by Ajahn Chah
You continue to practice like this as much as possible; you might even reach a point where you are constantly judging and finding fault with everyone you meet. You are constantly reacting with attraction and aversion to the world around you, becoming full of all kinds of uncertainty and continually attaching to views about how to practice. It’s as if you’ve become obsessed with the practice. But don’t worry about this yet—at this point, it’s better to practice too much than too little. Practice a lot and dedicate yourself to looking after body, speech, and mind. You can never really do too much of this.
Once you have a foundation, there will be a strong sense of shame and fear of wrongdoing established in the heart. Whatever the time or place, in public or in private, you will not want to do anything that is harmful to yourself or others. The practice of mindfulness and restraint with body, speech, and mind and the consistent distinguishing between right and wrong is what you hold as the focus. You become concentrated in this way and by unshakably sticking to this way of practice, the mind actually becomes sila, samadhi, and wisdom.
As you continue to develop your practice, these different qualities are perfected together. However, practicing at this level is still not enough to produce the factors of jhana, or “meditative absorption”; the practice is still too coarse. However, the mind is already quite refined—on the refined side of coarse. For an ordinary unenlightened person who hasn’t been looking after the mind or practicing meditation and mindfulness, just this much is already something quite refined. It’s like a poor person, to whom having a few hundred dollars can mean a lot, though for a millionaire it’s almost nothing. A few hundred can be a lot when you’re hard up; in the same way, even though in the early stages of practice you might only be able to let go of the coarser mental afflictions, this can still seem quite profound if you are unenlightened and have never practiced and let go before. At this level, you can feel some satisfaction at being able to practice to the full extent of your ability.
If this is the case, it means that you have entered the correct path. You are traveling along the very first stage, which is something quite difficult to sustain. As you deepen and refine it, sila, samadhi, and wisdom will mature together from the same place, from the same raw material. It’s like the coconut palms. They absorb water from the earth and pull it up through their trunks. By the time the water reaches the coconut itself, it has become clean and sweet, even though it is derived from that plain water in the ground. The palm is nourished by what are essentially the coarse earth and water elements, which it absorbs and purifies, and these are transformed into something far sweeter and purer than before. In the same way, the practice has coarse beginnings, but by refining the mind through meditation and reflection, it becomes increasingly subtle.
As the mind becomes more refined, mindfulness becomes more focused. The practice actually becomes easier as the mind turns more and more inward to focus on itself. You no longer make big mistakes or deviate wildly. When doubts occur in different situations, such as whether acting or speaking in certain ways are right or wrong, you simply halt the proliferation of mental activity and through intensifying your effort turn your attention deeper inside. Samadhi becomes progressively firmer, and wisdom is enhanced so you can see things more clearly and with increasing ease.
The end result is that you can clearly see the mind and its objects without having to make any distinction between mind, body, and speech. You see that the body depends on the mind in order to function. However, the mind itself is constantly subject to different objects contacting and conditioning it. As you continue to turn inward and wisdom matures, eventually you are left contemplating the mind and its objects—which means you start to experience the body as something immaterial. The body’s physicality is experienced as formless objects that come into contact with the mind.
Now, examining the nature of the mind, you can observe that in its natural state it has no preoccupations. It’s like a flag on the end of a pole or like a leaf on a tree. By itself, it remains still; if it flutters, that is because of the wind, an external force. In its natural state, the mind is the same, without attraction or aversion, without ascribing characteristics to things or finding fault with people. It is independent, existing in a state of purity that is clear, radiant, and stainless. In its natural state the mind is peaceful, without happiness or suffering. This is the true state of the mind.
So the purpose of practice is to seek inwardly, investigating until you reach the original mind. Original mind is also known as pure mind. It is the mind without attachment. It isn’t affected by mental objects and doesn’t chase after pleasant and unpleasant phenomena. Rather, it is in a state of continuous wakefulness, thoroughly aware of all it experiences.
When the mind is like this, it does not become anything, and nothing can shake it. Why? Because there is awareness. The mind knows itself as pure. It has reached its original state of independence. This has come about through the faculty of mindfulness together with wise reflection, seeing that all things are merely conditions arising out of the confluence of the elements, without any individual controlling them.
In the past, because the roots of desire, aversion, and delusion already existed in the mind, whenever you caught sight of the slightest pleasant or unpleasant thing, the mind would react immediately. You would take hold of it and have to experience either happiness or suffering, and you would be constantly involved in these mental states. Through wise reflection, you can see that you are subject to old habits and conditioning. The mind itself is actually free, but you have to suffer because of your attachments. That’s how it is as long as the mind doesn’t know itself, as long as it is not illumined. It is not free; it is influenced by whatever phenomena it experiences. In other words, it is without a refuge, unable to truly depend on itself.
