Tag Archives: conscious awareness

whole-life path 2

Posted on by

0

Selected excerpts from “Kamma and the end of Kamma” by Ajahn Sucitto.
Continued from last week:
…don’t get fazed by the arising of old habits, but reflect on them to remind yourself to avoid old ways: don’t follow outdated maps and false guides. Of these, a good number will also crop up in one’s thinking mind. After all, this too is conditioned in terms of content (education, media) and in the authority we give to it.
In the world in general, thinking is held to be the supreme intelligence, and a guide to truth and fulfilment. Hmm. Really? How many of your thoughts fall into that category? A few meditation sessions will disabuse you of that notion. Many thoughts will be running on autopilot. Some will be planning, some brooding over the past, some playing themes that one has heard many, many times to no good end. All around ‘me’. Then look around at the great unknowables: ‘Why do things, even our own minds, occur? Am I or am I not? Is there a purpose to life? What happens when we die? Is there a soul, an afterlife, or what?’ What good would it do you if you could have all these worked out in your head anyway? Thinking can’t take you to where you know enough to not need more thinking.

But mindfulness opens another kind of intelligence. It surveys the process of thinking, cleans it, prunes it, trains it to report accurately on presently arising phenomena – and with dispassion turns down its voltage. When mindfulness is combined with other factors of awakening, the relative and changeable nature of experience becomes clear. You can notice the moment when a thought has ended; or acknowledge that a particular obsession isn’t running like it used to. This full knowing reduces suffering. You get to glimpse non-clinging, and with some calming and steadying you can consolidate awareness of that area where the mind isn’t seeking stimulation through thoughts or memories. That basis, where manas ceases and perceptions based on any ideas fade out, can yet be ‘sensed’.[**]

These resources and insights make it possible to bear with unpleasant feeling, as one recollects: ‘Unpleasant feeling sits on the life path; it is to be met, understood and handled with awareness.’ For example, when there is physical pain, can you cultivate the attention that notices where the pain isn’t? If you have pain in your legs, can you notice the ease in your neck? The habit of perception is to generate global felt meanings out of local feelings; and from that comes the experience ‘I’m in pain.’ To shift from that to ‘there is pain; it draws attention to the leg,’ is a good start. It checks the saṇkhāra program that is attracted to feeling, gathers around it and generates ‘I am’. To go against that trend, you widen awareness: you include your entire body, and you consider that all bodies experience painful feeling. But by referring to the relativity of the discomfort – that only a part of the body, and only a fraction of potential awareness, are occupied by any one feeling – and by not fighting the dukkha, a piece of the suffering of ‘I am’ can be abandoned. That dispassion allows a shift to a more manageable standpoint regarding the pain. This view of how stress lessens has to be realized, kept alive, and expanded. With this, you get a window into the domain of the mind which isn’t about feeling and interpreting and reacting.

This is significant when it comes down to psychological and emotional pain – because that is based on perceptions, meanings, assumptions and self-view, and could cease more completely than bodily pain.[56] Perceptions of being blamed, being overlooked or not treated sympathetically; impressions of betrayal and being a failure – they all cut deeply and engender painful feeling for a long time. Understandably, we don’t want or support such actions – but they happen. So, we have to cultivate an awareness that can be steady and spacious enough to feel unpleasant feeling without tightening, collapsing or reacting. That’s a part of anyone’s awakening process. And if the factors of awakening are strong, they can do the job. To them, feeling is just feeling. Mental feeling is generated through the manas activity of interpreting and hitting the sore spots of the citta in its programmed ways. This kind of feeling arises dependent on favouring or opposing what the mind itself has created. But when feelings and reactions have already arisen, or are associated with memory, getting upset about them is of no use. If we can mindfully widen around our reactions (‘what to do?’), then around our perceptions and patterns (‘I am this’), until we just feel the feeling – the feeling can pass. Then, although it may be the case that one has done something wrong or been treated unfairly, there’s no suffering.

For example: shifting the mind from irritation to patience can be brought around through noting the unpleasant quality of irritation, and any non-irritating aspect of the person or the event that is bothering us. ‘Waiting for an hour for someone isn’t much fun, but I’m safe here; I can practise with this and waiting won’t kill me.’ So, maybe we recollect patience, deliberately evoke it and attend to that quality. As another example: if we’re impassioned with a body or some consumer item, we might bring to mind the unattractive or the undesirable feature of it. In other words, to move from suffering to non-suffering we can substitute one image or mind-state for another.

However, the mind can eventually learn to move from the perceptions and programs that condition suffering without having an alternative image or thought to go to. It does this through penetrating that convincing mesh of ‘me and them and what I want to do’, and expanding awareness of a heart-impression – such as (in the above example) ‘I’m being treated like an idiot’ – until it is no longer ‘me’ and ‘mine’ but an impression (‘contracted, frustrated’). Then, by steadying and suffusing the citta with Dhamma resources, the perception, impression and feeling can dissolve. Suffering can cease whenever the factors of awakening gather round, remove the ‘person’ from the negative scenario, and attend to the citta directly. Then there’s no further kamma created: you don’t have to prove, contend, or defend; as the saṇkhāra releases, the hurt fades.

Through humble everyday practice such as this, the experience of the Third Noble Truth deepens. The mind steps back from the outflows, and as citta senses that, the flow of mental energy quietens. That is, if the mind is steadied, opened and dispassionate, an intrinsic and clear stillness can be experienced. It has no intention, and it doesn’t support becoming and self-view. It’s a kind of weightlessness which at the same time is the most grounded and steady thing you can know.

This has a long-term effect in terms of understanding: I don’t have to be something, simply because I never have been able to be anything in the first place – all that happened was a tangle of confused activity. The apparently trapped owner of the mind is exposed as a phantom, a confusion of consciousness. And as that confusion and that person abate, so also does the drive of intention; there is a sense of lightness and freedom.

As long as there’s the view that a real self is the owner, perpetrator and inheritor of kamma, that view supports pleasing or displeasing impressions and patterns, and a need to do something about it. When that view is relinquished, there is peace, because there’s nothing nagging away at the heart.[57] But it’s not that there’s now a view of being a self who is independent of kamma, or a view that there’s no need to do anything. In the domain of kamma, of cause and effect, skills around kamma have to be exercised – so it’s helpful to inquire into how to act co-operatively, and to mutually address our assumptions and programs. The Buddha demonstrated and encouraged such action throughout his life; it’s just that for an awakened being, there’s no outflow, no craving, no becoming to have to deal with. For the awakened, these are the actions that have utterly ceased.

Continued next week: 26 June 2025

the kamma of relationship

Posted on by

0

Selected excerpts from “Kamma and the end of Kamma” by Ajahn Sucitto

‘And how is it, bhikkhus, that by protecting oneself one protects others? By the pursuit, development, and cultivation [of the four establishments of mindfulness]. It is in such a way that by protecting oneself one protects others. …

‘And how is it, bhikkhus, that by protecting others one protects oneself? By patience, harmlessness, lovingkindness, and sympathy. It is in such a way that by protecting others one protects oneself.’

S.47:19 – ‘At Sedaka’

Even when meditating on your own seems fine, you may notice that social contact stirs you up. Opinions about others, concern, attraction, irritation: how to resolve all that? How do we establish guidelines to help form healthy relationships? Is skill in relating to others even necessary for liberation?

