Being Dharma

by Ajahn Chah

  Practicing here this evening we have meditated together for an hour and now stopped. It might be that your mind has stopped practicing completely and hasn’t continued with the reflection. That’s not the right way to do it. When we stop, all that should stop is the formal sitting meditation.

  Keep a state of meditation and reflection going at all times. Just taking a walk and seeing dead leaves on the ground can provide an opportunity to contemplate impermanence. We are no different from the leaves: when we get old, we are going to shrivel up and die. Other people are the same. We should make efforts to raise the mind to the level of constant contemplation and awareness like this, whether walking, standing, sitting, or lying down. This is practicing meditation correctly, following the mind carefully at all times.

  I’ve often said that if you don’t practice consistently, it’s like drops of water. The practice is not a continuous, uninterrupted flow. Mindfulness is not sustained evenly. The important point is that the mind does the practice and nothing else. The body doesn’t do it; the mind does the work. If you understand this clearly, you will see that you don’t always have to be in formal meditation for the mind to know samadhi.

  Once you recognize this, you will be developing awareness at all times and in all postures. If you are maintaining mindfulness as an even and unbroken flow, it’s as if the drops of water have joined to form a smooth and continuous stream. Mindfulness is present from moment to moment, and accordingly there will be awareness of mental objects at all times. If the mind is restrained and composed with uninterrupted mindfulness, you will know the wholesome and unwholesome mental states that arise. You will know the mind that is calm and the mind that is confused and agitated. Wherever you go, you will be practicing. If you train the mind in this way, your meditation will mature quickly and successfully.

  Please don’t misunderstand. These days, it’s common for people to go on retreats for several days where they don’t have to speak or do anything but meditate. Maybe you have been on a silent retreat for a week or two, afterward returning to your normal life. You might leave thinking you’ve “done vipassana,” and because you feel you know what it’s all about, you return to old habits of sensual indulgence. When you do this, what happens? Before long, none of the fruits of vipassana will be left. If you do a lot of unskillful things that disturb and upset the mind, wasting everything, then next year you go back, do another retreat for several days or weeks, come out, and carry on partying and drinking, that isn’t the path to progress.

  So you need to contemplate until you see the harmful effects of such behavior; this is what is meant by renunciation. See the harm in drinking and going out on the town. Reflect and see the harm inherent in all the different kinds of unskillful behavior you are accustomed to indulging in until that harm becomes fully apparent. This will provide the impetus for you to take a step back and change your ways. Then you will find some real peace. To realize peace of mind, you have to see clearly the disadvantages and pitfalls in such forms of behavior. This is practicing in the correct way. If you do a silent retreat for seven days, where you don’t have to speak or get involved with anyone, and then are chatting, gossiping, and indulging all over for another seven months, how will you gain any real or lasting benefit from those seven days of meditation?

  I would encourage all of you to try to understand this point. It’s necessary to speak in this way so habits that are faulty become clear to you, and thus you will be able to give them up. You could say the reason you came here is to learn how to avoid doing the wrong things in the future. What happens when you do the wrong things? It leads you to a state of agitation and suffering where there is no goodness in the mind. It’s not the way to peace. This is how it is, but many places where meditation is taught don’t come to grips with it. Really, you have to conduct your daily life in a consistently calm and restrained way.

  This is a form of reminder to you all, so I will ask your forgiveness. Some of you might just feel I’m scolding you—“The old monk is telling us off!”—but it’s not like that. It’s just that you may need reminders, because in meditation you have to be constantly turning your attention to the practice. Please try to practice consistently. See the disadvantages of practicing inconsistently and insincerely, and try to sustain a dedicated and continuous effort in the practice. It can then become a realistic possibility that you might put an end to the mental afflictions.

  CONTEMPLATING THE BODY: A TALK TO CANDIDATES FOR ORDINATION

  These robes are the banner of the Buddha. Think about it. Tomorrow you will go to the village for alms. People will happily offer you their food and show respect. Even old people, their heads white and their backs bent, will show you respect. Why? Because of the power of the ocher robes. These robes are of the ultimate power. If you don’t use them correctly, the people in the villages will feel that you have lost your minds. “Crazy” will be their only verdict.

  When ordaining, going forth in the Buddhist religion, many instructions can be given. But today I will not say too much. I will follow the way of the ancient teachers, who urged us to learn and practice meditation, specifically the fivefold meditation on hair of the head, bodily hair, nails, teeth, and skin. Just talking about them, it can seem like a game or a joke. But if they are carefully considered, they are extremely profound.

  We are here to learn meditation, and meditation is these five objects. “Venerable hair, venerable nails . . .” They are called the root meditations. These five meditations were born with us and have always been with us, but we haven’t recognized them. So it’s necessary to study the five root meditations as a basis for entering the path to nirvana. You can establish right view when you study a root meditation and contemplate its meaning. Some people will say they already know it and ask why they need to study such a thing. In fact, they don’t know. They don’t really know their own hair, their own nails, and the rest. They don’t see them according to the truth. Meditation monks always hear such talk but are not moved by it.

