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Venerable Ajahn Munindo -
The Freedom to Suffer
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Enlightenment is a wonderful idea.
This is the seed out of which grows our dedication to a whole
body/mind training.
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It can take a long time before we find out what the real point of Buddhist
practice is. There are innumerable doctrines, beliefs and techniques in this
Way, but none of them is an end in itself. All of them are included in an
overall training which is called cittabhavana, or 'the training of the heart'.
The word citta is variously rendered in translation as 'heart', 'awareness', and
sometimes as 'consciousness'. Bhavana literally means 'to bring into being'. So
cittabhavana can also be translated as 'cultivation of awareness'. This subject
is obviously central both to what you are doing here as psychotherapists and to
what we are doing in our monastic training, so I am glad that we have this
opportunity to consider it together.
It is easy, as I said, for us to take quite some time before we get the core
message that awareness itself is what we are working on. It is very important
that we do come to see that all the different skilful means offered in Buddhism
are in reference to this.
Back in the 1960s and '70s many of us were out in Asia looking for something
that we hoped would fill up an emptiness we felt we had inside - an inner sense
of lacking.
In keeping with our expectations, we found a large variety of systems and
substances, some more helpful than others. Buddhist monasteries and teachers
were amongst what we came across. What we thought they were offering was this
wonderful idea of enlightenment.
We were tremendously inspired and believed this meant that if at some time in
the future we fully grasped this idea, then we would be free from any sense of
lacking for ever more; we would be free from suffering altogether. We were
tending to approach what we found there in the same way that we approached our
everyday life, that is, as consumers: "How can I become enlightened? What
must I do to get this freedom from suffering?"
I heard a story of a young Westerner traveling around Southeast Asia who was
particularly concerned that he didn't join up with anything but the best
tradition and so he proceeded to go from teacher to teacher conducting
interviews with them. He asked each one in turn the question, "What was the
Buddha doing under the Bodhi tree?" I imagine he planned to compare all the
answers and then make his choice. Each teacher naturally replied from their own
perspective. The first, a Japanese teacher living in Bodhgaya, said, "Oh,
the Buddha was doing shikantaza." Then another teacher said, "The
Buddha was definitely practising anapanasati." Another replied, "The
Buddha was doing dzogchen." And further, "The Buddha was sitting in
vipassana meditation." When this seeker visited Thailand and asked Ajahn
Chah what the Buddha was doing under the Bodhi tree, Ajahn Chah replied:
"Everywhere the Buddha went he was under the Bodhi tree. The Bodhi tree was
a symbol for his Right View."
Whenever I recall this story, I like what it does to me. There is a turning
around of attention and a remembering of the essential point of our practice. I
find myself returning to the heart of the matter, or to the only place where I
can make the kind of effort that brings about a difference.
Of course it is understandable that we don't get it altogether right in the
beginning and spend energy holding on to an initial idea about becoming
enlightened. These ideas are the seeds which grow into a fuller way of practice.
However, we do need to recognise that what is on offer in this Way is a complete
training in awareness - not just an idea. We take up the training as we would
take up an invitation; in this case an invitation to assume our own true place
within our body/minds. The Buddha's path of training isn't a mere conditioning
aimed at fitting us into anybody else's form or anybody else's understanding.
AWARENESS
Awareness as Capacity
The model I find helpful in contemplating our training is that of awareness
as capacity. Our experiences are all received into awareness. How well or how
freely we receive life is dependent on our hearts' capacity; or, we could say,
on the degree of awareness we are living as. With this model, we can examine
exactly how, where and when we set the limitations on our capacity to receive
experience, what the limitations we place on awareness are, and what this feels
like.
One of the chants which we regularly recite in the monastery says: appamano
Buddho, appamano Dhammo, appamano Sangho. The word appamana translates as
'without measure'. So this verse means: "Limitless is the Buddha, limitless
is the Dhamma, limitless is the Sangha." One way of seeing what was
unlimited about the Buddha is to look at his quality of awareness. The Buddha's
heart capacity was boundless and accordingly he could accommodate unlimited
experience without the slightest stress. He went beyond any compulsive tendency
to set limitations on awareness and so was untroubled by anything that passed
through his awareness. Hence we say, "I go for refuge to the Buddha";
or we orient all our conscious effort towards the possibility of limitless
awareness.