The Community of Value

Well, we exist due to relationship; we all needed several people to even get born, let alone to survive infancy and learn about being human. We model ourselves on other people, from whom we learn a language and any kind of moral behaviour. A life without good friends is narrow and bleak; and families, friendships and communities thrive or splinter dependent on how skilful the relationships are. Our lives as individuals are blessed by good people: we can’t see our own blind spots, so it takes wise and compassionate companions to point these out in a way that is supportive rather than judgemental. For this reason, the Buddha greatly valued spiritual friendship (kalyāṇamitta), and considered association with wise people to be one of the requirements for ‘stream-entry’, the first level of awakening. [43]

Given the variable nature of social relationships, the most reliable thing to belong to is a field of value such as this. To belong to the group no matter what it’s doing, or to follow a leader because they make promises is unwise: we enter a relationship of infantile dependence or of being dumbed down. Not only is such false association personally unreliable – given the power that comes with group belief and action – it can be a danger to humanity. We can all attest to the destructive ideologies that masses of people have adopted – often incited by promises of wealth, or by the power of a charismatic leader. So, we need to personally connect with a Way, a Dhamma, that is free from contaminations and offers clarity and integrity. When this freedom is accessed by anyone who cultivates that Way, the community of value arises as a collective that enriches and is for the welfare of all.

Kalyāṇamitta is therefore not just a matter of friendship; it’s about a shared commitment to values that don’t harm or exploit others. It grows through cultivating relationships that steadily bring integrity, compassion and inquiry into a living focus. Such aspiration, effort and benefit from the spiritual communion that has involved millions of people throughout history. This living and ongoing legacy of skilful actions, aspiration and understanding is a ‘field of value’ (puññākhettaṃ) that can keep extending its boundaries. To belong to such a community entails steady practice. It means that rather than compete, compare and focus on each other’s personal idiosyncrasies, we attune to the bright kamma in ourselves and others, and develop through acting and interacting in its light. To see and respect the good in ourselves and to be keen to live that out – this is conscience (hiri); then to see and respect the good in others, and to be keen to live in accordance with that – this is concern (ottappa).

Conscience and concern are called ‘the guardians of the world’ – and as long as we listen to their advice, our personal world is aligned to the integrity and empathy that support awakening.

We can lose touch with that integrity and empathy if we neglect valuing our own actions and those of others. This devaluing occurs when we see each other, not as fellow subjects, but as objects compounded of wishful fantasy or anxiety. This seeing of another through one’s own tinted lens is the ‘self and other’ program. In this, we might expect other people to embody our ideals – and consequently get critical when they don’t live up to them. We might also project our fears onto others; or imagine that everyone else is enlightened or near it, and we are the laggards of the group. Or that people expect us to be something we’re not. All of these are negative mental kamma: the mind has adopted a view that divides ‘us’ into ‘self and other’ rather than directly relating to another with respect, appreciation and compassion: just as we would like to be related to.

Of course, it’s not that all aspects of anyone’s behaviour are flawless, or that we ourselves always see things from an undistorted perspective – but how else can good qualities arise if we don’t acknowledge our potential for them? It’s not as if we can make goodness appear where there isn’t a basis. So, the field of value offers the common ground in any misunderstanding. That common ground is remembered and brought into play whenever we touch into the qualities of integrity and empathy in ourselves, and ask another to do the same. Then there can be a dispassionate expression of how we see things, and a similar listening.[44]

 Mutual respect and equanimity can show us where we’re mistaken, or where ignorance has taken over the heart – and at the same time present trust and friendship.

So, when there is deep attention in the relational experience, the heart also finds access to the inspiration and compassion that give it strength. We all have a measure of good-heartedness, and as we tune in to that capacity in ourselves and others, it grows. Then we can enjoy the nourishment of kindness, or the protective care of compassion, or the joy of appreciation, and the equanimity to hold the space that allows emotions to arise and pass. These measureless qualities soften and even eradicate notions about self and others; they are even called ‘doors to the Deathless’.[45]

To be continued

knowledge and action

Posted on by

0

Selected excerpts from “Kamma and the end of Kamma” by Ajahn Sucitto

[Note: This part of the text is the conclusion of the section on latent tendencies, leading to disturbing states of mind, and their release through guided meditation.]

There are dependently-arisen states that lead to suffering, solidification of world and self; and there are dependently-arisen states that lead to release. The former depend on ignorance; the latter arise in accord with Dhamma (dhammatā). [42] Dependent on factors of awakening, the biases are removed from the mind that gave rise to a sense of inadequacy, feeling hard done by, frustration, worry, uncertainty about what one is or should be, and the planning that is supposed to make one’s world comfortable. And so on. With the fruition of Dhamma, one’s world doesn’t arise: there is an end to that kamma.

But to integrate that relinquishment of self-view in terms of action, the ongoing path of our lives is to maintain the spiritual values that benefit the shared domain. As you clear the layers of assumptions about life in the world – that it should always feel good, make sense and provide you with fulfilment – you place your trust in good heart and association with good people as being the foundation for engaged life. To see and bring forth the good in others, you cultivate good heart; to cultivate good heart, you associate with good people. We acknowledge the parents who kept us alive and psychologically intact for years; we acknowledge the great gift of receiving teachings, and of having a teacher. And without having taken precepts, having committed to a convention and a practice, would the crucible for liberation have been set up? Without training the mind in meditation, would the chemistry that transmutes kamma into liberation have taken place?

What arises from such inquiry is the wish to serve; to follow what calls forth good heart. To have regard for the world and for healing its suffering: this is compassion. To regard it steadily: this is dispassion. Regarding the world takes a bright, still mind.

Meditation: Meeting Your World

Establish a supportive bodily presence: a sense of uprightness, with an axis that centres around the spine. Connect to the ground beneath and the space above and around the body. Acknowledge sitting within a space, taking the time that you need to settle in. As you settle, let your eyes gently close. Attune to the bodily sense in any way that encourages stability and ease.

If you feel unsettled – by thoughts, stirred-up moods or sagging energy – draw attention down your back to the ground, allowing the front of the body to flex freely with the breathing. Refer to the ‘descending breath’ – down through the abdomen – if you feel bustling or uptight. Attune to the ‘rising breath’ – up through the chest and throat – if you feel sunk or flat.  As you come to a sense of balance, bring to mind a current situation in your life. It may well be the case that if you ask yourself: ‘What’s important for me now?’ or ‘What am I dealing with now?’ a meaningful scenario will come to mind. It could be about something at work, or to do with your close friends or family, or your well-being or your future. Just get the overall impression of that, without going into the full story. It could trigger a flurry of expected possibilities, or a heavy sense of having no choice; it could be the ‘so much to do…’ or the ‘I really need this…,’ or ‘he she/they think this about me and it’s not true.’ Try to catch and distil the emotive sense: burdened, eager, agitated – or whatever. As it becomes distinct, feel the energy, the movement of that (even if you can’t quite put it into words). For example, is it a racing sense, a buoyant one, or giddy, or locked? Keep triggering that sense by bringing the scenario to mind until you feel you have the tone of that.

Then contemplate that sense in terms of the body. Notice whether, for example, you feel a flush in your face or around your heart, or a tightening in your abdomen, or a subtle tension in your hands or jaw or around your eyes. If the topic is very evocative, you may feel a flurry and then be filled with such a flood of thoughts and emotions that you lose awareness of your body.

If so, open your eyes, breathe out and in slowly and wait for things to become steady again. Then as you re-connect to, or sustain, your embodied awareness, sense that emotive affect again … which area of the body is affected? And as you focus on the bodily effect, what mood does that bring up? Is it positive, something that there is an eagerness for, so that the body sense seems to rise up and open? Or is it negative, accompanied by a sinking or tightening in the body? Whatever it is, create an attentive space around the experience: can you be with this for a little while?

