The Path to Nibbana

by David C Johnson

  There is no question about it. You’re on these roller coasters; emotional roller coasters, up and down, up and down, up and down. When you start forgiving more, those high high’s, and low low’s start to turn into little waves. You still have some. But you don’t get caught for as long. You just stop and say, “This just isn’t important enough to get upset about.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE –Success!

  After you forgive that person, you stay with them; you stay with that person that’s come up into your mind until you feel like, “Enough! I don’t have to do this anymore. I really have forgiven you.” At that point, with your mind’s eye, you look them straight in the eye, and you stop verbalizing, and you hear them say back to you: “I forgive you too.”

  Wow! Now this is different, isn’t it? It’s kind of remarkable. You have this feeling of being forgiven as well as you forgiving them! You’ve forgiven yourself for making mistakes, for not understanding. You’ve forgiven that other person for making mistakes, for not understanding, or causing pain, whatever you want using the statement that really makes it true for you. And, now, you hear them say “I forgive you.”

  There is a real sense of relief. Wow! What happens in your mind now is that JOY comes up in your mind. You feel light. You feel really happy. Happier than you ever felt before. You didn’t realize you were carrying these big bundles of rocks on your shoulders, holding you down, did you? And now, you have put them down. When you forgive, the heaviness of those hard feelings and “rocks” disappear. You feel light. “Oh My! This REALLY is great stuff!”

  It takes a lot of work, but, it’s worth it. It’s not easy. Why isn’t it easy? Because of the amount of attachment we have when we begin. You keep doing the meditation, and when you get done with one person, you go back to yourself. You repeat: “I forgive myself for making mistakes. I forgive myself for not understanding.” You stay with yourself until somebody else comes up into your mind. You keep on doing that until your mind says, “OK. I’ve done it. Everything is good. There’s nobody else. Enough!”

  At this time, you can switch back to your Mindfulness of Loving-Kindness meditation and make it your primary formal practice. Now you can understand why Mindfulness of Forgiveness Meditation is definitely part of Loving-Kindness. How can you ever practice Loving-Kindness if you have hatred? You can’t. This practice releases the Hatred.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN – Not Easy

  This practice has NO simple, easy, fast-fix here! You can’t just buy the solution this time at the Mall either. You have to patiently continue this practice all the time until you release the unwholesome mind-states which are your old habitual tendencies of mind.

  Depending on how attached you are to the idea that a person wronged you, or the idea of how badly you screwed up, this leads you into “I can never forgive myself.” Until you finally go through this process of forgiveness, you will not be free of this burden.

  You WILL know when you have gone entirely through the Mindfulness of Forgiveness Meditation because then you will be free and you will see clearly this is how Forgiveness really works. Are you done? You don’t have to have anybody to tell you that this worked. You’ll know!

  The daily continuous work of this practice is most important. When you are walking from one place to another, I don’t care what you are doing. Any kind of distraction that comes up forgive it. Smile. If a person comes up to you and they start talking, and you don’t want to talk, FORGIVE THEM. They don’t understand. They don’t understand what you are doing. It’s ok that they don’t understand. It’s ok that they don’t know where you are or what you are doing. They can judge you, they can condemn you, they can cause all kinds of distractions, and that’s fine. They can do that. BUT, as for you, you can forgive them for it.

  As you forgive them, you are letting go of the attachment to the way ‘I’ think things are supposed to be. Not understanding can be a really big thing. Because we don’t understand so much; we have our own opinions and ideas of the way things are supposed to work; that can be a problem. We get caught up by assumption. That’s it, isn’t it?

  What happens when things don’t match your idea of the way things are supposed to work? What then? You may find yourself fighting with REALITY which is the truth, the Dhamma of the present moment! You’re not accepting the reality that’s right there in front of you. You begin judging and condemning, and, most often, blaming somebody else for, disturbing you.

  Well, I’m sorry... They’re not disturbing your practice. THEY ARE PART OF THE PRACTICE! There’s no such thing as something else, or someone else, disturbing MY PRACTICE. It’s only me fighting with what is real, the REALITY, the Dhamma of the present moment, not liking this or that, and next, I am blaming somebody else OR something else for the cause of that…

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN – Forgive it!

  What about sounds disturbing us while we practice? Sometimes, in a retreat, if you are concentrating too hard you can observe what can happen. You could get SO upset if there is even one squeak of a door or someone is walking by too heavily near you or breathing too loudly. You might jump up thinking “OH! You disturbed my practice!”

  Do you begin to see how ridiculous this actually is? What is happening here is that the present moment produced a noise, and there was noise, and then, mind came up and said, “I don’t like this. That’s not supposed to be there.” ”I want to complain to somebody, and make them stop so MY mind can be peaceful!” What is actually happening is concentration is out of balance with mindfulness. Concentration is too strong, and mindfulness is too weak. Hahaha! How crazy is that?

  If you can’t accept what’s happening in the present moment, with a balanced mind, there will be suffering. OK! So! There’s a noise. “There’s somebody talking!” So? It doesn’t matter just as long as you have mindfulness and equanimity in your mind. When balance is in your mind, if there is a noise, that’s just fine. And? You can do your forgiveness meditation!

