Defining unlimited

 A DIFFICULTY WITH THE WORD ‘NIBBĀNA’ IS THAT ITS meaning is beyond the power of words to describe. It is, essentially, undefinable. [It’s very easily to define nibbana, as long definition is negative. The problem starts with positive definitions, they ara all made in the situation where consciousness depends on nāmarūpa, while nibbana is liberation from that dependence. Also from positive description of the three undetermined markas of what is undetermined we can undetermined where the problem lies:

A definition of infinity is self-contradictory, verbally, since it involves placing a limit (finis) to that which is stated to have none. Nanamoli Thera. V.B]

Another difficulty is that many Buddhists see Nibbāna as something unobtainable – as so high and so remote that we’re not worthy enough to try for it. Or we see Nibbāna as a goal, as an unknown, undefined something that we should somehow try to attain.

Most of us are conditioned in this way. We want to achieve or attain something that we don’t have now. So Nibbāna is looked at as something that, if you work hard, keep the sīla, meditate diligently, become a monastic, devote your life to practice, then your reward might be that eventually you attain Nibbāna – even though we’re not sure what it is.

Ajahn Chah would use the words ‘the reality of non-grasping’ as the definition for Nibbāna: realizing the reality of non-grasping. That helps to put it in a context because the emphasis is on awakening to how we grasp and hold on even to words like ‘Nibbāna’ or ‘Buddhism’ or ‘practice’ or ‘sīla’ or whatever.

It’s often said that the Buddhist way is not to grasp. But that can become just another statement that we grasp and hold on to. It’s a Catch 22: No matter how hard you try to make sense out of it, you end up in total confusion because of the limitation of language and perception. You have to go beyond language and perception. And the only way to go beyond thinking and emotional habit is through awareness of them, through awareness of thought, through awareness of emotion. ‘The Island that you cannot go beyond’ is the metaphor for this state of being awake and aware, as opposed to the concept of becoming awake and aware.
In meditation classes, people often start with a basic delusion that they never challenge: the idea that “I’m someone who grasps and has a lot of desires, and I have to practice in order to get rid of these desires and to stop grasping and clinging to things. I shouldn’t cling to anything.” That’s often the position we start from. So we start our practice from this basis and, many times, the result is disillusionment and disappointment, because our practice is based on the grasping of an idea. [Grasping the idea of letting go isn't so bad, one has to start from where one is. But it is good to grasp, that "I am someone who ..." is the main problem, working with various desires without questioning this assumption may lead to some improvement, but unlikely to the abandoning of attavada. V.B]

Eventually, we realize that no matter how much we try to get rid of desire and not grasp anything, no matter what we do – become a monk, an ascetic, sit for hours and hours, attend retreats over and over again, do all the things we believe will get rid of these grasping tendencies – we end up feeling disappointed because the basic delusion has never been recognized.

This is why the metaphor of ‘The Island that you cannot go beyond’ is so very powerful, because it points to the principle of an awareness that you can’t get beyond. It’s very simple, very direct, and you can’t conceive it. You have to trust it. You have to trust this simple ability that we all have to be fully present and fully awake, and begin to recognize the grasping and the ideas we have taken on about ourselves, about the world around us, about our thoughts and perceptions and feelings.

The way of mindfulness is the way of recognizing conditions just as they are.

We simply recognize and acknowledge their presence, without blaming them or judging them or criticizing them or praising them. We allow them to be, the positive and the negative both. And, as we trust in this way of mindfulness more and more, we begin to realize the reality of ‘The Island that you cannot go beyond.’ When I started practising meditation I felt I was somebody who was very confused and I wanted to get out of this confusion and get rid of my problems and become someone who was not confused, someone who was a clear thinker, someone who would maybe one day become enlightened. That was the impetus that got me going in the direction of Buddhist meditation and monastic life.

But then, by reflecting on this position that “I am somebody who needs to do something,” I began to see it as a created condition. It was an assumption that I had created. And if I operated from that assumption then I might develop all kinds of skills and live a life that was praiseworthy and good and beneficial to myself and to others but, at the end of the day, I might feel quite disappointed that I did not attain the goal of Nibbāna.

Fortunately, the whole direction of monastic life is one where everything is directed at the present. You’re always learning to challenge and to see through your assumptions about yourself. One of the major challenges is the assumption that “I am somebody who needs to do something in order to become enlightened in the future.” Just by recognizing this as an assumption I created, that which is aware knows it is something created out of ignorance, out of not understanding.

When we see and recognize this fully, then we stop creating the assumptions.

Awareness is not about making value judgments about our thoughts or emotions or actions or speech. Awareness is about knowing these things fully – that they are what they are, at this moment. So what I found very helpful was learning to be aware of conditions without judging them. In this way, the resultant karma of past actions and speech as it arises in the present is fully recognized without compounding it, without making it into a problem. It is what it is. What arises ceases. As we recognize that and allow things to cease according to their nature, the realization of cessation gives us an increasing amount of faith in the practice of non-attachment and letting go.

The attachments that we have, even to good things like Buddhism, can also be seen as attachments that blind us. That doesn’t mean we need to get rid of Buddhism. We merely recognize attachment as attachment and that we create it ourselves out of ignorance. As we keep reflecting on this, the tendency toward attachment falls away, and the reality of non-attachment, of non-grasping, reveals itself in what we can say is Nibbāna.

If we look at it in this way, Nibbāna is here and now. It’s not an attainment in the future. The reality is here and now. It is so very simple, but beyond description. It can’t be bestowed or even conveyed, it can only be known by each person for themselves.

As one begins to realize or to recognize non-grasping as the Way, then emotionally one can feel quite frightened by it. It can seem like a kind of annihilation is taking place: all that I think I am in the world, all that I regard as stable and real, starts falling apart and it can be frightening. But if we have the faith to continue bearing with these emotional reactions and allow things that arise to cease, to appear and disappear according to their nature, then we find our stability not in achievement or attaining, but in being – being awake, being aware.

Many years ago, in William James’ book ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience,’ I found a poem by A. Charles Swinburne. In spite of having what some have described as a degenerate mind, Swinburne produced some very powerful reflections:

“Here begins the sea that ends not till the world’s end. Where   we stand,
Could we know the next high sea-mark set beyond these waves  that gleam,
We should know what never man hath known, nor eye of man  hath scanned ...
Ah, but here man’s heart leaps, yearning towards the gloom with  venturous glee ...
From the shore that hath no shore beyond it, set in all the sea.”

~ From ‘On the Verge,’ in ‘A Midsummer Vacation.’

I found in this poem an echo of the Buddha’s response to Kappa’s question in the Sutta Nipāta:

Next was the brahmin student Kappa:

“Sir,” he said, “there are people stuck midstream in the terror and the fear of the rush of the river of being, and death and decay overwhelm them. For their sakes, Sir, tell me where to find an island, tell me where there is solid ground beyond the reach of all this pain.”

“Kappa,” said the Master, “for the sake of those people stuck in the middle of the river of being, overwhelmed by death and decay, I will tell you where to find solid ground.

