moment-to-moment consciousness

Posted on July 4, 2024 by tiramit

Leigh Brasington

Editorial Note: Some of you may have noticed that last week I placed the name Leigh Brassington as the author of Christina Feldman’s piece on Dependent Origination. Sorry about that, in fact, I corrected it a day later. Increasing difficulty with my vision (AMD macular degeneration in the right eye) has made it impossible to write my own material,

https://dhammafootsteps.com/2012/10/04/neverending/

(click on the link to read an early post that refers to Dependent Origination). For the time being I’m focused on republishing sections from Dhamma publications which I find particularly worthwhile. So, what follows is Leigh Brassington’s clearly stated piece on Dependent Origination [Image: close-up of a sunflower seed by Mathew Schwartz, unsplash]

Here’s an example of what’s meant by moment-to-moment Dependent Origination: let’s say you’ve never had a mango. You’ve heard about mangos, and one day you go to the grocery store, and in the produce section there’s a sign that says “Mangos.” You’re like “Oh, I’ve heard about mangos, they’re supposed to be good.” There’s this funny looking fruit and you think, “I’ll buy a mango.” So, you buy a mango and you take it home. You figure out you’ve got to peel it; and of course, you make a big mess because that’s what happens the first time you attack a mango. Then you cut off a piece, and now you’ve got a piece of mango in your sticky fingers. You are conscious, you’ve got a mind and body, you’ve got working senses. The mango hits the tongue – contact, vedanā, pleasant vedanā, craving; “I’ll have another bite” and another bite. “This is good; I’m going to get me some more mangos. In fact, my friends Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, they’ve never had a mango. I’m going to turn them on to mangos.” You have just given birth to the mango bringer. You go see your friends and you turn them on to mangos and they’re like “Great, this is wonderful, thank you!” And the next time you go see your friends you bring a mango, and they’re like “Great, thank you for the mango.” And the next time you bring a mango, they’re like “Oh, another mango.” And the next time you bring a mango, they’re like “What’s with all the mangos?” Oh, dear! death of the mango bringer.

What’s happening is that based on your sensory input and your cravings and clingings, you’re creating a sense of self. It’s not your physical birth that’s happening with every sense-contact; it’s the birth of the self. When you crave, there’s a sense of the craver. When you cling, there’s an even stronger sense of the clinger – me, I own it, mine. At first, at the craving stage, it’s “I want it”. At the clinging stage, it’s “I’ve got it and I’m going to keep it.” And this results in “bhava,” which I’ve been translating as “becoming,” and which could also mean “being and having.” Now you have this thing you’re craving. You have become the one who owns it, and you just gave birth to yourself as this owner. But because your sense of self is rather fragile – notice how we’re always seeking self-validation – it keeps dying on you and you’ve got to think it or emote it up again.

Examining the twelve links of dependent origination from a moment-to-moment perspective is probably the deepest and most important way to look at them. This spinning of the wheel of dependent origination leads to old age, sickness, death, pain, sorrow, grief, lamentation, and all the rest of the dukkha. The Buddha’s teaching is about the end of dukkha, and there are two ways to work on this. One is when there’s a sense-contact, and it produces vedanā – Stop! don’t go any further. Don’t go into the craving. There’s not much you can do before that. You’re conscious, you have a mind and body, your senses are engaged with the environment. You’re inevitably going to get contacts, and the contacts are going to produce the vedanā which are not under your control. The vedanā are happening in the old brain, the so-called reptilian structure, and that’s not under your control. It’s only after the vedanā that you have some opportunity to control what happens next.

Thankfully, the craving isn’t inevitable. Some of these links are inevitable. In other words, if you get born, it’s inevitable you’re going to die. But if you get a pleasant vedanā, it’s not inevitable that you’re going to fall into craving. What comes after vedanā is perception – the naming or conceptualizing of that sense-contact – and that’s not even mentioned in the twelve links of dependent origination. After perception, mental activity arises – saṅkhāra again, the thinking and emoting about the sense-contact that produced this vedanā. Some of the thinking and emoting is no problem. It’s only when it gets into the “I gotta have it, I gotta keep it” that the craving and clinging set in. Or “I gotta get rid of it, I gotta keep it away.” That’s where it gets to be a problem.

This is why the Second Foundation of Mindfulness is to pay attention to your vedanā. This is so that when you experience a pleasant vedanā, you know it, and you’re right there in that gap after the vedanā and before the onset of craving – and you can actually deal with the experience wisely. You can enjoy the pleasant vedanā, and just leave it at enjoying the pleasant vedanā. You can experience the unpleasant vedanā, and act, if necessary, based on the unpleasant vedanā without falling into craving and clinging. This is the strategy on a sense-contact by sense-contact basis. It’s a lot of work because we get a lot of sense-contacts. However, you need to be in there every time checking because the craving is liable to come up; and when it comes up, it’s a setup for dukkha. We don’t really seem to be able to pull this off all the time. Sometimes, yes, good, diminish your dukkha, you experience the sense-contact with its vedanā, enjoy it, let it go. But sometimes, you get lost and fall into craving and clinging.

But a long-term strategy is to go back to the very beginning of the list of the twelve links, and uproot the ignorance. Because without the ignorance, there are not the saṅkhāras, and without the saṅkhāras there’s no consciousness, mind-and-body, etc. That sounds a bit like annihilation, but really what it’s saying is that without the ignorance this whole tendency to wind up in craving and clinging just isn’t there. The key thing is to uproot that sense of self that is the craver and the clinger, to gain the unshakable deep understanding, based on experience, that this feeling of self is simply an illusion. You want to penetrate that illusion to such an extent that you don’t conceive of a self. Similarly, when you go to the beach and look out and see a ship sail over the horizon, you know it didn’t fall off the edge of the world. That sensory input does not lead to conceiving any “the edge of the world” as part of the experience. Can you get to the same place about all of the stuff that normally generates the sense of “I”, the sense of me, the most important creature in the universe? This is the uprooting of ignorance, and when that’s done, then the whole edifice of self/craver/clinger falls apart. Furthermore, it’s taken care of forever.

You can read the est of this chapter (chapter 3) in the original, which is a free Dhamma book, as PDF, Epub, Mobi. Look for the link in Leigh’s Website:

https://leighb.com/index2.html#RightCon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pZQdBy3u84

Another link from the Website, a helpful video on emptiness. At the beginning of this video, you will see he uses the acronym: SODAPI (Note: the sound of the ending of the word rhymes with ‘eye’) Streams Of Dependently Arising Processes Interacting, SODAPI

dependent origination part two

Posted on June 27, 2024 by tiramit

Christina Feldman

[Editorial Note: It was 1982, I was in South India for the first time, fresh off the plane from London. None of this would have been possible without the help of friends in the NGOs and charitable organizations there. In the days that followed, I was taken on the back of a motorbike over the rough rural roads, to a small NGO in a village of impoverished fishermen. Culture shock as well as jetlag, led to a a confusion of random mind stuff looking for a context, a framework, somewhere for it all to fit, and not finding anywhere.

It’s easy to sum it up like that now, with the benefit of hindsight. One good thing that happened was that somebody gave me a book; “What the Buddha Taught” by Walpole Rahula, an outline of paṭicca-samuppāda: dependent origination. This was my introduction to how the Eastern mind works. Difficult to grasp at first, but a strange familiarity, as if I knew the text from somewhere but I’d never come across it before… perhaps in a previous life? So, I can’t explain it except that this must be a partly obscured universality. It all made as much sense to me, the Western mind, as it does the Eastern mind and as it would to any way of thinking in any context.]

Over the years, I’ve gathered references and examples of the paṭicca-samuppāda mostly in the Thai Theravada branch of Buddhist thought, particularly Buddhadassa Bhikkhu, and there are some recent articles by Ajahn Amaro who describes how Ajahn Buddhadassa presents this teaching. The central question to us, is how can we be free of the Western addiction to becoming?

“The cycle of becoming bhavacakka is our drug of choice to which we are all habituated, whether it is ‘becoming’ based on sense-pleasure, or becoming born of noble aspirations or caring for our family. The objects of becoming can vary from those which are reasonably wholesome to those which are downright destructive, but the process works in exactly the same way irrespective of the object, and if we don’t understand how it works, we are inevitably trapped in that endless cycle of addiction. The Buddha’s teaching helps us to recognize that trap and to break free from it.”

To read the whole post, click on the link below, and from there you can make your way to other related material:

https://dhammafootsteps.com/2023/12/07/off-the-wheel-part-two/

Other links, you’ll find at the end of this article: Dependent Origination by Christina Feldman.

In the Buddha’s teachings, the second noble truth is is a process which is going on over and over again in our own lives—through all our days, and countless times every single day. This process in Pali is called paṭicca-samuppāda, sometimes translated as “dependent origination” or “co-dependent origination” or “causal interdependence.”

The process of dependent origination is sometimes said to be the heart or the essence of all Buddhist teaching. What is described in the process is the way in which suffering can arise in our lives, and the way in which it can end. That second part is actually quite important.

Paṭicca-samuppāda is said to be the heart of right view or right understanding. It is an understanding that is also the beginning of the eight-fold path, or an understanding that gives rise to a life of wisdom and freedom. The Buddha went on to say that when a noble disciple fully sees the arising and cessation of the world, he or she is said to be endowed with perfect view, with perfect vision—to have attained the true dharma, to possess the knowledge and skill, to have entered the stream of the dharma, to be a noble disciple replete with purifying understanding—one who is at the very door of the deathless. So, this is a challenge for us.

What the paṭicca-samuppāda actually describes is a vision of life or an understanding in which we see the way everything is interconnected—that there is nothing separate, nothing standing alone. Everything affects everything else. We are part of this system. We are part of this process of dependent origination—causal relationships affected by everything that happens around us and, in turn, affecting the kind of world that we all live in inwardly and outwardly.

