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Venerable
Ajahn Sumedho -
Question Time with Ajahn
Sumedho
Q:
This word 'citta' is used in the suttas for the subjective
consciousness. If there's a citta from which the asavas (biases) are
removed and a citta which is liberated, how does this fit in with the
idea of self or no-self? How does one avoid self-view in thinking about
the citta? If there's no self, who is it that's aware and what is it
that becomes enlightened?
A: This is where Buddhism excels. It totally frustrates that desire. The
Buddha wouldn't give an inch on that, because that's the non-dualism of
the Buddha's teaching. It's psychologically uninspiring. You're left
with just letting go of things rather than holding on to the feeling of
a God or Oneness or the Soul or the Subject with capital S, or the
Overself, or the Atman or Brahman or whatever - because those are all
perceptions and the Buddha was pointing to the grasping of perception.
The "I am" is a perception - isn't it? - and "God" is a perception.
They're conventionally valid for communication and so forth, but as a
practice, if you don't let go of perception then you tend to still have
the illusion - an illusoriness coming from a belief in the perception of
the overself, or God or the Oneness or Buddha Nature, or the divine
substance or the divine essence, or something like that.
Like with monism - monistic thinking is very inspiring. "We're all one.
We are one - that's our true nature - the one mind." And you can talk of
the universal mind and the wholeness and the oneness of everything.
That's very uplifting, that's the inspiration. But non-dualism doesn't
inspire. It's deliberately psychologically non-inspiring because you're
letting go of the desire for inspiration, of that desire and need and
clutching at inspiring concepts. This doesn't mean that those concepts
are wrong or that monistic thinking is wrong; but the Buddha very much
reflected the attachment to it. So, you're not an annihilationist saying
there's nobody, nothing, no subject, but by non-dualism, you just let go
of things till there's only the way things are.
Then who is it that knows? People say: "Then what is it that knows? Who
is it that knows the way things are, who is it that's aware? What is it
that's aware?" You want me to tell you? I mean you're aware aren't you?
Why do you have to have a name for it? Do you have to have a perception?
Why can't there just be awareness? Why do you have to call it mine, or
the eternal essence, or whatever? Why do you have to name it? Why not
just be that, be aware. Then you see the desire, the doubt, wanting to
label it, add to it. It's avijja paccaya sankhara (creating conditions
out of ignorance). The process goes on of wanting to complicate it by
giving it a name, calling it something.
Just like the question "Can you see your own eyes?" Nobody can see their
own eyes. I can see your eyes but I can't see my eyes. I'm sitting right
here, I've got two eyes and I can't see them. But you can see my eyes.
But there's no need for me to see my eyes because 1 can see! It's
ridiculous, isn't it? If I started saying "Why can't I see my own eyes?"
you'd think "Ajahn Sumedho's really weird, isn't he!" Looking in a
mirror you can see a reflection, but that's not your eyes, it's a
reflection of your eyes. There's no way that I've been able to look and
see my own eyes, but then it's not necessary to see your own eyes. It's
not necessary to know who it is that knows-because there's knowing. And
then you start creating views about who is it that knows, then you start
the avijja paccaya sankhara and on through the whole thing again to
despair and anguish.
Q: How do you practise contemplation of the citta (approximates to
"mind", except that it is not cerebral, nor is it located in a place in
the body. The word refers to the sense of mind consciousness)?
A: Well it's just like a mood; vedana (feeling) is attractive, repulsive
or neutral, but citta can be quite fuzzy - you can feel emotionally
confused or hesitant, or muddled or just dull and very nebulous feelings
of moods. If you're practising citta vipassana you're really aware of
what your citta is like. But sometimes people in meditation develop a
technique, and they do it no matter what. They aren't aware of their
actual mood or what's affecting them. They become conditioned to a
meditation technique: "It's 8.35 - time to do my anapanasati," and then
they're not aware. They've just been on the telephone, and their Mother
told them that their Father ran away with the secretary and that the
electricity bill wasn't paid so the lights go out and there are all
these things that make you upset -and then they wonder why: "I couldn't
meditate last night, I was too upset; I just couldn't concentrate on my
breath!" But if you're meditating properly, then if some horrible thing
happens, you can watch your citta. Don't think you've got to do
anapanasati at that time -I mean its not going to be much use. No
wonder. There's a lot going on here that you have to accept and notice.
You can do anapanasati when nothing much is disturbing you.
People ask me, they say: "I've been trying to do anapanasati for years,
I haven't gotten anywhere" They have this idea that to do anapanasati is
a good practice, but they, don't reflect on other factors in life: what
kind of work they do, what kind of family situation they're in and all
the things that are going to influence and affect their mind and heart.
Maybe for a moment you might be able to suppress everything out, but it
all comes exploding back into your mind again. So the more quiet you
get, the easier it is just to concentrate on the breath.