“There is an island, an island which you cannot go beyond. It is a place of nothingness, a place of non-possession and of non-attachment. It is the total end of death and decay, and this is why I call it Nibbāna [the extinguished, the cool].
“There are people who, in mindfulness, have realized this and are completely cooled here and now. They do not become slaves working for Māra, for Death; they cannot fall into his power.”
~ SN 1092-5, (Ven. Saddhatissa trans.)*

In English, ‘nothingness’ can sound like annihilation, like nihilism. But you can also emphasize the ‘thingness’ so that it becomes ‘no-thingness.’ So Nibbāna is not a thing that you can find. It is the place of ‘no-thingness,’ a place of non-possession, a place of non-attachment. It is a place, as Ajahn Chah said, where you experience “the reality of non-grasping.”

This anthology, ‘The Island,’ reflects on this. Its quotes and spiritual teachings are more pointers than definitions or specific directions. Through the use of various teachings, references, scriptures and some of their own experience in practice, Ajahn Pasanno and Ajahn Amaro are pointing to Nibbāna, pointing out that Nibbāna is a reality that each one of us can know for ourselves – once we recognize non-attachment, once we realize the reality of non-grasping.
Ajahn Sumedho Amaravati Buddhist Monastery
***
Ajhan Amaro:

As I listened to the daily Dhamma talks of Ajahn Sumedho, the abbot and founder of the monastery, I noticed that over and over again he made mention of Ultimate Reality, the Unconditioned, the Unborn and Nibbāna. This was very striking since, during my couple of years in monasteries in Thailand, I had hardly heard a word spoken about this, even though it was the goal of the spiritual life.

Certainly that goal, of the realization of Nibbāna, was acknowledged as the overriding aim of the practice. However, it was stressed repeatedly that the Buddha’s emphasis was on the path, the means whereby that goal could genuinely be reached, rather than on rendering inspiring descriptions of the end to which the path led. “Make the journey!” it was said, “the nature of the destination takes care of itself and will be vividly apparent on arrival. Besides, the true nature of Ultimate Reality is necessarily inexpressible by language or concept. So just make the journey and be content.” This had made sense to me, so I now wondered why it was that Ajahn Sumedho made such an emphasis on it.

Being an inquisitive sort, and not very good at holding back, one day I asked him the question straight out. His reply struck me very deeply and affected the way in which I have thought and spoken ever since. He said:

“After teaching in the West for a very short period of time, I began to see that many people were disappointed both in materialism and theistic religions. To them Buddhism had great appeal but, lacking any fundamental sense of, or faith in the transcendent, the practice of Buddhism became almost a dry, technical procedure – intellectually satisfying but strangely sterile as well.

“They had largely rejected the idea of an Ultimate Reality from their thoughts as being intrinsically theistic nonsense so I realized that people needed to be aware that there was also such a principle in the Buddha’s teachings, without there being any hint of a creator God in the picture. In Thailand, because there is already such a broad and strong basis of faith in these transcendent qualities, there is no need to talk about Ultimate Reality, the Unconditioned and so forth – for them it can be a distraction. Here, I saw that people needed something to look up to – that’s why I talk about it all the time. It goes a long way to cultivating faith and it gives a much more living and expansive quality to their spiritual life; there is a natural joy when the heart opens to its true nature.”

*1094. “Owning nothing, taking nothing:
this is the island with nothing further.
I call this ‘nibbāna,’ the extinction of old age and death. (3) 1095. “Having understood this, those mindful ones are quenched in this very life.
They do not come under Māra’s control, nor are they Māra’s footmen.” (4) 

(Bhikkhu Bodhi)

Mental Enema

 

In this winter’s retreat, the month of January has passed and a new month begins in the silence, the cold weather, the stillness of winter. Whether the retreat is organized for us to be meditating as a group or alone, being the listener, the witness to the way it is, is the important issue. We’re not trying to get or get rid of anything but to just be the neutral observer, the Buddho, the witness to the way things are. This is bhāvanā – the Pali word for meditation and for developing the Eightfold Path.

During these days, many of you will experience a lot of suppressed memories or emotions that might arise, such as fear, guilt or remorse. Repressed anger or resentment can come up during these silent retreats. You can be rather frightened by it because sometimes we see a retreat like this as getting tranquil, getting samādhi and living in a blissful state where all the fears and anger, resentments, the world and all its complexities are suppressed and we're just in a one-pointed state of happiness that we'd like to hold on to.

Many times we may have been on retreats where we got various strong senses of samādhi, of luminosity, of peace, and then we want that again. We'd like to always feel like that, to feel enlightened, to feel blissful, to be free from fear and desire. When we practise meditation to get something, remember that the previous blissful experience is now a memory. So when you remember past experiences of being peaceful – feeling bliss through the silence of a retreat – you're remembering something that happened in the past, and that creates a desire to get to that state again. This is where being the witness is the important position to take – not the one who's trying to get something that you don't have in the present, that you remembered having on previous retreats. Be a witness to that very desire, the desire to get something you're not feeling, or that you don't have at this present moment. Much of our life is like this.

The cultural conditioning, the social conditioning that we've all experienced, very much sets up a habit pattern of repression. Cultural conditioning is about what's right and wrong, what's polite, what's impolite, what is true, what is false. You acquire these values from your parents, from your social group, and then carry them through life making value judgments about yourself and the world around you because of the cultural conditioning that you acquired when you were quite innocent, before you had any time to reflect on it. You just absorbed like a sponge, absorbed everything that was thrown at you, given to you, or what you were told was right and wrong.

During these retreats, maybe we have a lot of fear that arises over nothing in particular, either in the monastery or the immediate environment. Or maybe a lot of anger or resentment may manifest when you're in silent meditation. And then you try to get rid of it, that's one reaction, to suppress it, or feel that you can't meditate. Then you feel you're not a good monk or a good nun because you're feeling like this, or because the mind can proliferate, fight, resent. And all of this can be witnessed. All of us have a lot in life to resent because the life we experience from an ideal position isn't like that. It's not about justice and fairness where everything's right and your parents, social group, religious education – whatever it might have been – was right or wrong.

This word ‘conditioning’ is neutral. It's not about right conditioning or wrong conditioning, but conditioning itself through reward and punishment. When you're good, you get rewarded for that, and when you're bad, you're punished. That's the conditioning process. That's social and cultural conditioning that we experience. But witnessing that conditioning is not judging it in any way, but recognizing that there are a lot of repressed feelings, emotions, and desires. Resistance and repression are other forms of clinging. Vibhava taṇhā, the desire to get rid of or resist something, is like this.

Luang Por Chah had many stories to tell about how he dealt with fear. In Thai society, they are very much conditioned to believe in ghosts and spirits that you can't see but that exist in various places. That's very strong cultural conditioning. Being a dhutaṅga bhikkhu, a wandering monk, he would go and live in charnel grounds or graveyards where the suggestions and conditions for fear of ghosts or spirits would be most prominent. A graveyard always gives the impression of someplace you don't generally want to go into, even to someone who was not conditioned like that. It reminds you of death, and death is another fear we all have; fear of dying. In the worldly life, the sensory realm that we experience, there's a lot to fear. It's not an unreasonable emotion; it's primal to the animal world. The animal world is a world of survival and fear. Fear is a kind of protective mechanism, to be aware of where danger lies and try to avoid it. But because of memory, we can remember things even in the safest places and be frightened in our condo in London with locks on the door, guards at the gate.