It is also important to understand that freedom is not found separate from this process. It is not a question of transcending this process to find some other dimension; freedom is found in this very process of which we are a part. And part of that process of understanding what it means to be free depends on understanding inter-connectedness, and using this very process, this very grist of our life, for awakening.

Doctrinally, there are two ways in which this process of paṭicca-samuppāda is approached. In one view it is held to be something taking place over three lifetimes, and this view goes into the issues of rebirth and karma. My own approach today is the second view, which I think is really very vital and alive, which looks at paṭicca-samuppāda as a way of understanding what happens in our own world, inwardly and outwardly, on a moment-to-moment level. It’s about what happens in our heart, what happens in our consciousness, and how the kind of world we experience and live in is actually created every moment.

To me, the significance of this whole description is that if we understand the way our world is created, we also then become a conscious participant in that creation. It describes a process that is occurring over and over again very rapidly within our consciousness: I like this; I don’t like this; the world is like this; this is how it happened; I feel this; I think that.

Right now, we could track down countless cycles of this process of paṭicca-samuppāda—when we’ve been elated, when we’ve been sad, when we’ve been self-conscious, fearful—we’ve been spinning the wheel. And, it is important to understand this as a wheel, as a process. It is not something static or fixed, not something that stays the same. You need to visualize this as something alive and moving, and we’ll get into how that happens.The basic principle of dependent origination is simplicity itself. The Buddha described it by saying:
When there is this, that is.
With the arising of this, that arises.
When this is not, neither is that.
With the cessation of this, that ceases.

When all of these cycles of feeling, thought, bodily sensation, all of these cycles of mind and body, action, and movement, are taking place upon a foundation of ignorance—that’s called saṃsāra. That sense of wandering in confusion or blindly from one state of experience to another, one state of reaction to another, one state of contraction to another, without knowing what’s going on, is called saṃsāra.

It’s also helpful, I think, to see that this process of dependent origination happens not only within our individual consciousness, but also on a much bigger scale and on more collective levels—social, political, cultural. Through shared opinions, shared views, shared perceptions or reactions, groups or communities of people can spin the same wheel over extended periods of time. Examples of collective wheel spinning are racism or sexism, or the hierarchy between humans and nature, political systems that conflict, wars—the whole thing where communities or groups of people share in the same delusions. So, understanding dependent origination can be transforming not only at an individual level, but it’s an understanding about inter-connectedness that can be truly transforming on a global or universal level. It helps to undo delusion, and it helps to undo the sense of contractedness and the sense of separateness.

In classical presentations, this process of dependent origination is comprised of twelve links. It is important to understand that this is not a linear, progressive, or sequential presentation. It’s a process always in motion and not static at all. It’s also not deterministic. I also don’t think that one link determines the arising of the next link. But rather that the presence of certain factors or certain of these links together provide the conditions in which the other links can manifest, and this is going to become clearer as we use some analogies to describe how this interaction works.

It’s a little bit like a snowstorm—the coming together of a certain temperature, a certain amount of precipitation, a certain amount of wind co-creating a snow storm. Or it’s like the writing of a book: one needs an idea, one needs pen, one needs paper, one needs the ability to write. It’s not necessarily true that first I must have this and then I must have this in a certain sequential order, but rather that the coming together of certain causes and conditions allows this particular phenomenon or this particular experience to be born.

It is also helpful to consider some of the effects of understanding paṭicca-samuppāda. One of the effects is that it helps us to understand that neither our inner world, nor our outer world is a series of aimless accidents. Things don’t just happen. There is a combination of causes and conditions that is necessary for things to happen. This is really important in terms of our inner experience. It is not unusual to have the experience of ending up somewhere, and not knowing how we got there. And feeling quite powerless because of the confusion present in that situation. Understanding how things come together, how they interact, actually removes that sense of powerlessness or that sense of being a victim of life or helplessness. Because if we understand how things come together, we can also begin to understand the way out, how to find another way of being, and realize that life is not random chaos.

Another effect of understanding causes and conditions means accepting the possibility of change. And with acceptance comes another understanding—that with wisdom, we have the capacity to create beneficial and wholesome conditions for beneficial and wholesome results. And that’s the path—an understanding that we have the capacity to make choices in our lives that lead toward happiness, that lead toward freedom and well-being, rather than feeling we’re just pushed by the power of confusion or by the power of our own misunderstanding. This understanding helps to ease a sense of separateness and isolation, and it reduces delusion.

A convenient place to start in order to gain some familiarity with the process of dependent origination is often with the first link of ignorance. This is not necessarily to say that ignorance is the first cause of everything but it’s a convenient starting place:

With ignorance as a causal condition, there are formations of volitional impulses. With the formations as a causal condition, there is the arising of consciousness. With consciousness as a condition, there is the arising of body and mind (nāma-rūpa). With body and mind as a condition, there is the arising of the six sense doors. (In Buddhist teaching, the mind is also one of the sense doors as well as seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching.) With the six sense doors as a condition, there is the arising of contact. With contact as a condition, there is the arising of feeling. With feeling as a condition, there is the arising of craving. With craving as a condition, there’s the arising of clinging. With clinging as a condition, there’s the arising of becoming. With becoming as a condition, there’s the arising of birth. And, with birth as a condition, there’s the arising of aging and death. That describes the links. To read the author’s commentary on the twelve steps of dependent origination see last week’s post,

This process, when reversed, is also described as a process of release or freedom. With the abandonment of ignorance, there is the cessation of karmic formations. With the cessation of karmic formations, there is the falling away of consciousness, and so on.

The second noble truth of dependent origination describes a process that happens every single moment of our lives. But clearly there is a distinction between a process and a path, and it is an absolutely critical distinction. One doesn’t actually want to continue in life just as a spectator, watching the same process happening over and over and over again—a spectator of our own disasters. Awareness is actually something a bit more than simply seeing a process take place. In choosing to be aware, we make a leap which is really about an application of a path in our lives, otherwise mere seeing of the process becomes circular and we continue to circle around. The path is what actually takes us out into a different process.

Now, the third noble truth [the cessation of suffering] is not a value judgment in itself; it is simply a portrayal of the way in which it is possible to step off a sense of being bound to this wheel of saṃsāra or to the links of dependent origination. It is significant to remember that it doesn’t have to be any one link that we step off or that there is only one place where we can get out of this maze. In fact, we can step out of the maze and into something else at any of the links.

The well-known Thai meditation master Buddhādasa Bhikkhu describes the path out of suffering as “the radiant wheel.” It is also called the wheel of understanding or the wheel of awakening, in which the fuel of greed, anger, and delusion which give us the feeling of being bound to the wheel of saṃsāra, is replaced by the fuel of wise reflection, ethics, and faith.

One portrayal of the alternate wheel is that wise reflection, ethics, and faith lead to gladness of heart and mind, the absence of dwelling in contractedness and proliferation. The gladness is in itself a condition for rapture, a falling in love with awareness. The rapture is a condition for calmness and calmness is a condition for happiness. Happiness is a condition for concentration; concentration is a condition for insight; insight is a condition for disenchantment or letting go, and letting go is a condition for equanimity, the capacity to separate the sense of self from states of experience so that an experience can be just an experience rather than be flavored by an “I am”-ness of a self. And equanimity in itself is a condition for liberation and the end of suffering.

Link to the original document by Christina Feldman:

https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/article/dependent-origination/

Link to a post about Dependent Origination by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, with some biographical details by the editor:

https://dhammafootsteps.com/2020/07/24/doerless-doing-part-6b-editors-notes/

Link to Ajahn Amaro’s post about further exit points from the cycle:

https://dhammafootsteps.com/2023/12/14/off-the-wheel-follow-up/

dependent origination part one

Posted on June 20, 2024 by tiramit

Christina Feldman

Dependent Origination (paṭicca-samuppāda) is a way of understanding what happens in our world on a moment-to-moment level. It’s about what happens in our heart, what happens in our consciousness, and how the kind of world we experience and live in is actually created every instant. If we understand the way our world is created, we also then become a conscious participant in that creation. It describes a process that is occurring over and over again very rapidly within our consciousness. If we pause here and think for a moment, we have probably all gone throughout countless cycles of dependent origination since we first woke up. Perhaps it was a moment of despair about what you had for breakfast or what happened on the way to where you are right now, a mind-storm about something that happened yesterday, some sort of anticipation about what might happen today—countless moments that you have gone through where you have experienced an inner world arising: I like this; I don’t like this; the world is like this; this is how it happened; I feel this; I think that.

Ignorance (avijjā)

Ignorance is used in Buddhist teachings in a very different way than it is used in our culture. It’s not an insult, or an absence of knowledge—it doesn’t mean we’re dumb. Nonetheless ignorance can be deeply rooted in the consciousness. It may be very invisible to us, and yet it can be exerting its influence in all the ways we think, perceive, and respond. Ignorance is often described as a kind of blindness, of not being conscious in our lives of what is moving us on a moment-to-moment level. Sometimes it is described as perceiving the unsatisfactory to be satisfactory, or as believing the impermanent to be permanent—this is not an unusual experience. Ignorance is sometimes taking that which is not beautiful to be beautiful, as a cause of attachment. Sometimes it is defined as believing in an idea of self to be an enduring and solid entity in our lives when there is no such thing to be found. Or as not seeing things as they actually are, but seeing life, seeing ourselves, seeing other people through a veil of beliefs, opinions, likes, dislikes, projections, clinging, attachments, et cetera, et cetera. Ignorance flavors what kind of speech, thoughts, or actions we actually engage in.

