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Venerable
Ajahn Viradhammo -
Bringing the Teachings Alive
A talk
given by Ajahn Viradhammo at Cittaviveka July 1st 1989
For me, monastic life is a model that the Buddha has offered of how we
can all practise. Sometimes lay people ask: 'But how do I do it as a lay
person?
' Lay life is so varied; life situations vary so much, some
people have families, some don't. There are all kinds of lifestyles, so
it's hard to set up any specific model. Certain general suggestions are
given for lay practice: to keep the precepts, to live a moral life, to
practise generosity; Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood are
offered, but lay practice has to be creative in using life itself as a
vehicle for freedom - and that's very individual. Monastic life has a
more uniform quality because we live together according to rules; as lay
practitioners you can contemplate how this model works for reflection
and contemplation.
Now the basic and fundamental prerequisite of monastic life is
surrender, a giving up to a certain form and discipline. We take the
precepts and accept this lifestyle: that's the choice we make. But then
it becomes a situation where we no longer have that many choices. We
live in a hierarchy, we have a prescribed way of relating between men
and women. We have rules about taking care of our robes and the
equipment of the monastery; we have rules that govern the sharing of
things.
We have various ways of admonishment and of ordination, legal processes.
As a monastic order we give up to this training and form. Some people
think that rules are an infringement on freedom, but actually what this
surrender or commitment does is to give us the opportunity to watch -
rather than a freedom to always do what we want. Before I became a
bhikkhu I lived in India for some time, and had tremendous physical
freedom. I managed to live on about ten dollars a month; I didn't have
the constraints of my old culture, so there was tremendous freedom. But
I became very confused. I got confused because at that time I still
believed that if I did what I wanted, I'd reach some kind of fulfilment;
but instead I found that doing what I wanted to do just made me more and
more frustrated, because it did not put an end to wanting. It did not
put an end to that fundamental restlessness which I kept trying to
overcome by obtaining an experience: travel, a relationship or whatever.
That kind of freedom actually was fun for a while, but it led to despair
- the more I went out into the world of situations and events, the more
I realised that this was not working. Then, through some stroke of good
fortune I managed to become a bhikkhu.
I didn't find it easy, but of course that's not the point. The first
year of monastic life was terribly frustrating, the second year was
terribly frustrating, the third year was terribly frustrating! I
couldn't shuffle the pieces of the chessboard around. I couldn't go to
the monastery I wanted to go to. I'd go to Ajahn Chah, and I'd say: 'Luang
Por, I'd like to go to such and such a monastery.' He'd say: 'What's
wrong with this one? Don't you like me?' Ajahn Chah's way was very much
one of frustrating desire - and he was fearless in that. He didn't mind
if his disciples hated his guts! That's the kind of compassion he could
exhibit: the compassion to frustrate. That takes a lot of courage,
doesn't it? But I had decided that if I was going to get anywhere near
the Truth that the Buddha was trying to point out, I just had to stop
and look. I couldn't just keep rearranging things; I had already given
that a good go and I knew it didn't work. The reason I took up this
model, this vehicle, was not just to have fun; nor was it because I
wanted to get something out of it - it was because I wanted to be able
to observe.
So this fundamental commitment to a structure allows for the freedom to
watch. Can you translate that into your own life? For example, your
family, your job, your social structure: these can be a vehicle for
spiritual understanding if you begin to accept that within them there
will be frustrations, rather than always trying to rearrange situations
to fulfil personal desires and needs. Obviously, if the situation is
harmful in some way, then you have to make a change; but the usual
humdrum, boring, annoying stuff of life is actually the stuff of
Enlightenment, if we are willing to observe how it is.