Resentment is another example of conditioning. We have all maybe experienced unfairness in our lives, from teachers or parents who didn't understand what we were doing. Friends, or society in general, can make value judgments about us. Fear of what other people think is another strong social conditioning experience. ‘What will the neighbours think?’ But the ‘witness’ isn't thinking. It's not about thinking or deliberately trying to do something, but working with the way things are. You don't have to go to a graveyard to deal with fear of ghosts or spirits, or fear of something out there in the atmosphere that is some kind of menacing presence. We can consider just the way we can make ourselves frightened with what we're thinking or by remembering things of the past.

Fear is also an emotion that we sometimes like to experience. You wonder why people go to horror movies to be scared out of their wits by what they see on a screen. Why would you pay money to be scared? It’s because it is an exciting feeling, to be frightened and scared, to feel like you're a victim of life, a victim of society or a social group. There's something very egotistical about playing the role of a victim because it makes us feel that we're somebody who's been unfairly treated or victimized by something else outside ourselves. But the witness is aware. When one feels victimized by life, it’s like this. You're taking the position of ‘Buddhaṁ saraṇaṁ gacchāmi’ – refuge in Buddha, to witness the way it is. It's not about getting rid of fear, or justifying everything and just trying to explain or analyze everything away. Or you try to think about it and analyze yourself, and blame your frightened tendencies on others. Or maybe you blame yourself, thinking you're just a weak person because you have a lot of fear to deal with. Whatever you think, whatever direction the critical mind takes, it's still words and thoughts and habits that you're using. You're not being a witness, you're being a critic – thinking about yourself, thinking about the world.

Sometimes one can relate to meditation, taking the witness position, as a kind of mental enema, a cleansing process. The word enema means a kind of cleansing process for the body, but this is a mental enema where we don't have to do anything but witness the mental conditions that arise. What comes out of your mind might be repulsive like any physical enema, but it's being released from yourself. You're letting go of it and allowing it to manifest, becoming fully conscious and not clinging to it. The Buddho is a refuge that we all refer to – Buddha as a refuge. It’s not refuge in some idealized Buddha of the past, not in some kind of traditional ceremonial chant, but it's about witnessing the way things are. When we talk about Gotama the Buddha’s enlightenment, he was witnessing the way things are, not trying to get rid of things, to fight or resist, or just get into a state where he didn't feel anything. There is that image of him under the Bodhi tree where he gives up trying to control his mind, trying to arrange everything, trying to get into a nice peaceful state. He just lets go of everything and then, as the legend goes, all the forces of the universe come and tempt him both on the fear and desire levels. His response is witnessing, not trying to control it, get rid of it, or condemn it, but just noticing, witnessing the presence and the absence of phenomena that arise. So it's a fearless position.

In my own experience, that's how I've learned to really develop or cultivate bhāvanā or sammā diṭṭhi, right understanding. It's not to fight or resist but to observe. Luang Por Chah’s definition of Buddho, the Buddha's name, is ‘the one who is a witness’. Knowing is like this. During this retreat, when negativity arises – fear, jealousy, anxiety, worry, doubt – see it as a blessing. It's asking to be let go of. It arises in consciousness when the conditions in a retreat here are not frightening. Amaravati Monastery is a very safe place in terms of external conditions. The community is trained with the vinaya – the precepts – so we’re committed to non-violence, to celibacy, to right speech; that's our intention as a group. In terms of safety it's as safe as you can get, where you have the community you're actually living and associated with, that makes such a strong commitment to moral precepts. So even if fear, jealousy, anxiety, worry, or doubt arise, don't take it personally. Don't see it as some kind of thing you've got to get rid of, or that if you want to get enlightened you've got to get rid of doubt. Because that very position of ‘I've got to get rid of doubt, get rid of fear’ is the ego again. ‘I'm somebody who has something I shouldn't have. If I were wise and enlightened, I wouldn't have any doubts or fears.’ That's an ideal we might create around Buddhist monks or nuns, or the Buddha himself. There is social conditioning, for example, the sīlabbata parāmāsa or attachment to conventions, social conventions, religious conventions. The vinaya is a moral convention that we attach to, not to create a sense of personality with it. We can become very arrogant when we look down on others who don't seem to have the high standards of moral conduct that we see in ourselves, that we are clinging to. It's not about creating a sense of moral superiority or condemning others, but they’re guidelines for action and speech in community life, in daily life.

Social conventions are something that we might not even notice. So much of Western psychology is based on the ego. We emphasize the word ego a lot, a sense of self-conceit or self-importance. It includes even an ego where we despise ourselves or look down on or criticize ourselves. Whatever habitual identity you form – an attachment to your physical body, or your physical identity – the ego comes from that strong conditioning, through social conditioning, through thinking.

Vicikicchā, generally translated into English as doubt, is the third fetter which prevents us from seeing the right path to sammā diṭṭhi. So we investigate doubt – to not be sure, to be uncertain, to be unstable, to not know something is like this. And that's about thinking, isn't it? You realize the danger of attachment to thought, how you create a whole world of expectations and fears just through thinking. We live in a realm of doubt and uncertainty and instability because the world is an illusion. It's not what you think. It's not a condition that you can control. The world arises and ceases according to other conditions. The sensory bodies we identify with are conditions: what we see, hear, smell, taste and touch – everything we think – is conditioned. Conditions can be skilful, kusala, or unskilful, akusala. But the Buddho, the knower, the witness, is aware. Skilful, unskilful, good, bad are all conditions created through thinking, through believing, through grasping. When you really penetrate that with wisdom, then the insight you get is letting go. It doesn't mean getting rid of the conditions, it means just releasing your grasp. In terms of samādhi or concentration, it's more like a relaxed state of awareness, not an intense grasping state of intense concentration on an object. It’s a sense of relaxation, of letting go, of releasing the body from all its tensions, releasing your mind from all its fears and desires. So when this happens, when we really trust in letting go, then sammā diṭṭhi – right understanding, or perfect understanding – arises. It’s there naturally. As individual people, we're not trying to be wise and get right understanding. When we think we're very wise and have sammā diṭṭhi, that's another conceit. After 55 years of monastic life, if I still think I have sammā diṭṭhi as a person, that's a delusion. Sumedho is an illusion, it's a costume, it's a convention. It's not a real person. But Buddho you can trust – conscious awareness in the present is like this.

Striving to get right understanding is good. There's nothing bad about it, wanting to become enlightened, wanting to become free from suffering, wanting to attain Buddhahood, wanting to become a bodhisattva. Wanting to become anything, like just a good person or a good monk or nun, that's good karma. It's good but it's still a convention. It's still a condition, a sense of me and mine – me, trying to become a very good monk or a good person, or get a good rebirth in the next life or even to get out of rebirth. Wanting to not be reborn again is still a thought, words that we read in the scriptures. These are good but the grasping of that, the sense of me and mine, ‘I'm somebody who doesn't want to be reborn again’, is like this. It's still a condition that arises and ceases. So, good is impermanent; bad is impermanent. The Buddho makes no judgments about good and bad anymore, it’s just knowing whatever condition you’re experiencing or attached to at present. The insight is to let go, to relax with it. Let it be what it is and it ceases all by itself. Allowing the natural cessation of phenomena is a relaxed open awareness, not an intense effort to destroy evil or get rid of the satanic forces in your mind or the universe.