Formations (sankhāra)

Ignorance is the causal condition or climate which allows for the arising of certain kinds of sankhāras—volitional impulses or karmic formations. In a general sense we’re all formations; we’re all sankhāras. Everything that is born and created out of conditions is a formation. Dependent origination gets a little more specific: it talks about intentional actions as body formations, intentional speech as both body and mind formations, and thoughts or states of mind as mental formations. As such it is describing the organization or shaping of our thinking process in accordance with accumulated habits, preferences, opinions. Sankhāras lend a certain fuel to the spinning of the wheel. Within a given cycle, they interact and form more and more of themselves. There is also a constant interaction of the inner and outer, through which the whole cycle keeps getting perpetuated. Some of the formations arise spontaneously in the moment, and some are ways of seeing or ways of reacting that have been built up throughout our whole life. Due to their repetitive use, these sankhāras become somewhat locked or invested in our personality structures and stay close to the surface as more automatic or habitual ways of response. However, it is important to understand that each sankhāra is actually new in every moment. They arise through contact, through certain kinds of stimulation. We tend to think of them as habitual or ever-present because of how we grasp them as something solid. But in our encounter with them in the present moment they are not presented to us as history or as something that is there forever.

Consciousness (viññāṇa)

Formations condition the arising of consciousness. Consciousness is used in the sense of the awareness of all the sensations that enter through the sense doors. So, there is the consciousness of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and thinking. At any given time, one or the other of these sense door consciousnesses dominates our experience. Consciousness also describes the basic climate of the mind at any particular moment—the way it is actually shaped or flavored. So, any particular moment might be aversive or dull or greedy, for example, though without interest or intention some of these flavorings of consciousness may not be noticed. Consciousness is also interactive: not only is it shaped by formations and by ignorance, it is also shaping everything going on around us—regardless of whether we pay attention to it or not.

Name and Form (nāma-rūpa)

Consciousness gives rise to nāma-rūpa, which is sometimes translated as mind and body, but that’s a little too simplistic. Rūpa, or body, describes not only our own body but all other bodies and all forms of materiality. Nāma, or mind, describes the feelings, the perceptions, the intentions, the contact, and the kind of attention we give to what appears in the field of our awareness. So nāma describes the whole movement of mind in all its components in relationship to materiality. This is how it works: there’s an arising of rūpa, and then nāma creates concepts or attitudes about it. The kind of relationship we have with any material form, including our own body, is shaped by what’s going on in the mind, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. So, the shape of the mind and our body, this nāma-rūpa, is always changing, always moving, never staying the same. Consciousness, body, and mind are always interdependent, with consciousness leading the body and the mind to function in a certain way. If a consciousness has arisen flavored by anger or by greed, by depression, by anxiety—or whatever—it provides the conditions for the body and mind to organize itself in a particular way.

All of the events that have taken place so far in these links of ignorance, karma formations, consciousness, and mind/body—these are actually the most important steps in the generation of karma. These volitional impulses—what is happening in the body and the mind—are actually the generation of karma.

Six-Senses (saḷ-āyatana)

We go on from body and mind to the six sense doors or the six sense spheres, for it is the psychophysical organism that provides us the capacity to see, hear, smell, taste, touch and think. One of the deeper understandings we can have, is to acknowledge that the mind is one of the sense-spheres. The thoughts, images and perceptions that arise and pass away in the mind are not so essentially different from the sounds or bodily sensations that come and go in the realm of the senses. We may sometimes have the impression that mind is constant or always “on duty,” but a little bit of a deeper exploration of what happens within the mind actually shatters that perception.

Contact (phassa)

When the sense doors are functioning, contact arises. Contact is this meeting between the sense door and the sense information—I ring the bell, hearing arises. You smell something cooking in the kitchen, the smell arises through the nose sense door. The arising always involves the coming together of the sense door, the sense object and consciousness—the three elements together constitute contact. The Buddha once said that with contact the world arises, and with the cessation of contact there is the cessation of the world. This statement acknowledges the extent to which we create our world of experience by selectively highlighting the data of the senses. Each moment of contact involves isolating an impression out of the vast stream of impressions that are present for us in every moment as we sit here. Contact is what happens when something jumps out of that background and becomes the foreground. When we pay attention to it, there’s a meeting of the sense object and consciousness and the sense door. That is contact.

Feeling (vedanā)

Contact is the foundation or the condition for the arising of feeling. In speaking about feeling here we are not speaking about the more complex emotions such as anger or jealousy or fear or anxiety, but the very fundamental level of feeling impact that is the basis not only of all emotions but of all mind states and responses. We are speaking about the pleasant feeling that arises in connection with what is coming through any of the sense doors; or the unpleasant feeling, or those feelings that are neither pleasant nor unpleasant. This doesn’t mean they are “neutral,” in the sense of a kind of nothingness. Some feelings are certainly there, but they don’t really make a strong enough impression to evoke a pleasant or painful feeling response in us. Actually, the impressions and sensations and experiences that are neither pleasant nor unpleasant are some of the more interesting data received by our system.

It is important to acknowledge that the links of contact, of sense doors and feeling that we have been talking about are neither wholesome nor unwholesome in and of themselves; but they become the catalyst of what happens next. The sense doors, the feelings and the contact are the forerunners of how we actually react or respond and how we begin to weave a personal story out of events or impressions that all of us experience at all times. Therefore contact, feeling and sense doors are pretty important places to pay attention.

Craving (taṇhā)

Where does craving come from? From our relationship to feeling; feeling is the condition for craving. This craving is sometimes translated as “unquenchable thirst,” or a kind of appetite that can never be satisfied. Craving begins to be that movement of desire to seek out and sustain the pleasurable contacts with sense objects and to avoid the unpleasant or to make them end. It’s the craving of having and getting, the craving to be or to become someone or something, and the craving to get rid of or to make something end.

Pleasant feelings or impressions are hijacked by the underlying tendency for craving; and unpleasant feelings are hijacked by aversion. And when a feeling is felt as neither pleasant nor unpleasant, it is also hijacked, in this case by the deluded tendency to dismiss it from our consciousness and say it doesn’t matter. Our sense of self finds it very hard to have an identity with any impression or sensation which is neither pleasant nor unpleasant.

It is at the point where craving arises in response to pleasant or unpleasant feeling that our responses become very complex, and we run into a world of struggle. When we crave for something, we in a way delegate authority to an object or to an experience or to a person, and at the same time we are depriving ourselves of that authority. As a result, our sense of well-being, our sense of contentment or freedom, comes to be dependent upon what we get or don’t get. You all know that kind of restlessness of appetite—there’s never enough; just one more thing is needed; one more experience, one more mind state, one more object, one more emotion, and then I’ll be happy.

What we don’t always see through when we are in the midst of ignorance is that the way such promise is projected, externalized, or objectified is actually something which always leaves us with a sense of frustration. We are dealing here with a very basic hunger, and we allow our world to be organized according to this hunger by projecting the power to please or threaten onto other things. But the important thing to remember is that craving is also a kind of moment-to-moment experience; it arises and it passes.

Clinging (upādāna)

Craving and clinging (also called grasping), are very close together. Craving has a certain momentum, a certain one-way direction, and when it becomes intense, it becomes clinging. Now, one way that craving becomes clinging is that very fixed positions are taken; things become good or bad; they become worthy or unworthy; they become valuable or valueless. And the world is organized into friends and enemies, into opponents and allies according to what we are attached to or what we grasp or get hold of. That sense of becoming fixed reinforces and solidifies the values we project onto experience or objects. But it also reinforces belief systems and opinions, and the faculty of grasping holds on to of images of self. “I am like this.” “I need this.” “I need to get rid of this,” and so on. And, often, many things in this world are evaluated according to their perceived potential to satisfy our desires. What all this does is actually make us very busy. Think about the situations when you really want something, how much activity starts to be generated in terms of thinking and plotting and planning and strategizing: you know, the fastest route to get there from here, the most direct route to make this happen.

Traditionally, clinging is often broken down into four different ways in which we can make ourselves suffer. There is the clinging to sensuality or sense objects. The other side of clinging to sense objects is clinging to views, theories, opinions, beliefs, philosophies—they become part of ourselves. Another form that grasping takes is clinging to certain rules—the belief that if I do this, I get this. Or one says, “This is my path. This is going to take me from here to there.” The last of the forms of clinging Buddha talked about was clinging to the notion of “I am”— the craving to be someone, and the craving not to be someone, dependent on clinging to an idea and an ideal of self. This notion of self is perhaps the most delusionary force in our lives.

Becoming (bhava)

Clinging is followed by becoming or arising—the entire process of fixing or positioning the sense of self in a particular state of experience. Any time we think in self-referential terms, “I am,” “I am angry,” “I am loving,” “I am greedy,” ” I know,” “I’m this kind of person” and so on, an entire complex of behavior is generated to serve craving and clinging. I see something over there that I’ve projected as “This is going to make me really happy if I get this,” and I organize my behavior, my actions, my attention in order to find union with that. This is the process of becoming—becoming someone or something other than what is.

Birth (jāti)

Birth, the next link in the chain of dependent origination, is the moment of arrival. We think “I think I got it!” “I found it (the union with this image or role or identity or sensation or object),” “I am now this”—the emergence of an identity, a sense of self that rests upon identifying with a state of experience or mode of conduct, the doer, the thinker, the seer, the knower, the experience, the sufferer—this is what birth is. And there is a resulting sense of that birth, of one who enjoys, one who suffers, one who occupies, one who has all the responsibility of that birth.

Aging and Death (jarā-maraṇa)

Birth is followed by death in which there is the sense of loss, change, the passing away of that state of experience. “I used to be happy.” “I used to be successful.” “I was content in the last moment.” And so on. The passing away of that state of experience, the feeling of being deprived or separated from the identity, “I used to be…” is the moment of death. In that moment of death, we sense a loss of good meditation experience, the good emotional experience. We say it’s gone. And associated with that sense is the pain and the grief, the despair of our loss.