We know we need to do this if we want to awaken out of the agonizing sense of
limited being. It is because we come up against the humiliating experience of
"This is just too much - I can't take any more" that we have to train
ourselves. We must understand what this 'I' is that finds it all too much. Our
experience of the present moment is not too much for reality; reality is what's
happening. The painful constriction we feel is the symptom of the limitations we
place on awareness. This pain is the appropriate consequence of our habitual
grasping.
Seeing it from this perspective, we realise that placing limitations is
something we are responsible for doing. Our cramped hearts are not imposed on
us. We come to see that we are not helpless victims of our conditioning. I'm
always surprised when people tell me, "This is just the way I'm made,"
as if it's somebody else's fault for getting the design wrong. Working with a
model of awareness as capacity, we discover (literally, 'un-cover') potential
for change. With constant careful attention in this area there begins to dawn a
quiet confidence in a way that we can cultivate.
Paying Attention
In the world of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, sensations and mental
impressions we have no choice but to receive sense-impingement. Regardless of
our lifestyle, be it as monk or nun or psychotherapist or any other occupation,
we are all touched by the world of the senses. And these impressions are either
received or not received. If we are rigid in our holding to the perception of
ourselves as inherently limited in our ability to receive, then we feel put upon
by the struggle; we feel obstructed. But to contemplate the possibility of
opening and expanding our heart's capacity takes us beyond the feeling of being
obliged to suffer.
If we make a discipline of paying attention to the very feeling of being
obliged to suffer, then we are being mindful of the dynamic that actually
creates the suffering. We are putting ourselves in the place where we can undo
the cause of the feeling of limitation. Our untrained attention easily and
understandably flows in the direction of being interested in maximizing on
possibilities for pleasure. It is natural for the sensual side of our character
to want to follow what the senses appear to tell us is the best way to increased
well-being - that is, if it feels good then take it; if it feels bad, reject it.
But from our life experience we know that we need to look deeper than that. This
is not to pass judgment but to accord with reality. Nobody is forcing us to
look deeper, but if we don't then we remain more troubled by life's struggles
than we have to be.
Here we see why there is an emphasis on suffering in Buddhism. Right
attention paid at the right time and place shows what it is we are doing to
maintain the felt perception of limited being. If we realise that we are
responsible for doing this then we also realise we can choose to not-do it. What
a relief!
So how we approach our struggles is our own choice. For example, in regard to
body, suppose one day one of us discovers a painful, sensitive lump beneath an
armpit. It is likely that to some degree we would rather not know about it. But
we are all aware of the dangerous consequences of avoiding that kind of sign.
Something within knows that pain is an organismic message calling for attention.
If we offer it the suitable response of interest then further damage might be
avoided. If we don't, then maybe the volume of the message will have to
increase.
In our practice of training for awareness we learn to read heart-pain in the
same way as we would interpret bodily symptoms. Heart-pain indicates that there
is something which for some reason we are avoiding and to which we are not
paying proper attention. Later it may be seen as a nudge towards awareness, but
it begins in shock and suffering. Remember how it was for the Buddha when he
first encountered old age, sickness and death.
Heeding this summons to attention and feeling inwardly, not turning away from
the pain that is involved, we are able to witness the resistance we have. When
we recognise what it is that we are doing we come to see the suffering for what
it is. If our attention is careful, caring and well-informed enough, an easing
of the holding to limited capacity occurs and a new understanding appears in its
place. We then receive an unexpected affirmation which says that, for every
increase in our capacity to receive life, there is a corresponding increase in
discernment itself.
The ability to see clearly and feel accurately is already there in our
open-heartedness. It is only the compulsive setting up and maintaining of
restrictions on ourselves that creates obstructions. The larger capacity of
heart already has within it what we are looking for. Our difficulty is that we
prefer not to have to go through the doorway of fear and struggle to enter that
larger reality. Yet all our efforts to become wise and compassionate by merely
reading and strategising our lives leave us feeling self-centred and frustrated.
Hence, there is great value in the encouragement we give each other in applying
ourselves to the careful cultivation of this kind of training.
