Bringing heaven forever down to earth
Everything we experience, although it has its origin in the world, is in our mind. All our experience is subjective. The Dhamma concerns this subjective experience. The world of suffering (saṃsāra) and the world of ultimate happiness (Nibbāna) are essentially not places but states of mind. Which one of these we experience depends on the relationship between the mind and the world. The truth of the Dhamma is that which makes our subjective world perfect in every sense, which makes it free of suffering through creating the proper relationship of our minds to the world. This relationship is one in which the mind first of all finds its way to heaven on earth. We do not have to go somewhere else or wait until we die to experience heaven. We can find heaven in the blissfully empty mind (samādhi). Samādhi is the natural result of having the kind of virtue that lets go of our own desire. For it is just desire that fills our minds with all the things of the world. This heaven will not just be ours either. Our virtue will bring a little bit of heaven to anyone we come into contact with. Imagine a whole world that kept moral precepts, no killing, no stealing, no lying, no sexual misconduct, drink or drugs. This is making the world into a kind of heavenly abode, albeit an impermanent heaven. This is very different from thinking of heaven or a higher happiness as somewhere else. This can lead to a negative judgement and desire to get away from the world or a restlessness. In this respect it can really help us to reflect that ultimately, whether we want to go to heaven or not, there isn't anywhere completely separate to go. There isn't anywhere that is not somehow connected to this impermanent world because everything within this universe is interconnected in a causal web. The stable emptiness of the mind that can become our refuge, right here and now, is as far as we can go. Even this emptiness is connected to all the objects within it. This emptiness, this empty mind, has to realise the proper relationship of detachment to the things of the world in order to remain empty - it has to be an emptiness we let go into not one we reach for, not some kind of spaced-out state. Finding this detachment, this light touch on life, is a matter of seeing clearly, with the wisdom that can help us let go. Yet we also need a quality of compassion or appreciation that helps us to stay with the world and not try to go somewhere else. This balance exists within the mind, in the material world and in the relationship between the mind and the world which, coming all together, I often compare to a kind of spiritual aesthetics that can appreciate the sense of a harmonious relationship between form and space - spiritual art or architecture can evoke this sense. Furthermore through this we may form a picture of our spiritual qualities in the world to sustain a unified experience – samādhi as like the sun, wisdom like the sky... Ultimately, the relationship of detachment can become permanent, natural. This state of detachment is enlightenment, Nibbāna. This too we can realise before we die, through the wisdom that helps us let go. Nibbāna is the emptiness we let go into, it is the result of letting go of our attachment. Then, when we die, we can remain in this state after death. This is our 'original mind', the mind's most natural, stable state. It is the state that the mind abided in before it was born into the world of saṃsāra and returns to when saṃsāra ceases. Therefore no effort is required to sustain this once it is fully realised. This is bringing heaven firmly and forever down to earth. ‘Just watch your mind’
Very many teachers of Buddhism are now teaching people as they see all their ‘stuff coming up’ to ‘just watch their mind, accept and let go’. This is a good teaching if we realise that what we are watching is our karma coming up. Then we can keep moving forward but also be noting it all as the results of our actions of body and mind, past and present, seeing it all as feedback and altering our course accordingly. Where we can go wrong is: 1. If we see what is arising as our minds, not our karma and try to fix it all. Then we will have a hard job fixing the past. In a sense the practice of ‘just watching’ is a good remedy or balance to the fixing that can become endless therapy but it can be hard not to try to get rid of unpleasant feelings - after all that is natural enough. The answer is simple in theory but not so easy in practice. If we have enough patience we can we bring together the element of just watching or rather acceptance and skilful action of one kind or another to alleviate our suffering in the present. 2. If we do not make the discrimination between what is old karma and what is the active mind in the present we can: a) become the passive watcher and miss the opportunity to steer things in a good direction in the present b) fail to realise that we are already doing something to contribute to the karma that is arising through the way we are watching. As we passively watch we can then fall into the illusion that the watcher is somehow beyond, already enlightened even and we overestimate our minds, selling ourselves short of the highest goal. In the truly enlightened mind we are not watching our suffering, there is no suffering arising. What helps is if we also at times hold an object in our formal meditation – we meditate in a more active way. We use the mantra ‘Buddho’ for example. This helps us to clearly see the difference between the two sources of thought – what we are thinking in the present (our mantra) and the flow of karma, our automatic pilot as it were, that comes to interrupt us. In the active, untrained mind feeling and perception, past and present, get mixed up with each other. As we practise formal meditation past and present separate out. 3. If we watch the mind and not the body then the mind can lack feeling and also neglect the purely physical part of our existence as human beings. Also, can we just watch the body if it falls down or do we fall down with it? Expanded psychology
Given an expanded psychology there is no reason for mysticism of any kind. All the phenomena associated with the spiritual path can be explained in terms of a greater, expanded view of the mind. This includes rebirth and the existence of other realms. All this can be seen as phenomena of the mind because ultimately everything we experience is experienced within the mind. All we experience is the knowing of information or meaning. This is all there has ever been to our experience and is all there will ever be. This whole realm of information is formed in parallel with that of being. This is not some kind of inert phenomena. Truth can be as formative as matter or energy. It is just as alive if not more so than being. Although we may even use the terms of mysticism in order to evoke the special or unique qualities of spiritual realms we need not create any mystical 'beings'. This is as long as we understand that some phenomena exist just within the mind that have a completely independent existence from our own psychological processes. This is to give these things in one sense the status of beings in that they are as much a being as anything else that seems to be so. Yet we recognise that everything ultimately only seems to 'be' anything. This is a crucial point. Liberation of mind comes from realising that there is no need to be or become anything in order to survive. In fact we had better not become anything if we want to survive. Everything that is born, dies. Let me now give an example of a different view of a mystical phenomena: A person comes to a monastery to make an offering in memory of a deceased relative believing that this will assist their relative in some way. We can think of this as helping a spirit in mystical terms or we can reframe in terms of the mind. To make an offering is to do something positive in memory of someone. We add something positive to the memory which in psychological terms is that deceased relative within the mind. In terms of an expanded psychology we could understand the deceased person's spirit to be associated with this memory - the truth that the person really represents has its source in their 'spirit' and its influence also elsewhere. The surviving relative may be in touch just with a memory or with something closer to this source. Either way the act of offering is valid, having benefit for both parties. If we see the Buddha’s spirit in the same way as that of this deceased relative we see His 'spirit' as having enormous influence in the world. His Dhamma as a universal truth which lies in everything. So what might an expanded psychology look like overall? Conventional psychology concerns the realm of form. What we need to add to this is the phenomena and dynamic associated with the empty mind or space of the mind. Also the different kind of forms that can arise within the mind when this emptiness is complete or pure. If the mind is truly empty it is no longer creating or fabricating based on the data of the senses so what arises is a more direct experience of form, a pure perception free of conceptual bias. To conclude this expanded psychology is not, I would emphasise, some kind of secularism. This is is different understanding of what spirituality really is. It is a view of spirituality that still has magic but demystifies this. Greater understanding is then greater power to the mind. So I hope these reflections can help those people who cannot believe in mystical phenomena to find a new understanding of them that does not require belief. For those who already hold these beliefs maybe this can help them understand more clearly the true nature of what it is they believe in. Truth as essence