Ajahn Sucitto

Excerpts from: “Kamma and the end of Kamma”, Chapter 1: “Action that Leads to Liberation” (continued from last week) “These impressions and interpretations begin with the external mind, but get settled in the heart through the agreeable or disagreeable feeling (vedanā) or the prior association it evokes. In other words, citta doesn’t receive sights, sounds, smells and tastes; it receives the perceptions that mind-consciousness brings in.”

Consequently, the pairing of the objective mind and subjective heart builds meaning. The spiritual quest is based on the understanding that there is ageing, sickness and death; and with that the experience of separation from the loved, and being disagreeably affected by these facts of life – while at the same time being powerless to do much about it. Even on the level of daily life, what we think about, and how we conceive of people and things, washes over the heart with pleasant or unpleasant feeling, arouses gladness or disappointment, and may lead us into action. This is how the world of sights and sounds and people and events gets into us and gets us going (even when the event happened long ago). The inheritance, the vipāka or ‘old kamma’ of being born, is that whether the mind interprets things accurately or not, the heart stores its interpretations. And it bases intentions, responses and reactions – kamma – on those stored-up meanings. It’s a questionable basis.

The basis is as much psychological as sensorial. We need to, and do, seek to understand and otherwise manage our circumstances. Therefore, one of our most continual mental actions is that of interpreting and filing away experience to derive meaning and purpose. And, as with other creatures, part of that meaning and purpose has to do with getting support from, or participating within, a group. In our case, this ‘belonging’ also entails participation in a complex weave of social programs, customs and attitudes. “that tell us how to operate in order to be accepted. This also affects our kamma, because although some advice is wise, we may also act upon socially-derived prejudices that cause us to contribute to hurting others – so we become arrogant or insensitive. Some social customs are about bypassing uncomfortable truths (such as mortality), or not giving deep attention to the heart: a life of golf and parties fails to come to terms with the facts of life. Another big effect comes from the views and opinions of others: being praised or blamed, valued or neglected, lingers as perceptions by which we sense ourselves. This self-reference then becomes an identity. As a general principle then, how we have been (and are being) affected by others solidifies into who we are.

This psychological program of being affected and responding is called the ‘mental (or heart) formation’ (citta-saṇkhāra). Installed at birth, at any given moment this ‘master program’ responds to present experience in terms of what it has learnt that experience is like. It is informed through a library of perceptions, or ‘felt meanings’, that the manas aspect has encoded, even though these perceptions are all only representations of an object, an event, or of course a person. And also, saññā adds subjective tints to any object-definition, such as: ‘Will she like me?’, ‘He looks threatening’ – and so on. These tinted perceptions become the basis of many spur-of-the-moment responses in our lives.

Meanwhile, the mind has responded on many fronts: we may be involved with business, but are challenged by the result of hearing of a relative’s death an hour ago. Even as we struggle with this, other long-term aims or social obligations apply their pressure. Bodily health and energy also have their effects. In addition to this, our attention span fluctuates, particularly if we’re tired – so we can be running on automatic, attending in a habitual or blurred way, and acting on outdated or biased programs. Rather like the tides of an ocean that can lift us up, engulf us, or sweep us in any direction, this kammic process is then a dynamic field of the interplay between established aims, former or current input, and responses to any of these. The mind-sets, attitudes and interpretations that have become established in our hearts carry the potential to shape our present actions; and the future will arise according to whichever mixture of these effects we act upon.

Steering Through the Causal Field

From the above, you’ll see that kamma is potent and multi-dimensional. Steering through its causal field is possible, but it does require a reliable and trained mind; training is then an imperative. Dark kamma weakens the mind and destroys people; bright kamma is a source of strength and nourishment. On account of bright kamma, such as ethical integrity and goodwill, we can establish the calm and clarity that supports training manas and citta. Together, these two aspects of mind can then handle, understand and release the causal tangle.

Look after yourself!

‘And for the sake of what benefit should a woman or a man, a householder or one gone forth, often reflect thus: “I am the owner of my kamma, the heir of my kamma; I have kamma as my origin, kamma as my relative, kamma as my resort; I will be the heir of whatever kamma, good or bad, that I do”? People engage in misconduct by body, speech, and mind. But when one often reflects upon this theme, such misconduct is either completely abandoned or diminished.’

(A.5:57; B. Bodhi, Trans.)

So kamma is not an imprisonment, but a matter to be mastered. Firstly, if we must generate kamma, we can at least determine whether it will be bright or dark. Remember, there’s a choice: kamma depends on impulse or intention – but ‘intention’ is not just a deliberate plan; in fact, we’re not always that clear about what we’re doing and why. Many of our troubles come from just being preoccupied, or getting stuck in habits, or from inattention or misunderstanding; then intention is not guided by clarity. “Complacency or, on the other hand, pessimistic fatalism may also weaken the clarity and firmness of intention.