Let the awareness of, the ‘being with’, fully feel the tone of that experience. It may settle into an image – such as a bright stream, or something dark and heavy, or something twisted and stuck. Ask yourself: ‘What does this look (or feel) like, right now?’ Then, as you settle with it for a few seconds, bring up the question: ‘What does this need?’, or ‘What does this want to do?’ Follow with attention anything that happens to that sense of reaching out, or sinking back, or tension. There may have been an emotional shift – of relief or compassion. Perhaps parts of your body were affected: say you experienced a tightness in the abdomen and when you attended to your topic, lines of energy were experienced in your chest. Be with the enlarged experience, noticing any changes in the emotive sense. When things feel freer, ask yourself, with curiosity: ‘What is this response?’ Does something now seem obvious to you?

Carefully repeat this with that aspect of your world until you feel that something has shifted in your response, or that it has given you a key to deeper understanding. You may sense a letting go, or a firming up of your intentions.

Return through the body: to the central structure and the softer tissues wrapped around that, the skin around that, the space around all that. Slowly open your eyes, attuning to the space, and the sense of the place that you’re sitting in.

To be continued

four bases of clinging

Posted on by

0

‘Selected excepts from Kamma and the End of Kamma’ by Ajahn Sucitto

This world, Kaccāna, for the most part depends upon a duality – upon the notion of existence and the notion of nonexistence. But for one who sees the origin of the world as it really is with correct wisdom, there is no notion of nonexistence in regard to the world. And for one who sees the cessation of the world as it really is with correct wisdom, there is no notion of existence in regard to the world.

‘“All exists”: Kaccāna, this is one extreme. “All does not exist”: this is the second extreme. Without veering towards either of these extremes, the Tathagata teaches the Dhamma by the middle: With ignorance as condition, volitional formations [saṇkhārā] come to be; with volitional formations as a condition, “consciousness. … Such is the origin of this whole mass of suffering. But with the remainderless fading away and cessation of ignorance comes cessation of volitional formations; with the cessation of volitional formations, cessation of consciousness. … Such is the cessation of this whole mass of suffering.”’

(S.12:15; B. Bodhi, Trans.)

……………………………………..

One thing led to another, and after three years of practising in solitude, I returned to England for a visit. I stopped off in London, where Ajahn Sumedho was leading a small group of monks. In that community, there was more emphasis on action and interaction, “on a detailed training in terms of ethics and frugality, and on mindfulness with regard to using requisites. There was a lot of that kind of attention given to daily life; no competition, and no achievement. It demanded energy: all-night group meditation was a weekly practice, with its too brief highs and too long lows. ‘Patient resolve’ was the watchword. All this broadened equanimity and deepened awareness. And we were all in it together, so that generated friendship – even when people got stirred up and argumentative at times. That was understood and accepted, and we were encouraged to explore the cause of conflict and stress. The overall theme was to be mindful of whatever the mind brought up and investigate where the suffering was. It made life into a practice of pāramī; I made a resolution to stay with it – even though that meant getting stirred up pretty often. It was easy to see and feel where the challenge lay: clinging to my way and wishes. Holding on goes deep.

…………………………………..

The Buddha spoke of clinging as having four successively deeper levels: 1) clinging to sense objects, 2) to rules and customs, 3) to views, and 4) to impressions of what we are.

The first is fairly obvious – it’s about hanging on to possessions, and feeding on sights, sounds and the rest of it. In the monastery, with the limitation on sense-input, and with a good amount of physical work going on, most of this intensity would gather around the one meal of the day, or the hot drink and occasional sweets at tea-time. The very energy of clinging to the felt meaning of getting fed would sometimes send so much energy through the system that to patiently wait for everyone to gather, patiently file through to receive the food, patiently wait for everyone to get back … then, after chanting the meal-time blessings, to patiently wait for the senior person to begin eating – was quite an achievement! The food itself was nothing special – sometimes I hardly noticed what it was. Moreover, the degree of satisfaction derived from eating was nothing fantastic and was offset by feeling dull afterwards. The passion was all around the idea, the felt meaning, of eating. But that impression of gratification, and the appealing nature of the food could shift within minutes. On contemplating the whole issue, it was apparent that the intensity was just around the set of feelings and drives that clinging made solid and real – for a while. Clinging was just clinging to its own interpretations.

I could experience the same clinging occurring in terms of the second level of clinging – with reference to the rules and customs of the monastery. Everyone uses rules and customs to regulate their lives or occupations: forms of etiquette, customs around what food to eat at what time on what day of the week, or around how I like my office to be arranged, as well as religious observances and social taboos. But there’s a tendency to go into automatic, or to get dogmatic about one’s own system. One feeling I had about committing to Buddhist practice was to get out of this – to be more spontaneous, to live in the here and now. But after about three years with nothing to do, nothing to belong to, and therefore nothing to be spontaneous about, I really appreciated things like morning chanting every day, observances around handling and washing your alms-bowl, and a training in conventions that helped to keep me focused in daily life in a way that wasn’t about me achieving or being rewarded. The training just kept placing awareness ‘here’ in what I was doing.

It was the same with the system of meditation that I was using; even if I wasn’t always good at it, it defined where I was. I got to feel solid. But then there’d be a hunger to get even more solid; to be part of a highly-disciplined outfit and be someone who could sit like a rock with unwavering mindfulness of breathing. So, the snag that I hit was that a subtle condescension crept in for people who weren’t so solid, or couldn’t keep up; and an outright dismissal of those ‘here and now’ types who were sloppy and clearly had no sense for resolution.

However, Ajahn Sumedho, the leader of what was supposed to be the crack troop, did from time to time cancel routines, either if he thought people were struggling, or just for a break. Or maybe it was just for us to see what our minds did. He also lessened the intensity of some of the observances, allowing an early-morning mug of porridge because some people weren’t so well … And as for a system of meditation, although he sat in meditation a lot, he didn’t use much more of a technique than a basic focus on breathing for starters. The main theme was one of letting go.

It was a complete turn-around from how I had been practising, so it was very confusing for a few years, but it was to the point, and very direct. Let go of clinging. Yes, you do get to recognize that taking hold of a system, firming up and getting righteous about it, carries the same feel and passion that you can get around a bar of chocolate. It’s clinging … and it means you’re about to suffer. And probably to inflict some suffering on someone else.

Much the same thing occurs with the next layer of clinging to views, typified as views of ‘becoming and not-becoming’. These are the ways we extend out of direct experience to conjure up a future. That is, we either add continuity, purpose and a trajectory in life, or deny that there is any purpose; we either get involved with action or development, or declare that nothing can really be done – that everything’s impermanent so there’s no point. This is the underlying view of ‘becoming/not-becoming’ (bhava-vibhava) that makes us unable to relate to the ongoing and uncertain nature of conditions. Those views solidify and spin, sometimes with great conviction. They carry the passion and thirst that initiate kamma, so you don’t get out of cause and effect by following their signals.[38] The harder you work at getting things finished and solid, the more that craving for becoming sets up new goals. But saying that there’s no goal, that it’s all an illusion and let’s not bother with the future – also has its negative effects. Failure to consider cause and effect has definitely affected and continues to affect our environment. Results inevitably proceed from action. So, the more immediate goal is to find balance; and act from there.