Judgement-free Awareness
In working to go beyond habitual or ignorant existence, we will at some stage
be called to look at just how it is that we find a personal sense of security -
our identity. For all of us this arises to some degree by taking a position for
or against what is happening. We recognise this as feeling safe when we know
where we stand in relation to an experience we are having or some issue that is
presented to us. This ability to secure ourselves by discriminating is a normal
disposition for us, but only suitable up to a certain point. When this
discriminating faculty takes over and becomes who and what we are, we have a big
problem. It means we can never be free from taking sides, from agreeing and
disagreeing even in subtle ways, and that keeps our minds busy. Accordingly, we
are never simply aware of the activity of our minds. Our wish to abide in quiet
investigation ends up as a struggle with resistance and confusion.
We can find help in this area if we consider the consequences of the kind of
messages we were given early on in life about what represents Ultimate Reality.
For instance, what is the effect if the idea didn't get through that God is
love, that the ultimate reality in all existence is all-pervading, all-inclusive
caring, but instead we got the idea that God is a Being who eternally accepts
and rejects according to some agenda that we have no say in - that there is an
Omnipotent Being who is taking some up and sending some down - for ever? The
effect is that the highest aspect of our psyche is continuously discriminating
and we are effectively locked into a process that is inherently frustrating. We
are in a state of chronic stress.
There is no possibility of freedom in such a conditioned view. It is very
important to examine this. Imagine what happens, for example, if we are tired or
unwell and not in touch with much compassion. If an habitual taking sides for
good and against bad is dominating then we can't receive ourselves in that
state. All we do is act out of a chronically judging mind: "I shouldn't be
this way." Habitually seeking an identity by holding a view for or against
keeps us locked into or bonded to an imaginary programme that is ultimately
right. But what is right about it?
Finding identity by seeking security in the conditioned activity of our minds
can be contrasted with the spiritual path of finding well-being and identity in
awareness itself. Those who are committed to awakening move beyond a search for
security in a personal identity born out of fixed views and opinions; they move
through the insecure and unfamiliar world of not knowing where they stand, and
eventually reach non-judgemental awareness. If we don't have to know who we are
or be assured we are right, but can rather receive, in freedom of awareness, how
this moment is manifesting, we leave behind our ad-diction to certainty, with
its predictability and limited possibility. Our lives enter a different mode
altogether. We don't have to have guarantees that our group is the best or that
everything will turn out all right. We can tolerate uncertainty - and that is
wonderfully liberating. We find the possibility of being able to accord with all
the activity of our totally uncertain world without being driven heedlessly into
taking sides. The discovery is a welcome one.
Awareness and its Activity
As our investigation continues, we arrive at a point of seeing how all the
picking and choosing activity going on is simply activity taking place in
awareness. During the first interview I had with my first teacher in Thailand,
the Venerable Ajahn Thate, I was told that my task was to learn to see the
difference between the activity taking place in awareness and awareness itself.
End of interview!
This instruction still underlies all my practice. I feel very fortunate to
have had such clear, simple guidance. The suggestion this teaching gives us
lifts us out of believing we are the activity that is taking place. We can grow
into seeing all the content of our minds, including the picking and choosing and
evaluating and so on, as the natural waves that pass across the ocean of
awareness that is our life. We are positively disinclined to struggle with what
arises within us. Instead, we know that the judging mind is just so. It is
natural activity - no blame; no taking a position for or against the judging
mind or any activity. If we are aware of the inclination to grasp onto a view
about what we see, we remember, 'no judging the judging mind'. We have to get
quite subtle about it.
Abiding as awareness, wise reflection is energised and inspired. And it is
this very awareness which in turn gradually dissolves our false identity as
inherently limited, conditioned beings. In terms of training, we commit
ourselves to a practice of mindfulness of the felt perception of 'struggle'. If
we can remember to be conscious of the struggle that is taking place in any
given moment and then further remember to not-judge the struggle, we find
ourselves elevated into an awareness that already has in it the understanding
and sensitivity that brings about letting go. Letting go happens; it is not
something we do. Rather, it is conditioned by our not-doing - our not taking a
position for or against. The way forward then becomes clear.
In my opinion, we don't get very far in practice as meditators or as
psychotherapists until we are well-acquainted with the reality of not-judging.