We might wonder why we are who we are and what made us like this, but such speculation just activates the mind to no good end. The details of kamma are too complex to understand – it would be like trying to figure out which river or rain-cloud gave rise to which drop of water in the ocean.[4]

 The most direct and helpful way to steer kamma begins with ‘right view’ (sammā-diṭṭhi). Right view is the view that there is the bad and it can be steered away from, and there is the good and it can be cultivated. And cultivation entails training one’s attention. An attention that’s firm, clear and not flustered by moods and sensations can enter the underlying currents of the mind and turn a tide of heedlessness and self-obsession that would otherwise steer intention. In this way, right view leads into ‘right attitude’ (sammā-saṇkappā), which is the aim to set one’s attention on a skilful footing. With these two steps, the Eightfold Path out of suffering and stress gets established.[5]

The first responsible and accessible action on this Path is to pause on an emotional response and ask yourself whether this response is reliable and aims in a wholesome direction. Even this brief breaking of the reactive link that engages fresh intention with an old habit, if done repeatedly, can dissolve that link and cause that mental habit to cease. You find that you don’t have to retort, that you don’t have to rush to the deadline, and you don’t have to binge. Then different responses can arise – such as patience, forgiveness and tolerance. In ways like this, you can get out of the gridlock of ‘I’m stuck in this habit; I am this’, and make meaningful choices in your life. The “basis of any such choices is gaining the capacity to choose. And this heedfulness (appamāda) is what pausing and considering offers: I can pause, come out of a mind-state, give it due consideration, and decide to act on it – or let its accompanying impulse pass. I don’t have to be compulsive or reactive. Just taking this step, that of disengagement (viveka), opens the possibility for the fourth type of kamma, the kamma that leads to the end of kamma.

 This is what ‘liberation’ and ‘awakening’ refer to.

[Please find the last part of this chapter in the original, (see the link below), under the subhead: ‘Liberation Begins with Mindfulness,’ which can be found in the Contents listing. I decided not to continue with it here because it is of interest to a limited readership, in my opinion, and it’s best to move on to another aspect of this subject.]

https://www.abhayagiri.org/books/458-kamma-and-the-end-of-kamma

Ajahn Sucitto

[Excerpts from Kamma and the end of Kamma, Chapter 1: “Action that Leads to Liberation” by Ajahn Sucitto]

If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts,
suffering follows them like the cart-wheel
that follows the ox’s hoof …
If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts,
happiness follows them like
their never-departing shadow.
Dhammapada: ‘The Pairs’, 1 & 2

What is ‘kamma’, and what does it have to do with liberation? Well, as a word, ‘kamma’ is the Pali language version of the Sanskrit term ‘karma’, which has slipped into colloquial English as meaning something like a person’s fate or destiny. The problem with this interpretation is that it supports a passive acceptance of circumstances: if something goes wrong, one can say: ‘It was my karma’ – meaning that it had to happen, perhaps because of what one had done in a previous life. That’s not a very liberating notion. Where the idea really goes astray is when it is used to condone actions, as in ‘it’s my karma to be a thief (or to be abused).’ If kamma meant this, it would rob us of responsibility and self-respect. Furthermore, there would be no way in which we could guide ourselves out of our circumstances, habits or past history: and that’s a dismal prospect. However, kamma, in the way the Buddha taught it, means skilful or unskilful action – in terms of body, speech or mind – that we can exercise choice over. Making good use of this potential is what liberation, or ‘awakening’, is about.

Also, not everything that we experience is because of what we’ve done anyway. If you’re sick or caught up in an earthquake, it’s not necessarily because you’ve done bad things. If that were the case, considering the number of reckless human beings there have been, the Earth would never stop quaking! Instead, kamma centres on your current intention, inclination, or impulse (cetanā) – and it has a result (vipāka), either fortunate or unfortunate. This is the case even if why or how you acted was influenced by other people. So the Buddha’s encouragement was to know what you’re doing and why. One simple guideline is that acting towards others in a way that you wouldn’t want them to act towards you can’t give good results for yourself or others. Liberation is about getting free of tendencies such as self-centeredness or abusiveness.

Seen in this light, the teachings on kamma encourage a sense of responsibility for how you direct yourself in general, and for the many conscious and half-conscious choices you make throughout a day. Whether you feel at ease with yourself, or anxious and depressed; whether you’re easily led astray or whether you set a good example – all this rests on your clarity and integrity.

The Four Kinds of Kamma

Kamma means ‘action’ in a more than physical sense: it also includes verbal action, such as whether we insult and yell at people or say truthful and reliable things – and that action includes the ‘internal speech’ of thinking. But just as the body does neither good nor evil – these ethical qualities being rooted in the mind that initiates the physical deed – it’s the same with speech and thought. Language is neutral – it’s the kindness or the malice of the mind that’s creating the concepts and using the language that brings fortunate or unfortunate results. So, of the three bases of action – body, speech or mind – the kamma of our mental responses is therefore the most crucial in terms of living a wholesome life.

The Buddha spoke of four kinds of kamma. There is bad or ‘dark’ kamma – actions such as murder, theft, falsehood and sexual abuse that lead to harmful results. Avoid this, definitely. There is good or ‘bright’ kamma – actions such as kindness, generosity and honesty that have beneficial effects and enhance integrity and wisdom. This kind of kamma is to be thoroughly understood, cultivated and enjoyed. It’s not difficult: even refraining from dark kamma is bright in that it offers freedom from regret and supports clarity.

The third kind of kamma is a mixture of bright and dark kamma – actions which have some good intentions in them, but are carried out unskilfully. An example of this would be having the aim to protect and care for one’s family but carrying that out in a way that negatively impacts one’s neighbours. And the fourth? It’s the actions that lead to liberation – which I’ll get to later.

