We talk about letting go, we use that kind of language, but notice how it also implies that there has been a holding on, a ‘me’ who has been doing some holding. But more truly, in a more real and complete way, it is not so much a matter of letting go but of training the heart not to grasp, not to identify, not to create that illusion of ownership in the first place.
A sound arises and passes with no remainder. A word is spoken – we hear it, it arrives, it is known, it is gone. There is silence before the word and silence after it. There does not need to be any kind of remainder. We don’t need to let go of a sound. A sound comes and goes on its own. We know we can’t own it, hold it or keep it. So rather than letting go, recognize the truth – nothing is ever really owned or possessed by an ‘I’ or a ‘me’. The practice is sustaining that awareness of the inexorable, incessant flow – the change, the modulation of perceptions, patterns of consciousness, patterns of nature, arising, blossoming, dissolving, following their own laws.
A star a cloud or a sunset can’t be possessed, but it can be known. In the same way, just allow the feelings of the body – emotions, moods, thoughts – to be ownerless, to arise, take shape, be fully received and known, and then let them dissolve. Be that unlocated, non-possessive heart of awareness. Be that quality of knowing which participates in all experience, but without confusion, without possessiveness. Develop this so that the layers of attachment and identification, the layers of self-view, are seen more and more clearly, and let go of.
In the Udāna, the Inspired Utterances, the Buddha says there is that sphere of being, that āyatana, where there is no earth, no water, no fire, no wind, where there is neither this world nor another world, there is no infinite consciousness, infinite space or nothingness. And in that realm of being, that āyatana, there is no moon, no sun, no stars. There is neither a coming nor a going, nor a standing still. There is no basis, there is no development, no support. This, just this, is the end of dukkha.
When we hear those words they can make us feel insecure and threatened. No sun? No moon? No stars? No development? No support? What is that! You can feel a kind of spiritual vertigo, being suddenly knocked off balance. But all that is happening here is an unplugging, a dissolving of our familiar patterns of identification and clinging – our clinging to a ‘me’ who is here in this place, experiencing this world which seems to exist around me in three-dimensional space. So these words from the Buddha are threatening to the ego, to the habits of identification with time and three-dimensional experience, but to the heart itself they are greatly liberating, freeing. In that āyatana, that realm of being, there is neither a coming nor a going nor a standing still. ‘Place’ does not apply. ‘Here’ and ‘there’ do not apply. Past and future do not apply.
Luang Por Chah used to expound on this teaching by asking, ‘If you can’t go forwards and you can’t go back and you can’t stay still, where do you go?’ This is similar to the question about still/flowing water – it’s a conundrum, a puzzle that confuses the thinking, rational mind. There is no solution when we are identified with the body, with time and space, the sense world. If you tried to give Ajahn Chah a clever answer and say that you could go sideways or up a tree, he would tell you, ‘No, you can’t go sideways, or up or down either. Where do you go?’ The only way to solve the conundrum is to let go of identification with the body, with time and place. If there are clinging and identification with the body, with three-dimensional space, the conundrum is insoluble; there is no answer, no solution. But if we really take to heart this daily reflection that the body is not self, feelings are not self, perceptions are not self, that is not who and what we are…
If there is non-identification with physical form, with the sense world, with perceptions, then there is awareness – non-identification is that unentangled participating in experience. This participation is not tied to a personality, an individuality, a physical spot; this awareness, this knowing, is unlocated.
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In the last message that Luang Por Chah sent Ajahn Sumedho, the letter Luang Por sent just before he had his stroke and lost his ability to move and speak and teach, he said: ‘Whenever you have feelings of love and hate for anything whatsoever, these will be your partners in building pāramī, spiritual virtues. The Buddha Dhamma is not to be found in moving forwards, nor in moving backwards, nor in standing still. This, Sumedho, is your place of non-abiding.’
This was Luang Por Chah’s final instruction to his disciple who was setting up monasteries in the West. It wasn’t a list of ‘do this and don’t do that’. It wasn’t an exhortation to always remember to follow the traditions. He just reminded him of this one central, crucial principle: non-abiding, non-clinging. When the heart attunes itself to the Dhamma in this radical and complete way, it is able to respond to every situation. When we need to be conservative, we can be conservative. When we need to be creative, we can be creative. When we need to hold steady, we hold steady. When we need to adapt, we adapt. Through that non-clinging there is a supreme attunement to time, place, situation, to what each moment demands.
So that was the most appropriate and best advice to Ajahn Sumedho as he was starting up these new monasteries in the West – to let go of progress, to let go of degeneration, even to let go of holding steady. The Buddha-Dhamma is not to be found in moving forwards, nor in moving backwards, nor in standing still. It is here in the place of non-abiding, non-identification, no-thing-ness. It is here in the place of complete openness and receptivity.
The Breakthrough
Buddhist Meditation as a Means of Liberation
Ajahn Amaro
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