If we see the mind as consisting of information the essence of the mind is truth or meaning (Dhamma). Then, if we say that 'awareness' arises out of information and 'knowing' arises out of truth, we are aiming to raise all our awareness to the level of knowing. Ultimately this brings the mind into a different relationship with the world, to a unified experience. The truth and its knower are one and the same in the case of the highest Dhamma. In other words, "he who sees the Dhamma sees the Buddha." In all other cases the truth and its knowing are separate in some way. This is because the result of this ultimate knowing is for the mind to let go and enter into emptiness, ultimately into Nibbāna (in the coming together is the letting go). Then the essence of the mind is Nibbāna. So there is only conditions in the mind there is no longer a mind within those conditions. In fact Buddha, Dhamma and Nibbāna are all the same: We see the Dhamma, let go and Nibbāna is the result. So the Buddha and Nibbāna are in this sense the same. They are both the result of having seen the Dhamma. The Buddha and the Dhamma are the same in the sense that the Dhamma is the impermanence of everything; the Buddha is time itself. Yet we have to be careful that we take the right emptiness to be Nibbāna. There is more than one kind of emptiness. Even the emptiness of the unenlightened mind (the citta) goes unaffected from life to life, the suffering arising and ceasing within it. Only the enlightened mind is free of suffering, it does not arise - this is cessation (nirodha). This is liberation through truth not just a leap into space. So the search for liberation is one of truth not just samādhi. We consequently need to stay in the realm of truth or meaning to realise the truth and not drift into the realm of being anything. It is space within this realm of truth that is liberation. Hence 'being space' is close to liberation. Very deceptively close and yet suffering can arise within all spaces but one, the space of Nibbāna. But have we come up with a view of the deathless reliant on perception and therefore bound to the senses the same as any other consciousness? No. The mind relies on perception to enter Nibbāna but does not rely on perception to stay there because it has rediscovered its original nature. The mind has not gone anywhere. The mind is in the world but not of the world, there is union and transcendence together. Original mind Realising the essential knowing nature of the mind is to get back to its original source, the original mind, there before we are born and there after we die. This is a mind that can come in and out of existence having an independent source. We can discover this through the experience of samādhi. The mind beyond the senses in samādhi is like the mind before it comes into the world. The state of samādhi can still be there when the phenomena of the senses reappear as an open, spacious, pure mind or heart free of the hindrances. Unless this samādhi is completely pure, however, it will deteriorate as the mind enters fully back into the world. So there is only one kind of samādhi related to wisdom or knowing which remains pure and we realise we have discovered the original mind. In Zen they search for this through repeated enquiry "what was my face before I was born". In Theravada we see this original mind as simply the result of letting go of everything. Letting go occurs through knowing so the mind that lets go of everything is the mind that has knowing established as a natural state, as its essence. We ultimately even let go of all sense of a "one who knows" or a centre to this knowing. One way in which we can try to keep our mindfulness or our samādhi without the wisdom of letting go is through passivity. We do not enter in to the world at all, it is not just our heart that does not. This is flawed. Our minds will just get dragged back in to the world or the world will flood back into the mind through all that we are failing to do. What is required for the heart to remain pure is detachment within activity. This is the challenge or training that true spiritual life presents us with. So in this way we can see through samādhi all the dynamics of the mind and heart. We do not need to speculate as to the nature of the transcendent mind. Then if we have faith we can open to the possibility that this mind goes beyond death. Many great arahants have tried to show this to us. They have had relics of their bones kept after their cremation and then these have multiplied or grown showing that they have not really departed. The illuminated mind
We practice meditation first of all to bring more attention to our thought process and to our feelings. In particular to help us to clarify how we really feel about things. In the longer term through the practise of meditation we can come to see the mind in a different way. Our inner light goes on and we can see objects within our mind in the same way as we see them in the real world. We see our imagination projected onto the world of the senses. When we are withdrawn from the senses our imagination is clear and bright. In this way we are then completely clear. St. John of the Cross, if I understand correctly, described the spiritual life as one of this kind of illumination being followed by 'purgation'. First of all we see our minds and heart very clearly, then we go through the process of purifying the mind. This way of operating is very much applicable to the tendency of the western spiritual quest to be, on balance, thought out rather than purely devotional in character. Rather than, in Asia, having faith in a path of virtue to purify the mind the westerner needs to be able to see moral cause and effect operating to really get the sense of knowing what they are doing and why (I am reminded of a discussion I had with the great Luang Por Pannavado who said to me that before he could really concentrate on his practice he had to understand what he was doing and why). The advantage is that this then gives the practitioner the ability to work with the mind as well as actions of body and speech in the process of purification. This, it seems, makes the process for the Westerner slower but more thorough. The process of purgation also, as the word suggests, is one of an amount of inner turmoil. We can be battling with our minds early on in the path. It can be more practical to get a hold of outward moral action to begin with. Yet there is a noble quality to this battle and it pays off in the longer term. If I understand “The dark night of the soul” by St. John of the Cross then the only pitfall we have to try to avoid is becoming attached to the process of understanding, to the intellect, as an end in and of itself. Often this is a matter of clearly delineating the intellectual domain with regard to subjective and objective sources of information and with regard to conventional and ultimate truth. This is clarified by addressing the mind and body together, the mind-body problem. The mind-body problem As spiritual practitioners I do not think that we need to argue with the view that the mind is dependent on the brain. We just need to see that the information or truth contained there still has, to a large degree at least, a life of its own. The 'extended mind' theories perhaps show us how this life extends into the world, is not separate from the world - so our mind in informational terms is not just in our head, a perception that it is useful to dispel. But actually, objectively speaking, it is still very difficult to solve the mind-body problem. Subjectively it can be solved, the mind-body problem does not have to be a problem. It is not so difficult to enter into a subjective experience that is not too heavily influenced by an objective view. Meditation can help us here. Taking the mind beyond thought takes us beyond many of our objective views toward the raw subjective experience. Yet to survive we will always need to deduce an amount of objective information in our experience. This is a confusing situation for us as human beings. It is hard to perceive life clearly the way it really is objectively and to avoid this getting mixed up with the subjective aspect. There are bound to be blind spots and biases. Accepting this fact is the only solution we need to this problem. If we can realise that the conventional truths of our life in the world are merely an attempt to sort out the information that is coming to us from different sources we can settle with a functional understanding on the conventional level. We can help each other as human beings to come to a common agreement but we need to recognise this agreement for what it is, just an agreement. It is only if we take conventional judgements as in some way ultimately true that we then blind ourselves to ultimate truth or fix ourselves in a particular conventional view. In terms of what we really know we need to keep this to simple universal truths to be able to be confident and to really see in the way we think. The Buddha gives us such truths that furthermore, very significantly, cut through our very desire to analyse the world. Less desire also means less bias in the discrimination that remains necessary. The principle truth the Buddha points out is that of impermanence. Very significantly the truth of impermanence covers the phenomenon of the mind as well as the body. So there is no need to discriminate in our experience what is real or not real, objective or subjective, in order to be able to see the truth of impermanence. Pointing out the impermanent nature of conditions and our inability as human beings to find any real security or control furthermore takes our intention elsewhere. In the search for enlightenment we do not need to analyse the world beyond the basic, functional understanding we need to survive. We are looking instead for a more stable basis for the world of truth. The truth of impermanence may be simple but to perceive the world in this way is still not easy, its scary. We need to find some kind of faith, courage or sense of a refuge to get past this fear and be able to calmly observe. It is in fact this calm and peace that is our first refuge. It is this calm that we then develop further, through the wisdom that sees impermanence, to become our ultimate refuge. Looking for truth in the right place
