Filed under: Dharma
In Ending
In ending, I hope that you will continue your journeys and practice with much wisdom. Use the understanding that you have already developed to persevere in practice. This can become the ground for your growth, for the deepening of yet greater understanding and love. You can deepen your practice in many ways. If you are timid in practice, then work with your mind so that you can overcome that. With the proper effort and with time, understanding will unfold by itself. But in all cases , use your own natural wisdom. What we have spoken of is what I feel is helpful to you. If you really do it, you can come to the end of all doubt. You come to where you have no more questions, to that place of silence, to the place in which there is oneness with the Buddha, with the Dharma, with the universe. And only you can do that.
From now on it’s up to you.
Glossary
Abhidharma. – Buddhist psychology, which teaches a detail analysis of the components and processes of mind and body.
Bhikkhu. – A fully ordained Buddhist monk who has taken 227 training vows of renunciation and simplicity.
Body, speech, and mind. – The three spheres of action that can be observed and trained in Buddhist practice.
Concentration. – The mental factor of one-pointedness of mind, steadiness of mind on an object. Also those meditation practices which develop strong concentration and tranquillity by focusing on a steady object.
Consciousness. - The knowing faculty of mind, that aspect of mind which knows the sense objects arising and passing away at the six sense doors.
Defilements. - The mental factors of greed, hatred, and delusion, and mental states which arise with these as their root.
Delusion. – The mental factor of cloudiness of mind which does not allow objects to be seen clearly in the light of impermanence, suffering, and emptiness.
Dependent Origination. - The twelve-link chain of becoming which causes the cycling of birth and death. Each link provides the condition for the arising of the next. Thus ignorance conditions the arising of formative tendencies, which conditions the arising of consciousness, which is followed by the links of mind and matter, the six sense bases, contact, sense impression, feeling, craving, clinging, the process of becoming , rebirth, and finally the last link of old age, sorrow, suffering and death.
Dharma. – The universal law or truth, the teachings of the Buddha about this law, and the elements which make up the process of experience.
Eightfold Path. - The Buddhist path to purification and liberation – right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.
Elements. – Usually refers to the four great elements of solidity (earth), cohesion (water), temperature (fire), and movement or vibration (air). Also used to refer to the secondary physical elements and at times to elements of mind.
Elements of the Mind. – Includes the four mental processes of consciousness, feelings, perception, and volition or reaction to experience. May be further described as 52 basis mental qualities such as joy, greed, fear, calm, and so forth, which arise with consciousness and the object of experience.
Emptiness. – Emptiness of self or soul; refers to the basic understanding that there is no one, no self to whom all experience is happening, and that what we are is simply a changing process.
Feeling. - The mental factor of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral feeling that arises in relation to an object.
Five Aggregates. – The five interlinked processes which make up a human being. They are the physical body, feelings, perceptions, volitions, consciousness.
Four foundations of mindfulness. – The four fields for awareness that are our whole experience and where we must pay attention to develop insight. They are: (1) the body and material elements, (2) feelings – pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, (3) consciousness, and (4) all mental factors, all objects of mind, such as thoughts, emotions, greed, and love.
Four Noble Truths. – The most basic teaching of the Buddha: (1) the truth of suffering, (2) the truth of the cause of suffering – clinging and desire, (3) the truth of the end of suffering, and (4) the path to the end of suffering – the Eightfold Path.
Greed. – The mental factor which causes the mind to grasp or stick to an object or experience.
Hatred. - The mental factor of aversion, which causes the mind to dislike or strike against an object or experience.
Ignorance. – That basic force which does not see clearly the nature of the world and is the root cause of grasping and of our desire system.
Impermanence. – The basis truth that all phenomena which have the nature to arise must pass away.
Insight Meditation (vipassana). - Seeing clearly; meditation that focuses on the basic nature of the mind-body process to understand its true characteristics.
Karma. - The law of cause and effect which describes the relationship between events in the realm of mind and of matter.
Matter. – The physical world make of the four basic elements.
Mental factors. – In the five aggregates, this refers to volition and the various other mental factors which arise in relation to consciousness and an object.
Mental Formations or thought constructions. – The conditioned process of volition, categorization, and reaction which determines our relationship to experience.
