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Venerable
Ajahn Sumedho -
Suffering and the Way to Cessation
Venerable Ajahn Sumedho, in an extract from the forthcoming publication
'The Four Noble Truths', emphasises the use of reflection as a means to
abandoning suffering.
The whole aim of the Buddhist teaching is to develop the reflective mind
in order to let go of delusions. The Four Noble Truths is a teaching
about letting go by investigating or looking into - contemplating: 'Why
is it like this? Why is it this way?' It is good to ponder over things
like why monks shave their heads or why Buddha-rupas look the way they
do. We contemplate ... the mind is not forming an opinion about whether
these are good, bad, useful or useless. The mind is actually opening and
considering, 'What does this mean? What do the monks represent? Why do
they carry alms bowls? Why can't they have money? Why can't they grow
their own food?' We contemplate how this way of living has sustained the
tradition and allowed it to be handed down from its original founder,
Gotama the Buddha, to the present time.
We reflect as we see suffering; as we see the nature of desire; as we
recognise that attachment to desire is suffering. Then we have the
insight of allowing desire to go and the realisation of non-suffering,
the cessation of suffering. These insights can only come through
reflection; they cannot come through belief. Instead, the mind should be
willing to be receptive, pondering and considering.
People rarely realise non-suffering because it takes a special kind of
willingness in order to ponder and investigate and get beyond the gross
and the obvious. It takes a willingness to actually look at your own
reactions, to be able to see the attachments and to contemplate: 'What
does attachment feel like?' For example, do you feel happy or liberated
by being attached to desire? These questions are for you to investigate.
If you find out that being attached to your desires is liberating, then
do that. Attach to all your desires and see what the result is.
In my practice, I have seen that attachment to my desires is suffering.
There is no doubt about that. I can see how much suffering in my life
has been caused by attachments to material things, ideas, attitudes or
fears. I can see all kinds of unnecessary misery that I have caused
myself through attachment because I did not know any better. I was
brought up in America - the land of freedom. It promises the right to be
happy, but what it really offers is the right to be attached to
everything. America encourages you to try to be as happy as you can by
getting things. However, if you are working with the Four Noble Truths,
attachment is to be understood and contemplated; then the insight into
non-attachment arises. This is not an intellectual stand or a command
from your brain saying that you should not be attached; it is just a
natural insight into non-attachment or non-suffering.
When the Buddha gave this sermon on the Four Noble Truths, only one of
the five disciples who listened to it really understood it; only one had
the profound insight. The other four rather liked it, thinking 'Very
nice teaching indeed,' but only one of them, Kondanna, really had the
perfect understanding of what the Buddha was saying.
What did Kondanna know? What was his insight? It was: 'All that is
subject to arising is subject to ceasing.' Now this may not sound like
any great knowledge but what it really implies is a universal pattern:
whatever is subject to arising is subject to ceasing; it is impermanent
and not self ... So don't attach, don't be deluded by what arises and
ceases. Don't look for your refuges, that which you want to abide in and
trust, in anything that arises - because those things will cease.
If you want to suffer and waste your life, go around seeking things that
arise. They will all take you to the end, to cessation, and you will not
be any the wiser for it. You will just go around repeating the same old
dreary habits and when you die, you will not have learned anything
important from your life. Rather than just thinking about it, really
contemplate: 'All that is subject to arising is subject to ceasing.'
Apply it to life in general, to your own experience. Then you will
understand. Just note: beginning ... ending. Contemplate how things are.
This sensory realm is all about arising and ceasing, beginning and
ending; there can be perfect understanding, samma ditthi, in this
lifetime.
I would like to emphasise how important it is to develop this way of
reflecting. Rather than just developing a method of tranquillising your
mind, which certainly is one part of the practice, really see that
proper meditation is a commitment to wise investigation. It involves a
courageous effort to look deeply into things, not analysing yourself and
making judgments about why you suffer on a personal level, but resolving
to follow the path until you have profound understanding. Such perfect
understanding is based upon the pattern of arising and ceasing. Once
this law is understood, everything is seen as fitting into that pattern.