  Hair of the head is born from the scalp, nourished by the body’s fluids. Bodily hair and nails are the same. They are nothing to get obsessed with. When people dress themselves up, they are not really doing it in accordance with the true path. They are dressing up and adorning something that we don’t see as being beautiful. Did you see how they dressed up the corpse in the meditation hall for the funeral recently? In such a case, we can observe very clearly that people are trying to make beautiful something that is really not beautiful or clean.

  In truth, this body is not a clean thing. It is a matter of delusion, such as thinking that hair is beautiful. Actually, how could hair be beautiful? Is it something clean? There is nothing naturally clean or beautiful about hair. Put one beautiful hair in someone’s food, and how much will they appreciate it? Who will want to eat it?

  Put some hair on the ground, and who will want to pick it up? If you see some skin or hair on the path to the village when you are going for alms, will you feel attracted to pick them up for any reason? This is the truth of them, but people are always making efforts to adorn and beautify them, which only serves to delude all of us.

  We are easily deluded. We don’t know the truth of hair, nails, and the rest. So when we are ordained, these five things are taken up and the nature of them pointed out: hair is not beautiful, nails are not beautiful, teeth are not beautiful, skin is not beautiful. They are pointed out as unclean and unattractive. But people insist on trying to beautify them, so we are fooled. Not seeing the truth of them, we don’t see the Buddha. These things conceal the Buddha from our sight. So we are taught to make our vision pure and clear in regard to these things. Think about them, contemplate. You can sit and repeat the words and think about them. “Skin, hmm. The skin envelops the body and everything in it. If we were to peel off the skin, what would we see? Who could stay near us? If we peeled off the skin, leaving only the flesh on the bones, the little novices would dash out of the hall; they couldn’t stay. So where is the beau
ty?” Look and examine these five objects completely, and you will see they are not really beautiful; you will exhaust your interest in them. Rely on these five objects of meditation.

  But people like to be misled. We are misled by the adornment and beautification the world lives by. Style the hair, make up the skin, polish the nails, whiten the teeth. Make up everything, make the things that are not really beautiful into objects of attraction, and then there are causes for delusion. When you don’t see clearly, you get fooled. Like a fish. Fish swallow hooks, have you seen? In truth, the fish doesn’t eat the hook; it eats the bait. If it just saw the hook, it wouldn’t bite. It doesn’t think it’s going to be swallowing a hook, but that’s what happens because it’s lured by the bait. When it bites, the hook catches its mouth and it can’t get free.

  We people are the same, being lured by hair, nails, and the rest. We shouldn’t want them. Why do you want to carry these impermanent, uncertain things? Those who get attached to these things are deluded, thinking they are great, beautiful, and wonderful, like a fish who swallows the bait.

  The fish doesn’t know what it’s doing; it eats bait but ends up caught on the hook. Then, however much it wants to escape, it can’t. It is caught. Hair, nails, skin, and teeth catch us in the same way. Once we get attached to them, ow! When finally we come to realize what is going on, it’s difficult to get out. We might think about getting out of the world then, but we worry about our children, our possessions, all the sorts of things that fill up a life. We can end up bound by them, staying just where we are until death.

  This is being deluded, like the fish that is deluded by the bait. We are caught in the world because we think the five objects are attractive and wonderful, and we are absorbed by them our whole lives. In truth, it’s a small thing, not a great matter, just the matter of a hook catching the fish’s mouth. Please consider this.

  So when you ordain and study Dharma in this way, you can be at ease. Even if you disrobe because of some previous commitment or pressing matter, you should recall this and be careful, thinking about the hook. This can bring you peace, whether you are ordained or a layperson. The time may be short now, but never mind. Don’t be heedless. Contemplate these things. This is a meditation that you should learn and come to know, and it should instill some caution. People have no fear or caution because they don’t know the truth of this. This is a brief meditation all of you should learn.

  MEDITATION EXPERIENCES

  I had problems in meditation. I remember one time when I kept coming up against an obstacle. It was as if I were walking somewhere. I got to a certain point, and there was nowhere else to go. Another time was like walking and bumping into something, so I stopped. I would go again, but I kept bumping into it, again and again, and kept retreating. Finally, I became afraid and gave up.

  In the first example, there’s nothing to bump into, but still there is an obstruction. In the second, when you come to this obstacle, you become afraid and turn back. The mind wonders, What is this? In your sitting and walking meditation, you keep on coming to this point and wondering what it is. But whatever it is, never mind. After some time, it will cease. Then it can return, and there is the same wondering, What is going on here? This kind of uncertainty can really plague you.

  This happens in samadhi. It is actually a matter of having attachment in the experience of samadhi. These feelings and experiences come, and we become bewildered as to what is going on. It means that our understanding doesn’t yet reach the level of letting go.