When I first started meditating I couldn't do anapanasati at all. So I
did mantras. Something like mantras I found very helpful to calm - like
fighting fire with fire. My mind was such an obsessed thinker that I
needed a thought. I couldn't contemplate on anything as subtle as my
breathing, So I made up this mantra - "Let go" - and it worked. After a
while, I just kept saying this mantra: "Let go" The first month of my
meditation when I was a novice was an utter hell realm for me really.
Suddenly I found myself living a very lonely life in the monastery, all
alone. Nobody to talk to, nowhere to go. I'd just sit there and wait for
them to bring me the meal. I became obsessed about the food - really
ridiculous. And then try to do this anapanasati. In the end I thought,
"Let go, just say: 'Let go'" So I did that, and I found through
obsessing my mind with those two words eventually the thinking began to
still - I'd get moments when I wasn't actually thinking; there was a
moment of calm. And I'd notice it. And then the mind went back into
obsession, and I'd say: "Let go, let go, let go" Eventually it was
really like a machine gun! And after a while my mind became much more
calm, so I could just more or less casually go about it. That's working
with the mind. Then after a while mantras seemed ridiculous - I had no
need for them - and then anapanasati became something I really enjoyed,
I really liked to do.
Q: If consciousness and the khandhas** cease in a Tathagata, in a
Buddha, in someone who becomes enlightened, who exists, what kind of
existence is there left? Is there anything, is there nothing, or what?
A: There's no delusion, about it any more. There's consciousness -the
buddha was conscious, he wasn't unconscious - and he had a body and he
had perception. He had vedana and he had sanna sankhara, vinnara. He had
sense organs, and could see, hear, smell, taste, touch, think, and he
had vedana,- there was vedana but there was no desire from that, coming
from, ignorance. There was the ability to respond, to teach out of
compassion for other beings, but there was no self to do it: there was
just the remaining of what was left of that lifetime. He lived over
forty years after his enlightenment, for the welfare of others beings.
Language gets very confusing, because cessation sounds like annihilation
to us-but it isn't. It's the ceasing of ignorance, the cessation of
ignorance.
**Khandhas - body or form (rupa) and mind, which is made up of feeling (vedana),
perception or recognition (sanna), mind creations (sankhara), and
consciousness dependent on the six senses (vinnana)
Q: If there is no desire, if there's parinibbana, doesn't that mean
everything ceases?
A: That's it. There's the nibbana of non-grasping while the bodies still
living, and then there's the parinibbana the final relinquishment;
there's nothing to get reborn. You see, when people die still
unenlightened they desire to be reborn again. If you identify with the
body, then you try to hold onto it as long as possible or there's the
desire to be reborn into something else. You can see it just in a day
here when you want something to stimulate you - that's rebirth actually.
There's all this desire that will always take us to doing something,
absorbing into something else. Well, apply that to when the body is
dying. If you're frightened of death, and you've not really contemplated
life and you're still attached to all these views about yourself, then
there's a lot of desire going to come for rebirth. What you're attached
to you tend to absorb into - the things you're used to, what you like,
what you find attractive. You tend to go for that all the time; seeking
people that you like, or seeking the place or the things, the thoughts
and memories which are familiar. People will even hang on to misery and
pain, because they're used to it.
As I said last night, when you're miserable at least you feel alive. To
feel persecuted makes you feel really alive. Hating people makes you
feel alive, doesn't it? If you really hate somebody, then you know
you're really alive and you feel energised. Some people get very dull
when they don't hate people, when they don't have any lust or greed for
something, or any ambition to get somewhere. Why do people want to climb
Mount Everest, or be the first one to sit the longest in a tub of baked
beans? (There is actually someone - it's in the Guiness Book of Records.
Imagine the danger of being reborn from that one!) Taking revenge,
seeking vengeance, is sometimes what keeps people alive. I've never been
in an English pub because all my life in England I've lived as a monk
-but in American ones, I remember you'd go and you'd argue. You can get
very heated about political things that you really don't care about very
much-, it makes you feel alive to win an argument, or to support and
defend a particular viewpoint.
Now contrast that to what we're doing here where the attention is on
such ordinary things. There's nothing much: the passions are let go of -
greed, hatred, delusion. You're conscious of breathing now, conscious of
feeling - neutral feeling - Conscious of causes. You're bringing into
consciousness the way things are. Now one doesn't feel this desire: the
desire to go after extremes falls away. Most of us would really not want
to argue about political views, or go to pubs, or climb Mount Everest,
or sit in a tub of baked beans. So this is where most of our life is:
it's the same for everyone really. The extremes are brief moments, but
most of our life is like this: it's eating, walking, sitting, lying
down, feeling, waiting for the bus, waiting for somebody to telephone,
waiting for the bell to ring, waiting for the next event. And all that
time we're breathing and there's feeling, and there's consciousness. In
the practice of awareness, we're bringing consciousness to the
ordinariness because we're not Usually conscious of that: Usually the
ignorant person is conscious only in the extreme moments.
