2021/03/04

1] An Overview of the Path | The Noble Eightfold Path : 13 Meditation Talks

1] An Overview of the Path | The Noble Eightfold Path : 13 Meditation Talks

An Overview of the Path

NAVIGATIONBooks/Noble Eightfold Path/An Overview of the Path

July 7, 2011

The noble eightfold path forms the framework for all the Buddha’s teachings. It was the first topic he mentioned in his first sermon, and the last topic he mentioned in his last.

Shortly after his awakening, when he first taught the Five Brethren, he started by telling them that the eightfold path was the true way to awakening, that it avoided the dead-end extremes of sensual indulgence and self-torment. Then he explained the first factor of the path—right view—and at the end of his explanation Kondañña, the eldest of the five, reached the first level of awakening—proof that this really was an effective path.

Shortly before the Buddha died, Subhadda the wanderer asked him: Is it only in the Buddha’s teachings that there are awakened people or do other teachings have awakened people as well? At first the Buddha put the question aside. He said: “Put that aside and I’ll teach you the Dhamma.” But then after teaching the Dhamma, he went on to say that only in teachings where the eight factors of the noble path are taught will you find awakened people. And only in the Buddha’s teaching are all eight factors taught. So when he put that question aside, it was simply a matter of etiquette. Actually, he went on to answer the question, saying that this path is The Way: not simply an effective path. The effective path.

We like to hear that there are lots of different ways, lots of different paths to the top of the mountain. That gives us the option of choosing what we like without the fear of making a wrong choice. But if you’ve ever been on a mountain, you know that not all the trails lead to the top. Some of them wander off someplace else—down the mountain or off the edge of a cliff. And so when the Buddha, having been to the top, comes back to say that this is the only way up there, he wants us to give his words some credence. In fact, he says that one of the signs of actually attaining the first level of awakening is that you realize there is no other path. This is it.

So look at the factors.

The first two are right view and right resolve;

- these come under the heading of discernment.

There’s also right speech, right action, and right livelihood;

- these come under the heading of virtue.

And then right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration;

- these come under the heading of concentration.

It’s important to remember that each of these factors is a part of a path.
It’s meant to go someplace. Its purpose is strategic.
We don’t practice the path for the sake of arriving at right view or any of the other factors.
We use right view as a factor in the path to take ourselves to release—or it might be better to say that we arrive at release, because a lot of “ourselves” doesn’t get taken to release.
It’s going to get left behind as unnecessary baggage along the way.

Right view starts with conviction in the principle of action, that your actions come from your choices, and they do make a difference: that by acting on skillful intentions, you’re going to meet with pleasant results; by acting on unskillful intentions, you’re going to meet with unpleasant results.

The Buddha has to start here with the principle of action because there were a lot of teachings in his time that denied the role of action. Some said that actions were illusory and didn’t really exist. Others said that actions may exist but they don’t really have an effect on anything. Another school of thought said that whatever you do is already predetermined so you really have no choice.

If you’re looking for a path of practice that leads to the end of suffering, you can’t adopt any of those views, because they make the whole idea of a path meaningless. The whole idea that your efforts could bring about an end of suffering would become meaningless.

So the Buddha never approved of the teaching that things were totally predetermined by the past.

If you really want to put an effort into ending suffering, you’ve got to accept the principle that your efforts, your actions, really do have consequences.

Some people like the idea of determinism. It lets them off the hook—as long as they’re doing relatively well. But when they’re suffering, if you give them the choice, “Would you like the choice not to suffer?” they would probably say Yes. At that point they would like to have the power of choice.

The important point is that the simple power of choice is not enough. You’ve got to develop skills to go along with it.

That’s what the next level of right view is about: seeing things in terms of four noble truths—stress, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation—and developing the skills appropriate to each:

Stress is to be comprehended,
its cause abandoned,
its cessation realized, and
the path to its cessation developed.

This means that all the factors of the path are skills you need to develop to bring about the goal you’ve set for yourself.