  I once went to see a meditation master named Ajahn Wang. He was living on a hilltop with one other monk and two novices. I hadn’t met him, but had come to feel there must be something special about someone living like that. When I did finally meet him, he was happy. He knew. He knew that a sincere practitioner was going to be arriving at his dwelling. He understood about meditation monks, and he was happy to meet someone who was practicing.

  In the evening, he spoke to us about practice. He was a disciple of Ajahn Mun, in the generation of Ajahn Lee. These were really serious practitioners.

  I said to him, “Venerable Ajahn, this seems like an appropriate occasion for me to ask you for some guidance. I want to know what meditation is really all about.” I then spoke of the difficulty I had experienced.

  He said, “Oh, that’s not all there is to the matter. That’s a very small part of it.” He spoke from his own experience.

  Once when he was doing walking meditation, he stopped and fixed his attention, and his body sank into the ground. He was aware of this—why wouldn’t he know what was taking place?—and he saw his body sinking further and further into the earth. With awareness, he could just let it keep sinking, let it do what it would. Finally, it got to the end. He didn’t know where or what this end was, but he was aware that his body had reached it. Then his body started rising up. It rose up to the surface of the earth, but it didn’t stop there. It kept on going, rising up and up.

  He was aware of all this, and he was also really astonished at how such things could happen. His body kept on floating until it came to a tree, and then it exploded, boom! His intestines were hanging from the branches of trees like garlands. I asked, “Ajahn, was this a dream?”

  It wasn’t a dream. Well, this was certainly strange to hear about. But these things really happen. When you experience such things, you will know they really do happen.

  If this were to happen to you, your body exploding and guts hanging in the trees, what would you feel? If your awareness is steady, you can just watch it all happening. If the body explodes, you simply know that it explodes. If the intestines go flying out, you know they are flying out. You just need the firm conviction that this is nimitta (a sign or mental image occurring in meditation), and you come to have a deep conviction that nothing can harm you. Fixing your attention, the nimitta will appear to the mind and then disappear. Still, after it is gone, it might leave you wondering what it was that happened.

  I further inquired of the Ajahn, “I am at my wit’s end. I didn’t have this experience you spoke about, but there’s something else that happened to me. It’s like being on a bridge. I’m trying to cross a river on the bridge, but I get to a certain point and can’t go any farther. There’s nowhere to proceed, so I go back. Then I try again, but I always have to stop. This is something that happens in samadhi, not just in an ordinary state. I watch what is going on, and sometimes I see something blocking me. I wonder who is going to help me. So I have my doubts about what I should do when this happens. What is this, Ajahn?”

  “This is reaching the limits of perception,” was his answer. “When you get to the limit, just stand right there. Take note of what is happening. Stay there. If you are aware of it, the perception will resolve itself. It will change by itself without any need to force it. You just note that it is occurring, and you are aware of your state of mind when it occurs. It will change.

  “It is like the perceptions of a child being transformed into the perceptions of an adult. A child is fascinated by things and always wants to play with them. When the child grows up and sees those same things, she will not be interested in playing. She will be looking to ‘play’ elsewhere. There has been a transformation of perception.”

  I gained some understanding from his explanation.

  Then he said, “Don’t talk too much! Don’t have so many issues! There are so many issues, but all you need to do is be aware that anything can happen in samadhi. That’s enough. Anything is possible, but never mind. Don’t have any doubts about whatever occurs. When you have this perspective, these experiences will just arise and pass without causing you any hindrance. They are impermanent mental functions. There is no inherent reality in them. If you follow after what appears, then when you see a duck, it can become a chicken, and the chicken can turn into a dog. This could make you very confused, and there will be no end to it.

  “Fix your attention on whatever arises and watch it pass away. But don’t then get the idea that it’s fin
ished. Don’t think you are done with everything,” he warned. “Soon enough, there will be more. But if you have the attitude of not being taken in, not believing in these things, you keep on letting go of them. Then they pose no danger to you.

  “Watching like this gives you a foundation. Don’t run after these things! Keep on noting. When you meditate, you will gain familiarity, and you will be able to turn these experiences inward for your mind to know them. Dealing with them in this way, undoing the confusion of appearances, some wisdom will gradually come, and your ability to deal with these things will naturally increase; they will be resolving themselves.”

  The Ajahn said, “In the future, it will be just as it was in the past, and you should practice in the same way. Your experiences may be greater or lesser, but no matter what you experience, no matter how extraordinary, you need to keep this understanding in mind.

  “Be careful!” he said. “Some people seem to practice very comfortably. They don’t have obstructions. There is no suffering for them. This is previous karma coming to fruition in the present. When the mind becomes concentrated, this karma rushes in and invades. To say that things invade the mind doesn’t necessarily mean bad experiences are occurring. There can be happy experiences also, making the mind bright and clear. Harmful things can be fearsome, but they can also appear in attractive forms. However, all experiences are a peril to the mind. Don’t get fixated on them at all!”