Our attempts at getting enlightened can follow the becoming/not-becoming bias. Is it about having the Ultimate Experience of Deathlessness; or is it about the Final Cessation of Nibbāna? Either way, the clinging to these ideas comes from views that configure either some Timeless Ground of Being or a Blissful Oblivion as the goal. And these depend on whether the self-view inclines towards becoming or towards not-becoming. We probably switch from one to the other “dependent on whether we’re feeling upbeat or fed-up, or just as our energies fluctuate. Of course, it doesn’t make sense because the underlying bias varies: one moment we want an experience, and the next we want to get away from experiencing anything. A good question to ask dispassionately is: ‘Who’s doing that?’  and that takes us to the fourth layer of clinging – clinging to self. Clinging to the tendency of becoming or not-becoming generates the self who will be, or who will be eliminated. But any idea of self arises within awareness. And it changes all the time, such as from confident and relaxed to anxious and tense. Notice the itch and the thirst to be successful – or even a failure – a s long as you’re being something. “As this urge affects the mind with regard to any form, any thought and any scenario, so feelings and impressions get clung to and become solidified into a self who is the agent or victim of the world. And that world, whether it be a sublime, immaterial ‘Ultimate Reality’, or the ‘authentic, pure Buddhist tradition’, or the benighted and unjust world of geopolitics, is then regarded as a foundation for a view and inclination with regard to the world it’s created. Essentially, ‘self’ and ‘world’ arise interdependently as two ends of the same designation process; my self is embedded in my world. With this, skills and advantages get tainted with conceit and the urge for more, and negative conditions arouse despond or irritation. There’s plenty of room for suffering, and no end to the goings-on that occur around identification.  So, the four bases give us windows through which to contemplate clinging. In themselves, material food and the rest of it are useful. Rules and customs are useful guides, and in order to do anything well, you have to have a point of view and take into account your own energies, inclinations and skills. But there is also a need to witness and contain the passion and clinging around all this. This is the purpose of cultivating pāramī: to check, witness and move through the mind’s assumptions and resistances. Then, if you stay focused at the place where the mind lets go, there is a sense of ease and spaciousness. You get a glimpse of non – clinging.

However, you don’t resolve and clear these programs with pāramī alone. Cultivating pāramī develops one’s intent to the point where one can have a choice over whether to act upon them or not; but the tendencies remain as potentials in the mind, ready to engender more problems. To clear the tendencies of ignorance and becoming takes the factors of awakening (bojjhanga.)

To be continued

clearing results from the past

Posted on by

0

Excerpts from Kamma and the end of Kamma by Ajahn Sucitto

Unless we cultivate letting go, unless we can stop accepting heart-patterns as unbiased truth and ‘my self’, the issues of the past will be the basis for further kamma. The difficulty is that letting go requires the presence of an awareness that can receive these impressions, their tracks and residues. This takes a lot of grounded good-will, clarity, and spaciousness – qualities that can remind the citta of ‘safe and comfortable’.

In life-scenarios of chronic abuse, or sustained performance-driven stress, the heart-pattern of ‘safe and comfortable’ may in fact be rare. So, when we go to the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha for Refuge, this isn’t just a catch-phrase; it’s a practice of sensing the felt meaning of the Triple Gem, attuning one’s heart to it, and opening one’s embodied presence to the quality of Refuge.[26] A true Refuge is that which remains when your world goes upside down; this is why people with great faith can survive disasters and tyrannies.

The felt meaning, the perception, of being in Refuge, may be evoked by attending to what is not urgent or threatening right now – even if that is just the space of an open sky. Even a visual sign such as this can evoke the tone of ‘being safe in this’, a tone that allows your body to breathe freely. However, the tone of Refuge can more skilfully occur through reflections on bright kamma, that of others or one’s own. Its underlying theme is that you don’t create it; it arrives by being receptive to a supportive pattern, whether that is a memory or a presence. A Refuge that we feel welcomed into can then provide the container wherein distressing memories can arise and pass, and thus assist in ‘de-conditioning’ the mind.

Clearing Results from the Past: An Outline

With regard to what we can do to clear our inner world, the process of clearing the past as outlined by the Buddha is twofold: first, to acknowledge the results of action, and to determine “not to act in such ways again; and secondly, to spread inclinations of goodwill through the whole system and towards anyone else connected to the action.[27]

What needs to be cleared occurs on three levels: there are active programs – actions we keep doing; there are involuntary tendencies – patterns that lie dormant but come to the surface under stress, or as the mind unfolds in meditation; and finally there’s the self-view – the aspect of self-construction that refers to how we habitually regard ourselves. In all cases, the method entails accessing the patterns and programs in the mind, and revealing their tracks with deep attention. And then being mindful of and fully sensing how these conditions manifest. Then we need to meet them skilfully so that a response arises from the intelligence that begins to return through not following the old track.

In brief, we establish and firm up a reference to a healthy pattern, and then expand awareness so that that bright quality receives, meets and smoothes out residues of fear, rage, self-hatred, grief – or whatever the citta hasn’t been able to discharge. This may sound like a lot, but because many impulses and programs move along a few basic tracks, clearing the past is not a matter of focusing on every wild pig that’s charged through the heart – it’s more a case of straightening, uprooting, or leaving its tracks.

At the most obvious level, that of acknowledging actions and of changing how you’re going to act in the future, you own up to any unskilful deed you feel you’ve done, and with deep attention, discern the underlying pattern. (Remember, it’s a pattern, not a self.) Widen attention so that the citta can step back from that pattern. At the same time, stabilize the mind in the energetic“feel of resolve, so that awareness is strengthened – then a resolution that’s made will stick. In this way, you block off access and nourishment for that bad habit, and its track begins to fade.

Following on from that, the general theme of practice is to spread kindness (mettā), compassion (karuṇā), appreciative joy (muditā), and equanimity (upekkhā) into the citta’s field. Collectively, they’re called ‘the measureless’ (appamāno) or a ‘celestial abiding’ (brahmavihāra). In more down-to-earth terms, accessing them means touching into the felt sense and tone of these empathetic qualities, then lingering in and strengthening the citta with them. When the heart feels full, it’s natural and easy to steadily extend its awareness towards beings you feel you may have affected – and towards your own heart if it has become infected in some way or another.

So: you recollect an unskilful deed you’ve done towards another, considering how you would feel if you were them – or towards the person you may have been at that time. And when you remember being the object of others’ abuse or lack of empathy, you do much the same. You take the impression of who you feel you’ve been, and who you feel the other has been, and suffuse the entirety with goodwill; or at least with non-aversion.

The practice covers both ourselves and others, because in the heart, ‘self and other’ are just forms that arise from saññā-saṇkhāra. They are also interdependent. That is, our personalities are established and moulded dependent on who we’ve customarily interacted with: such as parents, peers and colleagues. And it is through the eyes of our personality that we regard and define others. When the personality has an embedded mistrust or hostility pattern, it projects that onto others. Granted, many people can exhibit forceful or intimidating mannerisms, but when your buttons get pushed by a few words, or a glance, or even just by their status, then you know that you have stuff to clear – otherwise you’ll keep that track of inferred hostility open and well-trodden.

The process of clearing entails our capacity to suffuse (or ‘pervade’) the citta with healthy ripples and waves. This entails a soft and slow expansion of awareness through body and heart. It’s a meditative training based on the understanding that where awareness goes, energy goes; awareness is the primary intelligence of citta. It’s through this that ignorance is removed.

In terms of practice, you don’t go into the tangling energies of ill-will, craving or despond, but stay wide and steady around them. With reference to the bodily aspect of patterning, you can slowly extend awareness through the entire body, so that the refined energy of breathing and the uncontracted quality of awareness clear hindrances. This generates the bright states of rapture and ease; and the mind settles in samādhi. In terms of heart, the suffusion is of the intentions of kindness, or compassion, or appreciative joy, or equanimity – so that the contracted or sour heart-energy unfolds into a beautiful abiding: ‘abundant, exalted, immeasurable, free from hostility and ill-will.’[28] Although they have different approaches, their combined cultivation is the kamma that generates the ‘great heart’.[29]

In referring to the brahmavihāra states, the Buddha uses the simile of someone blowing on a conch to evoke the way that these radiate and suffuse the atmosphere.[30]

 Exactly what ‘tune’ one plays depends on the distortion one is healing. There is the bleak ‘have to do it on my own’ hardness that needs the nourishing quality of kindness; at other times, it’s the heart’s irritability or vulnerability that calls for compassion, the protective energy. Sometimes it’s the case whereby we recognize the harm that comes from neglecting what is good in ourselves and others, or even through taking others for granted. Then the intent to appreciate goodness can arise. It’s important to not neglect this: the stream of good deeds that you did do, the kind words that just seemed natural, but were the right thing at the right time, the acts of courtesy or generosity that other people manifest. It’s important not to overlook appreciation – because we often do.