Q: How would you describe the nature of the pure mind?
A: This is where the Buddha was very careful, because when you're trying
to describe the indescribable, or define the indefinable, or limit the
unlimited, you can get yourself into a lot of delusion. The only thing I
can say is that as you let go of things more and more, and realize that
all that arises ceases - you realize the cessation of things - then you
realize the Unconditioned.
There's the conditioned, the Unconditioned; the created, the uncreated.
You can't conceive uncreatedness. You have a word but there's no
perception for it. There's no kind of symbol that one could grasp. You
could have a doctrine about it, so religion tends to make these
metaphysical doctrines that people believe in. But, since the Buddhist
teaching is a non-doctrinal teaching in which you're to find things out
for yourself, it leaves you without any real metaphysical doctrine in
order for the realization to happen.
The conditioned realm only arises and ceases. It has no eternality or
infinity to it. It's only a movement in the universal. So that whatever
word you get or concept you have can be very misleading. We've had
dialogue with Christians, and I notice Christian meditators now are
moving more towards the Buddhist position and saying quite outrageous
things like: "God is nothing or no-thing." But yet, for Buddhists, we
would understand that and that .. "no-thing" is probably a fairly
accurate description: whereas trinitarian Christianity is always giving
God attributes as a Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
So you're always having these conditioned attributes that you're looking
for, you're perceiving as God. And yet, you know in mystical
Christianity you transcend this trinitarian view very much; and that is
where you talk about mystery, or not knowing. Christian mystics don't
have the psychological vocabulary that we do in Buddhism, so they tend
to put it in a different way, But if you get beyond the terminologies
they use, it's very much the experience of the mind that is free from a
self-view - and from a binding to the conditioned world. So one sees the
potential in all religions to point beyond themselves.
The danger is always in attachment to the conventions. Even with
Buddhism, as beautiful and clear a teaching as it really is, not many
Buddhists use it to be enlightened. They tend to attach to a certain
part or a certain thing in it. But I think now there's more potential
for awakening to this truth - which isn't Buddhist in fact - it is
beyond conventions. But Buddhism is clearly stated as a convention. It's
not an absolute. It's a tool to use. At least with Buddha-Dhamma you're
not asked to support a convention in itself, you're encouraged to use it
for mindfulness and wisdom. And I can see that in Christianity also.
Hinduism and Islam have this in some form or another. Then ther's the
perennial philosophy. There's a lot of this really clear thinking going
on now among human beings that is quite wonderful - the mental clarity
and use of wisdom that is happening in different places on the planet.
No matter how gloomy and pessimistic the newspapers sometimes are about
the state of the world, I can't help but feel more optimistic. I can see
that it is changing and that in just my own lifetime theres been a
remarkable change in the development of a spiritual understanding and
wisdom, compared with say twenty-five years ago.
Q: Why do monks and nuns not claim attainments?
A: The rules for the monks and the nuns were made for particular
instances. From my own experience of being a Buddhist monk, I can see
how wise that is because it really makes you quite careful about how you
say things. Sometimes you can get very enthusiastic about your practice,
or you have insights and the thoughts do come up: "Oh, I'm enlightened"
And if you go round telling everyone, then that can be very misleading.
In fact when monks would get that way my teacher, Ajahn Chah, would say-
"OK, now you stay off in your little kuti and don't talk to anyone until
you calm down"
The tendency to interpret these experiences from self - view - "I am" -
is the danger; not that the experiences are wrong but you really need to
be non-attached to the memories of them or to an interpretation of them
from this position of "I AM ..."
There is suffering and there is the end of suffering: that's all the
Buddha ever really said. The Brahmin priests were always trying to push
him into making metaphysical statements, ultimate doctrinal statements
about the I AM, or THE ONE and so forth. And he would always say: "I
teach there is suffering, there is the end of suffering" Sometimes the
Brahmin priests would say: "Well obviously he doesn't know, otherwise if
he knew he could tell us" But then by telling people, as with all the
metaphysical, doctrinal teachings of religion, what happens? People tend
to just grasp the doctrine.
So if you believe in a metaphysical doctrine, then how you tend to
interpret life will come from that belief. The Buddha approached it from
existential experience - experience of existence - suffering and the end
Of suffering. However, the danger from that is to become nihilistic: to
say that there's no God, nothing, that there's just the arising and
ceasing, empty phenomena rolling on, meaningless nothing and so forth.