To want to get rid of ignorance is a noble desire but it's still a creation of words. ‘I want to be free from all ignorance’ is a wholesome thought, but a thought is still a condition. Out of the habit of not understanding the way things are, or avijjā, we cling to these high-minded ideals, these goals, these conventions. The Four Noble Truths, the first sermon of the Buddha, is a really skilful tool to use to investigate that. We're not here to just become good people, good monks, good nuns, good samaṇas, good lay people. Even though that might be wholesome, or that what you think yourself to be as a person is making good karma, that very sense of being a person, a separate form in the universe, is a basic delusion of the ego, sakkāya diṭṭhi. You can't get rid of sakkāya diṭṭhi but you can know it by being the witness to it, whether it be a positive ego or a negative one is not the issue anymore. Perfectly healthy, well-adjusted, a normal personality or a neurotic one, these are judgments made in society. I've heard many people say, ‘I can't meditate, I don't have good karma. I've got to deal with all my repressed anger and fears and I need psychotherapy. I need to get rid of all of these obsessive ideas that come to my mind. I want to become a healthy personality.’ These are all good desires but it's still coming from the sense of total belief that you are what you think, what you're feeling, or what your emotions are. And as long as that belief goes unquestioned, then you're always going to experience suffering, no matter what you do, no matter how good you are.

We all have to witness the changing conditions of life, the COVID pandemic, climate change, the rumours, the political problems of various countries, seeing our parents grow old, get sick and die. We get attached to dogs and cats and then they die, and no matter how good you've been you still feel grief and sorrow at the passing of beloved pets. Is that good or bad or right or wrong? It's not about good or bad, right or wrong anymore, but it's when you attach, when this attachment is caused through ignorance, then we create suffering throughout our lives. Death is always the obvious end of a life. If your sense of self-worth is attached to what you look like, your body, or your social conditioning, beliefs, thoughts and memories, then you die in fear or with the hope to get a rebirth, there's still the desire to become. Some people fear death because they haven't been perfect in life. When people die, many times the relatives fear that they've made bad karma because they didn't tell this person that they love them enough, they didn't give them perfect care and love and total appreciation in their lives. You didn't visit them as often as you should have, so there's a lot of guilt when relatives or good friends pass away because we create this sense of what we should have done in the past. But no matter how good and caring we might be, death is the inevitable end of a birth. We've experienced birth already. We don't remember being physically born because we didn't have a language, we hadn’t developed memory with language to remember what it was like to be born. But we were conscious.

We acquire the cultural, even the religious attitudes about death, that’s social conditioning. Death itself is a rather frightening word for many people. It’s not considered polite to talk about death at social events. Even I find, when somebody dies, to say they're dead seems rather blunt. So we use the words ‘passing away’ or something less startling than ‘they're dead’. That seems so heartless, so final. But it is true, what is born dies.

So a mental enema is a cleansing. It's cleansing consciousness, allowing what you’ve repressed and feared to come into consciousness rather than just try to slam the door every time fear, doubt, anxiety, and worry arise. We get caught in that and spend our lives worrying about anything that we can worry about because it's become one of our thinking habits. The future always has the possibility to worry about something. The future is one big worry right now, isn't it? Who knows what's going to happen with pandemics, climate change, or universal problems like the universe we see and experience through the senses? We know we're all going to get old. And getting old means the physical form weakens; the senses fade and it's like this. But in awareness, the Buddho, the witness doesn't get old, isn't afraid, doesn't worry about anything, is not guilt-ridden, forgetful or blaming or feeling victimized. These are all mental constructions that we tend to hold in us. When they enter the door of consciousness we develop habits of resistance, of repression.

In bhāvanā, or meditation, the fearlessness of the attitude of Buddho, of witnessing the way it is, is not a witness that is afraid. It's aware of fear. So, what is Buddho; what is the witness position? We can call it conscious awareness, mindfulness, pure consciousness or whatever. The word doesn't matter as long as you understand what it really means, that just to be aware of this present moment is like this. Now that sounds very simple in words, but the conditioning process is complicated. Sometimes we have to deal with just witnessing loneliness, boredom, and conditions that we don't want. We don't want to feel alone or lonely or left out. We don't want to feel bored with life. These are created through the idea that life should be just one interesting experience after another. But no matter how many interesting experiences you've had in your life, life is quite boring really. That's why people go to horror shows, because they're bored. Then they feel excited, frightened, horrified, and that's a state they can feel alive with. But boredom, what do you do with it? How do you cope with boredom? How can you get rid of it? Of course, the usual way is to distract yourself with something interesting. Saṁsāra vaṭṭa, the worldly life that we identify with, is an endless seeking of distractions, because otherwise just being consciously aware like this seems like boredom to the thinking mind.

With the thinking mind, you can excite yourself with thoughts. It’s interesting to analyze yourself, or considering your astrological sign you become more interesting as a person because you're born under a certain sign, and the stars and the sun and the moon were all in alignment, and this creates a sense of self-interest. So astrology can be very interesting. Or self-analysis: Why do I fear? Why do I suffer? Who's to blame for it? That can be very interesting because we didn't all come from happy home lives where our parents were absolutely perfect, or from a life that has been perfectly fair. So who's to blame for my suffering? Who can I blame?

Praise and blame are worldly dhammas, or worldly conditions. Praise is what we're after, what we want. That's exciting and interesting. To be praised, to be acknowledged, to be respected, to be admired is very pleasant. To be disregarded, ignored or condemned is very unpleasant. Modern life is very much aimed at trying to become something – become a famous person, become a rock star, become president of the United States, become somebody that's in the news, win a beauty contest, join the French Foreign Legion or some exciting militia group. They're very exciting, to be fighting for righteousness – to be a fighter for human rights, a fighter for democracy, a fighter for freedom. That gives you a sense of being somebody who’s on the right side of goodness and skilfulness. We can devote ourselves to good causes, to peace movements, to social justice, to democratic principles, to the rule of law, to all the best that we can think of. One considers that's good karma. It might be, but it might also not be very good karma because so many righteous groups are very deluded. If feeling righteousness is what you're aiming for, to make everything right according to what you think or according to what you've been told, this can be a form of tyranny. If I am attached to righteousness and you don't agree with me, then you're wrong. And what does that mean in terms of relationship? Then that's a kind of absolutizing of right and wrong. You become absolutely wrong and I become absolutely right. How can there be any communication between right and wrong except through destroying what's wrong; go on righteous wars to kill off the evil forces or the wrong views of others? So we get caught in endless wars. We get news of terrorism, killing, murdering, collateral damage; bombing people, villages and so forth where a lot of innocent people get killed out of a sense of righteousness, of clinging blindly to being right, or for principles such as standing up for democracy. That's exciting, that's not boring. But when you talk to men and women who have been in military lives and dealt with conflicts and wars, wars are quite boring actually. So much of it is waiting around. But when we go to the cinema and watch war movies it's all very exciting. Excitement is available to us, it's a distraction. But boredom is what we don't want, so we ignore it and seek various ways to find pleasure, happiness, comfort, romance, adventure, and excitement. And that's the world. The world is like that and that's why it's an illusory world. It's not the real world that everyone claims it is. It's the world of different illusions that individuals hold and grasp out of ignorance.

