To prevent people from becoming stuck in the gaining, the achieving or the comparing mind

 Now, with all this talking about stream-entry and realization, some of you who are familiar with Luang Por Sumedho’s teachings may also be aware that he would very, very rarely talk about or use the language of aiming for attainment. Just as we can become competitive about who has the biggest house or published the most papers, we can also become competitive or acquisitive about realization. So Luang Por Sumedho would very often point to the absurdity of ‘trying to become’ a stream-enterer or ‘trying to get’ enlightened. That very way of phrasing the issue displays an acquisitive or becoming tendency; we have let bhava-tanhā, the desire to become, take hold of our spiritual efforts.

So, in talking about all of this I’m very conscious of the fact that there’s a danger in creating a substantial desire to ‘become’ something special. It’s therefore important to notice how, when you set yourself a goal, you start to think: ‘I’m not a stream-enterer yet but I want to become one, so what can I do now to become that in the future?’ In Luang Por Sumedho’s teachings, over and over and over again he would say that one of the root delusions about meditation practice is to think, ‘I’m an unenlightened person who’s got to do something now to become enlightened in the future.’ He saw that he had been setting that up as a paradigm in himself, and he realized that he was creating a false framework. 

If we do this, even though we might feel its a good intention, we are unwittingly building our practice on a basis of bhava-tanhā. We can be unconsciously strengthening the sense of self, strengthening self-view: ‘I am an unenlightened person and I’ve got to do something to become an enlightened person in the future.’ 

What he would always encourage instead is to let go of that whole structure; to let go of conceiving ourselves as a person and simply be awake now, be enlightened now, be awake to this moment. So it’s not a matter of starting a stream-entry programme, but rather of being awake in this moment to the feelings of the body, to perceptions, the sounds that you hear, the things that you see. Sight, sound, smell, taste, touch; knowing this is all arising and passing away here and now. If we see that, if we recognize that, then we are being awake right now. Right now there is the quality of wisdom. It’s being actualized.

A number of years ago, the last time Luang Por Sumedho gave a retreat in California at Spirit Rock Meditation Centre, I was helping out with the event and I noticed that every single Dhamma talk was about self-view, about attachment to conventions and about getting beyond doubt – every single talk for the whole ten days. But he never mentioned stream-entry once. He never talked about the idea of a realization or an attainment or getting something. It was really striking how he was giving everybody the tools, but not creating a framework that was liable to cause people to be caught up in the gaining mind, or that self-creating habit of, ‘I’ve got to get something that I haven’t got yet.’ His approach was rather to say, ‘This is how you work with self-view. This is how you work with attachment to conventions. This is how you work with doubt. This is how it all operates. This is what you do. This is the set of tools. This is how they work. This is what you do with them. This is what you don’t do with them. I was really struck by the wisdom of that. He was giving a full-on teaching to help people acquire the tools needed to support that quality of realization. But he was also working hard to prevent people from becoming stuck in the gaining, the achieving or the comparing mind. 

That said, I also feel that it can be helpful to speak about the spiritual framework – not to go against Luang Por Sumedho’s way of doing things, but simply in order to have the roadmap that’s there in the Buddha’s teachings. In this way we can be clearer about the nature of the task at hand – then it’s up to us, having that framework, to be careful not to get entangled and end up grasping at attainment. Be aware if the mind is conceiving, ‘I am a person who is not enlightened yet and I’ve got to do something now to get enlightened in the future’; and as soon as you see your mind doing that, just say, ‘Whoah, hold it!’ Then, rather than buying into and solidifying that view, take Luang Por Sumedho’s advice and step back from it, saying, ‘Here is the wisdom mind seeing the way things are, here and now. Here’s the Buddha seeing the Dhamma, here and now.’ See that we can be enlightened right now, we can be awake in this moment. There can be wisdom, there can be wakefulness; and, in that moment of clear seeing, the Dhamma is recognized, is known, actualized.

I feel these are important themes, and it’s good to return to them throughout our practice, to familiarize ourselves with the framework of the spiritual landscape. We look at these areas of identification, where we get caught up, and hopefully we learn how to use these tools and understand this framework of awakening, without turning the framework into another obstacle. Instead of feeding the habits of self-view and the gaining and comparing mind, we learn to be able to see how it all works, to see what the potential is and what the obstacles are, and guide our lives towards what is really beneficial and truly liberating.

The Breakthrough

Buddhist Meditation as a Means of Liberation

Ajahn Amaro