That's the opposite of the eternalist view where there is a God and
eternal life. The Buddhist approach is to neither extreme but to this
penetration in the present, through the here and now, through
mindfulness. And the key, the clue, is that suffering: the experience of
suffering and the experience of non-suffering.
Now how many of you realize non-suffering? You don't suffer all the
time, but are you really aware when you're not suffering? Just question
yourself in that way, because the unenlightened human being tends to
assume that one is a person that has suffered a lot in one's life. This
kind of basic assumption from the personality position, tends to colour
everything that we do. We can be living in a situation where we're not
suffering at all but assuming that we suffer - even when there isn't any
suffering. But through mindfulness, you're noticing non-suffering; I
always bring to my attention as much as I can to the non-suffering.
Before, I would assume that I was a person who suffered a lot. And so
even in the most pleasant situations, if something was really nice and
there was no suffering, then I'd tend to grasp: "Well what'll happen
when I lose it?" Whenever this habit of I AM starts, you know "What'll I
do if I lose this? What if it changes, or it's taken away from me, or I
get sick, or something changes in a way that I don't want?" - with that
habit, even when things are going along very nicely, one is creating
suffering around the possibility of suffering in the future. What the
Buddha's saying is notice now, be aware, and that even in situations
that one might interpret as suffering - for example, physical pain,
cold, hunger, disease, loss of loved ones, one needn't suffer. The more
mindful you are, and reflective an that, then you're not creating
suffering onto the actual misfortune, or the unpleasantness, or the pain
that you're experiencing. Through this awakened mind you're not
creating, not complicating the way life happens to be with this
ignorance, this projection.
Q: How does mindfulness become a reality in one's life in the world?
A: Mindfulness is the ability to be awake and aware wherever you are. As
lay people you don't generally have the supporting encouragement to
practise mindfulness. People around you where you work may be not
interested in Dhamma at all. Whereas in a monastery you have a
conventional form that encourages you: thats the advantage of monastic
life.
But people need to be mindful of the way things are in their lives
rather than making the assumption that they can't be mindful unless they
have a lot of supportive conditions for that. What you can't expect is a
lot of tranquillity and simplicity if you're working where there's a lot
of pressure on you to be a certain way or do something. Then you'll find
these things will not be very helpful in tranquillizing your mind or in
leading towards simplicity or peacefulness with the external forms. But
you can be mindful of it and through that you find something within
yourself that is peaceful in spite of the agitation and stressful
conditions that surround you.
You can idealize monastic life: sometimes you have a very nice group
around you where you get on well, and everybody's quite mature and
sincere in what they're doing, and it's very, very pleasant to have
people who you can trust and respect. And you get very attached to that.
Then somebody comes in who is very disruptive, and you find yourself
getting angry with them and you think: "I don't like this, we've got to
get rid of this person so we can hold on to this nice community where
everyone gets on. We don't want any disruptive, unpleasant things coming
into it." That itself is a miserable thought. So we train ourselves to
expand our minds to include disruptions.
You can get very attached to silence, like on a meditation retreat. But
in a silent room, where everybody's still, any sound is magnified. Just
the rustle of a nylon jacket ... or somebody; gulps too much, swallows
too loudly or something like that, you can feel very annoyed. You think:
"Oh, I wish that person would stop making those noises." What you're
doing is, you're creating anger in your mind, aversion towards the way
things are, because you want this total silence and you don't want it to
be disrupted. But when it is disrupted, You see that you're attached to
that. Yet to include all possibilities for disruption within any
situation doesn't mean you go out and try to have disrupting things
happen; but you've already opened yourself to - the possibilities rather
than held onto an idea of what you would like.
Mindfulness allows us to open the mind to all possibilities, both for
what we like and what we don't like. Then you can begin to more or less
accept life's flow and movement, the way it changes, without being angry
or fed up when it isn't what you want.
In fact, you begin to feel quite at ease with life when you can accept
the whole of it as it is. A lot of people become very fussy and cowardly
and timid out of just not wanting to get involved in anything that might
agitate or create unpleasant feelings in their mind. You think: "Oh, I
can't go there because it'll just upset me" But when you're mindful then
you don't mind being Upset. Being Upset is part of living! You don't go
round seeking to be upset but it does happen. And you learn from it.
It's a part of lifes experience.
Q: If one looks inward, too much, does one miss out on the lessons
the outside can teach?
A: Well, because of the sensitivity of this human form, you're impinged
on by other people. But the emotional states and the sensitivity
involved in being in this state are to be reflected on rather than taken
personally. So you begin to see what selfishness is in your
relationships.
In monastic life, for example, you have to share everything everythings
communal - so a good part of our experience of life are the reactions we
have to each other. There are different types of characters and
different ways of doing things; some people you find more attractive and
others less attractive. All of this is observed, so that you're not just
following these habits, but you're beginning to really see a lot of
these selfish attitudes and biases -and feelings of being threatened by
others.