So in this retreat, I encourage you to not to take sides with any issues but to investigate. This investigation, how is it done? It's not an investigation of who is right and who is wrong but it's a witnessing, observing, like a really mindful soldier who's out in the field observing, just open to life, and the sounds and sights that are in the present moment are like this. But the soldier is interested in trying to identify any dangerous enemies lurking in the forest or on the horizon. We're not looking for enemies but just observing, witnessing Dhamma, ultimate reality, supreme reality – whatever words you want to use for it, it's apparent here and now, so it's available every moment. That's where we experience life. It's always here and now – it's like this. Just sitting here in the Temple is like this. Breathing is like this. Sitting is like this. What is it that’s aware of sitting? Are you aware of sitting or is sitting just the natural movement of the body: sitting, standing, walking, lying down? Do you force yourself to breathe? You can take pranayama lessons and develop all kinds of exercises with the breath. We're not asking you to do that. We're encouraging you just to be the awareness of the inhalation; it's like this, and the exhalation is like that. It sounds very boring, but getting through boredom is where wisdom lies. When life becomes boring – when you get old, life is increasingly boring. During a winter retreat, where there's nothing to do but sit, stand, walk, lay down, watch your breath, it’s very boring. Then we think of all kinds of things we should do to get rid of the boredom. But boredom is a mental state. It's not ultimate reality. What is ultimate reality? What is supreme reality, here and now, is conscious awareness. And that's where boredom ceases, where loneliness ceases, where the ego collapses, disappears; where the social conditioning, conventional attachments, disappear. You're not resisting or denying them, but they naturally cease. They’re mental states that arise and cease. They're very ephemeral and have no substance.

So it's up to you as individuals. What I've said this afternoon is an encouragement because one thing I can do is encourage you. The Buddha’s teachings are very skilful directions on how to end suffering. The First Noble Truth is about suffering, to be understood. The Third Noble Truth is the end of suffering. The ‘end of suffering’, what does that mean, that you don't get old, you don't get sick anymore, you don't feel grief when your beloved mother passes away or when your favourite cat dies? It means you're aware of grief, of old age, and you're not attaching to it. It doesn't make you cold-hearted and indifferent to life, but it allows empathy to arise in social situations. You don't become a totally unemotional zombie. Then you feel the wisdom of the brahma vihāras. That’s what's left when you’ve let go of everything – mettā, karuṇā, muditā and upekkhā. That’s how we relate to the deluded world, the illusory world that we're experiencing through the forms that we no longer identify with. So I offer this as a reflection.

Ajahn Sumedho

The Buddha pointed to everything that is not self

 Introduction to Meditation     

  The important thing in meditation is attitude, rather than technique or tradition. The right attitude is most important. Even if you have the best teacher with the best tradition and the best methods, if your attitude isn’t right, it won’t work.

Many people meditate with an attitude of gaining, attaining, or achieving. It’s not surprising, because our worldly attitude is based on achievement. We are conditioned by our education and society to see life as something we must use in order to attain or become something. On a worldly level, this is the way it is. We have to go to school in order to learn to read and write. We have to do all kinds of things in order to become something or to attain something, but enlightenment (   nibbā na    ) is not something that we ever attain or achieve. This is a difficult thing to comprehend with the intellect, because the intellect is conditioned to think in terms of gaining.

     Practicing without Gain     

The words “Dhamma” and “nibbāna ” are untranslatable because they cannot be explained conceptually: they are realizations rather than things. The best we can do in English is to use a term like “ultimate reality.” Dhamma and  nibbāna are what we realize rather than something we attain or achieve.

When we are meditating, our intention is to incline toward  nibbāna  rather than toward attaining a higher state of consciousness. There are various meditation techniques in which we can achieve higher levels of consciousness, but for  nibbāna there are no stages, there are no levels, there’s no attainment. There’s no development or progress because it’s a realization rather than an attainment.

The problem human beings have with meditation is their worldly mind. The worldly mind is always looking for something. Even if one meditates for years, there’s still a great desire in the mind to find out “Who am I? What am I? What is the purpose of my life?” But the Buddha was not trying to tell us the purpose of life. Instead, he tried to give us guidance to full realization. Therefore, in his basic teaching of the Four Noble Truths, he pointed to everything that is not self, rather than make any statement about what we are or what our true nature is. Even if he had told us exactly what we are, we still wouldn’t really know until we had meditated and found out for ourselves.

     Everything That Is Not Self     

The Buddha pointed to everything that is not self. In Pali, this “everything” is referred to as the five khandhas, translated as the five heaps, or the five aggregates. These are listed as: physical form, feeling, perception, volition (or mental formations), and sense consciousness. These are what we are not—and this “not being anything” is what we mean by anattā, or non-self. Everything that you can perceive and conceive, know through the senses, or think with the mind—everything mental and physical that has a beginning and an end, that arises and passes away—is included in the five heaps. The five aggregates include the whole universe that we perceive and conceive through our senses.

The five aggregates include our bodies. These human bodies are products of the earth, and their nature is to rely on all the things that the earth produces. We have to eat what comes from the earth, and when these bodies die, the elements of earth, water, fire, and air return to the earth again. Seeing our bodies as part of a larger process is a way of recognizing   anattā, a way of seeing that these bodies are not self.

In conventional reality, of course, the body is very much our “self.” When I talk about myself, I am talking about this body; I am not talking about anything else. But when we investigate and reflect, we begin to comprehend the truth of   anattā    as an actual experience. We are no longer deluded into thinking that we actually are our body, feelings, perceptions, volition, and sense consciousness. We know what is not ourself, fully and completely, without any doubt remaining. This is complete enlightenment, and this is what our meditation is about.

     The Conditioned and the Unconditioned     

The teaching of the Buddha is a very simple teaching, because it comprehends things in terms of the conditioned and the unconditioned. Conditioned phenomena are those which arise and pass away. They include everything that we perceive and know through our senses, through the body, feelings, thoughts, and memories. They are conditions; they begin and they end. The Pali term for the conditioned is sankhāra. Sankhāra includes all that arises and passes away, whether it is mental or physical. We are not quibbling about whether it is out there or in here, whether something arises and passes away in an instant or in an aeon. It does not make any difference as far as this way of meditating goes, because the conditioned includes all time-bound things.

The unconditioned is something that most people never realize because they are mesmerized by conditioned phenomena. To realize the unconditioned we have to let go of our constant attachment to conditioned phenomena.