Most people these days look for the truth or the Dhamma on the computer. In the best case some of what they find will redirect their attention to looking for the real thing (I try in what I present to engage both head and heart) but to be honest most people I meet just get hooked on the computer presentation and it just goes to their heads. Even in terms of more personal guidance a lot of people listen to guided meditation following the advise of a stranger rather than someone who knows them or by relying on and hence developing their own wisdom. If I had grown up as a meditator in the computer age I can think I would have been the same. The computer can feel comfortable, safe and we can feel we have the advise of the experts. I understand too how convenient the computer is for people with little time. The real Dhamma, however, is part of nature. It is real, not an idea. It is to be found in nature and from our spiritual friends. It is found when we can find help to get past our own peculiar obstacles and biases, our personal insecurities. It is not by trying to avoid these. It is found when we realise the uncertainties of life, not comfort or safety. We are looking for a natural response, from ourselves and from others to each other and to the world around us, not an intellectual understanding. Then, if we can learn to see the Dhamma like this, it can always be with us. The only people I have ever met who have such deep, genuine Dhamma in their hearts are people who have had the courage to really face themselves and the truths of life in a natural, peaceful, loving setting. The whole purpose of having monasteries is to make this real Dhamma available. It is what, over many centuries, they have been designed for. All are welcome. Buddhism and Science
In terms of a philosophy of science and information theory that has parallels with the Buddha's teaching I have not found anything that it is more potentially valuable than the work of the late Gregory Bateson. I believe that his work can place spiritual truth in its proper place within our world view. A place in which religion and science can come together and enhance each other. Here are a number of quotes from 'Angels fear: towards an epistemology of the sacred', Bateson's final book which I hope speak for themselves: In terms of the nature of consciousness: “We subtract or repress our awareness that perception is active and repress our awareness that action is passive. This it is to be conscious.” Or in terms of a wider definition of consciousness: “Consciousness is the way subsystems are hooked into a larger whole.” In terms of what we can really know: Apart from Creatura (the world of information - including the entire biological and social realms in which information is embodied in material form and subject to laws of causality) nothing can be known, apart from Pleroma (the material world) there is nothing there to know. In terms of how we describe things: Pleroma and Creatura should have different languages to avoid “the errors of fundamentalism, scientism and misplaced concreteness.” we have “developed our language to fit Pleroma and tend to distort.” And in terms of the place of religion: “Religion is the sacred, integrated fabric of mental processes that envelop our lives...without such metaphors for meditation, as correctives for the errors of human language and recent science, it seems that we have the capacity to be wrong in rather creative ways – so wrong that this world we cannot understand may become one in which we cannot live.” Such metaphors include “the deliberate search for revelation in contradiction and direct attacks on purposiveness and the sense of time.” “Of all metaphors the most central and salient is the self.” “The conceptual separation of mind and matter is a by-product of an 'insufficient holism'- the old religious beliefs are wearing thin and we are groping for a new.” Many of the Buddha's teachings could furthermore be considered 'tautological': “A tautology is a series of propositions the links between which cannot be doubted. The truth of the propositions is not claimed.” In dependent origination, for example, the link between birth and death as inevitably following one to the other is the central message. If we try to go deeper then we can begin to question the propositions but in my mind we then be missing the point. Buddhism and psychiatry - Embodiment and psychopathology Just as we can discover clear body awareness to be a source of sanity in the mind a distortion of our body image can be an indication or possible cause of psychopathology. I will preset a series of quotes from the psychiatrist Thomas Fuchs1 (in plain text) with comment from my understanding of the Buddhist point of view (in italics): “it is mainly through our embodied interaction with the world that the brain matures and develops into a relational organ...it is only as part of embodied interactions that the patterns of brain activity can serve as carrier processes of conscious experience. In this way it is the living body that unites mind and brain.” “the phenomenology of the lived body is able to overcome dualistic concepts of the mind as an inner realm of representations that mirror the outside world. Instead, by the mediation of the lived body the individual is in constant relationship to the world..” In the teaching of dependent origination the Buddha similarly points at the fact that our states of mind are dependent on the body and its interaction with the world. There is a very strong emphasis in the teaching of mindfulness on the first foundation, the body. It is from here that we observe the process of mental causation and become able to transform the mind from its very root. To overcome dualistic concepts of the mind is to overcome a dualistic experience of the world and discover the happiness that comes from a unified, non-dual experience. Phenomenology is, perhaps, the branch of philosophy closest to the Buddha's teaching and most compatible with the practise of mindfulness. ..”the body has a double or ambiguous experiential status: both as a 'lived body' implicit in one's ongoing experience, and as an explicit, physical or objective body (image). An ongoing oscillation between these two bodily modes constitutes a fluid and hardly noticed foundation of all experiencing.” Both experiences of the body can become disordered: in the 'lived body' schizophrenia is extreme disembodiment, depression extreme hyper-embodiment, anorexia an example of disordered body image and a more acute dissociation from bodily experience is found in post-traumatic and dissociative conditions - embodied concepts of mental illness should describe (phenomenologically) these disorders of being in the world and investigate the circular interactions of mind, brain, organism and the environment that maintain these. Similarly in the practice of mindfulness of the body we can see how the perceived relationship between the mind and the body is the underlying cause of our states of mind with sanity lying in a light touch, not hyper-embodied nor disembodied. My understanding is that conversely sanity and further than this, spiritual development, is to form a clear body image and carry this into activity, then the body image maintains the health of the 'living body' experience and is a source of wisdom and compassion in the mind. Perhaps we can conclude with a quote from the famous psychiatrist R.D.Laing pointing at how spirituality represents the ultimate sanity: “True sanity entails in one way or another the dissolution of the normal ego, that false self competently adjusted to our alienated social reality: the emergence of the 'inner' archetypal mediators of divine power, and through this death a rebirth, and the eventual re-establishment of a new kind of ego functioning, the ego now being the servant of the divine, no longer its betrayer.2” To me this is a very accurate and inspiring view of the potential of spiritual practice and yet how many of us could accept that the most powerful inner archetype in the mind is the simple, humble old body! And what about the practice of body contemplation, what is really like, how does it feel? The contemplation of the unattractiveness of the body in order to cool our desire is an unappealing practice to most people. Only if someone gets seriously hooked on the experience of mindfulness are they likely to want to find a way out of the desire that keeps pulling their minds into the future. Many will still be put off thinking that this contemplation is too negative. Yet this contemplation is not unpleasant or negative is practised correctly. Most of us will only need to see the minor defects in order to calm the mind. The result can be more love rather than less, albeit a love of a different, more stable, enduring character. The best description I have found of the result of this practice comes from 'One Way Street' by Walter Benjamin: “A lover will not only cling to the 'defects' in the loved one, not only to a woman's quirks and failings; facial lines and liver spots, worn clothes and a wonky gait will bind him far more inexorably, far more endurably than any beauty. One learned that long ago. And why? If the theory is