So commitment is very important; and this is what the robe is - it's a
symbol of commitment. Responsibility can be used as commitment, or it
can be seen as a burden. I can take on the responsibility of being the
senior monk and have kind of a martyr syndrome about it: 'Oh, poor me, I
have to be the senior monk...' or I can feel great about it: 'Wow! Look
at me, I'm the senior monk...' or I can just see it as a convention:
'I'm senior monk. I'd prefer to be a fly on the wall actually, but there
I am: senior monk.' Then I watch what it does to me - whether there's
like or dislike, or feeling that I'm doing it well or that I'm hopeless
- beginning to observe how the mind functions within that situation,
rather than changing or rearranging it according to some personal
opinion.
So, applying this to your situation, ask: 'What happens to me at work?'
'What happens to me at home?' Work is just not always going to be
fulfilling, it can be boring, interesting or annoying, but we can make
use of this commitment. If we're always shifting according to personal
desire, we can never really understand how it operates in the mind. So
commitment is fundamental to understanding our human mind. Now within
commitment there are three themes that I find very helpful in my own
practice:- discovery, training and purification.
Discovery (sometimes called vipassana) is fundamental, because the
Buddhist way is the way of awakening. It's not the way of getting rid
of, or attaining to something in the future; these are bound up with
ego, aren't they, with what we call 'self-view.' Awakening is always
something immediate: we awaken... What do we awaken to? To things we
haven't seen before; we discover things we haven't seen before. So the
Buddha's teaching is pointing out things which are always there, but
which perhaps we have not seen before.
Now this is how Buddhist concepts can help us; they can awaken us to
certain things about human experience which we need to understand in
order to be free. They are not just ideas that we put away until our
next exam in Buddhism, they are principles and concepts through which we
look at life - like lenses. So you can take a conceptual structure, like
the three characteristics of existence: impermanence, unsatisfactoriness
and not-self (anicca, dukkha, anatta) - how do you apply that to your
life?
For example, anatta, 'not-self': the teaching that this mind and body
are not self... But if I'm not this body and I'm not this mind, then who
am I?... The mind begins to question. The question directs the mind, it
starts to awaken us. The beauty of the Buddha's teaching is that it
allows for and uses doubt in a way to liberate the mind. Or take a
teaching like anicca: 'That which has a nature to arise has a nature to
cease' - begin to look at life through that. Life's experiences are
varied, so if I'm always involved in experiences it's very confusing but
if I use this teaching as a lens to look through, I see that that which
has the nature to arise also has the nature to cease, and is not
personal. So I begin to discover the nature of my conscious experience,
because I'm no longer attached to it - I begin to discover things about
experience that I've never noticed before. An angry thought is not mine,
it's a condition of nature; it arises and ceases. Perhaps I can then
begin to let go of guilt, anger and things like that, seeing them as not
personal - not-self. I have discovered something.
Then dukkha: often we talk about dukkha, unsatisfactoriness, in terms of
conflict. We all have conflict in our lives, but before I came across
this teaching I was always just trying to get rid of conflict: trying to
be a nice guy if I was angry; trying to get rid of greed if I was
obsessed with greed; trying to distract my mind if I got bored, so there
was this random attempt to get around it somehow. But when I heard the
teaching that says conflict has a cause I began to question, and to
discover the cause of suffering.
Now the delusion of our life is that we tend to get fascinated by
particular types of experience. If I get angry at the bus being late, I
think it's the bus driver's problem, or it's my problem. I'm always
looking outside to figure out what the problem is, but I'm not looking
at the anger. The teaching that we use is one of being more objective:
'OK, this is an experience of anger, but that is something which arises
and ceases. What's causing the suffering here?
' So we're detaching now
from the seeming urgency and complexity and fascination of our
experiences. In this process, it doesn't matter what we're angry at,
what matters is that we look more deeply into these basic mental
patterns in order to understand.
If we are willing to look into our conflicts, to open our minds to
conflict, then we can discover something, can't we? Whereas if we make a
judgement that we should be someone who never has fear or anger - should
always be bright and beautiful and charming - then, when the opposite
comes, we tend to try to push it away. There is no reflection, there is
just some kind of idea or expectation that we attach to, and then
frustration when this can't be met. But if we look at it differently we
see that experience is just a process, and in that process there is
something that we have to discover, something we have to look at. We
have to understand what is the cause of conflict.