Next, after right view, comes right resolve. You realize that unskillful actions are going to cause trouble, so you resolve not to get tied up in thoughts of sensuality, ill will, or harmfulness, because you know these thoughts, if you foster them, are going to take you down the path to suffering.

Then you look at your actual actions. This is where right speech, right action, and right livelihood come in.

To what extent do your words, your deeds, and your livelihood actually cause harm to other people? To what extent do they cause harm to yourself?

The Buddha has you use this reflection as a way of developing honesty. For him, the prime virtue is the virtue of truthfulness.

If you can’t admit to yourself that the things you say or do are causing harm, or the way you gain your livelihood is causing harm, there are going to be huge blind spots in your mind.

So these factors of the path force the quality of honesty on you. If you want to follow the path, if you want to reach the end of suffering, you have to look very honestly at how you’re living your life, and make changes in cases where you’re causing trouble.

All these factors working together make it easier to meditate. Notice that effort, mindfulness, and concentration all come under the last heading of the path, the heading of concentration.

The Buddha never talked about mindfulness as one kind of practice and concentration as something else.

Recently, I was reading an author who said that because mindfulness and concentration are two different factors in the path, they must be radically different; otherwise the Buddha wouldn’t have divided them into two different factors. The problem is that the author made them so different as to be antithetical: mindfulness was an open, accepting, non-reactive state of mind, whereas concentration was narrow and willful. It’s hard to see how the two could go together. In fact he said that the practice of right mindfulness on the one hand and right effort and right concentration on the other hand are two separate paths—giving you a sixfold path and a sevenfold path to choose from. But that’s not how the Buddha taught them. As with all the factors of the path, he distinguished between them, but also showed how they blended into each other. Just as discernment shades into virtue, and virtue shades into concentration, right mindfulness and right concentration shade into each other.

To begin with, they’re both part of a single heading: concentration. And as the Buddha described the relationship between them, the four establishings of mindfulness are the themes of concentration. These establishings are not just objects; they’re sets of activities.

You’re ardent, alert, and mindful,
focused on the body in and of itself, or feelings or mind or mental qualities in and of themselves,
putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world:
That’s the practice of right mindfulness.

Included within that practice is right effort,

the quality of ardency, in which you

generate desire, focus your intent, and stay persistent in trying

- to prevent unskillful qualities from arising or

- to abandon unskillful qualities that have arisen,

- to give rise to skillful qualities, and then

- to maintain skillful qualities once they’ve arisen:

That’s how right effort gets folded into right mindfulness.

Right mindfulness then gets folded into right concentration when the mind is able to stay with this set of activities until it settles down, abandoning all unskillful mental qualities, all thoughts of sensuality.

Sensuality here doesn’t mean the objects of your desire. It means your desire or obsession for the desires themselves.

That’s a problem in the mind.

We really like fantasizing about sensual pleasures, and it can set the mind on fire.

But if you’re mindful enough to abandon that kind of obsession,

the mind can calm down and settle into strong states of concentration, where you really do stay focused just on the topic of your object of mindfulness, the activity of mindfulness.

Say that you’re focused on the breath, working with the breath in various ways to make it a good place to stay.

You can really get absorbed in that. This takes you all the way through the four levels of jhana, which constitute right concentration.

Those are the factors of the path, the main frame for what we’re doing here.

So when you look at your life and look at your mind,

to what extent is it actually on the path and

to what extent are you allowing it to wander off into the brush?

What qualities need to be developed? What qualities need to be abandoned?

This is part of what the Buddha calls the customs of the noble ones—which are the values of the noble ones: that you learn how

to delight in abandoning whatever you have to abandon, and
to delight in developing whatever needs to be developed.

The path involves a fair amount of abandoning.

Right resolve involves abandoning unskillful thoughts.

Right speech, right action, right livelihood, and right effort all involve abandoning unskillful activities, unskillful mind states.