I remember experiencing this years ago with one of the monks.
Intellectually, I liked him very much, but whenever he started coming
near me I had this tremendous fear arise. He was a very kind person -
never hurt me - but whenever this particular monk came into my field of
vision I started feeling fear. And then, because I was puzzled about it,
I started realizing that the particular way he moved and carried himself
conveyed aggression to me. It was not his intention, but the actual
movement of the way he walked and carried himself converged to this mind
some aggressive force.
I hadn't been aware of that because I tend to be very abstract about
people: you know "this one is this way and he's good natured, he's
kind"; but then you get confused by these irrational reactions that
don't fit into your intellectual perception. The way people move
sometimes has a very strong effect on us that we're not always aware of.
The convention of the Buddhist monk puts the male into a non-aggressive,
harmless form; one of the important parts of the training is in
harmlessness. The whole appearance - the shaven' head, bare feet, the
robes - is to remind the individual man himself he is a monk, and also
to convey harmlessness to the society around. This is why I think, once
you get used to Buddhist monks as a perception, you feel devotion and
respect: if the life is lived properly then it represents compassion,
harmlessness, restraint - good virtues. Now if you take skinheads - they
don't convey harmlessness, do they? Their whole expression is to convey
aggression and brutality. They develop a way of walking, and looking,
and moving, and they put on things that make them look aggressive and
mean. This tends to bring fear into the mind.
The training of the Buddhist nun is to put the female form into a state
where, it's not trying to attract men or arouse jealousy in other women.
So the proper training of a Buddhist nun is one of not trying to draw
attention to herself.
By training in these ways, we become, aware of conditioned tendencies in
ourselves. If I had no such convention I would probably never have
thought of it much. In Thailand, as a monk, I became very aware of the
reaction people had to me, and I began to wonder why they would jump
back when I had onlly good intentions. I wanted to be friendly, and yet
when, I came directly to them they backed off. Why? Then I began to see
that, for one thing my size could appear overwhelming, and that it was
also because of the habitual movement of the body.
Living in Thailand for a number of years, I developed a genuine
appreciation for that particular respectful way of living, where you're
trying to bring out the best in people -rather than arousing things like
greed, or anger, or aversion, or envy, or lust. You're no longer moving
out into the society with the intention of arousing these kind of states
of mind in people, but you're living in the soceity trying to - be that
which is nonaggressive, harmless - that which conveys to the mind the
possibilities for the human being to be peaceful and awake, mindful,
wise, and restrained.
Q: You said that worry is what we produce when we don't have any
faith in travelling beyond pleasure and pain, Can you say a bit more
about that?
A: I am a great worrier! When we first came to England everything was
very uncertain: how would we survive as Buddhist monks in a non-Buddhist
country? Would we be beaten up and attacked by people, would anyone give
us alms-food, or what would happen? But in actuality my life here in
this country has been a good one. I began to see that even when
everything is going right, once you are caught in this habit of worry,
you still worry. It became obvious that people were interested in the
Dhamma and they were going to feed us and we were going to survive and
monasteries were going to be supported; but then when there wasn't
anything to worry about, one could find something else! And being in a
responsible position - like the abbot of a monastery, you get into
positions where you can't just hide behind someone else. In Thailand I
could hide behind Ajahn Chah's robes, and because I wasn't a native Thai
I could get out of a lot of things, so that there were certain
advantages. But being here I always felt that I was the focal point, and
so there were tendencies towards doubt and anxiety.
In reflective meditation you go out to the feeling of worry. I would
begin to open to that very feeling of worry or doubt, uncertainty,
rather than try to suppress it through affirmation. but I found that the
way out of worry was not by suppressing it but by totally accepting the
feeling of it. The insight that came from that was that in the sensory
realm there is an awful lot to worry about. It wasn't just a neurotic
hang-up! In this realm of pleasure and pain and personality and success
and failure, there is a lot to worry about. You could trip and break
your leg, you could have a heart attack, you could be beaten up or there
could be a nuclear holocaust, there could be an IRA explosion and all
kinds of things. Then because you have a memory you can hold on to
things of the past: "This happened to me five years ago and what if it
happens again?"
A country like Britain has developed to try to give us a sense of
security - you have a stable government, you have welfare, medical
services, education, all these things laid in for us -and still we
worry! So I've realized, that that sense of insecurity and uncertainty
is just the way life is.
But if you go to the actual feeling of insecurity, you find it peaceful.