true that feeling does not lodge in the head, that we feel a window, a cloud or a tree not in our brain but in the place where we see them, when we look at our loved one we are like wise outside ourselves. But in this case painfully stretched and tugged. Our feelings churn and swerve like a flock of birds blinded in the woman's bright presence. And as birds seek shelter in the tree's leafy hiding places, feelings too take refuge in dark wrinkles, graceless movements and the secret blemish on the loved one's body, where they duck down, safe and sound. And no passer-by will guess that it is here, precisely here, in the short-coming, in the less than perfect, that the admirer's burst of love, swift as an arrow, hits home.” Although this practice is common place in Buddhism to see the process explained like this as something beautiful and natural helps to inspire and raise the practice above the level of a mere technique. This then allows us to take our body contemplation deeper still, liberation can be found by replacing the real body with an image. The following quote from the Bible brings over the spiritual quality of such a practice: Jesus said to them: When you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner and the above as the below and when you make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male will not be male and the female will not be female, when you make eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in the place of a foot, and an image in place of an image, then you shall enter the Kingdom The Gospel according to Thomas Finding passages like this in the scripture of another spiritual tradition is also inspiring, pointing at the universality of this teaching and its applicability within different religious beliefs. 1 Fuchs,T and Schlimme, J.E. Embodiment and Psychopathology: a phenomenological perspective. Current opinions in psychiatry.2009.22:570-575 2 R.D.Laing - The Politics of experience Right Samadhi
Let us consider what the Buddha meant by Right Samadhi, the seventh factor of the eightfold path. There are two kinds of jhana 'mundane' or ‘supramundane'. Supramundane jhana has a ‘knowingness’ to it, this is the meditation that leads one to directly to enlightenment. All four supramundane jhanas are clearly described as bodily experiences. The mind contemplating the body, calming the mind while examining the real, material body, arrives at different levels of detachment in which the pure mind emerges, the body does not disappear. The process of detachment is a blissful one; this is the joy and rapture of the supramundane jhana. So the pleasure of supramundane jhana is not merely the enjoyment of physical feeling but the enjoyment of release. This is important, this means that supramundane jhana does not go in the same direction as the pleasures of the senses, it is not merely refined sense pleasure, it goes in the opposite direction and is closely related to the practices of celibacy (brahmacari) and body contemplation. This contrasts with mundane jhana, the experience where the body disappears. Certain psychic abilities or visions can be associated with these states. The mundane states represent a refined source of sense pleasure. Mundane jhana can be converted to supramundane through meditation on the body. Meditation on the body The practical advice we come out with is simple, to take the body into our concentration with us as much as possible by strengthening our awareness of it in the sitting posture; also by alternating sitting and walking practices, in traditional Thai style. In terms of theory: the body has two existences, one in the mind and one in the world. The root of suffering lies precisely in this duality of existence. Letting go of attachment to the physical body is the only way to overcome it. The practice is to enhance the image of the body in the mind in order to let go of, or rather to chill out of, the material, physical body. A mental image is formed which is free of the material elements, only feeling remains. This is a unified, non-dual experience of life, everything we experience is now in the mind. So it is the solidity of the body that divides us from Union. Letting go of is achieved through wise attention. The body is seen as in the mind rather than the mind in the body. The body image comes into the mind it is not created by it, it is not imagined. This is not 'getting into our body' or trying to get out of it - we get stuck either way - but letting go of our attachment to it. Note also that the mind enters the physical body through the force of either desire or rejection (so suicide is no escape). Wise attention is bare attention of the body not a view, opinion or evaluation. Holding to any view will ultimately fail to capture the truth. In particular it will become unbalanced with respect to wisdom and compassion. Truly neutral attention to the reality of the body will generate these two qualities in perfect balance. Also notice that this teaching is not anti-feeling. The pursuit of sensuality is not skilful because it creates attachment to the body not because there is something wrong with the pursuit of pleasure. The ultimate in pleasant feeling is the feeling of the mind detaching from the body, its ecstasy! Creative reflection on the body We can also usefully reflect on the body to help us to see it in a skilful way. When we are meditating on the body, where we are staying with the realities of our own body, going deeper and deeper into that experience, beginning the same over and over. This can be very calming or very boring depending on our character and our meditative ability. In contrast reflection on the body can be very creative, fun, and yet it can still help us to develop a more fluid perception of the body. As we begin our reflection we can realise that our perceptions of the human body are capricious and unstable. This is reflected in our depictions of it. In the modern age these images have proliferated into every medium and context - embellished, powdered, painted, magnified, and denigrated even mutilated. Distorted or accurately represented. In some cases an artist or sculptor is trying to add a depiction of the mind to that of the body. Or to depict the subjective experience of the body rather than the objective form. The depiction of mind and body in the same image like this has a kind of truth to it. The contents of our minds are I a very deep way, shaped by the body, they are the result of the mind and body holding each other - how it is held determining the inner form in a sense. On one hand when the body or person is seen as a mere object of sensual desire the pleasure of the form can be a projection of the mind into past or future feeling; the form is designed to generate this kind of feeling, it is provocative. Then on the other hand we can also see in art the depiction of thought in one way or another. There can be the desire to harmonize the material world in all its complexity with pure forms distilled by the mind, every form containing the idea of a perfect model. As a thinker who draws on a personal vision to perpetuate a fixed model that seeks to reconcile the organic with the geometric. In this way images of the body can become stylized and symbolic. Or in scientific thought we define the average man not the ideal and types of man. On the contrary, disavowing the norm or the ideal or recognizing the suffering of the body opens the way to caricature, the grotesque or monstrous. So the body in these ways can be a depiction of thought, individual or collectively reflecting a societal norm. When we enjoy or criticize the body we implicitly accept the ideals, thoughts or feelings without question. Or the body may be inscribed within a world of a mystical, perfected reality, as an embodiment of the soul, the mind or heart in a sense now dominant or even transcendent. This can be to escape the power of the body to push the mind around altogether, to find freedom for the mind from being conditioned by the body. Reflecting on all these different kinds of images can help us to understand how fluid the outer body image can be. We can also learn to picture the subjective experience of our body and realise how our inner body image changes in relation to outer form. We can find that we can even have more than one image inside, one that is a picture, one a feeling or formed by feeling. We can see what it is like to bring these images together - bringing a clear image together with the felt image can actually become a well-spring of deep empathy. In this way we get get in touch with very deep and powerful forces in the mind that we may already recognise but do not fully understand or have any influence over. We can think it inevitable that certain depictions of the body will have an effect, whether we like it or not, and yet this is not the case. Through mindfulness we can gain control over our perceptions and look to take them in whatever direction we wish. We can even choose to paint a picture or make a sculpture ourselves to share our perception. The sculpture of Anthony Gormley is very interesting in this respect from a spiritual point of view. He is a long-term practitioner of vippasana meditation, paying particular attention to the body. We can see how his depictions of the body have changed over his career from being very solid to the point of looking rather stiff or rigid to being light and ethereal, like some kind of glorious energy field. Such is the potential for transforming how our body appears to us and consequently how it feels. Just one moment of samādhi and you will never doubt again *** Whisper the truth and it shall roar through the cosmos *** trust only the eyes of freedom, the true eyes of the heart *** in being truly human lies a sacred