The unconditioned is like the space in a room. When you come into a room, do you notice the space, or is your attention drawn to the objects in the room? You see the walls, the windows, the people, the furniture, the colors, and the decorations. But the space in the room is not noticeable, even though it is there all the time. And when we’re busy watching all the people and the objects in the room, we don’t notice the space at all. It is only when we let go of thinking, talking, considering, and imagining, that we become aware and we notice the space in the room. When we attend to it, we see that space is peaceful and boundless. Even the walls of the room do not limit space.

It’s the same with the mind. The mind is unlimited and has no boundaries; it can contain everything. Yet we bind ourselves to the limited conditions of the mind—our ideas, views, and opinions. There is room enough in space for every theory, opinion, and view; they all arise and pass away, and there is no permanent condition. So there is room enough for everybody and everything, for every religion, every political view, every thought, every type of human being. And yet, humanity always wants to control and limit and say: “Only these we allow, and those do not have any right to be here.” Trying to possess and hold on, we bind ourselves to conditions, which always take us to death and despair.

Whatever we hope and expect will cause us to feel disillusionment and despair, if we attach to it. This is because whatever we attach to arises and has to pass away. There is nothing that arises which keeps on arising; it can only arise for so long, and then it passes away. So when you bind yourself to any condition that is arising, it can only take you along with it as it passes away. When you attach to anything that is arising, such as your own physical body or any condition in nature, it will take you to death. And so death is the end of that which was born, and despair is the other side of hope and expectation.

As soon as anything becomes unpleasant or unsatisfactory, we tend to jump into some other condition, into something that is arising. This makes life a constant search for pleasure, romance, and adventure. People are always running after that which is interesting or fascinating and running away from the opposite. We run from boredom, despair, old age, sickness, and death because these are conditions that we do not want to be with. We want to get away from them, forget them, not notice them.

But in meditation, the attitude is to be infinitely patient with conditions, even when they become unpleasant or boring. If we’re always running off to find something more interesting, we just keep going round in circles. This is called the cycle of saṁsāra   .

     Meditating on the Ordinary     

When we notice that the conditions of body and mind are just the way conditions are, it’s a simple recognition. It’s not an analysis, and it’s not anything special. It’s just a bare recognition, a direct knowing that whatever arises passes away. Knowing in this way demands a certain amount of patience; otherwise, as soon as any fear, anger, or unpleasantness arises, we will run away from it. So meditation is also the ability to endure, and bear with, the unpleasant. We don’t seek it out; we are not ascetics looking for painful things to endure so that we can prove ourselves. We’re simply recognizing the way it is right now.

The Buddha established his meditation on that which is ordinary, rather than on that which is extraordinary. For example, one technique of Buddhist meditation is mindfulness of the breath (P. ānāpānasati), which is meditation through attention to normal breathing. There are meditations on sitting, standing, walking, and lying down, which are also very ordinary—even boring. With meditation on these ordinary conditions, what is required is an attitude of infinite patience; we make all the time in the world to be with one inhalation and one exhalation. There’s nothing else to do except to be with what is—with the body sitting down, the body standing up, the body walking, the body lying down.

That’s a mental state very different from the one we are accustomed to, isn’t it? When we are sitting down, we normally do not notice sitting. We might sit and collapse out of exhaustion, or we might sit and read, sit and smoke, sit and eat, or sit and talk. We’re always doing something while we’re sitting. And it’s much the same with the other postures. When we lie down, we fall asleep heedlessly. We walk heedlessly, stand heedlessly, and sit heedlessly, so we never really see what is now and what is immediate. We are always thinking about what we have to do now in order to get what we want in the future, and that is endless. Even when you get what you want in the future, you find it only satisfies you temporarily, and then you start thinking of something else you have to have.

     Looking at the Movement of Desire     

I remember, when I was a little boy I saw a toy, and I told my mother, “If you buy me that toy, I promise I will never ask for anything ever again.” I really believed that full satisfaction could be gained from owning that toy! So she went and bought the toy and gave it to me. I think I played with it a little while and set it aside, and then I found something else that I wanted. But I remember how thoroughly convinced I was that, if she would give me that one thing, my desires would be satisfied forever—and I remember that I was not satisfied. Even at that young age, this realization made an impression because I can still remember the lesson: even getting what I wanted was disappointing because then I had to start looking for something else.

In meditation, we are looking at the movement of desire, but we are not passing judgment against desire. Some people think that Buddhists are all against desire, but the Buddha’s teaching is not an annihilationist teaching—it is an awakening. Desire is not something that we reject, or try to annihilate. We reflect on it and understand that it is a condition in nature.

There are desires that are good and desires that are bad. Desires to kill, hurt others, and steal are considered bad desires; all of us have bad desires at times. And then, there are good desires that make us want to help, be kind, or develop into good and wise beings. Whenever we recognize desire—whether it is good or bad—we are using wisdom. Only wisdom can see desire; desire cannot see wisdom. So when you are trying to find wisdom, just know desire. Watching the movement of desire lets us see its nature as a changing condition. And we see that it is not self.

     Buddha-Wisdom     

Buddha-wisdom is something that we use in our meditation, not something we attain. It’s a humbling kind of wisdom; it’s not fantastic. It’s the simple wisdom of knowing that whatever arises passes away and is not self. It is knowing that the desires going through our minds are just that—they are desires, and they are not us. Wisdom is living as men, women, monks, nuns, Buddhists, Christians, or whatever, using the conventional realities of gender, role, class, and so forth, but understanding those realities as mere conventions. Wisdom lets us see that they are not ultimate truth, so that they do not delude us.

Buddha-wisdom is that which knows the conditioned as the conditioned and the unconditioned as the unconditioned. It’s as simple as that. You just have to know two things: the conditioned and the unconditioned. When you are meditating, don’t try to attain, but just open up to your intention for meditating. When you suddenly awaken to the fact that you are trying to get something out of it, that is a moment of enlightenment. With an open mind, you begin to see what is really happening. But if you sit for a year trying to become and attain, you will feel terribly disappointed at the end of it. You will have lost everything because, if you don’t have the right attitude, you will not have the wisdom to learn from failure.

In our meditation, we learn from both successes and failures. People fail all the time. Mindfulness of the breath is one of the most frustrating meditation practices ever conceived because, if you try to get something out of it, it is not a very giving practice. You have to be patient. You have to learn from your successes and from your failures, until you no longer really care whether your experience is pleasant or unpleasant. Then both conditions can take you to enlightenment, to nibbāna.

Ajahn Sumedho from

The Mind and the Way

Turning Towards Emptiness

 

By reflecting, you bring into consciousness the state of conditions as they happen to be now. Having been born, we’re now this age, feeling this way, at this time and in this place. That’s the way it is. That cannot be changed by us. It’s just the inevitability of birth that this is the way it is now. And when you realize this, you have a perspective on the way it is – rather than a reaction to the way it is. If you don’t reflect, you just react to the way it is.

