Knowing the World (Part 3)

In the beginning, we train to pacify the mind. This can be difficult to do. You have to find a meditation that suits your own temperament. That will make it easier to gain tranquility. But in truth, the Buddha wanted us to return to ourselves, to take responsibility and look at ourselves.

Anger is hot. Pleasure, the extreme of indulgence is too cool. The extreme of self-torment is hot. We want neither hot nor cold. Know hot and cold. Know all things that appear. Do they cause us to suffer? Do we form attachment to them? The teaching that birth is suffering doesn’t only mean dying from this life and taking rebirth in the next life. That’s so far away. The suffering of birth happens right now. It’s said that becoming is the cause of birth. What is this ‘becoming’? Anything that we attach to and put meaning on is becoming. Whenever we see anything as self or other or belonging to ourselves, without wise discernment to know it as only a convention, that is all becoming. Whenever we hold on to something as ‘us’ or ‘ours’, and it then undergoes change, the mind is shaken by that. It is shaken with a positive or negative reaction. That sense of self experiencing happiness or unhappiness is birth. When there is birth, it brings suffering along with it. Ageing is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering.

Right now, do we have becoming? Are we aware of this becoming? For example, take the trees in the monastery. The abbot of the monastery can take birth as a worm in every tree in the monastery if he isn’t aware of himself, if he feels that it is really ‘his’ monastery. This grasping at ‘my’ monastery with ‘my’ orchard and ‘my’ trees is the worm that latches on there. If there are thousands of trees, he will become a worm thousands of times. This is becoming. When the trees are cut or meet with any harm, the worms are affected; the mind is shaken and takes birth with all this anxiety. Then there is the suffering of birth, the suffering of ageing, and so forth. Are you aware of the way this happens?

Well, those objects in our homes or our orchards are still a little far away. Let’s look right at ourselves sitting here. We are composed of the five aggregates and the four elements. These saṅkhārā are designated as a self. Do you see these saṅkhārā and these suppositions as they really are? If you don’t see the truth of them, there is becoming, being gladdened or depressed over the five khandhā, and we take birth, with all the resultant sufferings. This rebirth happens right now, in the present. This glass isn’t broken now, and we are happy about it now. But if this glass breaks right now, we are upset right now. This is how it happens, being upset or being happy without any wisdom in control. One only meets with ruination. You don’t need to look far away to understand this. When you focus your attention here, you can know whether or not there is becoming. Then, when it is happening, are you aware of it? Are you aware of convention and supposition? Do you understand them? It’s the grasping attachment that is the vital point, whether or not we are really believing in the designations of me and mine. This grasping is the worm, and it is what causes birth.

Where is this attachment? Grasping onto form, feeling, perception, thoughts, and consciousness, we attach to happiness and unhappiness, and we become obscured and take birth. It happens when we have contact through the senses. The eyes see forms, and it happens in the present. This is what the Buddha wanted us to look at, to recognize becoming and birth as they occur through our senses. If we know the inner senses and the external objects, we can let go, internally and externally. This can be seen in the present. It’s not something that happens when we die from this life. It’s the eye seeing forms right now, the ear hearing sounds right now, the nose smelling aromas right now, the tongue tasting flavours right now. Are you taking birth with them? Be aware and recognize birth right as it happens. This way is better.

To do this requires having wisdom to steadily apply mindfulness and clear comprehension. Then you can be aware of yourself and know when you are undergoing becoming and birth. You won’t need to ask a fortuneteller.

I have a Dhamma friend in central Thailand. In the old days we practiced together, but we went our separate ways long ago. Recently I saw him. He practices the foundations of mindfulness, reciting the sutta and giving discourses on it. But he hadn’t resolved his doubts yet. He prostrated to me and said, ‘Oh, Ajahn, I’m so happy to see you!’ I asked him why. He told me he had gone to some shrine where people go for divinations. He held the Buddha statue and said, ‘If I have already attained the state of purity, may I be able to raise up this statue. If I have not yet attained the state of purity, may I not be able to raise it up.’ And then he was able to raise it up, which made him very delighted. Just this little act, which has no real basis in anything, meant so much to him and made him think he was pure. So he had it engraved on a stone to say, ‘I raised up the Buddha statue and have thus attained the state of purity.’