Right mindfulness involves abandoning greed and distress with reference to the world.

The things you need to develop tend to be right view and right concentration, along with whatever skillful qualities you can manage, particularly the ones that

help you to see where you’re causing stress and suffering, and

help to stop causing them.

All too often we’re thinking about other things. We have other issues. And that right there is ignorance.

Ignorance isn’t just a matter of not knowing things.

You know things, but you’re looking at them in the wrong way, with the wrong priorities. And because your priorities are wrong, they make you do the wrong things.

You’ve got to develop the Buddha’s sense of priorities.

The big problem in life is that you’re causing suffering even though you don’t want to.

All too often, you’re causing suffering in areas that you would rather deny. That’s why the quality of honesty and truthfulness is so important: so that you can look squarely at your actual actions and their actual results. That way you learn to be sensitive to whatever stress you’re creating.

This is one the reasons why we need to get the mind into concentration: so that our sensitivity as to what counts as stress gets heightened. Things you used to accept as normal, you begin to realize: “This really is a burden on the mind.”

Sensing that burden, sensing that it’s not necessary: That’s how you begin to gain some freedom.

The Buddha once said that of the factors of the path, right concentration is the main one, and the others are its accessories.

Right concentration is the one we have to work at the most, to get the mind to stay with its one object, to learn not only the techniques of how to do this, but also the sense of values to remind you of why this really is important.

Without this skill, you miss everything else.

You can know about all the other factors of the path, you can read all about right view, but you can miss the whole point.

I was reading a book recently by a professor of Buddhist Studies. And it was amazing: Here was someone who had devoted his career to studying the Pali Canon, and yet the whole book was very wrongheaded. He could quote all the passages but he just totally missed the point.

So it’s not just a matter of knowing about the factors. You have to give them priority and master them as skills.

The Buddha talks about different levels of discernment.

To begin with, there’s

the discernment that comes from listening or reading, and
the discernment that comes from thinking things through.

And although it’s important to master those levels of discernment,

the really important level is the discernment that comes from actually developing skillful qualities in the mind. That’s when you get hands-on practice.

And as you work on the factors of the path, they do their work on your mind. The mind becomes more sensitive, more alert to what it’s doing, more open to the possibility that the suffering you’re experiencing in life is not something you can blame on other people, or on conditions beyond your control.

The essential suffering that’s weighing down the mind is something that you’ve been creating through your own actions, and you can learn how to stop.

That’s what abandoning means. You realize that there’s something you’ve been doing over and over again and you don’t have to do it. So you stop.

The way to get yourself to stop is to see that these actions really aren’t worth doing. Whatever pleasure you get out of them is nothing compared to the pain that you’re causing.

You have to see that fact in action, as it’s happening, if you want to be able to drop that particular habit. And often the habits we have to drop are the ones we really, really, really like.

Only by getting the mind a lot more sensitive will you be able to see through that liking, to see through the blindness and the ignorance that underlies it, so that you’re willing to let go.

This is why we’re sitting here with our eyes closed, focused on the breath.

We’re not off reading through the texts and trying to learn all we can about what the texts have to say.

We’re here looking at our own breath to see what our actions have to say—when viewed from the point of view of a mind that’s centered, still, clear, stable here in the present moment.

That’s the point from which we can develop a more refined sense of where there’s suffering and what action it’s coming from, so that once we really see where it comes from, we can let go. We can stop.

This is how you develop a sense of disenchantment and dispassion for the actions that you used to feel enchanted and impassioned about.

Your enchantment and passion kept you doing those things, so when you have no more passion for them, they stop.

And their results stop in the present moment as well. The things that used to weigh down the mind all go away.

As the Buddha said, at that point they don’t even leave a trace.

They may have been weighing down your mind for who knows how long, but when they’re gone, they’re gone.

They don’t leave any scars. They don’t leave any marks.

It’s simply that you’ve been doing this to yourself over and over and over again. And you suddenly realize you can stop—and you would prefer to stop. That’s it. The mind is freed.