Mind. – Includes consciousness plus the various mental factors which color consciousness.
Mindfulness. – That quality of mind which notices what is happening in the present moment with no clinging, aversion, or delusion.
Nirvana. – That state of total coolness beyond the movement of the mind-body process. Also refers to liberation from all greed, hatred, and delusion in the mind of an enlightened being.
Noble Ones. - Those who have attained at least the first stage or glimpse of enlightenment and whose understanding and faith is unshakable.
Perception. - The mental factor which perceives or recognizes objects.
Practice. – The ongoing training of the heart and mind in generosity, virtue, calm, and wisdom.
Precepts. – The Buddhist training rules for developing virtue. Laypersons keep five (refraining from killing, stealing, lying,sexual misconduct, and intoxicants which cause heedlessness); nuns and novices keep ten; and monks keep 227.
Samsara. – The world of conditioned phenomena, of the elements of mind and matter, all of which are subject to constant change.
Sense bases. – The six subjective-objective sense bases are: (1) the eye and visible objects, (2) the ear and sounds, (3) the nose and odors, (4) the tongue and tastes, (5) the body and bodily impressions, and (6) the mind and mind-objects.
Sitting. - To sit in meditation, focusing the attention on some aspect of one’s physical or mental states.
Suffering. - The basic unsatisfactory, insecure nature of all transient phenomena.
Three Gems (the Three Jewels or Refuges). – The Buddha, the Dharma (the law and his teachings of it), and the Sangha (the community of monks and practitioners).
Virtue. - Initially refers to following certain moral precepts; more deeply refers to acting in the world without greed, hatred, or delusion.
Filed under: Dharma
Inside You is Nothing, Nothing at All
In my third year as a monk, I had doubts about the nature of samadhi and wisdom. Really desiring to experience samadhi, I strove ceaselessly in my practice. As I sat in meditation, I would try to figure out the process, and therefore my mind was especially distracted. When I did nothing in particular and was not meditating, I was fine. But when i determined to concentrated my mind, it would become extremely agitated.
“What’ s going on?” I wondered. “Why should it be like this?” After a while, I realized that concentration is like breathing. If you determine to force your breaths to be deep or shallow, fast or slow, breathing becomes difficult. But when you are just walking along, not aware of your inhalation or exhalation, breathing is natural and smooth. In the same way, any attempt to force yourself to become tranquil is just an expression of attachment and desire and will prevent your attention from settling down.
As time went by, I continued to practice with great faith and growing understanding. gradually I began to see the natural process of meditation. Since my desires were clearly an obstacle, I practiced more openly, investigating the elements of mind as they occurred. I sat and watched, sat and watched, over and over again.
One day, much later in my practice, I was walking in meditation sometime after 11 p.m. My thoughts were almost absent. I was staying at a forest monastery and could hear a festival going on in the village in the distance. After I became tired from walking meditation, I went to my hut. As I sat down, I felt that I could not get into the cross-legged posture fast enough. My mind naturally wanted to enter into deep concentration. It just happened on its own. I thought to myself, “Why is it like this?” When I sat, I was truly tranquil; my mind was firm and concentrated. Not that I did not hear the sound of singing coming from the village, but I could make myself not hear it as well.
When the mind one-pointed, when I turned it toward sounds, I heard; when I did not, it was quiet. If sounds came, I would look at the one who was aware, who was separate from the sounds, and contemplate, “If this isn’t it, what else could it be?’ I could see my mind and its object standing apart, like this bowl and kettle here. The mind and the sounds were not connected at all. I kept examining in this way, and then I understood. I saw what held subject and object together, and when the connection was broken, true peace emerged.
On that occasion, my mind was not interested in anything else. if I were to have stopped practicing, I could have done so at my ease. When a monk stops practicing, he is supposed to consider: “A I lazy? Am I tired? Am I restless?” No, there was no laziness or tiredness or restlessness in my mind,only completeness and sufficiency in every way/
When I stopped for a rest, it was only the sitting that stopped. My mind remained the same, unmoved. As I lay down, at that moment my was tranquil as before. As my head hit the pillow, there was a turning inward in the mind. I did not know where it was turning, but it turned within, like an electric current being switched on, an my body exploded with loud noises. The awareness was a refined as seemed possible. Passing that point, the mind went in further. Inside was nothing, nothing at all; nothing went in there, nothing could reach. The awareness stopped inside for a while and then came out. Not that I made it come out – no, I was merely an observer, the one who was aware.