Without access to it we simply won't have the inner space to hold the intensity
of dilemma with which a life committed to transformation will most certainly
challenge us. If we do know the non-judgmental mind, then we know the place of
resolution, the place of spontaneity, of creativity, of intelligence. This is
where what we are looking for already exists. Until we enter this dimension, all
our wise words will be mere imitation. When we speak we will always be quoting
others.
The Factor of Agility
As we continue our cultivation of the Way there will be times when we become
unduly comfortable with a particular orientation to practice. If we are not
sufficiently alert to notice how this is happening we could fall into a feeling
of mediocrity; we become bored. So we are encouraged to develop the agility of
attention to be able to move in and out of contrasting environments. We avoid
staying only in areas in which we know we can operate well. This applies equally
to our inner world and our outer life.
One way of understanding how the principle of contrast brings deepening is to
observe how children learn and develop. Parents give their children contrasting
experiences, colours and objects which stimulate the growth of intelligence.
Without an appropriate input of contrasting experience, children lose their
propensity for imagination through repetition and the blandness of familiar
routines: they are likely to become dull.
We could also ponder on what the conventional wisdom contained in the saying
'a change is as good as a rest' might be. The feeling of being refreshed from
significantly changing what we are doing - even if it isn't to something we
particularly like - arises because we break out of the mode of predictability
that we had become used to. When we change what we are doing, we are energised
by our own interest and natural enthusiasm. We already have plenty of energy -
flare-ups of passion show us that - but because we become overly familiar with
the patterns of our lives rigidity sets in and we lose contact with our energy
source. Submitting ourselves to contrasting influences gives us new access to
our natural energy. If we don't understand this dynamic we may believe that we
are actually lacking, and go endlessly looking for new stimulation.
We need to contemplate our own condition until we find for ourselves how
interest and vitality are generated. In our monastery recently, a photographer
friend came to take pictures for next year's calendar. His work is beautiful and
very much admired for the richness and depth he manages to produce. The primary
element for bringing about that richness is contrast.
If we follow our usual tendencies to stay where we feel safe and avoid
challenges out of a suspicion of inadequacy, mediocrity is inevitable. Even if
we try treating ourselves to stimulations and distractions for a while, we know
that this is not the Way. By contemplating the principle of contrast in practice
we encourage ourselves to go into situations where we don't feel safe because we
are interested and we want to be awake.
I heard a well-known English judo master speak once about how he was given
instruction by his teacher. The teacher noticed that his student was winning all
the tournaments by executing a particular throw and that he always used his
right side. So the teacher told him he had to stop using his right side for one
year. A series of humiliating defeats followed but eventually the student
developed the skill of performing his winning throw using his left side. At this
point the wisdom of the teacher was recognised. So long as he could only throw
from the right he was vulnerable and it was just a matter of time before someone
else discovered his weakness and caught him out; but now, with the agility of
being able to come from either side, he was unbeatable.
Most of us don't have the good fortune to live with a watchful master who
observes our tendencies to become imbalanced by our emphasis on our good sides,
so we have to observe ourselves. And this is where we need the skill of inner
agility. The formal Buddhist Teaching in this area is known as The Four
Foundations of Mindfulness (Satipatthana). Without going into these teachings
thoroughly at this time, it is good to refer to them. The instruction presented
is a detailed description of the techniques and benefits of establishing
mindfulness in four areas: mindfulness of body (kayanupasanna); mindfulness of
feeling (vedananupasanna); mindfulness of the mind or heart itself (cittanupasanna);
mindfulness regarding the laws or patterns of reality that pertain to the Way of
Awakening (dhammanupasanna). The discourses given by the Buddha on this subject
form the foundation of all the teachings in the meditation tradition of the
Theravada school of Buddhism. Agility of attention, inner and outer, is held in
the highest position in the hierarchy of skills to be developed.
TRAINING
Training as 'According with'
Now let's turn to talking specifically about training. I use this word not in
the sense, for instance, of training a parrot to talk, which is better
considered as conditioning, but in the way of giving a direction to something
that is moving. At the centre of the cluster of buildings that comprise our
monastery, there is a garden dedicated to the memory of the late Venerable Ajahn
Chah. In the centre of the garden there is a stupa (reliquary) containing relics
of our teacher, and this stupa sits in a beautiful small pond. To keep the pond
fresh and filled up, the rain water from the roof of the adjacent Meditation
Hall is gathered and 'trained' to flow towards the stupa. Behind the stupa there
is a variegated ivy growing and I am trying to train it to climb the wall.