Equanimity holds the empathetic space and allows things to unfold. It doesn’t ask for results, but attunes to how things are right now. It is where the issue of self comes to an end as we understand kamma. With this, we realize that ultimately no-one did anything: it’s just that patterns and programs get established based on reckless actions, and on what each person has had done to them.

In the world in general, there’s a huge inheritance of psychological programs based upon violence and deprivation – and who knows where all that began. Under the pressure of desperate need and hopelessness, in a context that is starved of goodwill, or is abusive, citta can get so distorted and compressed that it only experiences relief in the blaze of rage and brutality. For example, say your father got brutalized by being in a war; this led to his bouts of depression, explosive rage and drunkenness. You picked up the results of that, were insecure and became abusive towards yourself and insensitive to others. Where and when do these cycles of violence and punishment and revenge end? Only when we can regard our own and other people’s actions empathetically in terms of cause and effect. That regard is equanimity, the most reliable base for action.

The End of Grief: The Nun’s Story

‘Overwhelmed with grief for my son –
naked, demented,
my hair disheveled
my mind deranged –
I went about here & there,
living along the side of the road,
in cemeteries & heaps of trash,
for three full years,
afflicted with hunger & thirst’

‘Then I saw
the One Well-Gone,
gone to the city of Mithilā:
tamer of those untamed,
Self-Awakened,
with nothing to fear
from anything, anywhere.’

‘Regaining my mind,
paying him homage,
I sat myself down.
He, Gotama, from sympathy
taught me the Dhamma.
Hearing his Dhamma,

I went forth into homelessness.
Applying myself to the Teacher’s words,’

‘I realized the state of auspicious bliss.
All griefs have been cut off,
abandoned,
brought to this end,
for I’ve comprehended
the grounds from which grief
come into play.’
(Therīgathā 6:2; Thanissaro, trans.)

Continued next week, 14 November 2024

citta and kāya: the affected field

Posted on by

3

Excerpts from, “Kamma and the end of Kamma,” by Ajahn Sucitto

The programmed, conditioned citta generates further programs and conditions; its formative energy (citta-saṇkhāra) runs into our bodies and drives emotions and thoughts. We can feel this programmed process occur in the flush of our skin, the tightening in the stomach, the opening of the chest, or the sinking in the heart. In the case of a bodily reflex, a somatic program/energy, or kāya-saṇkhāra, stimulates instinctive emotion; either that or it follows through on the heart’s signals to trigger reactions – even in cases which don’t pertain to the physical body. The body tightens up when we are in an argument; a loud noise may cause it to jump; a ‘warm’ smile triggers off a flutter in the pulse, and so on. The experiencing body (kāya) and heart are essentially not separate, and at an instinctive reflex level, the bodily intelligence will override the rational. This is important to bear in mind, because even when a memory, or the result of an action, is reasoned with and dismissed, forgotten, or suppressed (‘Oh, never mind; that was years ago,’ etc.), there can still be a bodily and emotive memory-pattern that arises at an unexpected time.

Consequently, in order to clear those effects, you have to meet them in aware embodied presence. The snag is that the citta uses bodily saṇkhāra in its shutting-down strategy; then pieces of that memory get buried under the body’s armouring or numbing programs. So, the ‘voice’ of their memories is silenced. And, as we’re often dealing with or creating inner chatter, we don’t feel and therefore don’t know about these shut-down programs. However, we might notice that our body has areas of numbness and tension that aren’t related to physical causes. Such conditions may indicate that the bodily intelligence has closed over some afflictive or traumatic residues. Another indicator is that one feels overwhelmed, or flattened, or explosive in certain scenarios; problems seem huge, one loses perspective and lashes out, freezes or collapses. This is because when an area that has had intelligence removed from it suddenly opens, the readings and responses aren’t intelligent. We do and say stupid, reckless things. Then we inherit the results of that – and become a self, based on the cycle of blow-up, punish, suppress … and then we repeat the program.

Any form of abuse – physical, verbal, or psychological (mine towards others, others’ towards me, or mine towards myself) – closes down or perverts the heart’s sensitivity. All that creates a pattern that encourages a program. Even unskilful thoughts have that effect; particularly as we can have them many times more than we can carry out physical deeds. If we allow the mind to repeatedly formulate deceit, jealousy, or guilt, that creates a track down which the emotional and psychological energies will run. If you swat annoying insects, or haul fish out of the water with a hook for sport, you may not think this is particularly evil. Indeed, we can do a lot worse.

But with any decisive action we generate a ripple in the citta; repeated, it becomes a pattern that energy flows into, and a saṇkhāra track – a potential for further action – gets established. With any act of harming or abusing, that ripple forms a wave that obliterates respect for life. If it isn’t acknowledged and caused to subside, it can extend its disregard to legitimize killing ‘bad’ people, and any inconvenient others. Genocide was supported by the notion that the indigenous people were sub-human – so they could be treated in the same way that we’ve learned to treat animals. Especially if they were occupying land that we wanted. Sadly, it’s also the case that the State demands that its citizens fight and kill others in a war – and thereby do violence to their own hearts. Whose fault is that?

‘Ignorance’ has to be the answer. Through this, what may have begun as your own impulse, or someone else’s that you followed or reacted to, gets embedded – and creates a track in the citta’s field. Then fresh physical or verbal actions move down that path. To use an analogy: a wild pig, alarmed or excited by something or another, darts through the undergrowth in a forest. It thereby creates a track. Other pigs, and deer, see that track and walk down it. The track widens and becomes established. You’re wandering through the forest, see the track, and, as it represents an easy way through the undergrowth, you also use it. The track becomes a path and eventually a road. Cars drive down it, so that even when the forest is cut down, there is no other way to travel. You’re not familiar with the wider territory. Eventually, because the road is convenient, you build your house beside it.

That’s how it is: the mind keeps running down saṇkhāra tracks that were established through a careless impulse, or by chance, or even by other people. People can still feel chronic guilt over the heedless actions of a decade ago. And we can also harbour grudges, or be running programs of self-disparagement and lack of worth over actions and attitudes that we’ve been the recipients of. Worse still: when it’s bound up with a self-view, an identity gets built next to that track – that failed, evil self is ‘who I am’. In such a case, when we do something, we feel that we’re bound to get it wrong and look out for signs of disapproval. Or on reviewing an action, we decide that our motives were impure. In some cases, tracks get so habitual that the mind loses touch with any fresher possibilities. Whose fault is that?

Wrong question. Through ignorance, saṇkhāra tracks create a self as their source, when the source was really an embedded memory, vipāka. But on account of that pattern, programs arise: people sabotage their well-being with self-disparagement, anxiety or depression, and employ distracting habits to shut off those memories and resonances. This is a set-up for addiction. Drinking, drugs, pornography, gambling, over-eating, binge-shopping, internet addiction, incessant chatter and restless activity: there is a wide range of addictions, some more toxic than others, but “all afflictive, and all contributing to the ‘inadequate self’ they originated from, and deepening that impression.

