Right Here in the Heart (Part 1)

When you listen to a Dhamma talk, pay close attention to your heart, for that’s where the Dhamma lies – in the heart. At first, before I had practiced, I didn’t believe that the Dhamma lay with the heart. “How could that be?” I thought. “The Dhamma comes with making an effort in the heart. That sounds better than saying the Dhamma lies with the heart.”

“The Dhamma lies with the heart. The Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha lie in the heart. All dhammas lie in the heart.” I didn’t believe this. All 84,000 sections of the Dhamma lie in the texts – that’s how I felt at first. But as I kept listening to my teachers explain things, none of them ever deviated from this point: “The Dhamma lies in the heart. The Dhamma lies with the heart.” As I kept listening to this, my mind gradually settled down and grew still.

At first, whenever I’d listen, I’d focus my attention on the speaker, instead of keeping it focused on myself. “Don’t focus your attention outside,” they’d say. “Keep conscious of what’s going on inside yourself. The Dhamma being explained will come in and make contact with you on its own.” I wouldn’t listen to this. I kept focusing my attention on the speaker. In fact, I’d even want to watch his face as he talked. It got to the point where if I didn’t watch his face, didn’t watch his mouth as he talked, I didn’t feel right. That’s how I was at the beginning.

But as time passed, I came to find that stillness would appear in my heart while I was listening to the Dhamma. That’s when I began to believe: “The Dhamma of concentration does lie right here in the heart.” I began to have a witness – myself. So from that point on, I wouldn’t send my attention anywhere outside while listening to a talk. I wouldn’t even send it to the speaker, because I was absorbed in the stillness in my heart. My heart would grow still as I listened – cool, calm, and absorbed. This made me believe: “They’re right. The Dhamma does lie with the heart!”

That’s when I began to believe this – when the Dhamma of concentration, mental stillness, and calm appeared in my heart as I listened to the Dhamma. This was what made me want to keep on listening as a means of stilling and calming the heart.

As time passed and I continued my meditation, then whatever results would appear as I practiced sitting or walking meditation, they would all appear in the heart. They didn’t appear anywhere else. When the mind wasn’t still, then whatever was getting me all worked up was there in the heart. I’d know: “Today my heart doesn’t feel right.” It would be distracted and restless in line with its moods. “Eh? Why is it that my heart doesn’t feel right today?” This made me interested from another angle. I’d try my best to calm the heart down. As soon as it got back into place with its meditation, it would settle down and be still. This made the point very clear – Dhamma does lie in the heart.

The world lies in the heart. The Dhamma lies in the heart. For this reason, when you listen to a Dhamma talk you should keep your attention focused right inside yourself. There’s no need to send it outside – to have anything to do with the person speaking, for instance. When you keep your awareness focused inside yourself this way, the Dhamma being explained will come in and make contact with your awareness.

The heart is what is aware. When the current of sound dealing with the Dhamma comes in and makes continual contact with the heart, the heart won’t have any chance to go slipping outside, because the Dhamma is something calming and absorbing. This moment, that moment, it keeps you absorbed from moment to moment with the current of sound coming from the speaker. Step after step, it keeps making contact. The heart gradually becomes more and more quiet, more and more still. This way you already start seeing the rewards that come from listening.

This is why, if you want to listen to the Dhamma in the right way for getting clear results, you have to keep your attention focused firmly inside yourself. There’s no need to send it outside, and no need to engage in a lot of thinking while you’re listening. Simply let the mind follow along with the current of Dhamma being explained, and the Dhamma will seep into your heart. When the mind doesn’t get itself worked up with thoughts about various things, it becomes still; that’s all there is to it. But to grow still, it needs something to counteract its thoughts. It won’t settle down on its own simply because you want it to. You have to use one ‘Dhamma theme’ or another, or else the sound of Dhamma while a talk is going on. Only then can it grow still.

Where is the greatest turmoil in the world? There’s no greater turmoil than the one in the heart. If we talk about things murky and turbid, there’s nothing more murky and turbid than the heart. There’s nothing at all that can compare with the heart in being troubled and pained. Even fire, which is said to be hot, isn’t nearly as hot as the heart aflame with the power of defilement.

Defilements do nothing but make us suffer, step after step. This is why we’re taught to see their harm, to be intent on keeping mindfulness established, and to investigate things from various angles. When mindfulness and awareness keep in touch with each other, then our practice of concentration and our investigation of things from the various angles of wisdom keep getting results – stillness and deft strategies – step by step.

For example, the Buddha teaches us: “Birth is suffering. Death is suffering. These are Noble Truths.” Birth is suffering but we’re pleased by birth. When a child is born, we’re happy. When a grandchild is born, when our friends and relatives have children, we’re happy. We don’t think of the pain and suffering the child goes through, surviving almost certain death in that narrow passage before being born.

If we don’t look at both the beginning point – birth – and the endpoint – death – so as to see them clearly, both these points will cause us unending joy and sorrow. Actually, the child has to survive almost certain death before it can become a human being. If it doesn’t survive, it dies right then – either in the womb or in the moment of birth – because it’s pained to the point of death. That’s how we human beings die. Once we’re born, then no matter what our age, we have to be pained to the point of death before we can die.