Anyone who does gardening knows that this kind of training can only work if it
is in the nature of the plant to go that way. Right training must accord with
the true nature of that which is being trained. And this training does most
definitely mean going against our unruly nature. Some gardeners might prefer
wildness, which I understand. But if we follow the way of undirected, untrained
wildness in the area of human passions, we cause a lot of suffering for
ourselves and others. So we willingly give ourselves into a training.
Whole-Being Training
If it is Buddhist training it must involve body, speech and mind. When we
look at our present quality of life, we should see it as the result of our past
actions (kamma). Our being is conditioned by actions of body (kayakamma),
actions of speech (vacikamma) and actions of mind (manokamma). Bringing our
passionate nature into line with the path of realisation must involve all of our
being. Many of our formal rituals are aimed at elevating awareness of these
three dimensions. As we bow in front of the Buddha image we are lowering our
bodily form in an acknowledgement of our experience of limitation. With our body
we are saying 'I', as separate ego, willingly submit myself to the 'way of what
is', in contrast to the stiff-necked "I can handle it, I don't need
anybody" kind of attitude. And as we offer candles and incense to the
Triple Gem, we perform with our body gestures of respect and gratitude, which
bring into relief the self-oriented activity of our lives that is always taking
from the world for 'me'. Similarly, as we recite the morning and evening
chanting, we utter words that resonate with the deepest aspects of our hearts.
By intentionally acting with body and speech in the form of regular ritual, we
are reminded of where the real responsibility for our actions lies.
Mindfully engaging each other in dialogue on matters of truth also serves to
cultivate a felt sense of the significance of training. It is encouraging to see
that more and more people are wanting to meet to support each other in this way.
If we don't train, then, like the water off the roof that never reaches the
pond but merely seeps away, so the precious passion of our hearts fails to
enliven our commitment to the Way.
Wanting to Train
If training accords with the true nature of that which is being trained,
there is an ease, even if at times we feel challenged. Training is challenging
because it is not what 'I' want. But then, when does 'I' ever truly get what it
wants? Is it possible for this separate 'I' to be genuinely contented? No!
Because, by being identified as the activity of wanting and not as awareness
itself, we are compelled to feel always busy. When we understand this then we
start wanting to train. And such wanting is essential. The meditation master
Venerable Ajahn Mahabua, when asked, "What is the place of desire for
liberation in this Way?", replied that it is the Way. When we fully want to
submit ourselves to a training because we long to go beyond a sense of cramped
limitation, then the interest and creativity that we will need for the task
ahead becomes available to us.
If hearing talks or reading books about practice inspires us to take up
training, then that is good. But we need to know that we are doing it because we
want to do it. It is only from this perspective that we can learn from what our
own discernment faculty has to tell us. If we are imitating someone else's
practice, then we are compromising this faculty. We need to assess, as we
proceed, if this way is our way. Entering into training is like entering a
mountain stream to bathe: we wouldn't just dive in because it looks attractive.
Maybe it's only a foot deep and we would be badly hurt. It's better to go
carefully, feeling our way until we are confident about what we are getting
ourselves into.
Sometimes people have a problem in this area of wholeheartedly wanting to
progress in their training, because Buddhist Teachings so insistently call
attention to the fact that suffering is rooted in desire. Such people jump to
the conclusion that to want anything at all is not the Way. This is very
unfortunate. As we know, where there is desire there is energy. If because of
some ill-informed assumptions about desire we disown this energy, then who is
taking responsibility for it? Who is taking care of it if we aren't? It doesn't
just go away because we don't think it's a good idea. The last thing that the
world needs is for more heedlessness around desire. What does help, though, is
to know what we want more than anything else. I am suggesting the reason that we
take up this training is because we want to find out what this is.