That’s the freedom the Buddha is aiming his teachings at. Everything else is a means in that direction.

So try to make sure that you use the teachings for their intended purpose. That way you get the most out of them and you fulfill the Buddha’s intentions in teaching them to begin with.

There’s that passage toward the end of his life where the devas were worshiping him with flowers, incense, and song, and the Buddha explained to the monks that this is not the way to really pay respect to the Buddha.

You pay respect to the Buddha by practicing the Dhamma in line with the Dhamma, which means that

you learn how to look at sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, and ideas with the purpose of giving rise to disenchantment.

You look for their inconstancy.

You look for the stress that’s involved in trying to find happiness in them.

And you learn to see them as not self.

That, he said, is how you pay true respect to the Buddha.

What does that have to do with the eightfold path? What does that have to do with the four noble truths?

The way that you normally take the material that comes from your senses and turn it into suffering: That’s the problem.

You use the eightfold path

to learn how to look into those processes,
to see how you fashion the raw material from the senses into suffering, and
to learn how to undo those habits.

Because we’ve been clinging to these habits,

we have to learn how to see what we’re actually doing so that we can develop dispassion for those habits.

The factors of the path are essential for strengthening the factor of right concentration, so that the mind is steady enough and still enough and sensitive enough to see what’s happening.

0] Introduction | The Noble Eightfold Path : 13 Meditation Talks

Introduction | The Noble Eightfold Path : 13 Meditation Talks

Introduction

NAVIGATIONBooks/Noble Eightfold Path/Introduction

The daily schedule at Metta Forest Monastery includes a group interview in the late afternoon and a chanting session followed by a group meditation period later in the evening.

The Dhamma talks included in this volume were given during the evening meditation sessions, and in many cases covered issues raised at the interviews—either in the questions asked or lurking behind the questions. Often these issues touched on a variety of topics on a variety of different levels in the practice. This explains the range of topics covered in individual talks.

I have edited the talks with an eye to making them readable while at the same time trying to preserve some of the flavor of the spoken word. In a few instances I have added passages or rearranged the talks to make the treatment of specific topics more coherent and complete, but for the most part I have kept the editing to a minimum. Don’t expect polished essays.

The people listening to these talks were familiar with the meditation instructions included

in “Method 2” in Keeping the Breath in Mind by Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo;
and my own essay, “A Guided Meditation.”

If you are not familiar with these instructions, you might want to read through them before reading the talks in this book.

You might also want to read the meditation instructions in With Each & Every Breath for further background.

Additional Dhamma talks are available at www.dhammatalks.org.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Metta Forest Monastery

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Method 2 | Keeping the Breath in Mind & Lessons in Samādhi

Method 2

NAVIGATIONBooks/Keeping The Breath/Method 2

THERE ARE SEVEN BASIC STEPS:

1. Start out with three or seven long in-and-out breaths, thinking bud- with the in-breath, and dho with the out. Keep the meditation syllable as long as the breath.

2. Be clearly aware of each in-and-out breath.

3. Observe the breath as it goes in and out, noticing whether it’s comfortable or uncomfortable, broad or narrow, obstructed or free-flowing, fast or slow, short or long, warm or cool. If the breath doesn’t feel comfortable, adjust it until it does. For instance, if breathing in long and out long is uncomfortable, try breathing in short and out short.

As soon as you find that your breathing feels comfortable, let this comfortable breath sensation spread to the different parts of the body. To begin with, inhale the breath sensation at the base of the skull and let it flow all the way down the spine. Then, if you are male, let it spread down your right leg to the sole of your foot, to the ends of your toes, and out into the air. Inhale the breath sensation at the base of the skull again and let it spread down your spine, down your left leg to the ends of your toes, and out into the air. (If you are female, begin with the left side first, because the male and female nervous systems are different.)

Then let the breath from the base of the skull spread down over both shoulders, past your elbows and wrists, to the tips of your fingers, and out into the air.