blend of wisdom and compassion, this is the alchemy of liberation *** imperfection and frailty are our guide toward liberation, not strength and idealism – to gracefully enter into decline is not to fail but to deepen *** what human-kind needs is not progress but regress *** the heart is softened by melancholy *** the spiritual path is ultimately not about going anywhere but staying right where you are – space can give the illusion of movement when actually it remains always still *** wisdom makes air into cool water for the heart *** we think ourselves above the world – the world has to come up as the stuff in our minds because we have not come down to earth *** the truly open mind is like a question. *** The Buddha never speaks about the ultimate, he speaks from the ultimate. *** life is a dialogue between the present and the past *** The Buddha’s teaching was aimed mostly at correcting the eternalist view. These days what is needed more is to correct the nihilistic view. *** The practice is all about letting go of selfish desire. We begin with letting go of selfishness through generosity and virtue. The mind becomes peaceful and, enjoying that peace, can then let go of our desire altogether through a natural wisdom. *** The Buddha represents an eternal letting go rather than grasping, the opposite and also the healing of the worldly mind. *** If we are walking along a path in the forest we can be delighting in the scene around us or we can be taking note of where we are in relation to home. These are two completely different experiences of the same situation. One holds an enduring truth, home. The other is merely sense impressions that arise and cease. Then there are deeper truths than this that can be ever present, providing a base for the mind. Because it is possible for truth to generate mind just the same as it is for mind to generate truth such truth can be the source of a transcendent mind. *** Can you still love the mangy old dog? Love is perfected, transformed from passion into dispassion, when harnessed to the plough of impermanence. *** In a human being everything comes together – the direct experience of the physical world which is the body; the mind which brings together information or truth; the spirit or empty mind which is that which can encompass body and mind in a way that reaches beyond both to liberation. *** Gaining insight is like the art of divination – full attention to the present yields an insight as to the future. *** The Dhamma is part of nature, that is where to look for liberation, nowhere else. We pursue the spiritual goal not by looking for somewhere else to get away to, there is nowhere else to go, but by making the mind empty through withdrawal first of all and then returning to look again at the world, by learning to encompass the world within this empty mind. Understanding this prevents a conflict arising between the striving for a spiritual goal and our life in the natural world which can be one and the same thing. *** The practice of mindfulness might sometimes make us start looking for perfection within the world. Right mindfulness (sammā sati) on the other hand is looking for the imperfections of the world. *** The mind does not know how look after the body. Most of us don't even know how to stand or walk properly never mind understanding sickness. The mind is one step removed from the physical world. This is good. The mind can be free. *** It is the grief of the world for itself that washes away the hosts of Mara. *** Suffering is the past and future wrestling with each other in the mind. *** With the advent of computers peoples' minds are getting very fast but don't seem to be really thinking very much or to really stay with something difficult and work it out. *** Just as mind can create truth, truth can create mind. When the natural, universal truth of Dhamma creates mind, the formless mind of the Buddha, this is the transcendent, being Dhamma. The mind has reached beyond materiality, beyond time and space. *** No wonder modern man is so confused! What we see as the body is not really the body, it is actually feeling. What we see as the mind is not really the mind. There is no 'me and my mind' there is just the mind in the present aware of the flow of the mind from the past, mental action and result. *** Mankind has been confused since the advent of psychology when we started watching our minds; our minds are made for watching the world, not for being watched. *** Meditation can seem boring but actually boredom is a very interesting state of mind to observe. Meditation is an act of giving, you give everything to it, you get everything out of it; meditation is just boring if you want something *** Rather than the mind inhabiting this precarious world, a sense of wonder and mystery opens us to the sense of meaning which holds the world within the mind – free of time and space. *** Perhaps we can all recognise how it is in truth that our voices come together and for a moment we share the same thoughts and dreams. The deeper the truth we share, the deeper is the feeling of union – the love of truth becomes a true love. Ultimately, perfect love, perfect union lies in the deepest truth, where the spacious mind is born. Our minds may become one within the eternal space of everlasting truth. *** A very small percentage of people who practise meditation will have some kind of truly profound experience. For these people monastic life, a life dedicated to this practice, will be the obvious choice. *** Science can show us the power of truth in the world. The Dhamma can show us the power of truth in the mind and heart. *** Letting go of craving creates space in the mind. This space is our spirit. The quality of our spirit can transform everything that arises within the mind. *** Let go. The space of the mind is bright, illuminating everything within it. *** The untrained mind is grasping by its nature, the only way to let go is first of all is to take hold of something else. Taking refuge in the space of the mind is, therefore, the temporary way to let go of everything. *** If we then remain aware of the space that surrounds all our experience we can rest in this refuge. In order to secure our refuge in our active life our very way of looking at things must cause us to let go, we need to acknowledge the impermanence of everything we see compared to the space. *** The way to permanently let go is to see everything in a way that causes us to let go rather than attach to things. *** Contemplation is the process of seeing what we are holding onto and changing our way of looking in order to let go. *** It is not a moralistic but an open, non-judgemental awareness that sees the suffering of all our craving and lets go. *** Open up to see the whole picture, then your direction will become clear. *** Our very first moment of samādhi can ruin our worldly lives but it can take many years after the experience to realise that everything is suffering compared to this and let go into a still higher samādhi. The first experience can be like finding our eternal soul. The highest samādhi is not the same, it is not like living forever but like dying, there is no sense of self. But this is a kind of dying where you don't go anywhere, where you realise that when everything ends your consciousness can mysteriously remain. Regardless of whether we believe that this state is the Deathless or not it remains as a source of truth that remains in the heart. When we see impermanence it shines its cool, blissful light of recognition on the world. *** The purpose of life is to find happiness. The highest happiness lies in letting go. Such a life is a natural training for death. *** When we truly have insight into impermanence the result is a mind that opens, as though this truth were first an answer but then a question – it remains as a source of wonder that opens the mind. This is a refuge in a mystery not in a fact. Karma is a mystery, the transcendent is a mystery. They are part of the same mystery. *** To feed our wholesome karma, past or present, dead or alive, is to feed ourselves. *** Space with suffering is our first refuge. Space without suffering is our second refuge. *** Far greater than all the things that change is the one thing that remains the same. *** The universe does not care about us. It is our job to care about the universe. *** We can be the everlasting truth, the truth of impermanence, and not be the impermanent objects that arise and cease. This is like bringing God down to earth. *** Good thought, happy feeling; wise thought, liberating feeling. *** Physical disciplines can help us optimise the system and generate energy. The Dhamma uses the same system with a different master. *** The pure mind is in here not out there. When reading about the pure mind we should always imagine a picture on the paper of a little hand pointing back at us so that we don't begin to think it is out there. *** If we want something magical from the practise we will never find it – the wanting will block the experience. *** The whole psychic realm will degenerate into false magic, superstition and a fear of ghosts amongst those with no real practice. *** Do you really forgive or do you just want to get rid of the grudge? *** Some people are worried they will go crazy if they meditate too much – if you have no patience or kindness in the mind this is true. It is also true that meditation can drive your craving crazy – so is it you or your craving going crazy? *** Psychic sanity is not believing in everything your spirits tell you just because they are spirits but watching for good and bad. The same applies to mysterious energies, they are not all good. *** Goodness is like the sun wisdom is like the moon. *** The content of our mind is