This is not a metaphysical teaching: 'All that is subject to arising is
subject to ceasing.' It is not about the ultimate reality - the
deathless reality; but if you profoundly understand and know that all
that is subject to arising is subject to ceasing, then you will realise
the ultimate reality, the deathless, immortal truths. This is a skilful
means to that ultimate realisation.
Before you can let things go, you have to admit them into full
consciousness. In meditation, our aim is to skilfully allow the
subconscious to arise into consciousness. All the despair, fears,
anguish, suppression and anger is allowed to become conscious. There is
a tendency in people to hold to very high-minded ideals. We can become
very disappointed in ourselves because sometimes we feel we are not as
good as we should be or we should not feel angry - all the shoulds and
shouldn'ts. Then we create desire to get rid of the bad things - and
this desire has a righteous quality. It seems right to get rid of bad
thoughts, anger and jealousy because a good person 'should not be like
that'. Thus, we create guilt. In reflecting on this, we bring into
consciousness the desire to get rid of these bad things. And by doing
that, we can let go - so that rather than becoming the perfect person,
you let go of that desire. What is left is the pure mind. There is no
need to become the perfect person because the pure mind is where perfect
people arise and cease.
Cessation is easy to understand on an intellectual level, but to realise
it may be quite difficult because this entails abiding with what we
think we cannot bear. For example, when I first started meditating, I
had the idea that meditation would make me kinder and happier and I was
expecting to experience blissful mind states. But during the first two
months, I never felt so much hatred and anger in my life. I thought,
'This is terrible; meditation has made me worse.' But then I
contemplated why was there so much hatred and aversion coming up, and I
realised that much of my life had been an attempt to run away from all
that. I used to be a compulsive reader. I would have to take books with
me wherever I went. Anytime fear or aversion started creeping in, I
would whip out my book and read; or I would smoke or munch on snacks. I
had an image of myself as being a kind person that did not hate people,
so any hint of aversion or hatred was repressed.
This is why during the first few months as a monk, I was so desperate
for things to do. I was trying to seek something to distract myself with
because I had started to remember in meditation all the things I
deliberately tried to forget. Memories from childhood and adolescence
kept coming up in my mind; then this anger and hatred became so
conscious it just seemed to overwhelm me. But something in me began to
recognise that I had to bear with this, so I did stick it out. All the
hatred and anger that had been suppressed in thirty years of living rose
to its peak at this time, and it burned itself out and ceased through
meditation. It was a process of purification.
To allow this process of cessation to work, we must be willing to
suffer. This is why I stress the importance of patience. We have to open
our minds to suffering because it is in embracing suffering that
suffering ceases. When we find that we are suffering, physically or
mentally, then we go to the actual suffering that is present. We open
completely to it, welcome it, concentrate on it, allowing it to be what
it is. That means we must be patient and bear with the unpleasantness of
a particular condition. We have to endure boredom, despair, doubt and
fear in order to understand that they cease rather than running away
from them. It is very important here to differentiate between cessation
and annihilation - the desire that comes into the mind to get rid of
something. Cessation is the natural ending of any condition that has
arisen. So it is not desire! It is not something that we create in the
mind but it is the end of that which began, the death of that which is
born. Therefore, cessation is not a self - it does not come about from a
sense of 'I have to get rid of things,' but when we allow that which has
arisen to cease. To do that, one has to abandon craving - let it go. It
does not mean rejecting or throwing away: 'abandoning' means letting go
of it.
Then, when it has ceased, you experience nirodha - cessation, emptiness,
non-attachment. Nirodha is another word for Nibbana. When you have let
something go and allowed it to cease, then what is left is peace.
Forest Sangha Newsletter: July 1992 2536 Number 21
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