The Teachings of Ajahn Mun Bhuridatta

The Method of Practice for Those Who Have Studied a Great Deal

People who have studied a lot of the Dhamma and Vinaya — who have learned a large number of approaches together with their many ramifications — when they then come to train their minds, find that their minds don't settle down easily into concentration. They need to realize that they must first take their learning and put it back on the shelf for the time being. They need to train "what knows" — this very mind — developing their mindfulness until it is super-mindfulness, their discernment until it is super-discernment, so that they can see through the super-deceits of conventional truth and common assumptions that set things up, naming them, "This is this," and "That is that" — days, nights, months, years, earth, sky, sun, moon, constellations, everything — all the things that thought-formations, the conditions or effects of the mind, set up as being this or that.

Once the mind can see through these effects of the mind, this is called knowing stress and its cause. Once you practice this theme and develop it repeatedly until you are quick at seeing through these things, the mind will be able to gather and settle down. To focus in this way is called developing the path. And when the path reaches a point of sufficiency, there is no need to speak of the cessation of stress: It will appear of its own accord to the person who practices — because virtue, concentration, and discernment all exist in our very own body, speech, and mind. These things are said to be akaliko: ever-present. Opanayiko: When meditators contemplate what already exists within them, then — paccattam — they will know for themselves. In other words, we contemplate the body so as to see it as unattractive and visualize it as disintegrating back into its primary properties in terms of the primal Dhamma that is blatantly clear both by day and by night.

When contemplating, you should keep this analogy in mind: When people grow rice, they have to grow it in the earth. They have to go wading through the mud, exposed to the sun and rain, before they can get the rice grains, the husked rice, the cooked rice, and can finally eat their fill. When they do this, they are getting their rice entirely from things that already exist. In the same way, meditators must develop virtue, concentration, and discernment, which already exist in the body, speech, and mind of every person.