Kamma has consequences – vipaka. Now take the case of dark kamma: if I speak harshly or abusively to someone, one effect of that is that they get hurt – and that means that they’re probably going to be unpleasant towards me in the future. It’s also likely that that action will have immediate effects in terms of my own mind: I get agitated. At this point habitual psychological programs get going. I may shrug off scruples, say that they deserved it, or that I was having a bad day, etc. – but the results still remain. I may even get accustomed to acting in that way because it relieves my emotional tension or makes me feel I’m on top – but my mind will become insensitive, and I will lose friends. On the other hand, if I think about my actions, I may feel stricken with guilt and hate myself.

Effects therefore accrue in terms of states of mind – such as insensitivity or guilt – and also in terms of behaviour: in this example, I either become loud-mouthed or intensely self-critical. Then there are results in the wider social sphere: I get isolated or only associate with shallow, insensitive people. All of this can lead on to substance abuse and other self-destructive patterns.

All kamma rolls out in terms of behaviour patterns, psychological programs and strategies – saṇkhārā – of which intention (or impulse) is the prime agent. And if there is no clarity around kamma, even negative and uncomfortable programs – such as justification, blaming, distracting and switching off – can define how I operate and how I’m seen. Tendencies to be a compulsive do-er, a busy and over-responsible one who doesn’t take care of themselves, or defensive or somehow unworthy – are programs that become part of my identity. And as these programs become familiar, they bind the mind into ongoing habitual action – psychological, verbal and physical. The identity that they thus create is like a ball bouncing on a trampoline. Bouncing and being bounced: ‘saṃsāra’, ‘the wandering on’, is what it’s called. Liberation is about not being bounced; and the fourth kind of kamma is the mental action that brings that around.

So, if we want to get free, we have to get a hold on how saṃsāra works. We have to pause and approach our saṇkhārā from a different mind-set than the one they jumped out of: getting defensive about the tendency for denial, for example, is just a continuation of the same program. However, a different approach is possible – because the mind is not completely bonded to its programs. We can experience the results of unskilful actions, and with the support of our own trained attention and/or that of reliable friends, learn to do better. We can change our ways. We can also realize the awareness that makes that possible, and that stands apart from kamma. Liberation from the feedback loop of action and result (kamma-vipaka) is therefore possible; it all comes down to training the mind.

Bodily, Verbal and Mental Kamma: The Causal Field

Mind mediates within our multi-faceted experience of ‘external’ and ‘internal’ realms. What I’m referring to as ‘external’ is the range of sense-data that provides details of where we are; whereas the ‘internal’ consists of our inclinations, moods, memories and attitudes. Similarly, mind has an external aspect, manas, that scans the senses and through its focus shapes experience into discrete objects; and it also has as an internal, or subjective, aspect, citta (pronounced ‘chitta’), that adds how we are affected by these objects. For the sake of clarity, I’ll call citta the ‘heart’ of the mental process.

Citta isn’t rational; it’s an affective-responsive awareness that is attuned to respond to its environment – physical or psychological – at a gut and heart level, with ‘fight-flight-freeze ‘drives that can kick in at a moment’s notice. Basically, it’s attracted to pleasure and tries to get away from pain – and those impulses, along with the thoughts that they stimulate, make experience very dynamic. Indeed: dealing with the changing state of the world around us – and the ‘world’ within us – keeps us pretty busy.

Taken as a whole, these external and internal realms make up a causal field. This field is the sum total of experience that’s caused by our living context of sensory life, society and family; and it also causes – that is, it’s sensitive and responsive to that context. Consciousness acts as the one-moment-at-a time link between these two realms, with mental consciousness (mano-viññāṇa) adding its interpretations to sights and sounds and the rest. That is, this mental activity tags input from the external senses with perceptions (saññā) that affect the heart, such as: ‘tastes good’; ‘this carpet smells like an old dog’; ‘she looks irritated.’ These impressions and interpretations begin with the external mind, but get settled in the heart through the agreeable or disagreeable feeling (vedanā) or the prior association it evokes. In other words, citta doesn’t receive sights, sounds, smells and tastes; it receives the perceptions that mind-consciousness brings in.

Continued next week 1 August 2024   

                     Click on the link below to download the original:  

https://www.abhayagiri.org/books/458-kamma-and-the-end-of-kamma

   Photo images in this post source: unsplash.com: Pedestrian crossing, Shinjuku, Tokyo

Ajahn Sucitto

[Excerpts from “Kamma and the End of Kamma,” by Ajahn Sucitto, Chapter 5: “Regarding the World.” Note: The book is available as a free Dhamma publication. Look for the link at the end of this post.]

Regarding the World
Having directly known all the world –
all in the world just as it is –
he is detached from all the world,
disengaged from all the world.
He is the vanquisher of all,
the wise one who has untied all knots.
He has reached the supreme peace,
nibbāna, inaccessible to fear.
A.4:23 – ‘The World’

When I visited a monastery in China recently, I met an old monk who presented me with a treasured piece of his own calligraphy, a piece that summed up the view of Dhamma as he understood it. It comprised two ideograms on a scroll: one meaning ‘still’ and the other meaning ‘bright reflection’. The translator interpreted the overall sense to mean something like: ‘the quiet, reflective mind that regards the world.’ ‘Regards the world’: there’s attention there, but non-involvement – dispassion. Yet that mind keeps regarding the world, not ignoring it: that implies compassion.

Interdependence

What is this world anyway? Socially, psychologically and environmentally, it’s a web in which different forces, energies and beings support and condition each other’s existence. It’s both caused and causative. In ecological terms, this interdependence calls for balance. The Buddha’s understanding was that our psychological balance and ethical integrity are essential for a climate that sustains life.