These different factors interact to create certain kinds of experiences in our lives. What is important to remember is that none of this is predetermined. Just like the climate for snow, the presence of certain of these links is going to allow other experiences to happen. Not that they must happen, or definitely will happen, but they allow for certain experiences to happen. This may sound like bad news in the beginning, but we get to the good news later.

Continued next week, 27 June 2024

About Christina Feldman

https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/author/cfeldman/

noticing the way it is, part 2

Posted on May 2, 2024 by tiramit

Ajahn Sumedho

Excerpts from “Intuitive Awareness,” the. chapter titled: “The End of Suffering is Now,” retitled in this blog: “Noticing the way it is”. This is the second and last part. The original by Ajahn Sumedho, is a free Dhamma publication available as PDF, EPUB, MOBI. Look for the link at the end of this post.

There are different kinds of methods that can be used to learn how to stop the thinking mind. For example, a Zen koan or self-inquiry practice like asking ‘Who am I?’ These are techniques or expedient means that we find in Zen and Advaita Vedanta, and are used to stop the thinking mind. You begin to notice the pure state of attention, where you are not caught in thinking and the assumptions of a self – where there is pure awareness. That’s when you hear the sound of silence, because your mind is in that state of attention. In pure awareness there’s no self, it’s like this. Learn to relax into that, to trust it, but not try and hold on to it. We can even grasp the idea that ‘I’ve got to get the sound of silence and I’ve got to relax into it.’ This is the risky part of any kind of technique or instruction, because it is easy to grasp the idea. Bhāvanā, cultivation of the mind, isn’t about grasping ideas or coming from any position. This paṭipadā, this practice, is one of recognizing and realizing through awakened awareness, through a direct knowing,

Some people find it frightening when the self starts to break up – because it’s like everything you have regarded as solid and real starts falling apart. I remember years ago, long before I was even a Buddhist, feeling threatened by certain radical ideas that tended to challenge the security of the world I lived in. When it seems somebody is threatening or challenging something that you depend upon for a sense that everything’s all right, you can get angry and even violent – because they are threatening ‘my world, my security, my refuge.’ You can see why conservative people get threatened by foreigners, radical ideas or anything that comes in and challenges the status quo – because that’s the world they are depending on to make them feel secure. When they are threatened, they go into panic. The Buddha pointed to the instability and impermanence of conditioned phenomena. This is not just a philosophy that he was expecting us to go along with. We explore and see the nature of the conditioned realm – the physical, the emotional and the mental – in the way we experience it. But your refuge is in this awakened awareness, rather than in trying to find or create a condition that will give us some sense of security. We are not trying to fool ourselves, to create a false sense of security by positive thinking. The refuge is in awakening to reality, because the Unconditioned is reality. This awareness, this awakenedness, is the gate to the Unconditioned. When we awaken, that is the Unconditioned. The conditions are whatever they are — strong or weak, pleasant or painful, whatever.

‘I am an unenlightened person who has to practise meditation hard. I must really work at it, get rid of my defilements and become an enlightened person some time in the future. I hope to attain stream-entry before I die, but if I don’t, I hope that I’ll be reborn in a better realm.’ Thinking like that, we go on creating more and more complications. People ask me, ‘Can we attain stream-entry? Are there any arahants?’ This is because we still think of stream-entry and arahantship as a personal quality. We look at somebody and say, ‘That monk over there is an arahant.’ We think that person is an arahant or stream-enterer. That’s just the way the conditioned mind operates. It can’t help it, it can’t do anything other than that. So, you can’t trust it; you can’t take refuge in your thoughts or your perceptions, but you can take refuge in awareness. That doesn’t seem like anything, it’s like nothing – but it’s everything. All the problems are resolved right there.

Your conditioned mind thinks, ‘Awareness is nothing, it doesn’t amount to anything. It’s not worth anything, you couldn’t sell it.’ This is where we learn to trust in the ability to awaken, because if you think about it, you’ll start doubting it all the time. ‘Am I really awake? Am I awake enough? Maybe I need to be asleep longer so that I can be awake later on. Maybe if I keep practising with ignorance, I’ll get so fed up that I’ll give it up.’ If you start with ignorance, how could you ever end up with wisdom? That doesn’t make any sense. It’s like hitting your head on a wall and thinking that after a while you might give it up if you haven’t damaged your brain. It does feel good when you stop. But instead of looking at it in that way, trust in this simple act of attention. Then explore and have confidence in your ability to use wisdom.

Many of you may think, ‘Oh, I don’t have any wisdom. I’m nobody. I haven’t had any real insight.’ So, you thoroughly convince yourself you can’t do this. That’s the way it seems on the personal level. Maybe you don’t feel you have anything to offer on that level, but that’s another creation. It’s the same as ‘I am an unenlightened person.’ Whatever assumptions you have about yourself, no matter how reasonable they might be – whether you think you are the best or the worst – they are still creations in the present. By believing in those creations, by thinking and holding to them, you’re continually creating yourself as some kind of personality.

This awakenedness is not a creation. It’s the immanent act of attention in the present. That is why developing this exercise of deliberately thinking ‘I am an unenlightened person’ is a skilful means to notice more carefully and continuously what it’s like to be mindful and aware while you are creating yourself as a person. You get this sense that your self-view is definitely a mental object; it comes and goes. You can’t sustain ‘I am an unenlightened person.’ How do you sustain that one, by thinking it all the time? If you went around saying ‘I am an unenlightened person’ all the time they would send you to a mental hospital. It arises and ceases, but the awareness is sustainable. That awareness is not created, it’s not personal, but it is real.

Recognize the ending, when ‘I am an unenlightened person who has got to practise meditation in order to become an enlightened person some time in the future’ stops. Then there is the ringing silence. There’s awareness. Conditions always arise and cease now, in the present. The cessation is now. The ending of the condition is now. The end of the world is now. The end of self is now. The end of suffering is now. You can see the arising, ‘I am,’ then the ending, and what remains when something has begun and ended is awareness. It’s like this. It’s bright, it’s clear, it’s pure, it’s alive. It’s not a trance, not dull, not stupid.

This is an encouragement, an ‘empowerment’ according to modern jargon. Do it! Go for it. Don’t just hang around on the edges thinking, ‘I am an unenlightened person who has to practise really hard in order to become an enlightened person’ and then after a while start grumbling, ‘Oh, I need more time,’ and go into the usual plans and plots, views and opinions. If you start with ignorance you will end up with suffering. In the teachings on dependent origination (paṭiccasamuppāda) you have ‘avijjā paccayā saṅkhārā.’ Avijjā is ignorance, and that conditions (paccayā) mental formations (saṅkhārā), that then affects everything. As a result, you end up with grief, sorrow, despair and anguish: soka-parideva-dukkha-domanassupāyāsā. So, I’m encouraging you to not start from avijjā but from vijjā, awareness, from paññā, wisdom. Be that wisdom itself rather than a person who isn’t wise, trying to become wise. As long as you hold to the view that ‘I’m not wise yet, but I hope to become wise,’ you’ll end up with grief, sorrow, despair and anguish. It’s that direct. It’s learning to trust in being the wisdom now, being awake.

Even though you may feel inadequate emotionally, doubtful or uncertain, frightened or terrified – these are reactions; emotions are like that. But be the awareness of the emotions: emotion is like this. Emotionally we are conditioned for ignorance. I am emotionally conditioned to be a person, to be Ajahn Sumedho. Someone says, ‘Ajahn Sumedho, you are wonderful!’ and the emotions go ‘Oh?’ Then, ‘Ajahn Sumedho, you are a horrible monk with terrible Vinaya!’ and the emotions go ‘grrrrr’. Emotions are like that. If my security depends on being praised and loved, respected and appreciated, successful and healthy, everything going nicely and everyone living in harmony – the world around me being so utterly sensitive to my needs – then I feel all right when everything seems to be going all right. But then it goes the other way – persecution, abuse, disrobing, blame, criticism – and I think ‘Life is horrible. I can’t stand it anymore! I’m so hurt, so wounded. I’ve tried so hard and nobody appreciates me, nobody loves me.’ That’s the emotional dependency of the person; that’s personal conditioning.

Awareness includes emotions as mental objects or ārammaṇā, rather than subjects. If you don’t know this, you tend to identify with your emotions and they become yourself. You become this emotional thing that is terribly upset because the world is not respecting you enough. Our refuge is in the Deathless reality rather than in the transient and unstable conditions. If you trust in awareness, then the self and your emotions – whatever they might be – can be seen in terms of what they are; not judged, not making any problem out of them, but just noticing: it’s like this.

Link to the original:

https://forestsangha.org/teachings/books/intuitive-awareness?language=English

apperception 2

Posted on April 18, 2024 by tiramit

Ajahn Sumedho

Excerpts from “Intuitive Awareness,” the. chapter titled: “When You’re an Emotional Wreck,” retitled in this blog: “Apperception” (perception of perception). This is the second and last part of the chapter. The original by Ajahn Sumedho, is a free Dhamma publication available as PDF, EPUB, MOBI. Look for the link at the end of this post.