To sum up: the patterns and programs, good and bad, are the waveforms in the causal field of citta. They are the means through which the mind operates in order to establish how to function in this sensory and psychological world. Furthermore, they formulate a self-image as the holding pattern, the locus of stability. However, as it’s constructed out of dynamic energy patterns, such a locus can’t be very stable. The best the average person can do is maintain a workable series of ‘good-enough’ patterns that keep the show on the road. And yet,

as the citta keeps pulsing and turning, at times it encounters its unresolved patterns or shut-down territory – and the past rises up independently of one’s wishes. Dependent on ignorance, and compounded by responses, impulses and intentions, the past event has laid down a pattern in the citta, and a sense of ‘I am this’ arises through its instinctive re-enactment.

Continued next week:  October 7, 2024

meditation: embodying the mind

Posted on by

7

Continued excerpts from, “Kamma and the end of Kamma,” by Ajahn Sucitto

Sit in an upright posture, and bring awareness to the present-moment experience of the body. Ask yourself, ‘How do I know I have a body?’ In other words, seek the direct experience of embodiment – the pressures, energies, pulses and vitality that signify awareness of the body. Then from that place of direct sensitivity, look for more details.

Push down a little through your tail and pelvic floor. Notice how that helps to shift the spinal column into a balance where the sacrum is straightened and the lumbar region of the back forms a springy arch. Avoid locking or straining. Use a slight downward push to form the arch, rather than force an exaggerated bow. Then sustain that posture by lengthening your abdominal muscles so that the rib cage is supported. This posture allows the body to be carried by a spring that transfers its weight down to what you’re sitting on.

Move your awareness gradually and sensitively up your spine from the tail tip through the sacrum, and the lumbar and thoracic vertebrae. Widening your focus, get a sense of the entire torso extending upwards along the spine from the pelvic region. Check out the centre of the back, between the lower tips of the shoulder blades: bring this place alive by slightly drawing it inwards towards the heart. Moving upwards, make sure that the shoulders are dropped and relaxed, and sweep a relaxing awareness from the base of the skull down to the sides of the neck and across the tops of the shoulders. Bring awareness to the neck vertebrae – notice that there is a sense of space between the back of the skull and the top of the neck. For this, it may help if you tuck your chin in and tilt it down just a little. Check the overall balance – that the head feels balanced on the spine, directly above the pelvis. Check that the spine feels uncramped; relax the shoulders, the jaw, and let the chest be open. Spend some time feeling into the skeletal structure, with the suggestion that the joints – those between the arms and the shoulders, for example – loosen and feel open. Let the arms be long. Relax into balance. Sense the spaciousness that this allows you; stay spacious and avoid a close-up or intense scrutiny.

Attend to the bodily sensations in bodily terms: for example, how the weight of the body feels distributed; or the degree of vitality and inner warmth that is present. Feel for the subtle movements in the body even when it is still – pulses suffusions and the rhythmic sensations associated with breathing in and out. Get comfortable: evaluate the bodily impressions in terms of ease. A certain pressure in one place may feel solid and grounding, while in another, tight or stiff. The energies and inner sensations moving through your body may feel agitated, or vibrant. Put aside any interpretations as to what causes these, or any immediate reactions to make things change. Instead, spread awareness evenly over the entire body, with an intent of harmony and steadiness. Let that attitude be felt as an energy spread over the body. This will allow any tightness to relax, and bring brightness to slack or dull areas.

As things come into harmony, the sensations of the breathing will become more apparent, deep and steady. You may find that not only does the breathing flow down into the abdomen, but it also sets up a subtle flush or tingle that can be felt in the face, the palms, and chest. Dwell in that and explore how it feels. It’s likely that the mind will wander, but make sure, above all, that you stay with the intent of harmony and steadiness. So, when you notice that your mind has drifted, at that moment of realization – pause. Don’t react. As the mind hovers for that moment, introduce the query ‘How do I know I’m breathing now?’ Or, simply, ‘Breathing?’ Attune to whatever sense arises that tells you you’re breathing, and follow the next out-breath, letting the mind rest on that out-breath. See if you can stay with that out-breath through its completion into the pause before the inbreath. Then follow the in-breath in like fashion, to the very last sensation. In this way, let the rhythm of the breathing lead the mind – rather than impose an idea of mindfulness onto the natural process of breathing.

Explore how you experience breathing in different parts of your body, beginning with the abdomen. ‘How does the abdomen know breathing?’ You may experience it as a ‘fluid’ swelling of sensation. Be with that for a few minutes, letting the mind take that in. Then, ‘How does the solar plexus know breathing?’ This may feel more solid, an opening and closing. Then the chest, where swelling ‘airy’ sensations predominate. Check out the throat, and the centre of the brow above the bridge of the nose. Notice how the breathing is not one mode of sensations or energies, and yet in terms of energy, the distinction between in- and out-breathing is always recognizable.

 Eventually your mind will want to settle. Let it choose how that feels most comfortable. It may settle in an area of the body, such as the chest or in the abdomen or nasal cavities. Or it may be that awareness can easily cover the body as a whole. In time as the mind merges into the breath-energy, spread its awareness over the entirety of the bodily sense, in the manner of suffusing or pervading. The distinct sensations of breathing may well diffuse and dissolve into that energy. Allow some trust, letting the thinking attention relax, and relying on the enjoyment of subtle energy to hold your awareness. Be present but not engaged with whatever arises.

When you wish to stop, draw your attention back to the textures of the flesh and the firmness of the skeletal structure. As you feel that grounded presence, allow your eyes to open without looking at anything in particular. Instead, let the light and forms take shape by themselves.

Continued next week: 24 October 2024

ending kamma through insight

Posted on by

0

Continued excerpts from, “Kamma and the end of Kamma,” by Ajahn Sucitto

Samādhi is generated through skilful intentions in the present. It also relies upon already having a mind-set that settles easily, and it naturally sets up programs for the future: one inclines to simpler, and more peaceful ways of living. Samādhi provides us with a temporary liberation from some kammic themes – such as sense-desire, ill-will, worry, or despond – and it gives us a firm, grounded mind which feels bright. But samādhi itself is still bound up in time and cause and effect; it is kamma, bright and refined, but still formulated.

Also, it takes time to develop samādhi. And meanwhile, the very notion of ‘getting samādhi’ can trigger stressful formulations such as: ‘Got to get there’, ‘Can’t do it’ and so on. Accordingly, the learning point for both one who does, and for one who doesn’t, develop much samādhi, is to handle and review the programming. ‘How much craving is in this? How much “me holding on” is there?’ That’s the process of insight. It’s always relevant.

The results of holding on can be discerned in our most obvious and continual form of kamma: thinking. Thinking plays a big part in our lives, governing how we relate to circumstances and other people, determining what potentials we want to bring forth and where interesting opportunities might lie – and just reflecting, musing and daydreaming. So moderating and contemplating thought is an all-day practice. This practice offers understanding – and therefore a means of purifying one’s kamma, and even getting beyond it.

To do this, notice the tone or speed or raggedness that thinking has. By doing this, there is a disengagement from the topic or purpose of thinking; and your mind settles and connects to how the thought feels in the heart. When your heart is grounded in the body, you don’t get captured by the drive or emotional underpinning of thinking. Whether you have a great idea, or are eager to get your idea acted upon, or you don’t have a clue and feel ashamed of that – all that can be sensed and allowed to change into something more balanced. So this hinges on referring to the interconnected system of body, thought and heart. Ideally we want to direct our lives with the full set, so that we’re not just acting on whims and reactions, and our thoughts and ideas are supported by good and steady heart. That heart is where kamma arises, so you want to make sure it’s in good shape and is on board with what you’re proposing. Get it grounded in the body before you let the tide of thought rush in.