In contrast to this, the original mind is beyond good and bad. But when you separate from original mind, everything becomes uncertain, and there is unending birth and death, insecurity, anxiety, and hardship, without any way of bringing it to cessation.
Ordinarily, if someone criticizes you, you will feel upset. Accepting sense-impressions without full mindfulness in this way causes an experience like being stabbed. This is clinging. Once you have been stabbed, there is becoming, change, and this is the cause for birth into some further state. But if you train yourself not to attach importance to phenomena, nothing is created in the mind. It would be like someone scolding you in a foreign language—the words would have no meaning for you, so you wouldn’t absorb that information and create suffering for yourself.
Samadhi means a mind that is firmly concentrated, and the more you practice the firmer it becomes. The more you contemplate, the more confident you become. It becomes easier to know the arising and passing away of consciousness from moment to moment. The mind becomes truly stable to the point where it can’t be swayed by anything at all, and you are absolutely confident that no phenomena whatsoever have the power to shake it. The mind experiences good and bad mental states, happiness and suffering, because it is deluded by its objects. The objects of mind are the objects of mind, and the mind is the mind. If the mind is not deluded by them, there is no suffering. The undeluded mind can’t be shaken. This is a state of awareness in which all phenomena are viewed entirely as elements arising and passing away.
It might be possible to have this experience yet still be unable to fully let go. Whether you can or cannot let go, don’t let this bother you. Before anything else you must at least develop and sustain this level of awareness and fixed determination. You have to keep at it and destroy the afflictions through determined effort, penetrating ever deeper into the practice.
Having discerned the Dharma in this way, the mind will withdraw to a less intense level of practice, which the scriptures describe as the mind undergoing “change of lineage.” This refers to the mind that has experienced a transcending of the boundaries of the ordinary human mind. It is the mind of the ordinary unenlightened perso
n breaking through to the realm of the noble awakened being. But this is still taking place within the mind of the ordinary unawakened person. Such an individual is someone who, having progressed in his practice until he gains temporary experience of nirvana, withdraws from it and continues practicing on another level because he has not yet completely cut off all afflictions. It’s like someone in the middle of stepping across a stream. She knows for certain that there are two sides to the stream, but she is unable to cross over it completely, so she steps back.
The understanding that there are two sides to the stream is similar to the change of lineage. It means that you know the way to go beyond the mental afflictions but are still unable to go there; thus, you step back. Once you know for yourself that the state of transcendence truly exists, this knowledge remains with you constantly as you continue to practice meditation and develop your spiritual perfections. You are certain of both the goal and the most direct way to it.
Simply speaking, this state that has arisen is the mind itself. If you contemplate according to the truth of the way things are, you will see that only one path exists and there is nothing else to do in life but follow it. You understand that states of happiness and suffering are not the path to follow. Attaching to either will cause suffering to arise. You understand this and are mindful with this right view, but at the same time you are not yet able to fully let go of your attachments.
So you must walk the middle path, which means being aware of the various states of happiness and suffering, while at the same time keeping them at a distance. Whenever the mind attaches to states of happiness and suffering, awareness of the attachment is always there. You don’t encourage or give value to the positive states even as you are holding on to them, and you don’t despise or fear the negative states. This way you can observe the mind as it actually is, and at all times you take the Middle Way of equanimity as the object of mind. Equanimity will necessarily arise as the path to follow, and you must move along that path little by little.
When eventually the mind is fully aware of the various positive and negative states, it is able to lay aside the happiness and suffering, the pleasure and sadness, to lay aside all that is the world and so become the knower of the world. The mind in full knowing can then let go and settle down, for the reason that you have done the practice and followed the path to this point. You know what you must do to reach the end of the path, and you keep striving to uproot and dislodge your attachments.
Focusing on the conditions of mind from moment to moment, it’s not necessary to be interviewed by a teacher about your state of mind or to do anything special. When there is attachment to happy or unhappy states of mind, there must be the clear and unwavering understanding that any such attachment is delusion. Such attachment is attachment to the world, being stuck in the world. What is it that creates the world? The world is created and established through ignorance, because we are not aware that the mind gives importance to things, fashioning and creating sankhara (mental formations) all the time.
It’s here that the practice really becomes interesting. Wherever you have attachment, you keep working at that point. You are in the process of finishing the job; the mind doesn’t let a single experience slip by. Nothing can withstand the power of your mindfulness and wisdom. Even if the mind is caught in some unwholesome state, you know it as such and are not heedless. It’s like stepping on thorns. Of course, you don’t try to step on thorns, you try to avoid them, but nevertheless sometimes you step on one. When you do, how does it feel? Once you know the path of practice, you know that which is the world, that which is suffering, and that which binds us to the endless cycle of birth and death. Even though you know this, you are unable to stop stepping on those thorns. The mind still follows various states of joy and sorrow, but doesn’t get completely lost in them. You sustain a continuous effort to destroy any attachment in the mind, to clear from the mind all that is the world.