Pain is something we’ve experienced from the moment of birth, but we don’t see it as a Noble Truth. Actually, it’s something we should see as harmful, as dangerous and threatening, so that we can find a way to get past and go beyond it through our own efforts – and especially through the efforts of our mindfulness and wisdom. When we enjoy the beginning but dislike the end – when we like birth but dislike death – we’re contradicting ourselves all the time. And where can we get any happiness with these contradictions in the heart? They have to make us suffer. There are no two ways about it.

So in order to put the beginning and end in line with each other, we have to contemplate the entire course of events – to see that birth is suffering, ageing is suffering, death is suffering – for these are all an affair of suffering and discontent. They’re the path followed by suffering and discontent, not the path to Nibbãna, and we cannot progress until we have them thoroughly understood through our skill in contemplating and investigating them. The Buddha teaches:

Dukkham natthi ajãtassa - “There is no suffering for those without birth”

When there’s no birth, where will there be any suffering? When there are no seeds for birth, there are simply no seeds for suffering, so there is no suffering in the heart. This is why Arahants have no feelings of discontent or pain in their hearts. They have no moods in their hearts at all. There are no happy, sad, or indifferent moods in the heart of an Arahant.

We’re the only ones with feelings in our bodies and hearts. Arahants have all three kinds of feelings in their bodies: they feel physical pain just like we do, but their hearts have no moods. The three kinds of physical feelings can’t have any effect on their hearts. Their hearts aren’t swayed by influences the way ordinary hearts are. They know pleasure, pain, and neutral feeling in their bodies, but there are no moods in their hearts – because they have gone beyond moods, which are all an affair of conventional truth. Their hearts are pure, unadulterated Dhamma and nothing can infiltrate their hearts at all. Feelings of pleasure, pain, and neither-pleasure-nor-pain are all impermanent, unsatisfactory, and not-self – and so can’t possibly get involved with the nature of a pure heart at all.

If you want your heart to prosper and grow, try to develop inner goodness and worth. Don’t let yourself lapse in generosity and virtue. These are good qualities for nourishing your heart and connecting up with good states of rebirth. If you have a good foundation of inner worth as your sustenance, then no matter where you’re reborn, that goodness will have to stick close to you so that you can look forward to a good destination.

As long as we haven’t yet gained release from suffering, we’re taught to exert ourselves and not to be lazy or complacent. If we’re able to meditate so as to inspect our hearts – which are full of all kinds of discontent – then we should keep right at it. Polish the heart every day. Polish it every day. When the heart is polished every day, it’s bound to shine. And when the heart is shining, you’re bound to see your reflection, just as when water is clear you can see clearly whatever plants or animals are there in the water.

Once the heart is still, you’ll be able to see whatever poisons or dangers it contains much more easily than when it’s murky and turbulent with all its various preoccupations, defilements and effluents. This is why we’re taught to purify the heart. In the teachings gathered in the Pãtimokkha exhortation, we’re taught:

“Never doing any evil, fully developing skilfulness, cleansing the heart until it is pure: These are the Buddhas’ teachings.”

This is what all the Buddhas teach, without exception. Whatever is evil or debasing they tell us not to do, telling us instead to do only things that are skilful, through the power of our own wisdom. This is what ‘fully developing skilfulness’ means: fully developing wisdom.

Cleansing the heart until it is pure is something hard to do, but it lies within our capacity as human beings to do it. The Buddha went through hardships, his disciples went through hardships, all those who have reached purity have had to go through hardships, but these were hardships for the sake of purity and release – as opposed to going down in failure – which is what makes them worth going through.

The heart, when it’s overcome with dirt and defilement, does not seem to have any value at all. Even we can find fault with ourselves. We may decide that we’d rather put an end to it all. This is because we’re so disgusted and fed up with life that we’re ashamed to show our face to the world. And all of this is because the heart is very murky and dark, to the point where it becomes a smouldering fire.

Life doesn’t seem worth living when the heart is so dark, because things that are dark and worthless have overwhelmed it. We can’t find any real worth to the heart at all, which is why we think it would be better to die. But where will we get anything ‘better’ or ‘good’ after we die? Even in the present, nothing is any good. If things got better with death, the world has had people dying a long time now, so why isn’t it any better than it is? There’s no good in us – that’s why we want to die. Once the heart is good though, it has no problem with life or death, because it’s already good. Why does the heart seem so thoroughly worthless when it’s overcome by worthless things?

When we wash these things away, step by step, the heart gradually starts showing some of its inner radiance. It starts growing peaceful and calm. The entire heart becomes radiant. Happy. Relaxed. Whatever we do – sitting, standing, walking, lying down or whatever work we do – we’re happy with the pleasure that has appeared in the heart.

When the heart is peaceful and calm, then wherever we are, we’re content. The important point lies with the heart. If the heart isn’t any good, then no matter where we are, nothing is any good at all. We keep fooling ourselves: “Over here might be good. Over there might be good. This lifetime is no good. The next lifetime will be better. Living is no good. Dying would be better.” We keep fooling ourselves. The troubled part of the mind – that’s what fools us. The part that’s stirred up with its various issues – that’s what fools us. “This will be good … That will be good,” but it’s no good at all. No matter where we go, we end up the same as where we started – because this part is no good. We have to straighten it out and make it good through our own efforts.

(Ajahn Maha Boowa “A Life of Inner Quality”)