Let the breath at the base of the throat spread down the central nerve at the front of the body, past the lungs and liver, all the way down to the bladder and colon.

Inhale the breath right at the middle of the chest and let it go all the way down to your intestines.

Let all these breath sensations spread so that they connect and flow together, and you’ll feel a greatly improved sense of well-being.

4. Learn four ways of adjusting the breath:

a. in long and out long,

b. in long and out short,

c. in short and out long,

d. in short and out short.

Breathe whichever way is most comfortable for you. Or, better yet, learn to breathe comfortably all four ways, because your physical condition and your breath are always changing.

5. Become acquainted with the bases or focal points for the mind—the resting spots of the breath—and center your awareness on whichever one seems most comfortable. A few of these bases are:

a. the tip of the nose,

b. the middle of the head,

c. the palate,

d. the base of the throat,

e. the breastbone (the tip of the sternum),

f. the navel (or a point just above it).

If you suffer from frequent headaches or nervous problems, don’t focus on any spot above the base of the throat. And don’t try to force the breath or put yourself into a trance. Breathe freely and naturally. Let the mind be at ease with the breath—but not to the point where it slips away.

6. Spread your awareness—your sense of conscious feeling—throughout the entire body.

7. Unite the breath sensations throughout the body, letting them flow together comfortably, keeping your awareness as broad as possible. Once you’re fully aware of the aspects of the breath you already know in your body, you’ll come to know all sorts of other aspects as well. The breath, by its nature, has many facets: breath sensations flowing in the nerves, those flowing around and about the nerves, those spreading from the nerves to every pore. Beneficial breath sensations and harmful ones are mixed together by their very nature.

To summarize: (a) for the sake of improving the energy already existing in every part of your body, so that you can contend with such things as disease and pain; and (b) for the sake of clarifying the knowledge already within you, so that it can become a basis for the skills leading to release and purity of heart—you should always bear these seven steps in mind, because they are absolutely basic to every aspect of breath meditation. When you’ve mastered them, you will have cut a main road. As for the side roads—the incidentals of breath meditation—there are plenty of them, but they aren’t really important. You’ll be perfectly safe if you stick to these seven steps and practice them as much as possible.

Once you’ve learned to put your breath in order, it’s as if you have everyone in your home in order. The incidentals of breath meditation are like people outside your home—in other words, guests. Once the people in your home are well-behaved, your guests will have to fall in line.

The ‘guests’ here are the signs (nimitta) and vagrant breaths that will tend to pass within the range of the breath you are dealing with: the various signs that arise from the breath and may appear as images—bright lights, people, animals, yourself, others; or as sounds—the voices of people, some you recognize and others you don’t. In some cases the signs appear as smells—either fragrant or else foul like a corpse. Sometimes the in-breath can make you feel so full throughout the body that you have no sense of hunger or thirst. Sometimes the breath can send warm, hot, cold, or tingling sensations through the body. Sometimes it can cause things that never occurred to you before to spring suddenly to mind.

All of these things are classed as guests. Before you go receiving guests, you should put your breath and mind into good order, making them stable and secure. In receiving these guests, you first have to bring them under your control. If you can’t control them, don’t have anything to do with them. They might lead you astray. But if you can put them through their paces, they can be of use to you later on.

To put them through their paces means to change them at will, through the power of thought (paṭibhāga nimitta)—making them small, large, sending them far away, bringing them up close, making them appear and disappear, sending them outside, bringing them in. Only then will you be able to use them in training the mind.

Once you’ve mastered these signs, they’ll give rise to heightened sensory powers: the ability to see without opening your eyes; the ability to hear far-distant sounds or smell far-distant aromas; the ability to taste the various elements that exist in the air and can be of use to the body in overcoming feelings of hunger and desire; the ability to give rise to certain feelings at will—to feel cool when you want to feel cool, hot when you want to feel hot, warm when you want to feel warm, strong when you need strength—because the various elements in the world that can be physically useful to you will come and appear in your body.