When I come out of this condition, I returned to my normal state of mind, and the question rose, “What was that?” The answer came, “These things are just what they are; there’s no need to doubt them.” Just his much said, and my mind could accept.
After it had stopped for awhile, the mind turned inward again. I did not turn it, it turned itself. When it had gone in, it reached its limit as before. This second time, my body broke into fine pieces , and the mind went further in, silent, unreachable. When it had gone in and stayed for as long as it wished, it came out again, and I returned to normal. During this time, the mind was self-acting. I did not try to make it come and go in any particular way. I only make myself aware and observed. I did not doubt. I just continued to sit and contemplate.
The third time the mind went in, the whole world broke apart: the earth, grass, trees, mountains, people, all was just space. Nothing was left. When the mind had gone in and abided as it wished, had stayed for as long as it could, the mind withdrew, and returned to normal. I do not know how it abided; such things are difficult to see and speak about. There is nothing to compare it with.
Of these three instances, who could say what had occurred? Who would know? What could I call it? What I have spoken about here is all a matter of the nature of the mind. It is not necessary to speak of the categories of mental factors and consciousness.With strong faith I went about practice, ready to stake my life, and when I emerged from this experience the whole world had changed. All knowledge and understanding had been transformed. Someone seeing me might have thought I was mad. In fact, a person without strong mindfulness might well have gone mad, because nothing in the world was as before. But it was really just I who had changed, and yet still I was the same person. When everyone would be thinking one way, I would be thinking another; when they would speak one way, I would speak another. I was no longer running with the rest of humankind.
When my mind reached the peak of its power, it was basically a matter of mental energy, of the energy of concentration. On the occasion I just described, the experience was based on the energy of samadhi. When samadhi reaches this leve, vipassana flows effortlessly.
If you practice like this, you do not have to search very far. Friend, why don’t you give it a try?
There is a boat you can take to the other shore. Why not jump in? Or do you prefer the ooze and the slime? I could paddle away any time, but I am waiting for you.
Filed under: Dharma
Nothing Special
People have asked about my own practice. How do I prepare my mind for meditation? There is nothing special. I just keep it where it always is. They ask, “Then are you an arhat (one who has reached a high stage of spiritual progress)?” Do I know? I m like a tree, full of leaves, blossoms, and fruit. Birds come to eat and to nest. Yet the tree does not know itself. It follows its nature; it is as it is.
Filed under: Dharma
The Unstruck Gong
Living in the world and practicing meditation, you will seem to others like a gong that has not been struck and is not producing any sound. They will consider you useless, mad, defeated; but actually, just the opposite is true.
Truth is hidden in untruth, permanence is hidden in impermanence.
Filed under: Dharma
Yes, I Speak Zen
A visiting Zen student asked Ajahn Chah, “How old are you? Do you live here all year round?”
“I live nowhere,” he replied. “There is no place yu can find me. I have no age. To have age, you must exist, and to think you exist is already a problem. Don’t make problems; then the world has none either. Don’t make a self. There’s nothing more to say.”
Perhaps the Zen student glimpsed that the heart of vipassana is no different from the heart of Zen.
Filed under: Dharma
The Timeless Buddha
The original heart / mind shines like pure, clear water with the sweetest taste. But if the heart is pure, is our practice over? No, we must not cling even to his purity. We must go beyond all duality, all concepts, all bad, all good, all pure, all impure. We must go beyond self and no self, beyond birth and death. To see a self to be reborn is the real trouble of the world. True purity is limitless, untouchable, beyond all opposites and all creation.
We take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. This is the heritage of every Buddha that appears in the world. What is this Buddha? When we see with the eye of wisdom, we know that the Buddha is timeless, unborn, unrelated to any body, any history, any image. Buddha is the ground of all being, the realization of the truth of the unmoving mind.
So the Buddha was not enlightened in India. In fact he was never enlightened, was never born, and never died. This timeless Buddha is our true home, our abiding place. When we take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, all things in the world are free for us. They become our teacher, proclaiming the one true nature of life.