At Ratanagiri Monastery, we have a regular meeting on Sunday nights at which
the local Buddhists like to gather for chanting, meditation and discussion. We
begin with the recitation of the Three Refuges and Five Precepts. For a long
time this took place with very little volume, until one day it occurred to me
that they sounded embarrassed about doing it. I asked if we should stop; but no,
they wanted to continue with it. So I suggested that unless the group were
feeling apologetic about wanting to do it, we should shout the recitation out.
These days we don't exactly shout, but there is a good strong communal voice
resonating around the Hall, reaffirming our determination to offer ourselves
into the training.
The need to know that we are doing our own practice stays with us. We can
easily become habituated to the training forms that we have acquired and because
of this they cease to work for us. However, if these forms are rightly grasped
then they enthuse and energise us. So we keep checking to see if we are doing it
because we want to. When we reach a point of genuinely wanting to train, we can
enjoy practice much more.
Obviously, there will be times when we feel like we don't want to do it
anymore. If we have cultivated the skilful habit of inquiring of ourselves, with
interest, as to what motivates our actions, when this feeling of not-wanting
arises we will be in the best place to find out whether or not we really don't
want to do it. Superficially, our desires come and go, conditioned by many
different casual concerns; but at the deepest level, as Buddhism sees it, all
beings want to be free. So if we look long enough, we will penetrate beyond the
not-wanting and remember what we are in this for.
A Long-Enduring Mind
Having a thoroughly conscious commitment to the training is also very
important. As with anything, cultivation of the Way takes time. In the Chinese
Buddhist tradition they have a teaching that says there are three requisites for
the Way to prosper: Great Faith, Great Doubt and a Long-Enduring Mind. Living
with an underlying faith that is highlighted by an ever-changing and challenging
counterpoint of doubt generates the energy that undoes our rigid habits. But if
our practice is tainted by wrongly-held expectations based on getting what 'I'
want, then the very same energy that has been liberated can feed the
ego-rigidity making it even less workable - we end up worse off than if we had
never begun practice. So the Chinese Buddhists take a vow to continue the same
path of practice, without alteration, for however many lifetimes it takes them
to awaken. For someone who firmly believes in the life-after-life transmigration
through the six realms of existence, this vow effectively relaxes expectations.
As long as we are demanding that we get what 'I' want out of the training, we
strengthen the obstructions. Just to contemplate this will help us change how we
relate to the expectations that we have clung to so dearly for so long. Real
training supports us in releasing expectations and refreshing our effort
continually.
We all have a problem with keeping effort fresh. Simply going through the
routine of doing formal practice is not enough. A few decades ago out in Asia we
were quick to criticise what we saw as pointless superstitious carry-on, like
the waving of incense in front of golden Buddhas. Yet our sitting meditation can
be the same. If we aren't doing it with freshness it becomes pointless carry-on;
in fact, it's worse than pointless. If we are not fully involved with all our
body, heart and mind in meditation, then we can be compounding the already
established patterns of limitation. How unfortunate!
For it to be the profound and radical ritual that meditation can truly be, we
need to remember what we have to do to keep our effort fresh and alive. Whilst
formal sitting is one valid way, there are other ways; we need to re-examine the
whole area of devotion and what it means to us. It is almost certain that to
imitate Asian devotional practices will not work, but it is vitally important to
find out what does work. Actually, in my experience, developing a devotional
practice of a daily offering of incense to the shrine is tremendously helpful in
sustaining spiritual aliveness. I might not sit meditation on some days but I
almost never omit my devotional efforts.
FREE TO SUFFER
It is by remembering what brought us to training, and remembering to
rediscover right effort moment by moment, that clear understanding of the
functioning of awareness dawns on us. With this new dawning of the inherent
value and beauty of awareness, a new letting go of the security of old familiar
identities occurs; even letting go of the idea of becoming better or developing
ourselves - even letting go of the idea of enlightenment. We now value this
clear-seeing so highly that we are positively disinclined to settle for anything
less.
There can even be a letting go of the preoccupation with the idea of becoming
free from suffering. We are more interested now in how accurately we are meeting
any suffering in this moment. We begin to find our security and well-being in
the freedom to suffer: "Can I suffer and remain free at the same
time?" Our interest in cultivating awareness has brought us full circle to
discover not freedom from suffering but a vast capacity to suffer. This vast
capacity to suffer is the vast compassion we are all looking for. How fortunate
it would be for the world if there were more beings around with such compassion.