Practitioners of the Dhamma shouldn’t be like that. He didn’t see himself at all. He was only looking outside and seeing external objects made of stone and cement. He didn’t see the intentions and movements in his own mind in the present moment. When our meditation is looking there, we won’t have doubts. So the way I see it, our practice may be good, but there’s no one who can vouch for us. Like this chapel we are sitting in. It was built by someone with a fourth-grade education. He did a great job, but he has no brand name. He can’t provide the guarantee or vouch for himself, showing qualifications like an architect who has the full training and education, but still he does it well. The saccadhamma is like this. Even though we haven’t studied much and don’t know the detailed explanations, we can recognize suffering, we can recognize what brings suffering, and we can let go of it. We don’t need to investigate the explanations or anything else. We just look at our minds, look at these matters.

Don’t make your practice confusing. Don’t create a bunch of doubts for yourself. When you do have doubt, control it by seeing it as merely what it is, and let go. Really, there is nothing. We create the sense that there is something, but really there’s nothing – there is anattā. Our doubtful minds think there is something, and then there’s attā. Then meditation becomes difficult because we think we have to get something and become something. Are you going to practice meditation to get or be something? Is that the correct way? It’s only taṇhā that gets involved in having and becoming. There’s no end in sight if you practice like that.

Here, we are talking about cessation, extinguishing. We are talking about everything extinguished, ceasing because of knowledge, not in a state of indifferent ignorance. If we can practice like this and vouch for our own experience, then never mind what anyone else says.

So please don’t get lost in doubts about the practice. Don’t get attached to your own views. Don’t get attached to others’ views. Staying in this middle place, wisdom can be born, correctly and to full measure. I’ve often made the simple analogy of comparing grasping to the place we live. For example, there is the roof and the floor, the upper and lower storeys. If someone goes upstairs, he knows he is up there. If he comes downstairs, he knows he is downstairs, standing on the floor. This is all we can recognize.

We can sense where we are, either upstairs or downstairs. But the space in the middle we aren’t aware of, because there’s no way to identify or measure it – it’s just space. We don’t comprehend the space in between. But it remains as it is, whether or not anyone descends from upstairs or not. The saccadhamma is like that, not going anywhere, not changing. When we say ‘no becoming’, that is the middle space, not marked or identified by anything. It can’t be described.

For example, these days, the youngsters who are interested in Dhamma want to know about Nibbāna. What’s it like? But if we tell them about a place without becoming, they don’t want to go. They back off. We tell them that this place is cessation, it is peace, but they want to know how they will live, what they will eat and enjoy there. So there’s no end to it. The real questions for those who want to know the truth, are questions about how to practice.

There was an ājīvaka who met the Buddha. He asked, ‘Who is your teacher?’ The Buddha replied, ‘I was enlightened through my own efforts. I have no teacher.’ But his reply was incomprehensible to that wanderer. It was too direct. Their minds were in different places. Even if the wanderer asked all day and all night, there was nothing about it he could understand. The enlightened mind is unmoving and thus cannot be recognized. We can develop wisdom and remove our doubts only through practice, nothing else.

So should we not listen to the Dhamma? We should, but then we should put the knowledge we gain into practice. But this doesn’t mean that we’re following a person who teaches us; we follow the experience and awareness that arise as we put the teaching into practice. For instance, we feel, ‘I really like this thing. I like doing things this way!’ But the Dhamma doesn’t allow such liking and attachment. If we are really committed to the Dhamma, then we let go of that object of attraction when we see that it is contrary to Dhamma. This is what the knowledge is for.

A lot of talk – you’re probably tired by now. Do you have any questions? Well, you probably do; you should have awareness in letting go. Things flow by and you let them go, but not in a dull, indifferent manner, without seeing what is happening. There has to be mindfulness. All the things I’ve been saying are pointing to having mindfulness protecting you at all times. It means practicing with wisdom, not with delusion. Then we will gain true knowledge as wisdom becomes bold and keeps increasing.

(The Teachings of Ajahn Chah)