 Hence his deep commitment to harmlessness and frugality. However, in referring to ‘the world’, the Buddha was generally focusing on the personal ‘internal’ world: the web of causes and conditions which arises dependent on the consciousness that participates in bodily life. This world is experienced as a series of shifting forms (rūpa) that arise dependent on seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching – moment-by-moment data which are tacked together by our minds to form a solid three-dimensional realm. To the casual observer, this reality persists through time.

 But when it’s more deeply and directly known, this world is not experienced as a fixed and stable entity, but as arising a moment at a time.

Furthermore, it is dependently arisen. That is, form becomes present for us dependent on consciousness; and consciousness arises dependent on some form to be conscious of. In detail: mind-consciousness arises as the interpreter and organizer of sense-data and heart-impressions. Without that input, mind-consciousness does not arise. It makes contact, thus generating perceptions that evoke feeling. Feeling and perception arise with contact, and with contact comes more heart-impressions and patterns – as well as programs involved with interpreting, organizing and responding to the impressions that mind has placed in the heart. And so, our world rolls on.

All this interpreting and organizing and feeling is summarized as ‘name’ (nāma), although ‘interpretation’ might give you a better handle on it.

 It is through the linking of ‘name’ to ‘form’ that an apparently ‘outer world’ and an ‘inner world’ co-dependently arise in the dynamic experience of consciousness, name and form.

To illustrate this: in the act of seeing, a visual object is first detected, then lingered over as the mind recognizes it, and designates it with an impression, perception or felt sense, such as ‘friend’ or ‘stranger’. Dependent on that and the current mood or intent, a response arises. One can then linger further and develop possibilities and plans. Regarding all this, we may feel uplifted, overwhelmed or bored by all the saṇkhārā – the energies and emotions that come up. Accordingly, ‘the world’ may seem exciting, dreadful or hum-drum. But it is conditioned, created and creative. And like the ever-changing design of the Mandelbrot set, it can keep going on and on: as the Buddha observed, you don’t get to the end of the personal upheavals until you have got to the end of your world.

Moreover, this doesn’t happen through moving around the world, running away from it or creating another world, but through contemplating the causal field, and penetrating the basis on which your world arises.[35]

Regarding the world this way leaves open the possibility that each of us, through purifying our ‘naming’ processes, can affect how the world seems and how we respond to it. Some responses feel balanced; others more compulsive. How are my attitudes colouring what arises? Is some fixed mind-set creating my world and myself as someone embedded in it? We train to acknowledge this so that we can see what needs to be cleared in order to get free. Therefore the Buddha taught where the world arises and where it stops, and the way to that.

To this end, many of the Buddha’s teachings are based on generating bright kamma in daily life. He taught the Eightfold Path to establish purity of intent. If you work with this with regard to people, duties and events, you can live with self-respect, gladness and equanimity. You don’t get caught up in the judgements of success/failure, praise/blame; instead, you establish your Path, linger in and savour the good, and work with what arises.

As long as one hasn’t developed such skill, the success/failure assessment gets internalized and craving keeps the mind driving on: ‘How long is it going to take me to achieve my goals?’ That’s the world arising, right there; it’s a race that can never be won, because the thirst to achieve creates the goal and the self who hasn’t achieved it. You climb one mountain, then you need to climb a higher or more risky one. What’s driving you? This process will always create stress. Stress can end, however, in accordance with the degree with which one can relinquish that thirst, that goal-orientation, that self. This is what is meant by purifying the intent. It means letting go of the search for fulfilment in terms of ‘world’.

Kamma should be known. The cause of kamma should be known. The diversity in kamma should be known. The result of kamma should be known. The cessation of kamma should be known. The path of practice for the cessation of kamma should be known.’ Thus, it has been said. In reference to what was it said?

‘Intention, I tell you, is kamma. Intending, one does kamma by way of body, speech, and intellect.’

‘And what is the cause of kamma? Contact is the cause of kamma.’

‘And what is the diversity in kamma? There is kamma to be experienced in hell, kamma to be experienced in the realm of common animals, kamma to be experienced in the realm of the hungry shades, kamma to be experienced in the human world, kamma to be experienced in the world of the devas. This is called the diversity in kamma.’

‘And what is the result of kamma? The result of kamma is of three sorts, I tell you: that which arises right here & now, that which arises later [in this lifetime], and that which arises following that. This is called the result of kamma.’

‘And what is the cessation of kamma? From the cessation of contact is the cessation of kamma; and just this noble eightfold path – right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration – is the path of practice leading to the cessation of kamma.’

“A.6:63 (Thanissaro, trans.)