One of the ideals we talk about is the concept of universal compassion. But the words themselves have no ability to feel compassion. We might attach to the most beautiful, perfect ideals, but attachment blinds us. We can talk about how we must all love each other, have compassion for all sentient beings, but not be able to do that in any practical way, to feel it or notice it. Then, going into the heart – where oftentimes it’s amorphous, where it’s not clean, neat and tidy, like the intellect – emotions can be all over the place. The intellect says, ‘Oh, emotional things are so messy. You can’t trust them,’ and feel embarrassed. “ I don’t want to be considered emotional.’ Then someone says, ‘Ajahn Sumedho is very emotional.’ Whoa – I don’t want anyone to think that. So maybe you think of Ajahn Sumedho as mindful, reasonable, intelligent, reasonable, kind. Now, I like that. That’s nice. But, ‘Ajahn Sumedho is emotional’ – it makes me sound like I’m weak and wet, doesn’t it? ‘Ajahn Sumedho is emotional. He cries, he weeps and he’s wet. He’s all over the place. Ugh.’ Emotions are oftentimes simply ignored or rejected and not appreciated. We don’t learn from them, because we’re always rejecting or denying them. At least I found this easy to do myself. Sati-sampajañña is opening and being willing to be a mess. Let a mess be a mess; a mess is like this. Wet, weak, all over the place, being foolish and silly, stupid; sati-sampajañña embraces all that. It’s not passing judgement or trying to control, to pick or choose. It’s simply the act of noticing that whatever emotion is present, this is the way it is, it’s like this.

So, the point that includes – notice it’s the here-and-now, the paccuppanna-dhamma, just switching on this immanent kind of attention. It’s a slight shift. It isn’t very much, just relaxing and opening to the present, listening, being attentive. It’s not going into some kind of real super-duper samādhi at all. It’s just like this. It doesn’t seem like much at all. As you relax, trust and rest in it, you find it sustains itself. It’s natural, you are not creating it. In this openness, in this one point that includes, you can be aware of emotions that you don’t usually bother with, like feeling lonely or sad, or subtleties such as resentment or disappointment. Extreme emotions are quite easy because they force themselves into attention. But as you open, you can be aware of subtle emotions. Not judging this, just embracing it, so that it’s not making a problem about the way it is, it’s just knowing the way it is. At this moment, the vedanā-saññā-saṅkhārā, the feelings, perceptions and mental formations, are like this. Rūpa, the body, is like this.

Notice what it’s like when you open to an emotional feeling or mood without judging it or making any problem out of it. Whether it’s an emotional feeling or physical feeling, whatever its quality, you’re learning to embrace it, to sustain your attention by holding it without trying to get rid of it, change it or think about it. Just totally accept the mood you’re in, the emotional state, or the physical sensations like pain, itching or tension, with this sense of well-being, of embracing. When I do this, I notice the ‘changingness’. When you are willing to let something be the way it is, it changes. Then you begin to recognize or realize non-attachment. In this way, sati-sampajañña is not attaching, it’s embracing. It’s a sense of widening, it includes; it’s not picky-choosy. It’s not saying, ‘I’ll pick only the good things; I won’t pick the bad ones.’ It takes the bad along with the good, the whole thing, the worm and the apple, the snake and the garden. It allows things to be what they are, but it’s not approving. It’s not saying that you have to love worms and want them in your apples, to like them as much as you like apples. It’s not asking you to be silly or ridiculous, but it’s encouraging you to allow things to exist, even the things we don’t want, because if they exist, that’s what they do, they’re existing. The whole thing belongs, the good and the bad. Sati-sampajañña is our ability to realize that, to know in a direct way, and then the processes take care of themselves. It’s not a case of Ajahn Sumedho trying to get his act together, trying to cleanse his mind, free himself from defilements, deal with his immature emotions, straighten out his wrong, crooked views, trying to make himself into a better monk and become enlightened in the future. That doesn’t work, I guarantee — I’ve tried it!

From this perspective, you can use upāya (skilful means) for particular conditions that come up. One could say, ‘Just be mindful of everything.’ That’s true, that’s not wrong. But some things are quite obsessive or threatening to us, so we can develop skilful means with them. I got a lot of encouragement from Ajahn Chah to develop skilful means, and that takes paññā. It’s using paññā to see how I would deal with things, especially difficult emotional states and habits. Don’t be afraid to experiment. See what comes up using catharsis, talking it out with somebody who will listen to you, or thinking it out deliberately.

One of my skilful means was listening to my thoughts as if they were neighbours talking on the other side of the fence. I’m just an innocent bystander listening whilst they carry on these conversations. I’m actually producing all the gossip, opinions and views in my own mind. I’m not involved, not getting interested in the subject matter, but just listening as it goes on and on about what it likes and doesn’t like, and what’s wrong with this person and what’s wrong with that person, and why I like this better than that, and if you want my opinion about this … I just kept listening to these inner voices, these opinionated, arrogant, conceited, foolish voices that go on. Be aware of that which is aware; notice that. The awareness is my refuge, not the gossiping, not the arrogant voices or opinions and views.

We can learn to help each other by just listening. Learning to listen to somebody is about developing relationship rather than preaching and trying to tell somebody how to practise and what to do. Sometimes all we need to do is learn how to listen to somebody else with our own sati-sampajañña, so that they have the opportunity to verbalize their own fears or desires without being condemned or given all kinds of advice. Listening can be a very skilful means. Some kinds of therapy can be considered skilful means that help us deal with problems that are usually emotional, and where we tend to be most blind and undeveloped is in the emotional realm.

Skilful means is learning that you do have the wisdom to do it. If you think that ‘I’m not wise enough to do that,’ don’t believe it. But also, don’t be afraid to ask for help. It’s not that one is better than the other, just trust your own experience of suffering. If you find you obsess a lot, suddenly things will fill your consciousness: memories will come up, certain emotions, foolish thoughts or silly things can pursue you. We can say, ‘I don’t want to bother with that stupidity, I’m trying to get my samadhi and be filled with loving-kindness – do all the right things,’ and not see what we are doing. When we think that, we’re trying to make ourselves fit into an image that is unreal. It’s imagined, it’s an idealized image. The Buddha certainly did not expect that. Whatever way it is for you is the way it is. That’s what you learn from, that’s where enlightenment is – right there – when you’re an emotional wreck.

Link to the original:

https://forestsangha.org/teachings/books/intuitive-awareness?language=English

apperception

Posted on April 11, 2024 by tiramit

Ajahn Sumedho

Excerpts from “Intuitive Awareness,” the. chapter titled: “When You’re an Emotional Wreck,” retitled in this blog: “Apperception” (perception of perception). The original by Ajahn Sumedho, is a free Dhamma publication available as PDF, EPUB, MOBI. Look for the link at the end of this post.

We’re in a retreat situation in Amaravati. Everything is under control and perfect for what we regard as a proper, formal retreat. In contrast to this, next week there will be a lot of comings and goings, and things happening that we can’t control. So, just be aware of expectation, and the view about what a proper, formal retreat should be. Whatever views or opinions you may have, just know the way they are. Whatever kind of irritation, frustration or aversion you might feel – you can use all of that for meditation. The important thing is to maintain the awareness that ‘it is the way it is’ rather than making attempts to suppress your feelings, ignore, or get upset and angry about things not going the way you want, and then not taking the opportunity to observe the way it is. If one is upset about the way it is, one can use that as a part of the meditation.

Unwanted things happen in any retreat. Like the window in the Temple: the electric motor that opens and closes it doesn’t work. High-tech! Then the spotlight went out. I notice in my own mind that when things go wrong, things break or things are going in a way that makes me feel frustration or irritation, then I like to use those situations. If the window doesn’t close, and the spotlight doesn’t go on, I can feel a certain way. I’m aware of that feeling of not wanting the spotlight or window to be broken, of wanting to get it fixed right away, ‘We can just get somebody in to do it during the break so it doesn’t interfere with my practice.’ But notice in all of this that mindfulness is the important factor, because concentration can get disrupted. However, mindfulness, if you trust it, opens to the flow of life as an experience, with its pleasure and pain.

Sati-sampajañña, awareness, apperception or intuitive awareness: I keep reiterating this so that you can really appreciate the difference between intuitive awareness and thinking and analysis that comes from trying to get something or get rid of something. If you’re caught in the thinking process, then you’ll end up always with, ‘Well, it should be like this and it shouldn’t be like that,’ and ‘This is right and that is wrong.’ We can even say, ‘The Buddha’s teachings are right,’ and get attached to that idea! The result of that, if we don’t have enough sati-sampajañña along with it, is that we become Buddhists who feel we are right because we’re following the ‘right’ teaching. Thus, as a consequence of attachment and the way we perceive the Buddha’s teachings, we can become self-righteous Buddhists. We can feel that any other form of Buddhism that doesn’t fit into what we consider right is then wrong, or that other religions are wrong. That’s the thinking behind self-righteous views – notice how limiting it is. We can be attached to these thoughts and perceptions, or to negative, inferior perceptions of ourselves, and think that’s right. Apperception means being aware of perceptions – perceptions of myself or that Buddhism is right … and they’re like this. There’s still consciousness, awareness, intelligence. It’s pure, but it’s not ‘my purity’ as a personal achievement, it’s naturally pure.

Notice that this awareness includes the body, the emotions and the intellect. Sati-sampajañña includes everything. It’s not dismissing the physical condition that we’re experiencing; it includes the emotional state and whatever state your body is in, whether it’s healthy or sickly, strong or weak, male or female, young or old – whatever. The quality is not the issue; it’s not saying how your body should be, but the body is included in this moment. Apperception is the ability to embrace that which is, and the body is right now. This is my experience. The body is right here – I can certainly feel it. Awareness includes emotional states, no matter what they are. Whether you’re happy or sad, elated or depressed, confused or clear, confident or doubtful, jealous or frightened, greedy or lustful, awareness includes and notices all those in a way that is not critical.