Once you settle the heart, you can evaluate the current of thought in terms of its effect. Sometimes it feels really pleasant in itself (like when people agree with me), but when I refer to how it sits in my heart and body, thinking can seem overdramatic, self-important, petty or unbalanced. Too often thinking closes the opportunity for the miraculous to occur, or for a fresh point of view to arise. And as the after-effect of all kamma is that a self-image gets created, do my thoughts make me into a fault-finder; a compulsive do-er; a habitual procrastinator; a feverish complicator; or a slightly grandiose attention-seeker? Does thinking keep my heart very busy being ‘me’, or could it be just a balanced response to what a situation needs – something that can dissolve without trace?

And as self-images do arise, can they be evaluated and witnessed with steady awareness? Can openness and goodwill arise in that awareness to know: ‘this is an image, this is old kamma, don’t act on this but let it pass?’ In this way, we can avoid making assumptions, established attitudes, and directed intentions into fixed identities. These are the blades of the spinning fan – stored up as citta-saṇkhārā. If you train in samādhi and paññā, those self-programs can be un-plugged. True actions don’t need an actor.

What underpins the automatic plugging-in is ignorance, the programming that is most fundamental to our suffering and stress. Ignorance is easy: pre-fabricated attitudes cut out the awkward process of being with things afresh. Ignorance gets seeded in the familiar and blossoms into the compulsive – which feels really solid and ‘me’. That’s how it is. But as the sense of self centres around people’s most compulsive behaviour, the personal self is so often experienced as the victim of habit, a being who’s locked into patterns and programs.

This is why it’s always remedial to attend to the kinds of kamma that are about not doing. The not-doing of harm, for example, is an absolutely vital intention to carry out – if enough of us followed this, it would change the world. And what about the other precepts? We can fulfil these, day after day and not notice it because our hearts and minds were elsewhere, believing we should do more and not noticing the not-doing mind. But the crucial Dhamma actions are just this: to disengage from the compulsive, and mindfully engage with the steady openness of your own interconnected intelligence.

For example, when a verbal exchange is getting overheated, you can attune to what’s happening in the body – the palms of the hands, the temples and the eyes are accessible indicators of energy. Does this energy need to be more carefully held? Sometimes I find that just acknowledging and adjusting the speed of speaking or walking shifts attitudes and moods; softening the gaze is also helpful. Say you’re feeling dull or depressed: is your body fully present …? Giving some attention there with a kindly attitude helps the energy to brighten up, and shifts the mind-state.

Holding on, gaining, succeeding, losing: the programs that saṇkhārā concoct – deliberate or instinctive, driving or drifting – can be witnessed. We can notice the surge of glee or despond, the lure of achievement, and the itch to get more. But we can focus on these impressions, heart-patterns and programs just as they are, rather than believing ‘this is me’; ‘this is mine’; ‘I take my stand on this’; or even ‘I am different from all this stuff.’ This is the focus of insight. It’s about witnessing programs: how they depend on self-views, how they arise based on feeling, attract a grasping, lead to the creation of ideas and notions, create a self – and so keep saṃsāra rolling on. With insight, you contemplate the rigmarole of success and failure, of what I am and what I will be: it’s all more kamma, more self-view, more stuff to get busy with. But if you see the endlessness of all that, you work with the self-patterning and cut off stressful programs. And that’s the only way to get free of kamma.

When that point becomes clear, deepening liberation depends on staying attentive and learning from what arises and passes through your awareness. Because when one relates to bodily, conceptual and emotional energies as programs, that doesn’t support the view ‘I am’. Being unsupported by that view, the basis of feeling is exposed; with disengagement and dispassion, that feeling doesn’t catch hold. But it’s like scratching an itch, or smoking a cigarette: even though you get the idea that it might be good to stop, your system won’t do it unless it gets an agreeable feel for the benefits of stopping, and you develop the resolve and skills to do so.

To this end, ethics place discernment where it most often needs to dwell; meditation blends body, thought and heart together into firmness, clarity and ease; and wise insight disbands the defective programs. Then we can handle life without getting thrown up and down by it. We don’t have to keep on proving ourselves, defending ourselves, creating ourselves as obligated, hopeless, misunderstood and so on. Kamma, and a heap of suffering, can cease.

Continued next week October 17, 2024

consolidation through breathing

Posted on by

0

Excerpts from “Kamma and the end of Kamma,” by Ajahn Sucitto

Once you’ve established a good foundation for meditation, you can pay attention to breathing in and breathing out. To be clear and attentive to breathing through the period of one whole inhalation and one whole exhalation and on to the next in a sustained way, reveals and unravels compulsive mind-states. Thus freed, the citta’s full potential can be realized; this is a powerful practice.

You can enter this practice by using a mantra such as ‘Buddho’, thinking ‘Bud-’ as you breathe in, so that the syllable extends over the entirety of that bodily process. Then do the same with ‘-dho’ on the out-breath. You can also initiate evaluation by adding the questions: ‘How do I know I am breathing?’ And then: ‘How is that?’ Use just enough to keep the mind engaged; you don’t need a lot of thinking – you just need to engage its receptive aspect. You may then notice that the direct experience of breathing arises as a sense of swelling, tightening and subsiding in the upper body as a whole. And sense it as a rhythmic flow of sensations and flushes. Of these, the most obvious aspects are the purely physical ones – for example, the repeated swelling of the chest or the abdomen, and the tightening and relaxing of the skin. More refined than these is the flow of air through the nose and down the back of the throat. And there’s also the subtle energetic effect: as you breathe in, you get a brightening effect, and as you breathe out, you get a quiet, calming effect. These are three strata of breath experience. Given time, you can discern them all.

The energetic effect is even discernible in non-breathing parts such as the face, hands and even the legs. This energy is intelligent. It seems to know what to do; so, you can relax. If the mind doesn’t interfere, breathing settles and calms by itself. Even when you’re asleep or distracted, this intelligent system takes care of itself. And if you can connect your mind and heart to it, this involuntary flow of brightening and soothing energy brightens and calms the citta.

Don’t force a tight focus. The Buddha doesn’t mention focusing on one point in the body, or even on the breath; rather, he speaks more in terms of being receptive to the kāya-saṇkhāra, the overall process of breathing. The discourse on mindfulness of breathing simply instructs: ‘Know you’re breathing in, and know you’re breathing out.’ So, the recommendation is just to be aware of the ‘in-out’, the rhythm. To me that’s significant, because rhythm has a heart effect. Every musician, every parent rocking a baby, knows that. If focusing feels tense, try receiving the rhythm – say the slight swell in the chest, or even the belt around your waist tightening and loosening; it should be something that keeps coming back so it is easily noted. So be aware of the body as a pattern of repeated sensations that occur with the breathing. When you pick up the repetitive quality, you’ll discern the energy, because that’s the source of that flowing vitality.

The training is to get simple. Give yourself whatever time you need to simplify – this alone reverses the trends of a lifetime. And when you lose focus, don’t make a problem out of it. That could turn another citta habit around. So just notice when you’ve drifted off, and at that point ask: ‘What’s happening with breathing right now?’ Then pick up whatever sensation comes to the fore connected with breathing. That makes the practice accessible. You’re probably shifting ingrained programs just by not pushing. Then, as you get lighter and simpler, the rest of the practice follows.

As your mind tunes in, you can refine the process by attuning to the full length of the breath. This gets you in touch with the ending of an out-breath, with its release and stillness; and with the complete fullness and stillness at the completion of an inhalation. This steady moving in and out of stillness is an aspect of bodily energy that we often miss out on in our normal way of life. But giving yourself the time to attune to the breathing allows you to be with that movement. And as you train ‘thoroughly sensitive to the entire body, breathing in … breathing out’, you attune to the body’s energies as they brighten, refresh and relax. This represents an important shift of attention from the rational or visual bases that normally dominate our lives. The sense-base of the body is highly sensitive and responsive: when I touch something, it touches me. So, when that contact is easeful, there is a sense of trust. And when one trusts, the energy relaxes, and the heart brightens. Hence, being in touch with breathing brings sensitivity and relaxation: bright kamma.