So it's not the experience that is the problem: lust is not the problem;
fear is not the problem; boredom is not the problem. The problem is the
attachment to these. What does this word 'attachment' mean? What is
attachment? This moment is the way it is now. Why do I make it a
problem, why does there have to be conflict? This isn't a judgement;
it's not saying I shouldn't have conflict, it's saying awaken to the
cause. When there is a welcoming attitude to the predicament we're in,
we begin to see what attachment and letting go is. Attachment is always
bound up with a sense of 'I'; letting go is an open acceptance of this
moment the way it is. This is something that we have to discover, we
have to see it quite clearly. This is the path of insight.
Training (bhavana in Pali): we have to make effort. Sometimes this
teaching of letting go can sound like a sort of complacent acceptance. I
might get angry and punch someone in the nose and say: 'It's all right,
just let go. No problem!' Then get angry again and punch you in the eye,
and say: 'I'm an angry person. That's just the way it is!' - but that's
not it, is it?
There is training to be done.
The two things that I find very helpful in training are: 1) to see cause
and effect, and 2) intention. We can always reflect upon cause and
effect, asking for example: 'What is the result of my practice? How long
have I been practising and what's the result? Am I more at ease with
life than I was ten years ago? Or, a year ago? Or am I more up-tight?'
If I'm more up-tight, then I need to consider my practice! If I'm more
at ease, then also I should consider my practice. So we look at cause
and effect asking: 'What is the result of my life, the way I live my
life?' Quite simply. Not as a judgement, saying: 'There I go, getting
angry again.' - that kind of attitude is not reflective. Instead notice:
The way I speak - what's the result of that?' 'The way I consume the
objects of the sense-world, whether it's ideas in books or ham
sandwiches: What is the result of that?' ' What is the result of my
sitting meditation? What's the effect on my mind and body, on the
society around me?' These are things we can contemplate. It's simple,
but very important - to see what works and what doesn't work.
It's because we don't understand that we make mistakes, so the trick is
to make as few mistakes as possible - and not to make the same mistakes
again and again. Yet sometimes we have this blindness, and we don't see
why we have suffering in our lives. Ignorance blinds us. So then what
can we do?... Wherever there is suffering, or confusion we can begin to
look at that pattern of our lives. If we look at this whole pattern, we
can discover the causes of suffering, and begin to make intentions to
not allow those causes to come up all the time.
Let's say I'm a person who is always making wisecracks at people. I
watch them cringe, I begin to notice that no one likes me, and I hate
myself. So I reflect: 'This kind of speech brings me remorse and regret,
and brings other people suffering. And I see: 'Ah, that's the result.'
So then what can I do?
Now this is when it's important to know the
difference between remorse and guilt. Remorse is a healthy response to
inappropriate action or speech, or thought; it's a healthy response,
because it's telling me: 'This is painful.' But most of us probably make
that into guilt: there is remorse, but also an inappropriate amount of
self-flagellation; this is the unhealthy activity of guilt.
For me, it seems that guilt is a kind of cover-up of the pain; I numb
the pain, covering it over with these thoughts of guilt: 'Yes. You are
rotten to the core, Viradhammo!
' But this is self-view. What does it
feel like when we just go to the pain?
If I say something which is
unkind to someone, and then see them get hurt, I think: 'Oh, I did it
again!' - and there's the jab.
This is why meditation is so important, because when we sit we get the
results of our life. Sometimes it's difficult to sit when there is
suffering, because we want to get away from that suffering. If we
actually sit and feel the pain, without judgement - really feel the
physical and emotional feeling of that - we can contemplate: 'This is
the result of that; with this, there is that.' We see dependent
origination: that the origin of this feeling depends on a certain
activity. If we really feel the pain, that registers in our minds in a
way that is intuitive, in a way that is quite fundamental. We understand
that when we do certain things we are going to suffer. We realise cause
and effect.