We’re not saying, ‘You shouldn’t have lustful emotions,’ or anything like that. We’re not making moral judgements, because we’re using sati-sampajañña. If you get caught up in your brain, your intellect, then it says, ‘Oh! You’re having lustful thoughts in the shrine room. You shouldn’t do that. You’re not a very good monk or nun if you do things like that. You’re impure!’ We’re attached to these judgements, this judgemental function we have, but sati-sampajañña includes that; it includes the judgement. It doesn’t judge judgement; it’s noticing the tyrannical, self-righteous superego that says, ‘You shouldn’t be the way you are. You shouldn’t be selfish. You should be compassionate and loving.’ ‘Buddhism is right.’ ‘I’m getting nowhere in my practice.’ Sati-sampajañña embraces that. It’s just noticing the way it is. I can listen to my intellect, my superego, emotional states and the body – but with sati-sampajañña the attitude is one of ‘I know that. I know you.’ It’s patient with all this. It’s not trying to control or make any problem out of it. As we relax and open to these things, we allow them to change on their own, we give them that opportunity. They have their own kammic force. Our refuge is not in thinking or emotions or the physical body, but in this simple ability to listen, to be attentive to this moment.

I always use the practice of listening to the sound of silence – that subtle, continuous inner ringing tone in the background of experience – because every time I open the mind, that’s what I hear. Its presence contains and embraces the body, the emotional quality and the thinking mind all at once. It’s not like A-B-C or anything in tandem or sequence. Just the way it is, as a whole, it includes. It doesn’t pick and choose, ‘I want this but I don’t want that.’ Noticing, trusting and valuing this ability that each one of us has is something to really treasure and cultivate.

You can reflect on intuition as the point that includes or embraces. In addition to the intuitive ability, we have the thinking ability. The thinking ability excludes, like the single-pointedness you get through concentrating on an object. With a single point for concentration, you focus on it in order to exclude distractions. When you’re using intuitive awareness, it includes all that is there. The single point you get through concentration is just a perception. When you take it literally, it means one naturally excludes anything that’s not in that point. That’s the rational, logical way of looking at it. One-pointedness can be seen in terms of the one point that excludes everything, because that’s the logic of thought. Intuition is non-verbal and non-thinking, so the point is everywhere, it includes. This is sati-sampajañña and satipaññā, or mindful wisdom. You can’t do this through thinking or analysis, or by defining or acquiring all the knowledge in the Abhidhamma Piṭaka or the suttas, and so becoming an expert on Buddhism because you might know a lot about it. But you won’t know it. It’s like knowing all about honey without tasting it – chemical formulae, different qualities, which one is rated the highest, the best and the sweetest, which one is considered common and vulgar, lower-realm honey – you might know all that but not know the flavour of any of it. You ca n have pictures and portraits of it, the whole lot. But if you just taste honey, then you are intuitively aware that it tastes like this.

Paññā, or wisdom, comes from intuition, not from analysis. You can know all about Buddhism and still not use any wisdom in your life. I like the word combinations sati-sampajañña and satipaññā (wisdom based on mindfulness). Sati-sampajañña is not something that you acquire through studying, or through trying to pursue it by will alone. It is awakening, learning to trust this awakening, paying attention to life. It’s an immanent act of trust in the unknown, because you can’t get hold of it. People like to ask, ‘Define it for me, describe it to me, tell me if I have it.’ Nobody can tell you, ‘Well, I think you have it, you look like you’re mindful right now.’ A lot of people who look mindful are not necessarily mindful at all. It’s not a matter of someone telling you, or acquiring the right definitions for the words, but in recognising and realizing the reality of it and trusting it .

I used to experiment with this because of my background. I spent many years studying in university and was conditioned by wanting to define and understand everything through the intellect. I was always in a state of doubt. The more I tried to figure everything out, I still wasn’t certain whether I had got it right or not, because the thinking process has no certainty to it. It’s clean and neat and tidy, but it is not liberating in itself. Emotional things are a bit messy. With emotions you can cry, you can feel sad, you can feel sorry, you can feel angry and jealous and all kinds of messy feelings. But a nice intellectual frame of reference is so pleasurable because it’s tidy and neat. It isn’t messy, doesn’t get sticky, wet and soggy, but it doesn’t feel anything either. When you’re caught in the intellect, it sucks you away from your feelings. Your emotional life doesn’t work anymore, so you suppress it because you’re attached to thought, reason and logic. Intellect has its pleasure and its gifts, but also makes you insensitive. Thoughts do not have any sensitive capability. Thoughts are not sensitive conditions.

Continued next week, 18 April 2024

Link to the original:

https://forestsangha.org/teachings/books/intuitive-awareness?language=English

identity part 2

Posted on April 4, 2024 by tiramit

Excerpts from “Intuitive Awareness,” by Ajahn Sumedho, the Chapter titled Identity. This is a free Dhamma publication available as PDF EPUB MOBI. Look for the link at the end of this post.

As soon as we identify with a negative thought, it hooks us: ‘Oh, here I go again, being critical and negative about somebody and I shouldn’t do that. I’ve been a monk all these years and how can I stop doing that?’ I’ve identified with a negative thought and it triggers off all kinds of feelings of despair. Or, ‘I shouldn’t be like this, I shouldn’t think like this. A good monk should love everybody.’ With awareness, you suddenly stop that, and you’re back in the centre again.

So just recognize, no matter how many times you go out on the wheel, it’s just a very simple act of attention to be back in the centre. It’s not that difficult, remote or precious; we’re simply not used to it. We’re used to being on the turning wheel. We’re used to going around and around and becoming all kinds of things. We’re used to delusions, fantasies, dreams. We’re used to extremes. What we’re used to we are inclined to do if we’re not attentive, if we’re not vigilant. Then we easily fall back onto the turning wheel because we’re used to that, even though we suffer. When we aren’t aware, when we aren’t vigilant and attentive, then we easily fall back into the realm of suffering. The good side of it is the more we develop awareness, cultivate awareness, we then start de-programming those habits. We’re not feeding these illusions anymore. We’re not believing, we’re not following, we’re not resisting. We’re not making any problem about the body as it is, the memories, the thoughts, the habits or the personality that we have. We’re not judging or condemning, praising, adulating or exaggerating anything. It is what it is. As we do that, our identification with the personal condition begins to slip away. We no longer seek identity with our illusions; we’ve broken through that. When we’ve seen through that illusion of self, what we think we are, then our inclination is towards this centre point, this Buddho position.

This is something you can really trust. That’s why I keep saying this, just as a way of encouraging you. If you think about it, you don’t trust it. You can get very confused because other people will say other things and you’ll hear all kinds of views and opinions about meditation, Buddhism and so on. Within this sangha there are so many monks and nuns, so many views and opinions. It’s a matter of learning to trust yourself, the ability to be aware rather than think, ‘I’m not good enough to trust myself. I’ve got to develop the jhānas first. I’ve got to purify my sīla first, my ethical conduct. I’ve got to get rid of my neurotic problems and traumas first before I can meditate.’ If you believe that, then it’s what you’ll have to do. But if you begin to see what you’re doing, that very illusion, then you can trust in that simple recognition. It’s not even condemning the illusion. It’s not saying you shouldn’t do those things. I’m not saying you shouldn’t purify your sīla or resolve your emotional problems, go to therapy or develop the jhānas. I’m not making any statement about ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’, but rather I’m pointing to something that you can trust – this awareness, sati-sampajañña, here and now.

If one of you should come to me and say, ‘Ajahn Sumedho, I’ve got so many neurotic problems and fears. I really need to go to therapy and get these things straightened up in some way because I can’t meditate the way I am,’ and I say, ‘Well, that self-view might even be right on a worldly level – I’m not saying you shouldn’t go to a therapist. What’s best is to not say you are this way or that way – to not give you some kind of identity to attach to – but to empower or encourage you to trust in your own ability to wake up, to pay attention. I don’t know what the result of that will be. I hope it will be good. But what’s true is that your true identity isn’t dependent upon any condition.

Pointing to the present, the paccuppanna-dhamma, we can grasp that idea and then think we don’t need to do all those things. ‘We don’t need to be monks or nuns; we don’t need therapy. We can just meditate. Pure meditation will solve all our problems.’ Then we grasp that and become anti-religious: ‘All religion is a waste of time; it’s all a bunch of rubbish. Psychotherapy is a waste of time. You don’t need that. All you need to do is be mindful and meditate.’ That’s another viewpoint. Those kinds of opinions are not pointing to the centre, they’re judging the conditions or the conventions. And even though you can say that it is true, that ultimately all you need to do is to wake up – simple as that – that in itself is a convention of language. This empowerment or encouragement is pointing to an immanent act of awakening. It’s not telling you that you are some kind of person who is asleep and should wake up, or that you should grasp that idea. It is pointing to that sense of actually being awake, aware.

In the Western world we get very complicated because we don’t usually have a lot of faith, or saddhā. Asian Buddhists tend to be more culturally attuned to this. They have a lot of faith in Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha or a teacher. Most of us come to Buddhism or become monks or nuns when we’re adults, and we’re sceptical. Usually, we’ve gone through a lot of sceptical doubts and have strong self-images, and a hard, strong sense of individuality. Speaking for myself, my personality was a doubting, sceptical one. This doubt, or vicikicchā, was one of my greatest obstructions. That’s why I couldn’t be Christian: it was totally impossible for me to believe in the kinds of doctrines that you have to believe in to be one. I was a sceptical, doubting character. At the age of thirty-two I was quite cynical. I’d been through a lot, and had quite a lot of bitterness about life. I was not pleased with my life at thirty-two. I was disappointed with myself and a lot of others. There was a kind of despair, bitterness and doubt, and yet the faint light at the end of the tunnel was Buddhism. That was one thing I still had some hope for, my interest in Buddhism. It was a sign to me, something that drew me into this life.