something we are doing or something that arises as a result of how we are looking. So we should watch the mind like something we are doing and be aware of how we are looking. *** We create the battle of thought and feeling, top-down versus bottom-up by placing thought in the head and feelings in the body. *** Real wisdom is what helps us let go and takes the mind into emptiness (samādhi). *** Seeing nature's futile struggle against impermanence is to see the suffering inherent in all things. *** Through mindfulness of the body we become brothers and sisters in old age, sickness and death. We find a natural source of morality. Our morality becomes a natural response, free of inner conflict. There is compassion without desire. *** In a world of limited resources our desires will always be a source of conflict with others. Generosity or sharing might solve the problem externally but not internally. Only the ability to let go frees us of all inner conflict. *** People say there is no evidence in science for the existence of a stable ground to consciousness, it has never been found. But the scientific instruments are all attuned to change. If something is universal and unchanging then it will be necessarily off all the dials. *** Mindfulness is to see that perception is active and action is passive, it merely follows. Mindfulness sees the act of perception; meditation calms this action. Wisdom arises naturally when perception is calmed. *** Dependent origination is a tautological statement – this means that the links are beyond doubt, the propositions are not claimed or asserted – for example birth leads to death, what birth and death really are is not the point. *** Looking, awareness is active. This activity is the source of all we see within the mind. The watcher is doing everything that we are watching. If the watcher is calm, the mind is empty. Calm mind, empty mind. If the mind is not completely empty (silent) it is not completely calm. *** “I am not all this stuff, I am the watcher” is just a conceited view. Period. *** The struggle of nature to find stability, coherence between its truth and its substance, is played out in the relationship between the mind and the body. This is the most intimate relationship of material form and meaning within our experience. Having a body compels us to find a solution to the mind-body problem. The solution is that the body is in the mind, not the mind in the body. *** The refuge has two levels, 'mundane' and 'supra-mundane', both are in emptiness or space: our mundane refuge is our refuge in the world, we can 'be the space' and watch the suffering arise and cease – if we watch with a calm mind we do not add to the suffering. The supra-mundane refuge is where there is no suffering arising. *** True equanimity arises from seeing the way things really are, not accepting the way it seems to be. *** The acceptance of suffering allows us to respond rather than react. *** Buddhism trains us to find a natural, stress-free morality. *** The renunciant path is humble relinquishment, not conceited dissociation. *** Oneness comes from letting go of self, not conceiving All. *** Even if you are just watching thoughts, hot eyes means hot karma. *** When there is a habitual reaction to a memory, then past and present get all mixed up. *** We can use wisdom or samādhi to control the mind. *** We can't really let go unless we have something else to let go into – samādhi. *** If we have faith we have time – faith is energy, energy is time. *** The body is both in the mind as an image and in the world as a feeling. *** Only having no desire takes one beyond evil. *** Therapy is curative. The Dhamma is preventative. Seen like this they do not conflict with each other. The preventative medicine clearly takes priority; moreover, there is no permanent cure. *** In Buddhism goodness leads to brightness of mind – becoming this brightness is being in heaven already. *** Acceptance is the end of greed and hatred but not of the delusion that is their cause. So through acceptance we can abandon greed and hatred but they will keep coming back. *** The purpose of periods of celibacy is to help change the perception of the body to a neutral one that leads to freedom from attachment. *** The establishment of mindfulness is, at the same time, the emergence of the spirit. *** Mindfulness becomes most naturally and firmly established when the mind is free of both the regrets that draw us into the past and the desires that draw us into the future. *** Through patiently tolerating (harmless) pain our relationship to pain changes and in time this can change the pain itself. *** We practice in order to get into a good space. There are lots of different spaces we can get into – some are higher than others and therefore are more pleasant, some are freer than others and therefore last longer. *** If looking for meaning becomes looking for importance then we can add stress to life rather than take it away. *** It is still true that everything is alright the way it is, but we need to truly see the way it is, all the time, to be free of suffering. *** If our sense of need is seen in the context of that which needs – that is the body – then we have sanity, or more than this, we have a source of natural ethics. *** Interestingly the study of the relationship between mind and body is often assumed to be concerned with developing power of mind over matter in some way or another. What we discover when we are truly mindful of the body, however, is that if we don't mind, it doesn't matter. *** Allowing the body to be simply present develops simple, humble presence of mind. *** Rather than being drawn into emotions, draw the emotions into you. *** The most useful questions are: What am I averse to in this? What am I attracted to in this? Do I really need this? Do I really know this? *** Acting, talking and thinking in the opposite direction to our unwholesome mind is what really seems to count. *** We gradually see that it is worth giving up craving for the future to win perfect mindfulness – because mindfulness is such a pleasant state. *** We practice until the extraordinary becomes ordinary and the ordinary becomes extraordinary. *** Liberation requires the complete reapplication of body and mind to a new purpose *** There are two ways or purposes for attention, sensual interest or wisdom and compassion *** In terms of karma, specifics do not need to be resolved, a positive balance takes things in a positive direction. *** In contemplation, tease yourself... In samādhi, play dead... *** Everything in the mind is really outside. Inside the mind is empty. *** We are continually projecting the suffering of body and mind out into the world. If we look down at ourselves and really see the suffering, we block this projection and the suffering ceases. The stronger this perception of suffering is the more it can protect us from the feelings of suffering. *** Contemplation is our way of letting go of things. Virtue is our way of holding on to them. If we combine these two we will have a very light touch on life. *** Letting go of the body is the way to sort the mind out for good. The reason that this works is that all our problems are inherently the result of our attachment to our physical existence. *** The only way to prevent the affairs of the body pulling us out of a nice space is to pull the space into the body *** If you don’t get any pleasant feelings from your practice of ānāpānasati, the reason might be that you don’t have sufficient body awareness to feel the breath fully – and this general body awareness can be developed through your daily life tasks. *** Some people ask, “Is it really necessary for liberation to see the body as unattractive?” The answer is that it isn’t, what is necessary strictly speaking is to see the body as not-self (or anattā), however many times it is necessary to see its unattractive aspect (asubha) at least momentarily for this to happen. The reason for this is that attraction leads to identification. *** Some people think that the higher practice is to work through your stuff with the world and not “run away from it”. But going out into the world actually constitutes a running away from the body and our predicament of physical existence, and this predicament is truly what we need to come to terms with to work through our stuff – or rather to prevent it from arising in the first place. *** The body is a mirror to the mind: Tense mind, tense body. *** The passions grasping at the body always leads to a mind-in-the-body-experience of life rather than a body-in-the-mind-experience. Not mind-in-body but body-in-mind equals not mind-in-the-world but world-in-the-mind. *** The body is also a manifestation of past karma, part of the karmic flow. Our genes are one way in which our karma is carried. So the body is not just materiality, it is also a source of information in the physical world encoded in its form. Although the energy related to information and to materiality are inseparable, the reader of the information is potentially in a parallel and detached existence. *** You can’t solve the problems of the mind within the mind, but only through two things – samādhi and mindfulness of the body. *** Perception and feeling are respectively cause and effect, but are not always recognized as such. This is because perception is not always clearly manifest. It is necessary to try to find the perceptions that are the source of feelings and not to merely focus on the feelings. *** We relate to thought and feeling as though these are mind and body respectively, but they are not. Thought is not the mind itself but the content of it. Feeling is not the body itself but a separate phenomena that is dependent on it. To be aware of the mind in and of