The mind, too, will be heightened, and will have the power to develop the eye of intuition (ñāṇa-cakkhu): the ability to remember previous lives, the ability to know where living beings are reborn after they die, and the ability to cleanse the heart of the fermentations of defilement. If you have your wits about you, you can receive these guests and put them to work in your home.

These are a few of the incidentals of breath meditation. If you come across them in your practice, examine them thoroughly. Don’t be pleased by what appears. Don’t get upset or try to deny what appears. Keep your mind on an even keel. Stay neutral. Be circumspect. Consider carefully whatever appears, to see whether it’s trustworthy or not. Otherwise, it might lead you to mistaken assumptions. Good and evil, right and wrong, high and low: All depend on whether your heart is shrewd or dull, and on how resourceful you are. If you’re dull-witted, even high things can become low, and good things evil.

Once you know the various aspects of the breath and its incidentals, you can gain knowledge of the four noble truths. In addition, you can relieve physical pains as they arise in your body. Mindfulness is the active ingredient in the medicine; the in-and-out breath is the solvent. Mindfulness can cleanse and purify the breath. A pure breath can cleanse the blood throughout the body, and when the blood is cleansed, it can relieve many of the body’s diseases and pains. If you suffer from nervous disorders, for instance, they’ll completely disappear. What’s more, you’ll be able to strengthen the body so that you feel a greater sense of health and well-being.

When the body feels well, the mind can settle down and rest. And once the mind is rested, you gain strength: the ability to relieve all feelings of pain while sitting in meditation, so that you can go on sitting for hours. When the body is free from pain, the mind is free from hindrances (nīvaraṇa). Body and mind are both strong. This is called samādhi-balaṁ—the strength of concentration.

When your concentration is strong like this, it can give rise to discernment: the ability to see stress, its cause, its disbanding, and the path to its disbanding, all clearly within the breath. This can be explained as follows:

The in-and-out breath is stress—the in-breath, the stress of arising; the out-breath, the stress of passing away. Not being aware of the breath as it goes in and out, not knowing the characteristics of the breath, is the cause of stress. Knowing when the breath is coming in, knowing when it’s going out, knowing its characteristics clearly—i.e., keeping your views in line with the truth of the breath—is right view, part of the noble path.

Knowing which ways of breathing are uncomfortable, knowing how to vary the breath; knowing, ‘That way of breathing is uncomfortable; I’ll have to breathe like this in order to feel at ease’: This is right resolve.

The mental factors that think about and correctly evaluate all aspects of the breath are right speech.

Knowing various ways of improving the breath; breathing, for example, in long and out long, in short and out short, in short and out long, in long and out short, until you come across the breath most comfortable for you: This is right Action.

Knowing how to use the breath to purify the blood, how to let this purified blood nourish the heart muscles, how to adjust the breath so that it eases the body and soothes the mind, how to breathe so that you feel full and refreshed in body and mind: This is right livelihood.

Trying to adjust the breath until it soothes the body and mind, and to keep trying as long as you aren’t fully at ease, is right effort.

Being mindful and alert to the in-and-out breath at all times, knowing the various aspects of the breath—the up-flowing breath, the down-flowing breath, the breath in the stomach, the breath in the intestines, the breath flowing along the muscles and out to every pore—keeping track of these things with every in-and-out breath: This is right mindfulness.

A mind intent only on issues related to the breath, not pulling any other objects in to interfere, until the breath is refined, giving rise to fixed absorption and then liberating insight right there: This is right concentration.

To think of the breath is termed vitakka, directed thought. To adjust the breath and let it spread is called vicāra, evaluation. When all aspects of the breath flow freely throughout the body, you feel full and refreshed in body and mind: This is pīti, rapture. When body and mind are both at rest, you feel serene and at ease: This is sukha, pleasure. And once you feel pleasure, the mind is bound to stay snug with a single preoccupation and not go straying after any others: This is ekaggatārammaṇa, singleness of preoccupation. These five factors form the beginning stage of right concentration.