The good thing about being highly individualistic, sceptical and doubtful is that you do tend to question everything. One thing I appreciated with Ajahn Chah was that everything was up for questioning. That which is sacred and oftentimes never questioned in religions, was allowed to be questioned. He was never one for a peremptory approach of ‘you have to believe in this and you have to believe in that.’ There was never that hard, heavy-handed, dictatorial style; it was much more this reflective questioning and inquiry. One of the problems with Westerners is that we’re complicated because of the lack of faith. Our identities get complicated in so many ways, and are highly personal; we take everything personally. Sexual desire and the sexual forces in the body are regarded as very personal. The same is true with how we identify with hunger and thirst. We judge the basic forces that are natural and take them personally, thinking we shouldn’t be cowardly and weak, pusillanimous. We get complicated because we judge ourselves endlessly, criticize ourselves according to very high, ideal standards – noble standards we can never live up to. We get self-disparaging, neurotic and depressed because we’re not in touch with nature. We’ve come from the world of ideas rather than from realizing the natural law.

In meditation it’s a matter of recognizing the way it is – the Dhamma or the natural law, the way things are – that sexual desire is like this, it’s not mine. The body is like this; it has sexual organs so it’s going to have these energies. This is the way it is. It’s not personal. I didn’t create it. We begin to look at the most obvious things, the basics, the human body, in terms of ‘the way it is’ rather than identifying with it personally. We investigate the instinctual energies. We have strong survival and procreative instincts: hunger and thirst, the urge to protect ourselves, the need for safety. We all need to feel some kind of physical safety, which is a survival instinct; these are basic to the animal kingdom, not just humans. It gets more complicated because we identify with it, and judge it according to high standards and ideals. Then we become neurotic. It gets all over the place; we can’t do anything right. This is the complicated mess that we create in our lives and it’s very confusing.

Now is the time to understand that it needn’t be seen in this way. No matter how complicated things are, the practice is very simple. This is where we need a lot of patience, because when we’re complicated, we oftentimes lack patience with ourselves. We’ve got clever minds. We think very quickly and have strong passions, and it’s easy to get lost in all of this. It’s confusing for us because we don’t have any way out of it, we don’t know a way to transcend or to see it in perspective. In pointing to this centre point, to this still point, to the here-and-now, I’m pointing to the way of transcendence or the escape. Not escape by running away out of fear, but by means of the escape hatch that allows us to get perspective on the mess, on the confusion, on the complicated self that we have created and identify with.

It’s simple and uncomplicated. But if you start thinking about it, then you can make it very complicated with such thoughts as, ‘Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think I could ever realize nibbāna.’ But this is where trust comes in. If you’re aware that ‘Oh, I don’t know’ is a perception in the present, trust in that awareness. That’s all you need to know. It is what it is. We’re not even judging that perception. We’re not saying, ‘What a stupid perception.’ We’re not adding anything. The awareness of it, that’s what I’m pointing to.

Learn to trust in that awareness rather than in what the perception is saying. The perception might even be common sense in a way, but the attachment to it is where you get lost. ‘We should practise meditation. We should not be selfish and we should learn to be more disciplined and more responsible for our lives.’ That’s very good advice, but if I attach to that, what happens? I go back to thinking, ‘I’m not responsible enough, I’ve got to become more responsible and I shouldn’t be selfish. I’m too selfish and I shouldn’t be,’ and I’m back onto the turning wheel again. One gets intimidated even by the best advice. What to do? Trust in the awareness of it. The thought ‘I should be responsible’ is seen, and one’s relationship to it is no longer that of grasping. Maybe if that thought resonates as something to do, then be more responsible. It’s not a matter of denying, blotting out, condemning or believing, but of trusting in the attitude of attention and awareness rather than endlessly trying to sort it out on the turning wheel with all its complicated thoughts and habits, where you just get dizzy and totally confused.

The still point gives you perspective on the conditions, on the turning wheel, on the confusion, on the mess. It puts you into a relationship to it that is one of knowing it for what it is, rather than making a personal identity out of it. Then you can see that this knowing is your true nature – your real home – this pure state, pure consciousness, pure awareness. You are learning to remember that, to be that. It’s what you really are, rather than what you think you are according to the conditioning of your mind.

Link to the source of this article:

https://forestsangha.org/teachings/books/intuitive-awareness?language=English

wise kindness

Posted on February 29, 2024 by tiramit

Ajahn Amaro

Excerpts from “Small Boat, Great Mountain,” Chapter 5, a free Dhamma publication available as PDF EPUB MOBI. Link at the end of the text.

I don’t like to teach loving-kindness meditation as a separate feature of spiritual practice. I find that it’s far more skilful to cultivate loving-kindness as a background theme, as a kind and loving presence that informs and infuses every effort that is made in our spiritual training. The way that we pick up any aspect of the training needs to have this quality of loving-kindness in it. As a preface to that, it’s also important to understand that loving everything doesn’t mean we have to like everything. Sometimes it’s misunderstood that to have lovingkindness we need to attempt to make ourselves like everything. For instance, we may try to convince ourselves that we like pain, grief, unrequited love, an overdraft, decaying sense faculties, or an ex who continues to haunt us. This is a misguided way of practicing loving-kindness.

It is better understood as “the heart that does not dwell in aversion.” Not dwelling in aversion towards anything, even our enemies. Someone quoted me a passage in one of the Dalai Lama’s recent books where he was talking about the Chinese. He referred to them as “my friends, the enemy.” So loving-kindness is that quality whereby we are able to refrain from piling on aversion, even toward that which is bitter, painful, ugly, cruel, and harmful. It’s a matter of realising that place in our hearts where we know that this too has its role in nature. Yes, including the whole spectrum of the seemingly unlikable, the repulsive, and the utterly despicable.

Loving-kindness is the quality of allowing and accepting these things as part of the whole picture. It’s not about saying we approve of everything or we think things like torture, deceit, and malice are good. It’s about accepting that they exist and fully acknowledging that they are a part of life’s panorama. Here they are. When we establish loving acceptance as a basis for practice, then whatever we’re dealing with in terms of our own minds and our world, there’s the fundamental quality of accord. And for myself, I find that that needs to be there whether I’m doing concentration practice, insight practice, or the nonduality practice of Dzogchen—completely letting go of everything in the subjective and the objective realms. We need to recognise that there is no enemy. There is Dharma. There is no them or that or it. It all belongs. Fundamentally, everything belongs and has its place in nature.

The brahma-vihāras chant that we do in English appears in the Buddha’s teaching called “The Simile of the Saw.” What he teaches there is that, “If you were captured by bandits and they were sawing your body into pieces, limb by limb with a twohanded saw, anyone who gave rise to a thought of aversion towards them on account of that would not be practicing my teaching.” (M 21.20)

I realize that some people find this an incredibly daunting and unrealistic teaching. But to me it is actually extremely helpful and skilful. It’s saying that hatred cannot be in accord with Dharma and is therefore never justified.

The Buddha used an extreme, almost absurd example where it would seem utterly reasonable to feel some aversion toward those sawing you up bit by bit. One would think a little irritation, just a snippet of negativity here or there, would be quite allowable. But the Buddha didn’t say that, did he? He said, “Not one hair’s tip of aversion is appropriate.” As soon as the heart lurches into, “No, this doesn’t belong, this shouldn’t be. You are evil. Why me?” then the Dharma has been obscured, lost. That’s the fact. Something in us may revolt, but the heart knows it’s true. Any dwelling in aversion points it out very clearly, and because of that, the aversion is a unambiguous sign that “the Dharma has been lost.”

As soon as we find ourselves judging our own minds or the people around us with harshness, cultivating justifiable hatred for the government or our thinking minds or our erratic emotions or our damaged lives, there’s no vision of reality; it’s obscured. The attitude is not in accord with truth. So that hatred, that aversion becomes a sign for us that we’ve lost the Path. This standard of training described by the Buddha may seem totally impractical, but it is doable. I think it’s helpful to recognise this because what we think we’re capable of is very different from what we actually are capable of. We might think, “I could never do that. That’s impossible for me.” Yet I tell you, it is possible. That potential is there for all of us. And when we find that quality of total acceptance and absolute non-aversion, where there’s kindness and compassion, then there’s a tremendous quality of ease and release, a real non-discrimination at last. For what kind of wisdom are we developing if it packs up and departs as soon as the going gets rough—as soon as the weather gets too hot, the “wrong” person is put in charge, or the body gets sick and uncomfortable?

A sincere spirit of loving-kindness is the most challenging thing to establish in the face of extreme bitterness and pain because to do so requires finding spaciousness around these experiences. This is where the heart most easily contracts and impacts itself. But we can pick up that quality and say, “Yes, this too is part of nature. This too is just the way it is.” Then, at that moment, there’s an expansion around it. We feel the space of emptiness that surrounds and pervades it and we see the whole thing is transparent. No matter how dense and real the feeling of “I and me and mine” is in that holding, we see in that spaciousness that not only is there space around it, but there is also light coming through.

Link to the source:

https://www.abhayagiri.org/books/423-small-boat-great-mountain

cessation (part 2)

Posted on February 15, 2024 by tiramit

By Ajahn Amaro
The concept of cessation is sometimes put forth as some event that we’re all seeking, where all experience will vanish and then we’ll be fine. A story from the time of the Buddha might help to expand our understanding of what cessation means. One night while the Buddha was meditating, a brilliant and beautiful devatā named Rohitassa appeared in front of him. He told the Buddha, “When I was a human being, I was a spiritual seeker of great psychic power, a sky walker. Even though I journeyed for 100 years to reach the end of the world, with great determination and resolution, I could not come to the end of the world. I died on the journey before I had found it. So, can you tell me, is it possible to journey to the end of the world?