  While I was in Asia on a three-month retreat. There was a water well pump that was drilling for water right outside of the meditation hall. Three months of an old clanky motor running from 8 o’clock in the morning until 6 o’clock at night. This can happen, you know? One continuous noise! It was really loud and really annoying, but, it was just sound. That’s all it was. I realized that it was not “MY” sound. “‘My” dislike of that sound wasn’t going to change that sound. “My” criticizing of the person that started the motor wasn’t going to make that sound any different.

  Do you see where all the attachments are in this example? The exercise here is accepting the fact that sound is here, and it’s ok for sound to be here. It has to be ok, because, that’s what’s in the present moment. That’s the truth [Dhamma]. Accepting the present moment is accepting the Dhamma just as it is.

  Whenever there is a disturbance, forgive the disturbance continually in your mind. FORGIVE. Smile. Forgive yourself for not understanding. That is how we work with forgiveness in daily life. I forgive myself for wanting things to be more perfect than they are. I forgive myself for making mistakes. I forgive myself for being angry, and, disliking this or that. Now we see that the forgiveness is not just one statement, it can be many. We take each of these statements into the practice and use them one by one.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN – No Mantras

  While you’re doing your sitting practice, once again, you just want to take one statement of forgiveness at a time. Stay with just one. Remember that this is not a mantra. You don’t surface say this and think about something else either. It has to be sincere. “I really do forgive myself for making mistakes or for not understanding or whatever.” It’s important to be sincere when you do this.

  The more you can continually forgive, with your daily activities, with your sitting, with your walking meditation, whatever you happen to be doing; you need to realize that this is what meditation is really about.

  Meditation is not about gaining some super-human state of mind. It’s not just about bliss. It is
more productive than that. It’s about learning how you cause your own suffering and how to let go of that suffering. The deeper super-human states of meditation will come up by themselves when we clear our minds and simply allow this to happen. You don’t have to personally do anything.

  The more you clear yourself, the more you clear your mind of judgments, opinions, concepts, ideas, and the more you accept what’s happening in the present moment, the more joyful life becomes. The easier life becomes.

  What’s that you are saying now? “Well, I have this habit of always analyzing and thinking.” OK, let it go. “BUT I have been doing this my whole life.” So? Hey! Forgive yourself for not understanding. Forgive yourself for analyzing.

  There can be a strong attachment to wanting to analyze. That’s the Western disease. “I want to know how everything works.” You don’t learn how things work by thinking about them. You let go and relax to see how things work when you forgive, and, you let go and relax to develop space in your mind to observe how they work.

  The truth is that, in meditation, thinking mind, analyzing mind is incredibly slow. The aware mind is incredibly fast. It’s extraordinary! You just can’t get there with a lot of words in the way. You can’t have opinions in the way. They will block you. They will stop you from seeing the way things truly are.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN – Blame Game

  Your Forgiveness Meditation is more than just about old attachments like, “Well, when I was five years old, Little Johnny, he beat me up, and I’ve hated him ever since then.” See how this is about you and uncovering this attachment and how you hold onto it, and how you cause yourself pain because of that attachment?

  Most especially these days, people are really big on blaming everybody but themselves for their pain, and, the question here should be, is that working with reality or not? It’s easy to say, “YOU caused me pain. I don’t like you.” But, did someone else cause you pain? Or did I just say something and you had another kind of an opinion, and, judged and condemned whatever I said, and then, your aversion came up, and the dislike of the whole situation, and now, you’re off to the races, and you’re a thousand miles away.

  You are causing yourself pain, and you’re running into your thinking, “But, I’m only thinking and analyzing.” Ha ha ha ha ha! You’re attached! You think, “This attachment won’t hurt me so much if I keep distracted. I can keep MY opinions, and my ideas about the way things are supposed to be, and then, I don’t have to change!” But, you’re fooling yourself. Change is the only way to free mind. Meditation is about positive change.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN – Be Happy!

  In summary, BUDDHISM is about realizing that you need to have a balanced and mindful mind, that doesn’t have high emotions in it, that doesn’t’ have attachments in it so that you can see things clearly and discover real happiness and contentment in daily life.

  BUDDHISM is about seeing the way things truly are; gaining knowledge by seeing for yourself how you are the cause of your own pain. It’s about taking personal responsibility and doing the work needed to find this kind of mindfulness, balance, and understanding.

  Mindfulness of Forgiveness Meditation trains us to recognize clearly when suffering arises [First Noble Truth]; to notice how we get personally involved with it and make it bigger which causes more suffering in life [Second Noble Truth]; and to escape this dangerous trap by using the 6R’s and seeing how it disappears [Third Noble Truth]; This meditation opens the way for clear understanding and relief [Fourth Noble Truth].

  The end-result creates the space we need in our mind so that we begin to respond to life instead of re-acting. Using the 6R’s, which fulfills the practice of Right Effort found in the early texts; using it with any meditation you are doing, this is one of the fastest ways for all people to see clearly what is really going on and to reach this kind of destination where there can be happiness and Peace.