Thank you for the opportunity to look into these matters.
Questioner:
I tend to become uncomfortably self-conscious when I make an
effort to be aware. Presumably this becomes less as one progresses.
Ajahn Munindo:
Even when what we give ourselves into is wholesome and
suitable, we end up struggling because of our compulsive trying. It can be
helpful to see the extent to which our Western-style will-power is disfigured
and disfiguring. Whatever we willfully attempt is distorted; it is interfered
with by our trying too hard. There is nothing wrong with this, it just hurts,
that's all. And to find the way to transform that hurt into genuine well-being I
always turn to the power of non-judgemental awareness. If we are able to receive
freely the pain of our self-consciousness, that is, without taking sides and
following ideas of how things should and shouldn't be regarding this felt pain,
we do arrive at a larger reality. In that openness is the understanding of how
to proceed with a purified quality of effort.
Actually, if our suffering is intense enough and our commitment to the Way
whole-bodied and wholehearted enough, we might have the good fortune of sinking
deeply into despair, and at that place remembering what we have been talking
about today; that is, how the judging-mind is complicit in what is happening. We
enquire, "Where am I finding identity? Am I still taking a position for or
against, or am I free to feel what I feel in this moment?" I say this is
good fortune, because if we do remember this deeply at the level of intensity to
which were brought by despair, the silent understanding that arises at that
depth will serve to undermine a lot of our false thinking and holding.
Q:
My problem is that sometimes when relating with others a tension seems
to develop from trying to stay aware within myself at the same time as attending
to that which is happening on the outside.
A. M.:
If someone comes to us in a state of distress asking for our
attention then, obviously, if we are able to offer attention we should. If we
still don't trust ourselves not to get caught up in our own inner reactions, we
have to acknowledge that that is the case. And we must know that that means we
have some work to do on ourselves. However, the time of attending to another is
not the best time to do the work on ourselves. Yes, in some sense these two go
together, but it is a matter of degree.
A regular, daily, formal practice of meditation, or whatever one wants to
call the exercise of conscious remembering, can also support us in this. As
Buddhists we recognise the value of regularity in both formal and daily-life
practice. What we are called to attend to in our daily activity is varied and
complex, but a formal daily sitting dedicated to doing nothing - except
releasing out of all tendencies to take sides - has profound benefit. As we
sensitively look into the very movement of preference as it is taking place, we
begin to see beyond it. Whatever compulsive judging is mixed up with the
activity, regardless of what the content of that activity might be, we simply
notice it and remember, "No judging the judging-mind." If there is
still judging, then we apply our contemplation to that, and keep falling back
into freer and freer perspectives. We continue releasing, releasing, releasing
our identification with the judgement, until there is just the activity of the
mind simply as it is; or maybe there is no activity at all. But without a
regular effort to sit still, ideally at about the same time each day, I feel we
might be disadvantaged in finding the kind of totally trusting relationship with
ourselves that we hope for; a relationship whereby we can forget ourselves and
simply attend.
Q:
You have talked about being opened up by suffering. I have heard that
in the Buddhist Teachings there are two ways: this way and the way of bliss or
ecstasy. The latter, I'm told, makes more use of celebration and joy.
A. M.:
Yes, I have heard about the idea of two ways as well. This might
be true, but I haven't seen any evidence of it myself. Deep opening does involve
both suffering and joy but I'm not sure they are separate ways. The doorways we
must go through always look to me to be daunting and they always involve
suffering. To approach these doorways definitely requires a strong sense of
well-being and a balanced confidence, but grasping the handle is frightening.
Once we actually begin to move out of the room of limited possibility,
through the narrow doorway, then we experience bliss and we enter upon a larger
awareness which is our new life. At this time we feel relieved and have a
wonderful sense that this will do us fine. We are pleased with ourselves - at
least for a while. Then our commitment to a training of body, speech and mind
prompts us to recall our deepest interest in the possibility of limitless
awareness; not just somewhat expanded awareness. We keep going for refuge to
Reality and this leads us to finding another doorway and another and another;
and we keep going through the trepidation over and over again. In my experience,
what changes is an increased willingness to go through with it. Right training
is about finding this increased willingness.
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