If you’re feeling happy, you get high, ‘I want to be a monk for the rest of my life and devote myself to the Dhamma. Dhamma is the way for me, the only way, the true way’; and you go out and bore people with a harangue on the importance of Buddhism in the world because you’re high and you feel positive and confident. Even that feeling of being inspired and confident and full of faith and devotion and all those kinds of things – that’s the way it is. One can feel a lot of faith, confidence in what one is doing. Or one can feel the opposite: one loses faith, one feels that this is a waste of time: ‘I’ve wasted my life. It’s of no value, I haven’t got anywhere. It hasn’t done anything for me. I don’t believe in it anymore, I’m fed up with it.’ Or one can feel indifference: ‘It’s all right, don’t know what else to do. Better than working in a factory.’ Whichever way you’re feeling now, either extreme or just indifference, that’s the way it is.

So just notice when you’re feeling positive and tremendously energetic, or when there’s a lack of energy and you’re too critical. When you’re depressed, tired or not feeling very well, it’s hard to arouse the inspired feeling. In those circumstances you tend to pick up what’s wrong with things very quickly. The way somebody walks across a room can really irritate you. Somebody blows their nose too hard, and oh, that’s disgusting! But when you are feeling full of inspiration and devotion, you don’t care about the faults of this or that, you’re caught up in this feeling of devotion and faith. These perceptions are to be reflected on as the way it is now. It has to be this way because it can’t be any other way at this moment. We feel like this, we feel tired or invigorated or whatever – this is the way it is. These are the results of having been born and living our lives, and being subject to changing conditions of sensuality.

Then note, really note what you add to the existing conditions. In all-night sittings you may feel sleepy or tired; note what you add to that feeling. Note the feeling itself but maintain a posture, rather than just react to feeling tired from an attempt to annihilate the feeling by following it and sinking into lethargy. When you’re convinced that you’re so tired there’s really nothing you can do about it, and even pulling your body straight is something that seems totally impossible, hold it up straight for a length of time. Observe, and learn how much energy it takes to hold a body up.

How much energy does it take to stop the thinking process? Have you ever noticed that? ‘Just can’t stop thinking’ – the mind goes on and on. ‘Can’t stop, what can I do? I don’t know how to stop thinking – it keeps going. I can’t stop it ...’ I know about this because I’ve always had a problem with a mind that just seemed to be endlessly thinking about something. And the desire to stop thinking and the effort to get rid of it create the conditions for more thinking. It takes effort to do this, not just thinking about doing it. I remember an Australian Abhidhamma fanatic once came to Wat Pah Pong. This man had a mission – when Westerners get into Abhidhamma they become like born-again Christians – but he didn’t know how to meditate; he didn’t believe that meditation worked, and he figured it all out with his Abhidhamma concepts. He felt that you couldn’t stop thinking. He said: ‘You’re always thinking and you can’t stop thinking.’ I said: ‘But you can stop thinking’, and he said: ‘No, you can’t’; and I said, ‘I’ve just stopped thinking’, and he said: ‘No, you haven’t!’ It was pointless to go on talking to someone like that. You have to be alert to know when you are not thinking, so you take an actual thought like ‘I can’t stop thinking’, and you deliberately think that. This is what I did, because I was a habitual, obsessive thinker.

So if you are averse to thinking, instead of trying to stop, go to the other extreme and deliberately think something; and watch yourself deliberately thinking, so that it’s not just a wandering thought process in which your mind goes round and round in circles. Use your wisdom faculty: deliberately think something, some thought that is completely neutral and uninteresting, like ‘I am a human being.’ Deliberately think it, but observe the space before you’re thinking, and then deliberately say: ‘I am a human being.’ Then note the end of the thought, the moment when you stop thinking. Pay attention to the moments before and after the thought, rather than to the thought itself; just hold attention on where there is no thought. Investigate the space around the thought, the space where the thought comes and goes, rather than thinking. Then you’ll be aware of an empty mind, where there’s just awareness but no thought. That may last for just a second, because you start grasping, so you just have to keep being more aware by thinking something again. With practice you can use even very unpleasant thoughts. For example, you might have strong emotional feelings of, ‘I’m no good, I’m worthless’, and they can be an obsession. In some people’s minds they can become a background to their lives. So you try thinking: ‘I shouldn’t think that. Venerable Sumedho says I’m good. But I know I’m no good.’ However, if you take that obsession and use it as a conscious thought: ‘I am no good’, you start seeing the space around it, and it no longer sounds so absolute. When it becomes obsessive it sounds absolute, infallible; the honest truth, the real truth: ‘This is what I really am, I’m no good.’ But when you take it out of the context of obsession and think it deliberately, intentionally, you see it objectively.

That sense of ‘me’ and ‘mine’ is just a habit of the mind; it’s not the truth. If you really take the ‘I/I am’ and look at it objectively, the feeling created by that ‘I am’ and ‘I am this way’ or ‘I should be/should not be’ is very different from when you’re just reacting.

In contemplating the Four Noble Truths you have the truth of suffering, its arising, its cessation and then the Path. You can’t know the Path and the way out of suffering until you are aware of where everything ceases – in the mind itself. The mind is still vital and alert even when there is no thought in it; but if you don’t notice that, you believe you are always thinking. That’s the way it seems. You only conceive of yourself when you’re thinking, because you’re identified with memory and the sense of ‘I am’ or ‘I am not.’ That ‘yourself’ is very much a conditioned, programmed perception in the mind. As long as you believe in that perception and never question it, you will always believe that you are an obsessive thinker, and you shouldn’t be this way or shouldn’t feel that way and you shouldn’t worry – but you do, and you’re a hopeless case; and so it goes on from one thing to another.

So ‘I am’ is just a perception, really – it arises in the mind and it ceases in the mind. When it ceases, note that cessation of thought. Make that cessation, that empty mind, a ‘sign’ rather than just creating more things in the emptiness. You can get refined states of consciousness by fixing on refined objects, as in samatha meditation practices that emphasize calming the mind – but with the contemplation of the Noble Truths you’re using the wisdom faculty to note where everything ceases. And yet when the mind is empty, the senses are still all right. It’s not like being in a trance, totally oblivious to everything; your mind is open, empty – or you might call it whole, complete, bright. Then you can take anything, like a fearful thought – you can take it, deliberately think it and see it as just another condition of the mind rather than a psychological problem. It arises, it ceases; there’s nothing in it, nothing in any thought. It’s just a movement in the mind and therefore it’s not a person. You make it personal by attaching to it, believing it: ‘And I’m such a hopeless case. I know I can never be enlightened after all the things I’ve done; the stupid things. And I’m so selfish and I’ve made so many mistakes. I know there’s no hope for me.’ All that arises and ceases in the mind!

Believing is grasping, isn’t it? – ‘I know what I am and I know I’m no good.’ You believe that, and that’s what grasping is. You create that belief, so the mind goes on in that way. And you can find all kinds of proof that you’re no good – you can even start getting paranoid: ‘Everybody knows that I’m no good, too. Yesterday Ven. Sucitto walked by and I just knew that he knows I’m no good. Then this morning I came into the hall and Sister Rocana looked at me a little bit strangely – she knows!’ Through belief you can see and interpret everything that people do in a personal way, as if they’ve all been condemning and judging you. That’s paranoia.