Click on the link below to get your free copy:

https://www.abhayagiri.org/books/458-kamma-and-the-end-of-kamma

Ajahn Sumedho
For each one of us, the way it is right now is going to be different: with our own moods, memories, thoughts, expectations or whatever. When we try to compare one person with another, we get confused because we’re all different. On the level of saṅkhāras, or conditioned phenomena, everything is different. Nothing can stabilize into a permanent quality or condition; it’s beyond the ability of saṅkhāras which by their very nature are changing. The Buddha taught, ‘Sabbe saṅkhārā aniccā – all conditions are impermanent. This is the way it is. They change. Saṅkhāras are like this. They can be of any quality: low or high, good or bad, right or wrong, material or mental or emotional, and their nature is anicca (impermanent), dukkha (unsatisfactory) and anattā (non-self).
The Buddha laid down this teaching very clearly; it’s very simple and you can reflect on it. It’s not a teaching you grasp or a Buddhist doctrine that you must believe in, because belief just stops you from reflecting. You don’t just say, ‘The Buddha said that, so it’s true.’ Rather, you take what the Buddha said and use it to look in the direction that it’s pointing… it’s like this. This may sound very prosaic and boring, ‘It’s like this’, but it’s using words to open up the mind to the way it is, rather than try to determine whether the way it is right now is right or wrong, good or bad, true or false.
What we call meditation is really mindfulness. There are so many meditation techniques that are available now on the Internet, and various teachers teach different styles because that’s the way teaching is; it depends on words. It isn’t about whether what I’m saying is right or wrong, or about you trying to believe what I’m saying is right, or prove I’m wrong. It’s an invitation, an encouragement to reflect on the reaction that you’re having as individuals at this present moment. Whatever the emotional state or mood that arises – it’s like this. Whether it is right, wrong or a mixture, is not the issue. It is the way it is. When I talk about Dhamma, it’s the reality of the way it is.
Religion is a kind of outer surface of everything. Some people prefer one over another, but that doesn’t make one better than the other. It’s just the way things are. Nobody’s going to demand that we feel the same and agree on the one. That’s what tyranny is: ‘You have to believe what I believe, what I say.’ So much of religious teaching gets blocked off by doctrines, things you have to believe in order to be a functioning member of a particular group. Belief is grasping concepts that you are attracted to, or that you are interested in. Or maybe you’re not interested in it but you’re told that if you don’t believe in a certain way, you’re a sinner, there’s something wrong with you, that you’re an apostate and have to leave the group.
But that’s not reflecting on the way it is; that’s just a form of tyranny where one person determines what a group has to believe in without question. That’s one reason why Christianity broke up into so many different kinds of groups, because people had different takes on the basic teachings and history of the Christian religion. Buddhism also can be caught in just believing in Tibetan Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Korean Buddhism, Thai Buddhism or Theravada Buddhism. We can all feel that the particular form we’ve chosen is better than the rest. Reflect on that. This feeling of ‘What I have is better than what you have’ is a feeling; words and feelings that arise and cease. That’s the very nature of all languages – it’s all words.
No matter how high-minded or beautiful the word may be, or how mean, low or nasty it might be, the one thing in common that all words have is that they are saṅkhāras, they’re conditioned phenomena. And that’s why I always encourage you to listen to the words that enter your mind without judging them, because if you learn to just sit still in a quiet place for a while, then various thoughts, memories and concepts arise and cease. You’re not trying to control them, reasoning everything out logically or judging if they’re right or wrong, true or false. But it’s like this.

This is reflecting on the nature of words – thoughts as they arise and cease – rather than trying to figure out what kind of thoughts you should think, or are wrong and bad and shouldn’t arise. If you have bad thoughts, you easily assume there’s some evil source in you, some devil trying to tempt you, or that you’re a bad person because a good person wouldn’t have evil thoughts. That’s conceptual proliferation. The mind goes around and around about right and wrong, good and bad.
I assume everybody here wants to be good. In the whole monastic form – in all religious forms – the ambition to be a good person is a common bond we share. But we can’t always have good thoughts. We are living in a community that has a structure to it that we all agree to: to surrender and live within the structure of the vinaya, the precepts. That’s an agreement that’s required to join the community of monks and nuns. All the Vinaya precepts are about right action and right speech, but not about right thought. Thought can be wrong, can be bad, can be evil, as well as good, the best, the highest possible thought you can think of at any moment. But you can’t sustain them. If you observe them, they arise and they cease. When you resist or try to suppress them, then you proliferate around them and blame somebody. Either you blame external sources – some kind of evil force in the universe is tempting you, is one way of expressing that – or think that someone in the sangha is trying to influence you in a negative way, or that you are just a bad person. But whatever take you have in regard to these bad or evil thoughts, it’s still the use of words, proliferating concepts that arise in your consciousness.
Many of the thoughts, emotional reactions and experiences that we have are still coming from the time we were little children, teenagers, young adults and onward. But what or who is it that is aware of thoughts as thoughts? Not the critic. The critic is not who you are. Your position in life isn’t to be stuck in a critical mind – caught always in seeing everything as what’s right and wrong about every condition, every situation – because all conditions, all saṅkhāras, are changing. You can’t sustain them.
Many of us have had insights through various forms of meditation, and then we remember them. For example, you think, ‘Yesterday I sat in the Temple and had the most profound insight into Dhamma.’ That’s a memory. It arises in the present moment. That’s the way memories are: impermanent. The next day you come back and sit in the same place in the Temple, and do the same things that you remember doing the previous day when you had this profound insight, and what happens? Your mind goes all restless, negative. You’re struggling with it; you feel disappointed and want to get up and leave. You’d hoped that the bliss that you experienced on a previous day could be sustained for your whole life. We would like to live in a state of what we call ‘bliss’ forever and ever because we don’t like to suffer.
The very nature of saṅkhāras is dukkha or suffering – unsatisfactoriness – because that’s the way they are. They’re not satisfying. No matter how good or beautiful or right, or the best that you can possibly have, they’re going to change because saṅkhāras are impermanent. That’s the way it is. Whose fault is that? You think, ‘Is it God’s fault? Why didn’t God create permanently blissful saṅkhāras for us, so that once we have this insight, we can stay in that peaceful state forever and ever, beyond death?’ We can imagine bliss as a permanent state. But the thoughts about bliss are still words and concepts that we create in the present moment. So, trying to remember previous insights is suffering.
Fifty-five years ago, before I met Luang Por Chah, I spent the first year as a sāmaṇera (novice monk) in a monastery in Nong Khai, in northeast Thailand. The head monk sent me off to a meditation monastery outside the town, where I spent a year meditating, at first using methods I found blocked me; I just couldn’t get beyond them. Then I’d feel if I wasn’t doing this method then I wasn’t meditating, and feel guilty and try to force myself to do this technique all day. And when you’re with yourself, you have no distractions. I didn’t take any books except one that I was given, The Word of the Buddha, the basic teachings from the suttas and the Tipitaka. That was the only book I allowed myself to read.