It's a kind of paradox: when you are reacting to that feeling, you get
worried and frightened by it; but as you open to that uncertain,
insecure feeling that you have and the violent reaction to it, and bear
with it - you will find its peacefulness. You will find a sense of peace
with yourself. Worry, if skilfully used, takes us to serenity of mind;
because when you're with that very feeling of insecurity, your thinking,
mind - with its "what if this happens, what if that happens? - will stop
operating. Then you will begin to recognize emptiness of mind, which is
a state of mind which is very receptive to the way things are. Then you
have perspective. You begin to have real faith that you will be able to
cope with the problems of life that you experience.
For example, I realize the potential at any moment for having a heart
attack, or being beaten up, or the ozone hole growing bigger, or all the
whales disappearing in the ocean, or being taken over by the Communists,
or whatever.... But what I know now is that I trust that whatever
happens I will respond to it appropriately, because these things are not
the important issue any more. One is in tune with something
transcendent, rather than thinking, "Well if I don't have this I'll just
die, and if this happens I won't be able to stand it". I realize that
whatever happens I'll stand it!
Q: What advice would you give to somebody who has suffered a sudden
calamity?
A: To really accept he way it is; that is, to bring it to consciousness
rather than to push it aside, or to just indulge in emotion, or to
resist it. To just notice and accept that this is the way it s, and to
bear the feeling of sorrow, or sadness that's there. Then you'll be able
to let it go - which doesn't mean it will go when you want it to, but it
means that you'll not be making any problems about it.
Life is like that. All of us, all human beings, experience the loss of
someone they love. It's just part of our human condition, and human
beings have always experienced that. We have to watch our parents die.
Maybe we have to experience the death of a child, or someone who dies
prematurely - a good friend who is in an accident. Sometime we have to
accept horrendous things in life.
But then when we are mindful we have already accepted all possibilities
one still feels the anguish, but, one can accept that feeling. That has
its own peacefulness too; the experience of life has a sad quality to
it. Every morning the monks and nuns chant: 'All that is mine, beloved
and pleasing, will become otherwise...' You think: 'What a horrible
thing to say.' But it's a reflection that what we love, what pleases us,
is going to change. We suffer when we think it shouldn't and we don't
want any changes. But in the mind that's open to life, it's often in the
times when we suffer a lot that we grow a lot to.
People that have had life too easy sometimes never grow up; they just
become kind of spoilt and complacent. It's where you've had to really
look and accept thingsthat are painful that you find yourself growing in
wisdom and maturing as a person.
I was invited to give talks to people with AIDS in the San Francisco
area in California. Of course that is a very traumatic disease, and has
all kinds of ugly things connected to it. It's like having leprosy;
having your immunity system pack up is probably one of the most
miserable things that can happen to a human being. So there is the
tendence to take it all personally, with bitterness and resentment, or
with a tremendous guilt and shame and remorse - because the homosexual
communities are mainly the ones that have it. There is often self-hatred
and guilt connected to it.
But yet, this very thing could be seen as an awakening. You could
determine it as 'God's justice', punishing you for living an immoral
life - that's one interpretation. Or you can feel just terribly
mistreated, and life has given you a pretty bad lot to handle and that
you hate God because he gave you this terrible thing. You've always felt
like a misfit or whatever. You can shake your fist at the heavens and
curse them. You can just involve yourself in self-pity and blame. Or you
can look at it as a chance for awakening to life, and to really look and
understand.
When you know you're going to die, sometimes that can make the quality
of the remainder of your life increase considerably. If you know you are
going to die in 6 months, then that's 6 months. If you have any wisdom a
all you're not going to go around wasting 6 months on frivolities, where
you might, if you're perfectly healthy, think: 'I've got years yet ahead
of me. No point in meditating right now because I can do that when I'm
older. Right now I'm going to have good time'. But if you know you're
going to die in 6 months ... in one way that can be a very painful
realisation, but also it can be what awakens you to life. That's the
important thing, the awakening and the willingness to learn from life,
no matter what you've done or what's happened. Every one of us has this
ever present possibility for awakening, no matter what we may have done.
I see our life in this form as a human being more as a kind of
transition. We don't really belong here. This is not our real home.
We're never going to be content with being human beings. But it's not to
be despised either and rejected, but it is being awakened to and
understood. You can say you've not wasted your life if you awaken to it.
If you live a long life - say 100 years - following foolish ideas and
selfishness, then 100 years have been wasted. But if you've awakened tom
life - maybe the length of it's not so long but at least you have not
wasted it.
Q: How about non-attachment within a relationship?
A: First you must recognise what attachment is, then you let go; then
you realise non-attachment. However, if you're coming from the view you
shouldn't be attached, then that's still not it; it's not to take a
position against attachment s a kind of command, but to observe: What is
attachment? Does being attached to things bring happiness or suffering?
Then you being to have insight, you being to see what attachment is, and
then you can let go.