  In sutta number 21 of the Majjhima Nikaya, as translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi, within The Middle Length Sayings’ and published by Wisdom Publications, it gives us some excellent advice that I would like to share with you now. It says:

  “There are these five courses of speech that others may use when they address you, their speech may be timely or untimely, true or untrue, gentle or harsh, connected with good or connected with harm, spoken with a mind of loving-kindness or with inner hatred.

  “This is how I should train: My mind shall be unaffected, and I will utter no evil words; I shall abide compassionate for their welfare, with a mind of loving-kindness, without inner hate. I shall abide pervading that person (whoever you talk with) with a mind imbued with loving-kindness (and forgiveness) and starting with him, I shall abide pervading the all-encompassing world with a mind imbued with loving-kindness, abundant, exalted, immeasurable, without hostility and without ill-will”. That is how I should train.

  Please use this Forgiveness Meditation often and train your mind to be happy!

  End Notes-The Path to Nibbāna

  * * *

  [1] Majjhima Nikāya 20 Sec 2. This sutta is one that appears to have text from MN 36. However, in MN 36 it was shown how this advice was rejected by the Buddha.

  [2] Dancing in the Dharma: The Life and Teachings of Ruth Denison, Sandy Boucher, 2006

  [3] Even if the meditator attains a jhāna just once in this lifetime, then they will be reborn into at least that corresponding jhāna realm. The act of attaining a jhāna is so powerful that it temporarily wipes out all evil karmic results except for the five heinous acts: killing either one’s mother or father, killing an Arahant, causing a schism in the order, or wounding a Buddha. One supporting reference is found for this in the Saṃyutta Nikāya. SN 42.8: The Conch Blower” P. 1340 http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn42/sn42.008.than.html

  [4] Ven. Bhante Vimalaraṁsi has combined the twofetters— rūpa and arūpa desires for existence — and then adds sloth and torpor as a fetter as it is defined in the suttas.

  [5]The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, trans. Bhikkhu Bodhi and Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 1995).

  [6]See also our website www.dhammasukha.org for more discussion on this subject.

  [7]Bhante Vimalaraṁsi, Meditation is Life, Life is Meditation (Annapolis: Dhamma Sukha Publishing, 2014).

  [8] Vimalaraṁsi, Breath of Love (Jakarta, Indonesia: Ehipassiko Publishing)

  [9]Vimalaraṁsi, Moving Dhamma, vol. 1 (Annapolis, MO:Dhamma Sukha Publishing, 2012). Vimalaraṁsi, Breath of Love (Jakarta, Indonesia: Ehipassiko Publishing)

  [10] Doug Kraft, Buddha’s Map (Grass Valley, CA: Blue Dolphin Publishing, 2013).

  [11]The Buddha called this process Dependent Origination or Paṭiccasamuppāda.

  [12]For more information on how the Breath Meditation is taught by us, please check our website, www.dhammasukha.org, for a talk on the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta in which we go through a complete explanation.

  [13]Eric Jaffe, “Psychology of Smiling,” Observer 23, no. 10 (University of Minnesota, December 2010), http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2010/december-10/the-psychological-study-of-smiling.html.

  [14]Refer to Majjhima Nikāya, sutta 36:30.

  [15]This Relax step is found in all suttas where the Buddha gives meditation instructions. The Pāli word for tranquilize is passambhaya. See for example the Majjhima Nikāya, suttas 10:5 or 118.

  [16]Majjhima Nikāya, sutta 43:31, shows the progression of radiating into all directions starting with Lovingkindness.

  * * *

  [i] A Guide to Tranquil Wisdom Insight Meditation, Dhamma Sukha Publishing, 2015

  [ii] K. Sri. Dhammananda, The Dhammapada, Introduction pg. XXII, WFB 2010

  [iii] Majjhima Nikāya 26, “The Noble Search”: section 16.

  [iv] Saṃyutta Nikāya, translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi (Somerville, MA): Wisdom Publication, 2000), p. 537.

  [v] Majjhima Nikāya 36, “The Greater Discourse to Saccaka.”

  [vi] htt
p://library.dhammasukha.org/jhanas-or-no.html

  [vii] Practical Insight Meditation and Progress of Insight, Ven. Mahāsi Sayadaw, (Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society (1971).

  [viii]Right Concentration – A Practical Guide to the Jhānas, Leigh Brasington, p.46 Shambala 2015

  [ix] Right Concentration – A Practical Guide to the Jhānas, Leigh Brasington p.54 Shambala 2015

  [x] Majjhima Nikāya 111, Sect 4.0, translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi (Somerville, MA): Wisdom Publication, 2000)

  [xi] Saṃyutta Nikāya, SN 54-46 Bhikkhu Bodhi, Wisdom Publications, p. 1607

  [xii] http://library.dhammasukha.org/brahmavihara-vs-breath.html

  [xiii] http://www.dhammasukha.org/bhikkhu-nanananda.html

  [xiv] http://www.tipitaka.net/tipitaka/dhp/verseload.php?verse=001