itself, the emptiness of it, keeps thought in its proper context. To be aware of the body in itself keeps feelings in their proper context. To look for feelings in the body is a mistake, it merely limits them. *** We have to be aware that we cannot let go of our feelings – these are our karma. What we need to let go of is the source of them. *** The not-self nature of the mind means that its automatic reactions cannot be controlled, but there need not be any of these. There can be silence, or just the flow of deliberate thought in the present without any inflow from the past or future. What arises in the present can then affect the world – the mind working as a passage of truth and virtue; but this mind exists in a different relationship to the world than the mind did before – it is not attached and tied down by its own proliferation but abides independent. *** Our suffering arises from a limited view of reality. Dhamma offers a different view of what is real and what is possible. *** We can be aware of the mind itself, the knowing (as inner light) just the same as we can be aware of the eye that sees. This mind needs no awareness of itself from another standpoint. This light illuminates the world. *** True vipassanā is not letting go of one thing for the next but letting go of everything. It sees absolute impermanence and not relative impermanence. We can let go of everything and yet this is not annihilation – this is the great mystery of life. *** Materialism is when we grasp at the things; eternalism is when we grasp at the space. *** In the process of the formation of perception, seeing is believing. Believing is not seeing. Through the development of wisdom, deeper seeing is deeper believing. *** Buddhism can at the outset seem very complicated and yet the more you understand it the simpler it gets. You realise that the practice is very simple. *** We live in a crucial time. The tradition is in decline in the East, and there is an open field here in the West. If we manage to get it right, the true Dhamma will take roots here; if we get it wrong and throw out all the challenging teachings in order to please everyone, then it will all go pear-shaped. *** True wisdom always has love. But does love always have wisdom? Maybe true love is that which has wisdom, because it has truth. *** On a spiritual path we are not denying ourselves sense pleasure but seeing the suffering of feeding the craving. *** In social terms Buddhism represents not society forming people but people forming the society – this is a loving and organic process. *** In the teachings of the Buddha there is a lot of material that might seem depressive, such as reflections on our inevitable mortality or on the impermanence and hollowness of all worldly achievements, and we might wonder why those things are being highlighted in such a way; did the Buddha want to make us depressed? The answer is that if you truly see the suffering you won’t experience the suffering; you will defeat it, once and for all, and enter into a new world of bliss. *** Impermanence ‘aniccaṃ’ is not just a view to go around and plaster onto everything. Then it turns into just another view or ‘diṭṭhi’. Instead it is a sign calling us to a quest for the eternal. If we are on the search for the eternal we will just simply be noting that whatever we encounter of impermanent conditions are ‘not it’ and proceed onwards without getting bogged down in it. *** We see self as subject or object, limited or infinite. These selves change with the dynamics of the mind – is it open or closed, does it go in or out? *** On one level mental suffering arises in the difference between what we get and what we want, but it is not as easy as just accepting things the way they are. This is merely trying to take refuge in passivity. We may not regret or desire what we have done but what we have left undone. *** The mind cannot just be told to be equanimous. It will always search for pleasant feeling. *** We can act, looking for inner happiness and accept at the same time if we have patience. *** People today often underestimate the fruits of the practice. They seem to expect it to be just a matter of some little psychological readjustment that makes the daily life simpler. But it goes much, much further than that. And likewise, the necessary commitment and effort you have to put into it to reap these fruits are also much greater than they expect. *** The fact that studies of different aspects of the same phenomena are not cited alongside each other is an example, I think, of a much wider modern phenomenon – the inappropriate compartmentalization of areas of knowledge and study. This is very much a symptom of the age of the computer word search as a research method. In Dhamma practise this leads to a mind that is overly focused and lacks the broader, open view. *** “Healthy body – healthy mind” that is what they say, and it is true – to some point. But what you ultimately need to be looking for is a mind that can remain healthy even when the body gets sick, because it will turn sick one day. *** What is mindfulness? If we see the mind clearly we see that the mind is established in the present already, where else can it be? The past is only a memory, the future is uncertain. Isn’t this right? Certainly our lack of attention to the present means that memory and uncertainty drift into the mind but even with this attention, regret or desire will automatically surround the objects of the mind dragging it in to past or future. So a mind with morality has far greater, more natural mindfulness A natural morality also comes about when we see each other as human beings – and a lack of morality through dehumanization. To see the real nature of the body is to see each other as human beings, avoiding making people into objects either of desire or hatred. In this way world peace begins inside and extends outward. *** A worldly view will lead to a worldly morality, a spiritual view to a spiritual one. So a spiritual view cannot define morality to people with worldly priorities, it is only as a view changes that it will naturally, healthily change people’s priorities. Life is seen as hugely precious but for completely different reasons. *** Only an arahant will naturally have perfect morality through a lack of desire. The rest of us will need help. *** When we attempt to describe our everyday experience of thoughts and feelings we are often surprised to see how much of it is relatively unformed, unclear. We can assume that everything we experience involves clear thoughts as words or images because there is the experience of a constant stream of so-called inner life. Actually most of our cognition is only partly formed inside, it is for the most part formed by things outside. It is a continuous stream of karma based on the things of the world, of perceptions. It is when we turn inside to examine thought and feeling that we begin to create something fuller and more coherent that does not then necessarily relate to the outer world, but it needs to be tested against it. Introverts will develop such an inner world to a greater extent and will have greater use of the imagination. *** The Refuge is in emptiness – and everything is potentially empty if it is empty of self. But it is a mistake to see the refuge as the space or silence or apparent emptiness of samādhi because to place the mind there requires effort and the state arrived at is impermanent. It is a stepping stone in the right direction, however. It is the way to let go of the objects to find the obvious space and the enjoyment of this to begin with, then to see this space in everything. It is the need for pleasure outside the objects of the senses that makes this a necessary stepping stone. *** How do we find the independence, permanence and stability of the unconditioned? We establish the unconditioned through the unconditional. This is what is meant in the teaching by the practice of Dhamma being established in the deathless and culminating in the deathless. We establish, for example, the spiritual factors as unconditional qualities – faith, love, patience, and determination are perhaps the most important. As the deathless becomes established it is then experienced first of all in subtle ways and we begin to be able to tune into it and strengthen it directly in our meditation. This is the culmination of the practice. *** The two sides of the practice, calm (samatha) and insight (vipassanā) require opposite attitudes. The samatha requires fixed routine and discipline, as little of variation and involvement of thought as possible. Vipassanā, although ideally going beyond thought requires an active and innovative approach, like skilful study, getting involved with and creative with the material and so on. When the mind is restless we do samatha, when it is sluggish we do vipassanā, until we reach a balanced state where the two come together. *** For some people issues from the past will come up over and over again. Just calming the mind does not prevent this or resolve anything. In terms of karma the most important aspect to hone in on are the mental images associated with memories. This is where there is the greatest potential for change. If we can hold an image or allow images to arise (often this means being able to experience the feelings without getting drawn in) we can relate to an experience completely fresh with a calm and skilful mind and resolve the issue. To do this we can need to see that the image is not the event, merely an image. It is the same with desire; the image is not yet the desire but merely karma. We can see an image from the past in a new light and the desire will not arise. *** The practice can be a bit like learning to steer a car. You learn how the break works, how the