Everything external has been set aside at this point, and from here on you just watch body and mind, observing mind and its objects arising and passing away, understanding that having arisen they pass away. With passing away there is further arising—birth and death, death and birth, cessation followed by arising, arising followed by cessation. Ultimately, you are merely watching the act of cessation.
Once the mind is practicing and experiencing this, it doesn’t have to go following up on or searching for anything else. Instead, it will be aware of whatever arises with full mindfulness. Seeing is just seeing. Knowing is just knowing. The mind and phenomena are just as they are. The mind isn’t creating anything additional.
So keep practicing, calming the mind little by little. If you start thinking, it doesn’t matter; if you’re not thinking, it doesn’t matter. The important thing is to develop this understanding of the mind.
Morality Brings Happiness: A Talk Given on Songkran, the Traditional New Year
Morality is the vehicle for happiness,
Morality is wealth and treasure.
Morality is the vehicle for dispassion;
Thus may morality be purified.
We who have come here to seek refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha today find ourselves in this moment in time, which is passing by right before our eyes, as we sit here. It is as the Buddha taught: days and nights are relentlessly passing; how well are we spending our time? This is the speech of the Buddha, his very serious admonition to us to watch over ourselves. Still, some Buddhists let the days and nights pass without recollecting what they are doing that day, what they have done in the day past, or what they will do on the morrow. It is a mistake to let the time pass without employing mindfulness, to pay attention to whether we are doing good or causing harm, knowing whether our intentions and behavior are good or bad. Yet it is indeed rare to find individuals who think about this and have this kind of sensitivity.
Today we have completed another year according to the old calendar. Actually, we don’t have to take so much interest in what we have completed, and we don’t need to think in terms of Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and so on. We can consider that we are starting from today, whatever the day is. Twelve months make a year, no matter when we start. It disagrees with worldly convention, that is all.
So we have come to this season of the year when we meet according to tradition. It is the end of another year in which we have been trying to practice the Dharma. We will have happiness and harmonious living because of honesty and morality. Living in a group or in the larger society, we will experience happiness and well-being because of morality and Dharma, the practice of virtue.
When I was a child, on this day the village elders would lead us together to other districts for what was called communing over water. We would drink from the same water, make vows over the same water, proclaiming our intention to be honest and straightforward toward each other. For example, in this district, in this township, in this province, we would say, “Although we live in different villages and have different concerns, let us have a common outlook for the purpose of bringing happiness to everyone; let us all live firmly established in virtue and spirituality.” We would vow in this way to establish truthfulness in order to have integrity in our dealings with our superiors, toward the village, the nation, religion, and royalty. It was in order to instill respect and caution, to be aware, to be modest and humble toward each other. Then our villages and our nation would be able to live in peace and happiness, because of siladharma, noble behavior by way of body, speech, and mind. In this way there could be harmony.
If we are without honesty and integrity—well, just look at the way things are all around us these days. If you take a look, you will probably be able to see. Within one village, people quarrel with each other. Children of the same parents dispute with each other. Citizens of the same country are fighting with each other. It’s because of delusion. I’m not pointing a finger at anyone; it’s only because of our delusion that this happens. Those who are, in actuality, brothers and sisters are qu
arreling and fighting and killing each other, all to no purpose. Why is this? Because of wrong understanding. People who don’t understand correctly do not think about the meaning of virtue and spirituality.
So our Supreme Teacher established what is called the Buddhist religion. It can be called Buddhist science, which is a body of knowledge superior to all other disciplines. Those subjects we study in the world, even when studied to the doctoral level, are disciplines with no end to learning. They are disciplines that have limits, which exist in the realm of desire and attachment and which lead to suffering. They do not help us to let go of suffering. This kind of knowledge is called science, but it is not the same as Buddhist science. In Buddhist study, if we have learned properly, we learn to let go, put down, stop. If there is harm in something, we learn to see the harm. Instead of holding tightly to things, we learn how to loosen our grip and let go. We learn about giving up. This is Buddhist science.
The teachings of the Buddha are a body of knowledge that is true and correct in all ways. They had to be taught, because these things do not come naturally for us. This knowledge does not change into some other set of concepts, but its validity remains the same. For example, the Buddha taught that doing good brings good results and doing evil brings evil results. This is a fixed law. It is certain. It is knowledge that comes from pure wisdom that is certain and reliable; thus, it can be called truth. Still, there are those who say that doing good is not certain to bring good results. They may have practiced virtue but not seen any good come from it. “I practiced virtue, so why can’t I see any benefit? We can see plenty of people doing bad things and getting good results, and plenty of people doing good yet still experiencing suffering.”