In the first three months, after desperately trying to perform this technique and I couldn’t do it), I just gave up. I was in a hut by myself and the people at the monastery were very good to me. The nuns and sāmaṇeras would provide me with food every day, and I also had good support from the lay community. The difficulty that I was experiencing wasn’t due to anything untoward that was happening around me in the monastery. But I was 31 or 32-years-old at the time, and I’d spent a lifetime repressing negative state. My self-image was that I was basically a very good-natured person, because at that time you had to get along in life and be friendly and open, and I considered myself a well-adjusted adult male. But then living alone with nothing to do for 24/7, except this technique, I couldn’t sustain it. The teacher who taught it to me said I had to keep doing this over and over until I got enlightened. Well, it wasn’t working.
There was nothing I could do, so I just learned to sit and watch. So much anger, resentment and fear started arising in consciousness. I looked at it – 32 years of repressed anger and resentment. In anyone’s life, there’s a lot to resent. Life has its qualities of fairness and goodness and also its opposite. But I was told anger was a sin. When I felt angry, I wasn’t angry at anyone in the monastery; it was just old resentment that I would remember from the time I was a child, the time when I was a student, when I was in the military. I decided I wasn’t going to try to stop this anger. I would just let it go, and I did. Anger is also a saṅkhāra. It isn’t permanent, it’s not self, it’s anattā. Resisting anger was a lifetime habit at that time – 30 years of resisting and repressing negative feelings, fear.
I started reviewing this book, The Word of the Buddha, and the Four Noble Truths, the first sermon of the Buddha. I started to contemplate suffering, the First Noble Truth. And I got it: the cause of suffering is trying to get something you can’t have. I began to have an insight into the fact that I didn’t have the bliss that I wanted. This is bhava-taṇhā, this is the desire to get something you remember or conceive of that you don’t have right now. So I started awakening to Dhamma, to the way things are. Bhava-taṇhā is like this. Wanting to get rid of things is vibhava-taṇhā; the desire to get rid of bad thoughts, of what you don’t like, what you don’t want, to kill the defilements. This is resistance, repression.
The teaching on the Four Noble Truths – that there are three kinds of desire, kāma-taṇhā (desire for sense pleasures), bhava-taṇhā, vibhava-taṇhā – really awakened me to reflect on desire. In terms of Dhamma, desire can be divided into these three categories, which are very helpful. See how much of your life here at Amaravati is about vibhava-taṇhā, the desire to get rid of things, or bhava-taṇhā, desiring to get something you want, to become enlightened, to become an arahant. Now, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to become an arahant or get enlightened. It’s not about good and bad anymore. But it is a desire, and desires are saṅkhāras and are impermanent and not self.

Continued next week: June 6 2024

Ajahn Sumedho

Excerpts from “Intuitive Awareness,” by Ajahn Sumedho. This is the third and last part of the first chapter. The book is a free Dhamma publication available as PDF, EPUB, MOBI. Look for the link at the end of this post.

We live on a planet that is quite beautiful. Nature is quite beautiful to the eye. Seeing it from sati-sampajañña, I experience joy from that. When we speak from personal habits, then it can get complicated with wanting and not wanting, with guilt or just not even noticing. If you get too involved with what’s in your head, after a while you don’t even notice anything outside. You can be in the most beautiful place in the world and not see it, not notice it. Seeing beauty or sense-pleasures just as experience is seeing something for what it is. It is pleasurable; good food does taste good, and tasting a good, delicious flavour is like this; it’s purely enjoyable. That’s the way it is. You may contemplate, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t’ – then you’re adding more to it. But from sati-sampajañña, it is what it is. It’s experiencing the flow of life from this centre point, from the still point that includes rather than from the point that excludes – the extreme where we want only the beautiful and the good, just to have one banquet after another. When we can’t sustain that delusion, we get depressed. We go to the opposite, wanting to kill or annihilate ourselves in some way.

Just like this weather we’ve been having – it’s the kind that people think England has all the time: cold, wet, damp, drizzly and grey. This is the worldwide perception of England. I decided to open to these conditions with sati-sampajañña. It is what it is, but I’m not creating aversion to it. It’s all right, and isn’t like this very often. I’ve lived in this country for twenty-four years. Some of the most beautiful weather I ever experienced has been here in this country. Perfect days, so beautiful: the greenness, the beautiful flowers and hills. Sati-sampajañña includes the cold, wet, drizzly and grey weather. There’s no aversion created in it. In fact, I find I like it in a way, because I don’t feel compelled to go out in it. I can sit in my kuti (small monastic dwelling) and keep warm. I quite enjoy feeling that I don’t have to go out anywhere just because the weather is so good. I can stay in my room, which I quite like; it has a nice feeling to it. When the weather gets good, I always feel I should be out. These are ways of just noticing that, even with sensory experiences that can be physically unpleasant, like cold and dampness, the suffering is really in the aversion. ‘I don’t like this. I don’t want life to be like this. I want to be where there are blue skies and sunshine all the time.’