Even the most beautiful thoughts and aspirations, as well as the most evil and nasty ones, arise and cease in the mind. Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not saying good and evil thoughts are the same. They have the same characteristic of arising and ceasing, that’s all. In other respects they’re different. Good thoughts are good thoughts, evil thoughts are evil thoughts. So I’m not saying it’s all right to think evil thoughts, but I am pointing beyond the quality of the thought: love and hate arise and cease in the mind. In this perspective you’re going to the reflective mind, where most people are totally unaware. People are generally only aware of themselves as a personality, an emotion or a thought – in other words, as a condition.

For practice, don’t worry about the qualities that go through the mind, how wonderful, interesting, beautiful, ugly, nasty or neutral they might be. We’re not investigating qualities or denying the quality of any thought, but just noting the way it is. Then you leave it alone so that it ceases. You create a thought, deliberately put it into the mind and let it go. To let go doesn’t mean you push it away: you leave the thought alone, though you’re aware of it during the whole time: the moment before the thought, the interstices and the ending.

We don’t notice the space around thought very much. It is just like the space in this room, I have to call your attention to it. What does it take to be aware of the space in this room? You have to be alert. With the objects in the room you don’t have to be alert, you can just be attracted or repelled: ‘I don’t like that, I like this.’ You can just react to the quality of beauty and ugliness, whether it pleases or displeases you. That’s our habit – our life tends to be reaction to pleasure and pain, beauty and ugliness. We see beauty and we say, ‘Oh, look at that! Isn’t it absolutely fantastic?’ or we think ‘Oh, disgusting!’ But the beautiful objects and the ugly ones are all in space, and to notice space you withdraw your attention from the beautiful and ugly objects. Of course they’re still there; you needn’t throw them out, you don’t have to tear down the building so that we can have a space here. But if you don’t concentrate on what’s in that room with love or hate, if you don’t make anything out of it, your attention withdraws from the objects and you notice the space. So we have a perspective on space in a room like this. You can reflect on that. Anyone can come and go in this space. The most beautiful, the most ugly, saint and sinner, can come and go in this space, and the space is never harmed, ruined or destroyed by the objects that come and go in it. The mind works on the same principle. But if you’re not used to seeing the spaciousness of your mind, you are not aware of the space that the mind really is. So you’re unaware of the emptiness of the mind, because you’re always attached to an idea or an opinion or mood.

With insight meditation you’re reflecting on the five khandhas – on the body, rūpa; feelings, vedanā; perception, saññā ; mental formations, saṅkhārā; and sense-consciousness, viññāṇa. We may want to get rid of them, but that is another condition, another saṅkhāra that we create. So we investigate them until they no longer delude us, and allow them to cease in the empty mind. When you think, ‘My body’s still here – how does it cease? It’s still here, isn’t it?’ Consider that the body will live its lifespan; it has been born, and it will disappear when its kammic force ends. What happened to Napoleon? What happened to the Queen of Sheba? And Confucius and Lao Tzu, and Marie Antoinette, Beethoven and Bach? They’re memories in our minds; they’re just perceptions in people’s minds now. But that’s all they ever were anyway, even when their bodies were alive. ‘Venerable Sumedho’ is a perception in the mind – in my mind it’s a perception, in your mind it’s a perception. Right now the perception of it is: ‘Venerable Sumedho is alive and kicking.’ When the body dies, the perception changes to: ‘Venerable Sumedho is dead.’ That’s all. The perception of death is there along with the name ‘Sumedho’, where now it is alive and kicking.

So as you experience it, the body is a perception that arises and ceases in the empty mind. With this realization of the empty mind, you can develop the Eightfold Path very skilfully. The Eightfold Path is based on right understanding, and that is the understanding of cessation.

Ajahn Sumedho 

Trust in the Dhamma

I feel a tremendous trust now. I feel confidence in what we call the Dhamma—in the Way Things Are—because it’s no longer important what happens to me, to this creature here. It’s no longer a worry. Whatever happens—the best, the worst, praise, blame, success, failure, leukemia, or robust good health till the age of ninety-five and a peaceful death as one sits down in meditation—feel confident that it’s all right the way it is. See it as Dhamma, rather than interpreting it and giving it a personal quality.

In Buddhism, we often talk about courage and fearlessness. Whenever we take the personal view, we are frightened, and we do cowardly things. We think, “I am going to suffer. What I love is going to be taken away from me. I’ll lose my health, be an invalid, feel pain. Nobody will love me, and I’ll be left alone. Life will be horrible. I’ll be lost, alone, unloved, in pain, old and sick, poor me!” That’s a lot to be frightened of, isn’t it? But when these fears are seen as Dhamma, then even the worst is bearable. We realize that this is not a permanent person or position that we are involved in. This is a transition from birth to death within the human form. And what we have, as human beings, is the opportunity to awaken between birth and death.

In the awakened mind, there is no fear. There is knowing, there is clarity, and it’s not personal. It’s not mine; it’s not yours. When all things cease, what remains is clarity, intelligence, brightness. We can call that “the true subject.” When people ask, “But what is my true nature?” I answer, “It’s peaceful, intelligent, calm, and bright. It’s deathlessness—but don’t take that personally.”

Ajahn Sumedho 

Transcending the conditions

We have a common bond of understanding in our spiritual aspiration; those who are actually realizing that truth and getting beyond the conventions that define and describe the conventional world find the religious experience as being very much the same thing. It’s not like the Buddhist ultimate truth is something different from the others. We are pointing to an ultimate reality that is with us all the time; it’s not cultural, it’s not Buddhist or Christian, it’s not Asian or European, it’s not male or female. We’re transcending this conditioned realm – not rejecting it, but seeing through it to that ultimate truth which, in Buddhist terms, we call the amatadhamma (deathless Dhamma).

The gates to the Deathless are open, and the deathless reality is realized through paying attention to life. We realize it; we can actually know the deathless Dhamma directly, through awakening our mind and paying attention to whatever is happening within us or outside us. So we are learning to look at ourselves in a different way rather than the highly personal way of ‘I’m this person, I’m this nationality, I’m this class, I’m this gender, I have achieved or not achieved, I have attained or not attained’, or ‘I’m a good person or a bad one’, or good-looking or ugly or whatever. We can no longer use these terms to describe experience in this highly personal way because awareness is bringing us to a universal reality that’s transcending the conditions, the conventions.

Ajahn Sumedho

Shangri-La

You can try looking for a peaceful place and, maybe, you find your Shangri-La and live happily ever after … but it’s more likely you’ll discover the American Air Force has low-flying jet practice over Shangri-La or the people in Shangri-La are so high-minded they never clean the toilets! There’s always a snake in the garden, or a worm in the apple; there’s always going to be something un-peaceful about the conditioned realm.

It’s the same with the idea of finding Prince Charming or Cinderella: ‘Once I meet the right person, then I will live happily ever after.’ That’s an illusion too. So with no place to go, nobody to save you and fulfil you, and nothing you can do about it, you could end up creating a world all of your own – living in a kind of deranged mental state. It isn’t through any objective realm, through thought, perception or through the material realm that you’ll find the way out of suffering, but in transcending it. Transcendence doesn’t mean escaping or rejecting suffering, but moving to that still centre of being where there’s perspective and receptivity to the conditioned realm. There’s no longer any identification with the objective conditioned realm.

Ajahn Sumedho