So then what can we do? Well, we can use skilful thinking rather than
guilt thinking. We can say: 'From now on, I'm going to try not to speak
in those ways.' We can make that intention; and that intention makes us
more mindful. So, five days later when I say the same thing again,
instead of thinking: 'There you go again. You're no good, you're rotten
to the core!
' I can go back and examine: 'What's the result?'
' 'It
hurts, it really hurts!' I feel it. That pain can teach me: 'With the
arising of this condition you get that condition, but when this
condition isn't there you won't get that.' If I go through that process
again and again and again, with those habitual patterns of suffering,
eventually I begin to see the arising of that unwholesome condition.
Mindfulness is now established. Mindfulness is very powerful, it's like
recollection or remembering. It sees: 'Ah, there it is...- but I'm not
going to react to that, I'm not going to follow that one.' I button my
lip, I don't say it. Then there's the joy: 'I didn't do it! I didn't get
sucked in.' The heart is freed from that particular habit.
Now in all of that there has been no hatred; there has been intention
but it hasn't been bound up with self-view, there has been no activity
of desire. I'm not trying to become a person who doesn't do that. There
is no activity of aversion. There is mindfulness, awakeness. That's
training, always working from awakeness and intention: I'm going to be
awake - not become anything, just be awake and aware of the way things
are.
Purification, the third consideration that I find helpful, is probably
one of the most difficult parts, because it's so boring. Of course, I
can only speak for monastic life because I never really developed the
training as a lay-person. I know that monastic life is not fun, it's not
meant to be. Though I love the brotherhood and find the monks inspiring,
there are times when I don't like the people, or feel annoyed or
intimidated or fed up. But I have the freedom to watch that, and this is
the purification.
This is where we have to have tremendous patience. The line is:
'Infinite patience, boundless compassion.' This is the practice. When it
all begins to surface - when you start to feel annoyed at the apartment
and the marriage, or fed up with the kids - desire manifests as
frustration. But then if we can bear with the frustration, not judge it,
we go through a purification. So we have to allow this stuff to surface
into the mind, we have to allow the rubbish to become conscious.
This is why the teaching of anatta and anicca, non-personality and
change, is so important - because if we didn't have that teaching, we
would take it personally. But the more we contemplate this teaching and
discover that it's true, the more courage we have to allow these things
to come up into consciousness. The more courage we have to let them up
into consciousness - the more patience we have to bear with them - the
more we realise the underlying peace of the mind.
That peace is not something we get by becoming anything but by letting
go, allowing things to cease. That's why we talk so much about
cessation. Say, when I'm feeling grumpy, I remember the teaching:
'That's going to change. Don't make it a problem.' So I allow myself to
be grumpy, which isn't an indulgence in being grumpy or laying that mood
onto the other monks but neither is it a denial of that grumpiness. It's
just recognising that that which has a nature to arise has a nature to
cease; I can awaken to that - and then it does cease. I realise that
more and more, it becomes a path of courage and confidence. There is the
confidence to allow these things to be there, to make them fully
conscious - to allow fear, anger or whatever to be fully conscious.
The tendency of repression is powerful. We are panicked by conditions
and then they can become a threat; we try to push them away, but they
come back. So if we find that conditions keep coming up in our lives,
then we have to consider: 'Am I really allowing them to be conscious, or
am I pushing them away?...' This balance between indulgence and
repression is hard to find, although actually it's very simple - it's
just awakening to the way it is right now.
It's a very moment to moment practice, so when the question comes up:
'Am I repressing or am I indulging?' see that as doubt, just a condition
in the mind: 'This is the way it is now,' 'I feel this way now' -
awakening, making things conscious. Notice that there is no desire in
that, no aversion, it's not bound up with the desire to become anything
or to get rid of anything, or sensual desire. There is no movement away
from this moment towards another moment. It's timeless. It's immediate.
It's awakening here and now.
Forest Sangha Newsletter: July 2000, Number 53
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