And the Buddha replied, “It is not possible to reach the end of the world by walking, but I also tell you that unless you reach the end of the world, you will not reach the end of suffering.” Rohitassa was a bit puzzled and said, “Please explain this to me, Venerable Sir.” The Buddha replied, “In this very fathomlong body is the world, the origin of the world, the cessation of the world, and the way leading to the cessation of the world.” (A 4.45, S 2.26) The world, “loka,” means the world as we experience it through sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, thought, emotion, feeling. That’s what “the world” is—my world, your world. It’s not the abstracted, geographical planet, universe-type world. It’s the direct experience of the planet, the people, and the cosmos. Here is the origin of the world, the cessation of the world, and the way leading to the cessation of the world.

He said that as long as we create “me and my experience”— “me in here” and “the world out there”—we’re stuck in the world of subject and object. Then there is dukkha. And the way leading to the cessation of that duality is the way leading to the cessation of suffering. Geographically, it is impossible to journey to the end of the world. It’s only when we come to the cessation of the world, which literally means the cessation of its otherness, its thingness, will we reach the end of dukkha, unsatisfactoriness. When we stop creating sense objects as absolute realities and stop seeing thoughts and feelings as solid things, there is cessation.

To see that the world is within our minds is one way of working with these principles. The whole universe is embraced when we realize that it’s happening within our minds. And in that moment when we recognise that it all happens here, it ceases. Its thingness ceases, its otherness ceases. Its substantiality ceases.

This is just one way of talking and thinking about it. But I find this brings us much closer to the truth, because in that respect, it’s held in check. It’s known. But there’s also the quality of its emptiness. Its insubstantiality is known. We’re not imputing solidity to it, a reality that it doesn’t possess. We’re just looking directly at the world, knowing it fully and completely.

So, what happens when the world ceases? I remember one time Ajahn Sumedho was giving a talk about this same subject. He said, “Now I’m going to make the world completely disappear. I’m going to make the world come to an end.” He just sat there and said: “Okay, are you ready? . . . The world just ended. . . Do you want me to bring it back? Okay. . . welcome back.”

Nothing was apparent from the outside. It all happens internally. When we stop creating the world, we stop creating each other. We stop imputing the sense of solidity that creates a sense of separation. Yet we do not shut off the senses in any way. Actually, we shed the veneer, the films of confusion, of opinion, of judgment, of our conditioning, so that we can see the way things really are. At that moment, dukkha ceases. This is what we can call the experience of rigpa. There is knowing. There is liberation and freedom. There is no dukkha.

Continued next week: 22 February 2024

Excerpts from Chapter 4, “Small Boat, Great Mountain,” a free Dhamma publication available as PDF EPUB MOBI. Link below:

https://www.abhayagiri.org/books/423-small-boat-great-mountain

cessation (part 1)

Posted on February 8, 2024 by tiramit

By Ajahn Amaro

The translation of terms can be very interesting, especially out on the borders where words expire. I remember years ago looking in the glossary of a collection of Vedanta teachings. Where the Sanskrit had a one-word term, the English explanation was a paragraph long. In refined areas of consciousness, English is pretty impoverished. Our language is great at emotions. We’ve got scads of words for every shade of feeling. But for the fine details of the inner reaches of consciousness, it’s hard to find words that really give an accurate and complete picture and that do not cause us to lose our way.”

Attending to the Deathless

In the Theravāda teachings, one of the ways the Buddha talked about how to be liberated is very similar to a central principle of Dzogchen. As far as I can gather, both traditions emphasise that at a certain point we need to let go of everything and awaken to the presence of the Dharma. Even the most skilful states must not be clung to. This principle is translated in various ways, but the one that feels most accurate is “attending to the deathless.” In Pali, that last word is “amatadhātu.”

A great passage in the suttas (A 3.128) presents an exchange between two of the Buddha’s elder monks. Venerable Sāriputta is the Buddha’s chief disciple, the one most eminent in wisdom and also in meditative accomplishments. Although he had no psychic powers whatsoever, he was the grand master of meditators. The other elder disciple of the Buddha, Venerable Anuruddha, had spectacular psychic powers. He was the one most blessed with “the divine eye”; he could see into all different realms.

The two disciples were an interesting mix. Sāriputta’s weakness was Anuruddha’s great gift. Anyway, shortly before his enlightenment, Anuruddha came to Sāriputta and said, “With the divine eye purified and perfected I can see the entire 10,000- fold universal system. My meditation is firmly established; my mindfulness is steady as a rock. I have unremitting energy, and the body is totally relaxed and calm. And yet still my heart is not free from the outflows and confusions. What am I getting wrong?”

Sāriputta replied, “Friend, your ability to see into the 10,000- fold universal system is connected to your conceit. Your persistent energy, your sharp mindfulness, your physical calm and “your one-pointedness of mind have to do with your restlessness. And the fact that you still have not released the heart from the āsavas and defilements is tied up with your anxiety. It would be good, friend, if rather than occupying yourself with these concerns, you turned your attention to the deathless element.” (By the way, the Pali Canon has a lot of humor in it like this, although it’s rather similar to English humor and sometimes is easy to miss.) So, of course, Anuruddha said, “Thank you very much,” and off he went. Shortly thereafter, he realised complete enlightenment. This was very understated humor.

The point of their discussion, however, is really quite serious. As long as we are saying, “Look at how complicated my problems are” or “Look at my powers of concentration,” we will stay stuck in samsāra. In essence, Sāriputta told his colleague, “You’re so busy with all of the doingness and the effects that come from that, so busy with all of these proliferations, you’ll never be free. You’re looking in the wrong direction. You’re heading out, looking at the meditation object out there, the 10,000-fold universal system out there. Just shift your view to the context of experience and attend to the deathless element instead.”

All it took was a slight shift of focus for Anuruddha to realize: “It’s not just a matter of all the fascinating objects or all the noble stuff I have been doing—that’s all conditioned, born, compounded, and deathbound. The timeless Dharma is being missed. Look within, look more broadly. Attend to the deathless.”

There are also a few places in the suttas (e.g., M 64.9 and A 9.36) where the Buddha talked about the same process with respect to development of concentration and meditative absorption. He even made the point that, when the mind is in first jhāna, second jhāna, third jhāna, all the way out to the higher formless jhānas, we can look at those states and recognise all of them as being conditioned and dependent. This, he said, is the true development of wisdom: the mindfulness to recognise the conditioned nature of a state, to turn away from it, and to attend to the deathless, even while the state is still around. When the mind is concentrated and very pure and bright, we can recognise that state as conditioned, dependent, alien, or something that is void, empty. There is the presence of mind to reflect on the truth that: All of this is conditioned and thus gross, but there is the deathless element. And in inclining toward the deathless element, the heart is released.

In a way it is like looking at a picture. Normally the attention goes to the figure in a picture and not the background. Or imagine being in a room with someone who is sitting in a chair. When you look across the room you would probably not attend to the space in front of or beside that person. Your attention would go to the figure in the chair, right? Similarly, if you’ve ever painted a picture or a wall, there’s usually one spot where there’s a glitch or a smudge. So where does the eye go when you look at the wall? It beams straight in on the flaw. In exactly the same way, our perceptual systems are geared to aim for the figure, not the ground. Even if an object looks like the ground—such as limitless light, for example—we still need to know how to turn back from that object.

Incidentally, this is why in Buddhist meditation circles there’s often a warning about deep states of absorption. When one is in one, it can be very difficult to develop insight—much more so than when the mind is somewhat less intensely concentrated. The absorption state is such a good facsimile of liberation that it feels like the real gold. So, we think: “It’s here, why bother going any further? This is really good.” We get tricked and, as a result, we miss the opportunity to turn away and attend to the deathless.

In cosmological terms, the best place for liberation is in the human realm. There’s a good mixture of suffering and bliss, happiness and unhappiness here. If we are off in the deva realms, it’s difficult to become liberated because it’s like being at an ongoing party. And we don’t even have to clean up afterwards. We just hang out in the Nandana Grove. Devas drop grapes in our mouths as we waft around with flocks of adoring beings of our favorite gender floating in close proximity. And, of course, there’s not much competition; you’re always the star of the show in those places. Up in the brahma realms it’s even worse. Who is going to come back down to grubby old earth and deal with tax returns and building permits?

This cosmology is a reflection of our internal world. Thus, the brahma realms are the equivalent of formless states of absorption. One of the great meditation masters of Thailand, Venerable Ajahn Tate, was such an adept at concentration that, as soon as he sat down to meditate, he would go straight into arūpa-jhāna, formless states of absorption. It took him 12 years after he met his teacher, Venerable Ajahn Mun, to train himself not to do that and to keep his concentration at a level where he could develop insight. In those formless states, it is just so nice. It’s easy to ask: “What’s the point of cultivating wise reflection or investigating the nature of experience? The experience itself is so seamlessly delicious, why bother?” The reason we bother is that those are not dependable states. They are unreliable and they are not ours. Probably not many people have the problem of getting stuck in arūpa-jhāna. Nonetheless, it is helpful to understand why these principles are discussed and emphasised.

This gesture of attending to the deathless is thus a core spiritual practice but not a complicated one. We simply withdraw our attention from the objects of the mind and incline the attention towards the deathless, the unborn. This is not a massive reconstruction program. It’s not like we have to do a whole lot. It’s very simple and natural. We relax and notice that which has been here all along, like noticing the space in a room. We don’t notice space, because it doesn’t grab our attention, it isn’t exciting. Similarly, nibbāna has no feature, no color, no taste, and no form, so we don’t realize it’s right here. The perceptual systems and the naming activity of the mind work on forms; that’s what they go to first. Therefore, we tend to miss what’s always here. Actually, because it has no living quality to it, space is the worst as well as the best example, but sometimes it is reasonable to use it.

Continued next week: 15 February 2024