With the body-sweeping practice, I found paying attention to neutral sensation very helpful because it was so easily ignored. Years ago, when I first started doing this, I found it difficult because I’d never paid attention to neutral sensations, even though they’re quite obvious. My experience of sensation was always through the extremes of either pleasure or pain. But you can notice how the robe touches the skin, just one hand touching the other, the tongue in the mouth touching the palate or the teeth, or the upper lip resting on the lower – investigate little details of sensation that are there when you open to them. They are there but you don’t notice them unless you’re determined to. If your lips are painful you notice. If you’re getting a lot of pleasure from your lips, you notice. But when it’s neither pleasure nor pain, there’s still sensation but it’s neutral. So, you’re allowing neutrality to be conscious.

Consciousness is like a mirror; it reflects. A mirror reflects but it doesn’t just reflect the beautiful or the ugly. If you really look into a mirror, it’s reflecting whatever: the space, the neutrality, everything that is in front of it. Usually, you can only notice the outstanding things, the extremes of beauty or ugliness. But to awaken to the way it is, you’re not looking at the obvious but recognizing the subtlety behind the extremes of beauty and ugliness. The sound of silence is like a subtlety behind everything that you awaken to, because you usually don’t notice it if you’re seeking the extremes.

When you’re seeking happiness and trying to get away from pain and misery, then you’re caught in always trying to get something or hold on to happiness, like tranquillity. We want samatha and jhānas – steady and absorbed states of mind – because we like tranquillity. We don’t want confusion, chaos or cacophony, abrasive sensory experiences or human contacts. We come into the Temple and sit down, close our eyes and give off the signs: ‘Don’t bother me. Leave me alone. I’m going to get my samādhi.’ That can be the very basis for our practice, ‘Getting my samādhi so I can feel good, because I want that.’ That leads to an extreme again – wanting, always grasping after the ideal of some refined conscious experience. Then there are others who say, ‘You don’t need to do that. Daily life is good enough. Just in-the-marketplace practice, that’s where it’s at – where you’re not doing anything extreme like sitting, closing your eyes, but living life as an ordinary person and being mindful of everything.’ That can be another ideal that we attach to.

These are ideals – positions that we might take. They are the ‘true but not right; right but not true’ predicament that we create with our dualistic mind – not that they’re wrong. In George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm there is a slogan: ‘Everyone is equal but some are more equal than others.’ In the conditioned realm, this is how we think. We think all human beings are equal, ideally. All human beings are equal, but with the practicalities of life, some are more equal than others. You won’t find the affluent Western world willing to give up much for the sake of equality in the Third World.

Reflect on the monastic form. It’s a convention and its aim is connected to the world through its alms-mendicancy. We need society, we need the world around us, we need the lay community for our survival. They are a part. Monasticism is not an attack on or a rejection of lay life. If we’re living in the right way, then the lay community bring forth their good qualities: generosity, gratitude and things like this. We can also move towards silence, meditation and reflection – this is encouraged. We can combine both samatha and vipassanā, tranquillity and insight – and the life of solitude with the life in the world. It’s not to reject one and hold on to the other as the ideal, but to recognize this is the way it is; it’s like this. The world we live in, the society we live in – we’re not rejecting it, turning against it or away from it, but including it. We can include it in the silence and the solitude.

Link to the original:

https://media.amaravati.org/dhamma-books?title=Intuitive+Awareness

Ajahn Sumedho

Excerpts from “Intuitive Awareness,” by Ajahn Sumedho. This is the second part of the first chapter. The book is a free Dhamma publication available as PDF, EPUB, MOBI. Look for the link at the end of this post.

When you try to conceive of mettā as ‘love’, loving something in terms of liking it, it makes it impossible to sustain when you get to things you can’t stand, people you hate and things like that. Metta is very hard to come to terms with on a conceptual level. To love your enemies, to love people you hate or can’t stand, is an impossible dilemma on the conceptual level. But in terms of sati-sampajañña, it involves acceptance – because it’s about including everything you like and dislike. Mettā is not analytical; it’s not dwelling on why you hate somebody. It’s not trying to figure out why I hate this person, but it includes the whole thing – the feeling, the person, myself – all in the same moment. So, it’s an embracing, a focus that includes and is non-critical. You’re not trying to figure out anything, but just being open, accepting and patient with it.

With food, for instance, we eat here in the dhutaṅga tradition – that is, eating from alms-bowls. I, at least, can no longer convince myself that I’m only eating one meal a day, because of this breakfast we are offered. But, however many meals a day we eat, we are encouraged to use restraint: not because there’s anything wrong with enjoying a meal; it’s not that food is dangerous and that any kind of pleasure you receive from eating will bind you to rebirth again in the saṁsāra-vaṭṭa (the cycle of birth and death) – that’s another view and opinion. It’s a matter of recognizing the simplicity of the life that we have. It simplifies everything. This is why I like this way.