If you're coming from a high-minded position of thinking that you
shouldn't be attached to anything, then you come up with ideas like:
'Well I can't be a Buddhist because I love my wife, because I'm attached
to my wife. I love her, and I just can't kind of let her go. I can't
send here away. I can't throw her into the volcano. That's coming from
the view that you shouldn't be attached. But the recognition of
attachment doesn't mean that you get rid of your wife, it means you free
yourself from wrong views about yourself and your wife. Then you find
there's love there, but it's not attached; it's not distorting, clinging
and grasping.
The empty mind is quite capable of loving in the pure sense of love and
caring about others, but any attachment will always distort that. If you
love somebody and then start grasping them, it tends to go off; then
what you love becomes painful for you. For example, you love your
children - but if you become attached to your children, then you don't
love them any more, because you're really with them as they are. You've
got all these ideas about what they should be and what you want them to
be. You want them to obey you, and you want them to pass their exams.
And then you're no longer loving them. Then if they don't fulfil all
your wishes, you feel angry and frustrated and averse to them.
So attachment to children no longer allows us to love them. But as you
let go of attachment, you find that you natural way of relating is to
love, and you are able to be aware of them as they are, rather than
having a lot of ideas of what you want them to be.
Talking to parents .. they say how much suffering there is in having
children, because there's a lot of wanting. You know, when we're wanting
them to be a certain way, not wanting them to be another way and so
forth, we create this anguish and suffering in our minds. But the more
we let go of that, then we find out that we can have an amazing ability
to be sensitive and aware of children as they are. Then, of course, that
openness allows them to respond, rather than just react to attachment. A
lot of children, you know, are just reacting to: 'I want you to be like
this.' And they get to that stubborn stage: 'I'm not going to be what
they want.' It's just reaction going on.
The empty mind or the pure mind is not a blank kind of 'zero land' where
you're not feeling or caring about anything. It's that effulgence of the
mind, brightness, truly sensitive and accepting - an ability to accept
life as it is. And then, because we accept life a it is, we can respond
to the way we're experiencing it in appropriate ways, rather than just
reacting out of fear and aversion.
Q: (Ajahn Sumedho replies to a question on attachment and self-view.)
A: Grasping is the problem. If you see grasping and understand that,
then you have solved life's problems completely. If you really reflect,
it's the grasping of the sensory world that makes it all go wrong. In
itself the material world is all right. There's nothing wrong with
humanity or the universe. It's the grasping that makes us suffer from
it.
The Buddha pointed to this grasping. In the first Noble Truth he said:
'There is suffering.' He stated the problem that we all have: there is
this suffering, this dukkha that we all experience. Then the second
Noble Truth is that we suffer because of grasping. Then the insight is
to let go of things; and then the realization of non-attachment follows.
So if there's peacefulness and calm, then you're aware of non-grasping.
The sense of 'me' and 'mine' depends on grasping things. When you think
back in your life, the memory part is from being able to remember
moments of grasping. You can't remember the moments you were not
grasping something. So then you're always having to do things to
remember. That's why excitement, romance, adventure, all these things
are so powerful for us because when we grasp them then we have these
memories. We feel alive. Human beings identify with and grasp memory as
self.
You feel alive when you're angry and you hate somebody. Indignation
makes you feel alive - that you are somebody. Greed makes you feel
you're going to get something you want. To want something and get it
gives you a sense of being alive. Envy and jealousy: to be somebody who
other people are jealous of is important, isn't it? To have a better car
than the neighbours or to have a beautiful house, or lovely clothes, or
be someone who has status in a community - the grasping of that ....
You suffer because you're always in this position of being somebody. And
then there's always going to be a reaction from somebody else. So if I
am a rich and famous person, then the grasping of that perception means
that there are going to be a lot of people who want either to challenge
me, or take away my wealth, or criticize me. Or people are going to try
to delude me, flatter me and make friends with me because they want the
things that I have. So that whole form of grasping leads to suffering.
But actually, having status and wealth and a new car and all this -
there's nothing intrinsically bad or wrong with that, but it's the
grasping of it that will bring the suffering. And conversely, with
poverty: grasping the idea that I'm a poor person, I'm low class, I'm
worthless - grasping that view is suffering.
At least when you think: 'Well, I'm poor and I'm the lowest, meanest,
most unlovable person in the society' - at least nobody's going to envy
you for that. But it's still a position that one's going to suffer from
attachment. When the attachment is seen through, then it doesn't matter.
What your status is, whether you're at the top or the bottom, or in the
middle - these are not the important issues of our life or spiritual
development. They're not important to us.
