Ajahn Sumedho

[…] We’ll sacrifice our life for an illusion, to try and protect our identities, our positions, our territories. We’re very territorial. We think England belongs to the English. When we take that apart, does this plot of land here say it’s England? When I do jongrom (walking meditation) outside, does the earth come up and say, ’You’re walking on me – England.’ It’s never said that! But I say I’m walking here in England – I’m the one who’s calling it England – and that is an identity, a conventional identity. We all agree to call this plot of land here ‘England’, but it’s not really that; it is what it is. Yet we’ll fight, torture and commit the most atrocious acts over territory, quibbling about just one inch of property on a border. The land doesn’t belong to anybody. Even if I own land legally – ‘This belongs to Ajahn Sumedho’ – it doesn’t really. That’s just a convention.

When we bind ourselves to these conventions and illusions, then of course we’re troubled because they are so unstable and not in line with Dhamma. We end up wasting our lives trying to increase this sense of identification, the sense of, ‘It’s mine, it belongs to me and I want to protect it. I want to hand it down to future generations.’ We go on and on like this, into future lives and the generations that follow. We create a whole realm of illusion, personality and identity with the perceptions that we create in our minds, and that arise and cease with no real core to them, no essence.

We can be very threatened when these illusions are threatened. I remember first questioning the reality of my personality. It scared me to death. When I started questioning it, I was not particularly overconfident or had high self-esteem. I have never been prone towards megalomania; usually the opposite, very self-critical – and yet I felt threatened when that security, that confidence in being this screwed-up personality, was being threatened. There is a sense of stability even with people who are identified with illnesses or negative things, like alcoholics. Being identified with some sort of mental disease like paranoia, schizophrenia or whatever, gives us a sense that we know what we are, and can justify why we are that way. We can say, ‘I can’t help the way I am. I’m a schizophrenic.’ That gives us permission to be a certain way. We gain confidence or stability when our identities are labelled and we all agree to look at each other in this way, in terms of this label, this perception.

So, you realize the kind of courage it takes to question, to allow the illusory world we have created to fall apart – such as with a nervous breakdown when the world falls apart. When the safety and confidence that we gain from that illusion starts cracking and falling apart, it’s very frightening. Yet within us there’s something that guides us through it. For example, what brings us into this monastic life? It’s some intuitive sense, a sense behind the sense, an intelligence behind all the knowledge and the cleverness of our minds. Yet we can’t claim it on a personal level. We always have to let go of the personal perceptions, because as soon as we claim them, we’re creating another illusion again. Instead of claiming, identifying or attaching, we begin to realize or recognize the way it is. This is the practice of awareness, of sati-sampajañña, of paying attention. In other words, it’s going to the centre point of our minds, to the Buddho position, ‘the one who knows.’ If you look at this statue of the Buddha here in the Temple, it’s a symbol, an image representing the human form at that still point.

There is this encouragement to practise what we call ‘meditation’. The word ‘meditation’ can mean all kinds of things. It’s a word that includes any kind of mental practice, good or bad. But when I use this word, what I’m mainly using it for is that sense of centring, that sense of establishing, resting in the centre of the mind. The only way one can do that is to not try and think about or analyze it; you have to trust in just this simple act of attention, of awareness. It’s so simple and so direct that our complicated minds get confused. ‘What’s he talking about? I’ve never seen any still point. I’ve never found a still point in me. When I sit and meditate, there’s nothing still about it.’ But there’s an awareness of that. Even if you think you’ve never had a still point, or you’re a confused, messed-up character who can’t meditate, trust in the awareness of that very perception. That’s why I encourage you, whatever you think you are, to think it deliberately – really explore the kinds of perceptions you have of yourself, so that they’re not just habitually going through your mind and you’re either believing them or trying to get rid of them.

The more we try to get rid of our personalities, the more confused we get. If you assume that you’ve got to get rid of your personality in some way because it’s an illusion, then you’re caught in another illusion that ‘I’m someone who has a personality I’ve got to get rid of; I’m the personality that’s got to get rid of my personality.’ It doesn’t get anywhere – it’s ridiculous. But the practice is not a matter of getting rid of, but of knowing.

Be a personality then. Really intentionally be one; take it to absurdity. That’s a lot of fun. Take your personality to where it’s totally absurd and listen to it. Your relationship is then not one of identity but of recognizing that you’re creating this personality, this changing condition. I can’t create any kind of personal perception that lingers, that stays. There’s nothing I can create through my mental powers that has any staying power on a personal level. It’s all very illusory, very changeable, very ephemeral. However, there is that which can be aware of the personality as a construction. I deliberately think, ‘I am a screwed-up person who needs to meditate in order to become enlightened in the future.’ I’m deliberately thinking it but I’m also listening to it; I’m investigating it. I have created that perception. I have chosen to think that, and I can hear myself thinking it. I don’t create that which is aware and listens to perceptions. It’s not a creation. I create this perception that ‘I am a screwed-up person,’ – but not that which is aware of the perception.

You can investigate, and begin to know, the difference between awareness and thinking. What is the still point, the centre, the point that includes thinking? This kind of thinking is reflective. I’m just asking myself this question to bring attention to it. I’m not looking for somebody to give me an answer. But that’s a reflective question that clarifies my attention; it helps me to focus, to be aware. The more I pay attention and am aware, the more I recognize that in this still point there’s this resounding sound of silence. I didn’t create that. I can’t claim the sound of silence is some personal creation of mine, that it belongs to Ajahn Sumedho. It’s like trying to claim the air, the space: ‘All the space in the world belongs to me,’ that kind of ridiculous thing. You can’t create a person around it, you can only be. There is this sense of being this still point, resting, opening to and allowing the personality, the body, the emotional habits and thoughts that arise. Our relationship to them now is one of understanding or embracing rather than identifying.
Continued next week:  4 April 2024

Excerpts from “Intuitive Awareness,” by Ajahn Sumedho, the Chapter titled Identity. This is a free Dhamma publication available as PDF EPUB MOBI. Link below:

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