Just notice your attitude towards food. The greed, the aversion or the guilt about eating or enjoying good food – include it all. There’s no attitude that you must have towards food other than an attitude of sati-sampajañña. It’s not making eating into any hassle. When I used to go on fasts, Ajahn Chah would point out that I was making a hassle out of my food. I couldn’t just eat; I was making it more difficult than it needed to be. Then there is the guilt that comes up if you eat too much or you find yourself trying to get the good bits. It gets complicated. I couldn’t just be greedy and shameless, I also had to have a strong sense of guilt around it and hope that nobody would notice. I had to keep it a secret, because I didn’t want to look greedy, I wanted to look as if I weren’t.

I remember that whilst staying with Luang Por Jun, I was trying to be a strict vegetarian, really strict. At his monastery, Wat Bung Khao Luang, they had certain kinds of dishes that didn’t have any fish sauce in them, or any kind of meat or fish. But, as most of you know, in Thailand most of the food has fish sauce or some kind of animal mixtures in it. So, it was difficult because I had very little choice, and people would always have to make special things for me. I always had to be special. It had to be Phra Sumedho’s food and then the rest. That was hard to deal with – to be a foreigner, a phra farang, and then to have a special diet and special privileges. That was hard for me to impose on the group. As I was helping to pass out the food, I’d get very possessive. I felt I had a right to have a lot of the vegetable dishes they did have, because the other monks were eating all the fish, chicken and things like that. I found myself aiming for the vegetarian dishes first so that I could pass them out according to my own needs. It brought up a really childish tendency in me. Then one day another monk saw me doing this, so he grabbed the vegetarian dish first and only gave me a little spoonful. I was so angry when I saw that. I took this fermented fish sauce, this really strong stuff, and when I went past his bowl, I splattered it all over his food! Fortunately, we were forbidden to hit each other. This is an absolute necessity for men – to have rules against physical violence!

“I was trying to live up to an ideal of vegetarian purity, and yet in the process having violent feelings towards other monks. What’s this about? It was a vindictive act to splatter all that strong chilli sauce with rotten fish in it over some monk’s food. It was a violent act in order for me to keep a sense that I’m a pure vegetarian. So, I began to question whether I wanted to make food into such a big deal in my life. Was I wanting to live my life as a vegetarian or what? Was that the main focus that I was aiming at? Just contemplating this, I began to see the suffering I created around my idealism. I noticed Ajahn Chah certainly enjoyed his food and he had a joyful presence. It wasn’t like an ascetic trip where you’re eating nettle soup and rejecting the good bits; that’s the other extreme.

Sati-sampajañña includes, and that’s the attitude of a samaṇa, a contemplative, rather than the ascetic who says, ‘Sensual temptations, the sensual world, sensual pleasures are bad and dangerous. You’ve got to fight against them and resist them at all costs in order to become pure. Once you get rid of sexual desire, greed for food, all these other kinds of greedy sense things – these coarse, gross things – you don’t have any more bad thoughts, you don’t have any more greed, hatred and delusion in your mind. You’re absolutely sterilized from any of those things. They’re eradicated, totally wiped out like toilet cleansers that kill every germ in sight – then you’re pure.’ Then you’ve managed to kill everything – including yourself. Is that the aim? That’s taking asceticism to the position of annihilation, attakilamathānuyoga or self-torture.

Or there is the opposite extreme of kāmasukhallikānuyoga, sensual indulgence, ‘Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you may die. Enjoy life. Life is a banquet and most of the suckers are starving to death.’ This is a quote from a fifty’s movie called Auntie Mame. Auntie Mame managed to really enjoy life, in the movie anyway. She’s not a real woman but a kind of icon of intelligence and beauty, one who just lives life to the hilt and enjoys everything. That’s a very attractive idol: one who thinks this life is meant to be full of pleasure, happiness and love. Grasping that is kāmasukhallikānuyoga.

For the samaṇa, it’s a matter of awakening to these extremes; awareness includes both. It’s not like taking sides – that we’re rejecting or condemning Auntie Mame and ‘Life is a banquet,’ or the extreme ascetic, the life-denying annihilator. But we can see that these are conditions we create in our minds. Always wanting life to be at its best, a party, a banquet, one pleasure after another, or thinking to have any pleasure or enjoyment is wrong and bad, that it’s lesser and dangerous; these are the conditions we create. But the samaṇa life is right now, it’s like this. It’s opening to what we tend not to notice when we’re seeking these two extremes as our goal.

Life is like this. You can’t say it’s a banquet all the time. Breath going in … I wouldn’t describe it as a banquet, or that the sound of silence is life at its best, where it’s just one laugh after another. Most of our experience is neither one extreme nor another; it’s like this. Most of one’s life is not peak moments, either in the heights or the depths, but it’s neither-nor, it’s that which we don’t notice if we’re primed to extremes.

In terms of beauty, for example, I find it helpful to come from sati-sampajañña rather than from personal attachment. With beautiful objects, beautiful things, beautiful people or whatever – coming from personal habits is dangerous because of the desire to possess them, to have them for yourself, or be attracted and get overwhelmed by the desires that arise from seeing beauty through ignorance. With experiencing beauty from sati-sampajañña, one can just be aware of the beauty as beauty. It also includes one’s own tendencies to want to own it, take it, touch it or fear it; it includes that. When you’re letting go of that, then beauty itself is joy.

Part 3, continued next week 23rd May 2024

Link to the original:

https://amaravati.org/dhamma-books/intuitive-awareness/