Filed under: Dharma
Picking up Mangoes
When you have wisdom, contact with sense objects, whether good or bad, pleasant or painful, is like standing at the bottom of a mango tree and collecting the fruit while another person climbs up and shakes it down for us. We get to choose between the good and rotten mangoes, and we do not waste our strength because we do not climb up the tree.
What does this mean? All the sense objects that come to us are bringing us knowledge. We do not need to embellish them. The eight worldly winds – gain and loss, fame and disrepute, praise and blame, pain and pleasure – come of their own. If your heart has developed tranquillity and wisdom, you can enjoy picking and choosing. What others may call good or bad, here or there, happiness or suffering, is all to your profit, because someone else has climbed up to shake the mangoes down, and you have nothing to fear.
The eight worldly winds are mangoes falling down to you. Use your concentration and tranquillity to contemplate, to collect. Knowing which fruits are good and which are rotten is called wisdom, vipassana. You do not make it up or create it. If there is wisdom, insight arises naturally. Although I call it wisdom, you do not have to give it a name.
Filed under: Dharma
The Joy of the Buddha
If all is impermanent, unsatisfactory, and selfless, then what is the point of existence? One man watches a river flow by. If he does not wish it to flow, to change ceaselessly in accord with its nature, he will suffer great pain. Another man understands that nature of the river is to change constantly, regardless of his likes and dislikes, and therefore he does not suffer. To know existence as this flow, empty of lasting pleasure, void of self, is to find that which is stable and free of suffering, to find true peace in the world.
“Then,” some people may ask, “what is the meaning of life? Why are we born?” I cannot tell you. Why do you eat? You eat so that you do not have to eat anymore. You are born so that you will not have to be born again.
To speak about the true nature of things, their voidness or emptiness, is difficult. Having heard the teachings, one must develop the means to understand.
Why do we practice? If there is no why, then we are at peace. Sorrow cannot follow the one who practices like this.
The Five aggregates are murderers. Being attached to body, we will be attached to mind, and vice versa. We must cease to believe our minds. Use the precepts and calming of the heart to develop restraint and constant mindfulness. Then you will see happiness and displeasure arising and not follow either, realizing that all states are impermanent, unsatisfactory, and empty. Learn to be still. In this stillness will come the true joy of the Buddha.
Filed under: Dharma
Underground Water
The Dharma belongs to no one; it has no owner. It arises in the world when a world manifests, yet stands alone as the truth. It is always here, unmoving, limitless, for all who seek it. It is like water underground - whoever digs a well finds it. Yet whether or not you dig, it is always here, underlying all things.
In our search for the Dharma, we search too far, we overreach, overlooking the essence. The Dharma is not out there, to be gained by a long voyage viewed through a telescope. It is right here, nearest to us, our true essence, there are no problems, no troubles. Good, bad, pleasure, pain, light, dark, self, other, are empty phenomena. If we come to know this essence, we die to our old sense of self and become truly free.
We practice to give up, not to attain. But before we can give up mind and body, we must know their true nature. Then detachment naturally arises.
Nothing is me or mine, all is impermanent. But why can’t we say nirvana is mine? Because who realize nirvana do not have thoughts of me or mine. If they did, they could not realize nirvana. Although they know the sweetness of honey, they do not think “I am tasting the sweetness of honey.”
The Dharma Path is to keep walking forward. But the true Dharma has no going forward, no going backward, and no standing still.
Filed under: Dharma
Short and Straight
A devout, elderly village lady from a nearby province came on a pilgrimage to Wat Ba Pong. She told Ajahn Chah she could stay only a short time, as she had to return to take care of her great-grandchildren, and since she was an old lady, she asked if he could please give her a brief Dharma talk.
He replied with great force, “Hey, listen. There’s no one here, just this. No owner, no one to be old, to be young, to be good or bad, weak or strong. Just this, that’s all; various elements of nature playing themselves out, all empty. No one born and no one to die. Those who speak of death are speaking language of ignorant children. in the language of the heart, of Dharma, there’s no such thing.
“When we carry a burden, it’s heavy. When there’s no one to carry it, there’s not a problem in the world. Do not look for good or bad or anything at all. Do not be anything. There’s nothing more; just his.”