This gives rise to somatic and emotional effects: one feels deeply relaxed and refreshed. This is the experience of rapture (pīti), a buoyant and refreshed state, and ease (sukha). Rapture and ease carry the sense of being in the flow with something. It’s not just that one is doing good, but that good things are happening. As we pick up the sense of that, the citta and the body become calm and the breathing gets softer, and the combined effects permeate the entire system. The thinking mind, the heart, and the body come together, and their unification is both bright and calm. That’s samādhi, or ‘right concentration’.

Samādhi is richer than the concentration that we might develop for solving problems, or when being absorbed in entertainment. These pursuits work by flooding rather than training attention: you don’t develop much skill in sensitizing and handling your programs when you’re watching the World Cup! Samādhi is a conscious consolidation of bodily, conceptual and heart energy, brought around by applying the mind, and keeping the entire conscious system alert, sensitive and contained. The right kind of consolidation depends on modifying intention and attention: you have to learn how to encourage interest, how to appreciate, how to let go, and how to enjoy. Learning these skills alone is a good enough reason to practise.

To recap: with bringing to mind and evaluation, one both primes and guides the attention with appropriate prompts. Ordinary discursive thinking generally makes the body feel more hard-edged or agitated, notably in the hands or the face (the ‘do-it’ parts of the body), or in the diaphragm (the ‘brace yourself’ area of the body). If these occur, ask: ‘How is my entire body now?’ to release the grip; then, when things feel balanced: ‘Where is the breathing now? What if I wait for the next out-breath, and just let that flow through the whole body?’ Letting the breathing happen by itself takes time and skill.

In the case of repetitive, obsessive thoughts, you might relate the thinking to the heart: there might be a sense of hurt beneath the complaining of the thoughts; or a giddy whirl that’s connected to a great idea. The unpleasant or pleasant feeling has to be attuned to, met, and opened around. Then: ‘Can I be with this feeling?’ So you stop fighting it or believing in it. Rather than analyse and scold yourself for wandering off again (‘how many times …!’ etc.) – just pause. You might benefit from a sympathetic inner voice: ‘How am I? May I be well …’ If the thoughtfulness is simple and caring, it can bear with and perhaps discharge the push of the feeling. Or you might ask: ‘Am I settled in terms of my body?’ And, as you feel the whole body settle down, at some time ask: ‘Why not flow with the breathing for now?’ It takes responsive clarity to bring the mind out of hankering and criticising, or being blanketed by drowsiness, worry or doubt.

As attention is steered into an unhindered source of energy, the heart can linger and enjoy. There can be a radiant, uplifting effect as the breath-energy permeates the entire body. The hard edges and stiffness of the body dissolve and the body is sensed more as an energetic field. Ease then stabilizes attention within that to counteract any giddiness or apprehension. When this develops as an enduring effect, it gives rise to the state of absorption (jhāna).

Continued next week, 10 October 2024

virtue leads to release

Posted on by

4

Ajahn Sucitto

[Excerpts from “Kamma and the End of Kamma”]

‘Bhikkhus, for a virtuous person, one whose behavior is virtuous, no volition [cetanā] need be exerted: “Let non-regret arise in me.” It is natural that non-regret arises in a virtuous person, one whose behavior is virtuous.

‘For one without regret no volition need be exerted: “Let joy arise in me.” It is natural that joy arises in one without regret.

‘For one who is joyful no volition need be exerted: “Let rapture arise in me.” It is natural that rapture arises in one who is joyful.

‘For one with a rapturous mind no volition need be exerted: “Let my body be tranquil.” It is natural that the body of one with a rapturous mind is tranquil.

‘For one tranquil in body no volition need be exerted: “Let me feel pleasure.” It is natural that one tranquil in body feels pleasure.

‘For one feeling pleasure no volition need be exerted: “Let my mind be concentrated.” It is natural that the mind of one feeling pleasure is concentrated.

‘For one who is concentrated no volition need be exerted: “Let me know and see things as they really are.” It is natural that one who is concentrated knows and sees things as they really are.

‘For one who knows and sees things as they really are no volition need be exerted: “Let me be disenchanted and dispassionate.” It is natural that one who knows and sees things as they really are is disenchanted and dispassionate.

‘For one who is disenchanted and dispassionate no volition need be exerted: “Let me realize the knowledge and vision of “liberation.” It is natural that one who is disenchanted and dispassionate realizes the knowledge and vision of liberation.’

(A.10:2; B. Bodhi, trans.)

Another major distortion is the assumption that thinking will make our lives happy and solid – that pre-judgement sets up all kinds of stress. We might, for example, become an incessant thinker, or someone who delights in thinking and enjoys generating ideas. Of course, some ideas are interesting, and it’s great to link up a remembered fact with an imaginative proposal and start nudging them towards a conclusion. And yet this inner speech can be so absorbing that we don’t see or think beyond the range of what we already know or have an attitude around; so we get tunnel vision, become obsessive and lose that open awareness within which one’s ideas can be held in a broader perspective, other people’s angles and sensitivities listened to, and the energy of thinking can be peacefully relaxed. In fact, if the energies of conceiving and evaluating, planning and speculating can’t be moderated or discharged, the system burns out with nervous stress.[22]

However, thinking about how to stop thinking only adds more energy and conflict to the mix. This is why meditative training directs thinking. You skim off what’s unskilful or unnecessary to consider right now, then steer your thoughtfulness towards the grounded presence of the body, taking in how it feels.

In this way, you steady the body, and through focusing on calm, repetitive experiences such as walking at a moderate pace, or breathing in a full and relaxed way from the abdomen, allow the citta to relax and open. Spreading attention slowly over the body as if in a slow massage is another good approach, one that adopts citta’s response to pleasure. You also can do this while standing, using the sense of balance to steady the mind. Take the time to notice the feeling of space around your body; then sit, walk or stand feeling that space, doing nothing more than being present with the embodied system. Deepen into simple moment-by-moment attitudes of well-wishing: ‘May I be well’ … ‘May others be well.’

I suggest this approach because attitude affects intention, which is the leader in the programming process. For many people, the energy of intention is set to the hyperactive mode of the business model: ‘You’ve got to work hard. Get out there and make it work for you.’ But if your heart is passionate or forceful, then your body gets signals to give you more energy, so your nervous system gets overstimulated and you tense up. Just notice how much nervous energy you can expend in getting emotionally worked up about things; notice how draining that can be. So, in meditation, train yourself to find a balance of resolve and receptivity rather than sustain ideals or imperatives that you can’t back up through the body’s energy or are beyond your psychological capacity. ‘Sitting here until I realize complete enlightenment’ is more likely to rupture your knee ligaments and stir up psychological turmoil than achieve the desired result.

A downshift in terms of speed and goals is a major shift. But you can begin by adjusting your attitude to one that makes the mind workable, fluid and curious. You move from ‘I’ve got to get it right’ to ‘How is this? Let’s take things a moment at a time.’ With this, you steady your energy, and use attitudes and intentions that bring your heart into play – so that it will be a supportive participant in this interconnected process.

This meditative kamma can then tone up the basis of all your intelligences; this brings around bodily ease, interrupts compulsive or habitual thinking, and also enables you to exercise authority over what you think about and how. And as this is about resetting your own conscious system, you can take the practice and its results with you wherever you go.

Continued next week 03 October 2024