The Buddha established the Sangha in a way that avoids all that. If
you're from the aristocracy, or if you're from the working class or
whatever, when you come into the Sangha it's of no importance. You're
just Sumedho Bhikkhu, Sobhano Bhikkhu, Sucitto Bhikkhu - you're just
bhikkhus, and you don't know whether they were Lord so and so, or Prince
of Princess, or any of these things. Such things are of no importance in
the holy life. But in worldly life, to have a Ph.D., to be someone who's
well-educated, or who comes from a good family: these are highly valued
by people in the society.
Or they're criticised. You can be an egalitarian, thinking: 'I hate the
aristocracy - Lords, Ladies and Counts and Countesses - it's all
rubbish.' But that means that you still think it's something. To call it
rubbish means that you actually believe it is something important -
because as a condition, it's just what it is, you don't have to call it
rubbish. It's nothing bad in itself or wrong to be a Lord or a Lady, or
a Count or Prince, but it's the attachment to any view about it that
leads to suffering.
With something you really love, then attachments form quite easily. And
you always know when you're attached, because you're suffering. One
time, I'd become very devoted to Ajahn Chah. I'd become very attached to
him, actually. This gave me a lot of happiness, because I hadn't had
anyone who I really felt that love for in my life. So it all went to
Ajahn Chah, and it was a very inspiring and wonderful feeling for me.
But then I noticed that I was suffering a lot, because if anybody
criticised Ajahn Chah or implied that there was a better teacher
somewhere else, I'd get incredibly angry about it.
And so I'd watch this. At first I believed it. I'd say: 'If you think
the other teacher's better than Ajahn Chah, go to that other teacher' -
that kind of thing. But then I'd reflect and see that it was not a very
nice mental state, and I'd watch the suffering that was coming from
that. And then I'd realise the attachment.
Then the tendency was to think, 'I shouldn't be attached.' So I'd say:
'I'm not really attached. Other teachers are just as good as Ajahn Chah.
They're all the same ....' But I was still attached; out of idealism I
was just pretending not to be attached.
So you still suffer, though you're pretending to be completely tolerant
and non-attached. Then you realise the attachment is an emotional one.
So you begin to go to the feeling of attachment and really study
attachment, rather than just trying to suppress it and say: 'I'm not
attached.' You go to that place in yourself and you investigate it. You
learn from it; and through that you let go of it. Because once you see
it, then attachment's gone. The attachment is out of ignorance. You're
never attached out of wisdom. So once there's wisdom then there's no
attachment.
You can be attached to the idea of not being attached. Krishnamurti, for
example, would always emphasise not to be attached to anything. He would
say, 'Monks, this is all wrong. Religion, monks, all this is wrong. It's
not the way.' Then people listening to that would attach to his view,
and they weren't aware of the attachment they had to Krishnamurti's
view. So the problem is not the view, but the attachment. A view is a
view. You can see if you're attached to a view, for or against it. Then
the actual practice is to not being attached to any view, and you are
very much investigating what's going on.
With wisdom you're free to be a monk or not to be a monk, but you're not
attached to it. You have no opinion. I can see if there's an attachment
to being a monk, then I suffer from it, from being a monk. But when
there's no attachment, then one feels that it's an offering. One
presents this monastic form to others as an offering. It's a gift, it's
a beautiful form in itself. It's not me.
It would still be an attachment if I felt, in order to prove I'm not
attached to being a monk, I should disrobe. That's still an attachment
from the self, isn't it? To prove that I'm not attached, I'll have to
disrobe to see what happens to my mind when I'm not a monk. That's
attachment. But if you're just with the moment as it is, then being a
monk, the form itself, is just a beautiful form, a beautiful convention
that one feels is of great use and can be a great offering to the
society we're in. Beginning with ignorance, there's this imposition,
this going out, out of fear and desire and ignorance. So that is the
compounding of the whole process, and then attachment comes from that,
and one builds a whole realm of attachment in one's mind.
Now when there is the ending of ignorance, then the world that is
created out of ignorance falls way. Then there's what we call Dhamma -
the way things are. So then monks and nuns and lay people, and Buddhist
conventions and all these things, are what they are. They're dhammas for
us, rather than attachment.
The Western mind tends to assume that non-attachment means 'getting rid
of something'. For example, a woman said to me once: 'I could never be a
Buddhist because I'm attached to my children.' I'd say: 'Well, what do
you mean, not be attached to your children? Throw them off a cliff or
something to prove you're not attached to them? Or just desert them so
that you won't be attached to them?' That's not Buddhism. But the
ability to not be attached to your children means that you can love your
children. When you're attached to your children, you can't love them any
more - because attachment destroys that. Any love you have is destroyed
by attachment, because attachment blinds and is painful and is
suffering. Whereas love born from wisdom is joyful.
Forest Sangha Newsletter:
October 1988, Number 6;
January 1999, Number 7;
July 1989, Number 9;
October 1989, Number 10;
January 1990, Number 11;
October 1990, Number 14.
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