throttle works, how the clutch works, how the gear works. You are confused over what all these things are for, and you can’t make sense of it at all, then all of a sudden you realize that you can be steering your car down the road. “Wooah I can control this thing now!” And it is the same with the mind. You learn how all the path-factors work, and all of a sudden, after many years perhaps, you can be steering your mind along the road of samādhi. “Aha, so that was what that thing was for...” Don't ever let anyone tell you that it can't be done! *** It is contradictory to talk about being mindful of the hindrances. The hindrances are one thing and mindfulness is another. Mindfulness is not being aware of our lack of awareness but establishing our awareness. Having said that – the hindrances are not a problem in themselves, they are just in the way of something else. So we don’t make a problem out of them in themselves, we are just out to get past them. *** If we have no samādhi or insight then to accept everything is all we can do, we have no real lever on the mind. But a touch of equanimity means we can keep the love going even when we are getting nowhere. *** To reflect that we are not feelings or thoughts is good. To think we are the good and not the bad is just conceit. *** One thing that is often underestimated among meditation practitioners is the power of shorter meditation sessions. It is true that big breakthroughs usually come out of longer meditation sessions, for example six hours or so, but to simply go to one’s meditation object whenever there is a short break in activities, or if one finds oneself amidst a conversation which doesn’t concern one, is a great habit that helps building the foundation of the bigger breakthrough. It is a practice that breaks the momentum of the unwholesome thoughts in your daily life. *** We can spend a lot of time trying to get around our karma in one way or another when the quickest way is straight through with patient endurance. We can think that we can resolve our karma when we just need to endure it. We can think that we cannot resolve our unwholesome thoughts when we can, or at least we can get beyond them. *** Proliferation (papañca) is our conditioning; mental formations (saṅkhāras) are our instincts. As saṅkhāras flow out, papañca flows in. *** Once we have truly let go of something we can pick it up again and we won’t stick to it. *** The five precepts kept to a very refined degree represent the abandoning of these five precepts. *** If we fall in love with the present moment we also fall in love with everyone in it. *** Balanced practice is not too far in or out. The teaching of C.G. Jung is an example of too far in. *** If we follow our desires, our desires follow us like hungry dogs. If we don’t follow our desires, our desires follow us like obedient dogs. *** We tend to assume that the mind must either go into something or away from it – so we miss the possibility of the light touch of detachment. *** Give the spiritual training one hundred percent. This does not mean that you should constantly pressure yourself to your limit, or beyond it; but that you in each mind-moment will be presented with a choice – a choice between the Dhamma and the unwholesome thoughts, and then you will have to make the right choice. *** Faith is tremendously important. *** Advice for practising the mantra Buddho: Find a rhythm in your everyday chores. One of the reasons for why this practise is so much easier walking than it is, for example, while you are doing the washing-up is that there is such a natural rhythm there in the footsteps. Once one starts to master this practise, the thinking required to do your daily chores can almost start to “blend together” with Buddho. *** Ajahn Anan said that when the mind is applied to something, then it is mindfulness (sati); and when it simply spins around, it is proliferation (papañca). And to elaborate on that: the mind, or auto-pilot, lost in papañca is always, by necessity, connected with the unwholesome thoughts, and this idle speech inside you can only say things to you that you already know. *** Chanting is a great thing to to during a retreat, because it is a mental activity, and thereby it wakes your mind up, but it does so without inviting very much proliferation *** If unwholesome thoughts are giving you a particularly rough time you might want to ask yourself what you have been doing to feed them lately. However, there is another possibility as well; if you have been very energetic in opposing them lately it could all be a matter of desperate counter-attacks. They can become very coarse and brutal when they are opposed. And then we can really realize what a dark force it is that we are dealing with here. *** It is not possible to save the Dhamma by writing it down, it is only possible to save the Dhamma by practising it. *** The only way to prove the value of this path, at the end of the day, is to be happier than the people of the world. *** The implications of this path are not merely psychological but also existential. It is not merely about a different way of experiencing the world, but a new understanding of experience in itself. *** It is a popular practice these days to simply watch the mind, but this practice is based on the deluded view that the watching mind is not involved in what it is watching – but in reality really it is. If you change the way you watch you will see how much this changes the mind. *** If you manage to suppress the unwholesome thoughts then for the first time you will get a clear vision of the body, because the body is what they are most concerned about concealing. You could say that the unwholesome thoughts are our misguided defence mechanisms. *** You might be sitting there with both knees and the back blazing with pain, but around the corner awaits an insight that will change your life forever. *** Have you chosen your favourite among the Buddha's disciples? Who would you like to resemble? Who suits your character? Ajahn Anan asked me this question, and my reply was Mahā Kaccāna – the mysterious poet who appears from nowhere and explains something very profound, and then disappears again. *** A happy monastery is a strict one, not a slack one. A well-tamed and trained dog is a happy dog. Slackness is absolutely not equivalent to kindness. It just means that one is letting the unwholesome thoughts do as they please. *** Sometimes certain monastics feel a bit cynical about the etiquette that is part of the monastic life (for example that there is a prescribed way of washing the bowl, etc.) but these things could be compared to the custom of soldiers polishing their boots before going to a battle. It can have a very steadying effect on the heart in difficult times. *** Don't follow the unwholesome thoughts when they want to choose this or that for the meal. Instead follow an awareness of what is appropriate for the situation. This can be applied for all everyday situations. We cannot try to 'have our cake and eat it'. That is a method that is based on a deluded view of the mind. We cannot just do what we want and solve all our problems internally. *** [Speaking to a junior monastic:] To become too preoccupied with folding cloth in the proper way or something is a huge trap in the monastic life. People get into arranging beautiful flowers or performing ceremonies, and when you ask them if anyone of them are progressing in their meditation, they will say: “Ahem, we will meditate tomorrow, today we have this important ceremony!” *** Sometimes throughout my monastic life I have encountered an abuse of the teachings on acceptance and letting go. People who gladly let go of the precepts or of safety regulations during building projects, putting people's lives at risk. But really the Buddha didn't teach like that. Instead we should be striving to do our best in whatever we engage ourselves with. And if things doesn't work out, then that is a good time to let go and be accepting. In other words, we do our best, and whatever happens, happens. This is a marriage between the two beautiful qualities of effort and acceptance. *** Teresa of Ávila said that determination is the primary quality of the spiritual life. If you are determined you'll make it through eventually. And I think we can add patience as the second. Those are the two to keep looking for within yourself – determination and patience. Maximum effort together with maximum patience gives us right effort. *** If we have the wisdom not to grasp things and yet the compassion to stay with things, together this creates the light touch of detachment that is free of suffering. *** There is no way to escape the stress of the world. There is only a way to escape 'the world'. The way out is in. *** Clarity comes if you direct thought at the future, let feeling represent the past and silence live in the present. *** Spiritual aesthetics is a different kind of beauty that makes the mind peaceful. *** We can see the space between things as having meaning as well as any object within it. We can see the deeper space within the space, samādhi as, in a sense, between between. Liberation as between between between. *** We do not need to see God, we only need to see suffering and let go to be liberated. *** Unconditional love is won not when we love despite the cancer that is killing us or love someone through their cancer. Love comes to its highest when we can even love our cancer as that which can liberate us. *** Language is so limited. What about all the feelings there are no words for And all the words there are no feelings for *** Truth is everlasting. Stay with the truth until the mind becomes truth and the mind will be everlasting. *** |
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