When all these parts of the noble path—virtue, concentration, and discernment—are brought together fully mature in the heart, you gain insight into all aspects of the breath, knowing that ‘Breathing this way gives rise to skillful mental states. Breathing that way gives rise to unskillful mental states.’ You aren’t caught up with the factors—the breath in all its aspects—that fabricate the body, the factors that fabricate speech, the factors that fabricate the mind, whether for good or for ill. You let them be, in line with their inherent nature: This is the disbanding of stress.

Another, even briefer way to express the four noble truths is this: The in-and-out breath is the truth of stress. Not being aware of the in-breath, not being aware of the out-breath: This is the cause of stress—obscured, deluded awareness. Seeing into all aspects of the breath so clearly that you can let them go with no sense of attachment, is the disbanding of stress. Being constantly mindful and alert to all aspects of the breath, is the path to the disbanding of stress.

When you can do this, you can say that you’re correctly following the path of breath meditation. You have cognitive skill, able to know all four truths clearly. You can attain release. Release is a mind that doesn’t cling to low causes and low effects—i.e., stress and its cause; or to high causes and high effects—the disbanding of stress and the path to its disbanding. It’s a mind unattached to the things that cause it to know, unattached to knowledge, unattached to knowing. When you can separate these things, you’ve mastered the skill of release—in other words, when you know what forms the beginning, what forms the end and what lies in between, letting them be as they are on their own, in line with the phrase,

sabbe dhammā anattā

All phenomena are not-self.

To be attached to the things that cause us to know—the elements, khandhas, the senses and their objects—is termed clinging to sensuality (kamūpādāna). To be attached to knowledge is termed clinging to views (diṭṭhūpādāna). To be unacquainted with pure knowing in and of itself (buddha) is termed clinging to precepts and procedures (sīlabbatūpādāna). And when we cling in this way, we are bound to be deluded by the factors that fabricate the body, speech, and the mind, all of which arise from obscured awareness.

The Buddha was a complete master of both cause and effect, without being attached either to low causes and low effects, or to high causes and high effects. He was above cause and beyond effect. Stress and ease were both at his disposal, but he was attached to neither of them. He fully knew both good and evil, was fully equipped with both self and not-self, but wasn’t attached to any of these things. He had at his disposal the objects that can act as the basis for the cause of stress, but wasn’t attached to them. The path—discernment—was also at his disposal: He knew how to appear either ignorant or shrewd, and how to use both ignorance and shrewdness in his work of spreading the religion. And as for the disbanding of stress, he had it at his disposal but didn’t cling to it, wasn’t attached to it, which is why we can truly say that his mastery was complete.

Before the Buddha was able to let go of these things in this way, he first had to work at giving rise to them in full measure. Only then could he put them aside. He let go from abundance, unlike ordinary people who ‘let go’ out of poverty. Even though he let these things go, they were still at his disposal. He never dismissed the virtue, concentration, and discernment he had worked at perfecting up to the day of his awakening. He continued using every aspect of virtue, concentration, and discernment to the day he entered total unbinding (parinibbāna). Even the moment he was about to ‘nibbāna,’ he was practicing his full command of concentration—in other words, his total unbinding occurred when he was between the jhānas of form and formlessness.

So we shouldn’t dismiss virtue, concentration, and discernment. Some people won’t observe the precepts because they’re afraid of getting tied to them. Some people won’t practice concentration because they’re afraid of becoming ignorant or going insane. The truth of the matter is that normally we’re already ignorant, already insane, and that to practice centering the mind is what will end our ignorance and cure our insanity. Once we’ve trained ourselves properly, we’ll give rise to pure discernment, like a cut jewel that gives off light by its very nature. This is what qualifies as true discernment. It arises for us individually and is termed paccattaṁ: We can give rise to it, and know it, only for ourselves.

Most of us, though, tend to misunderstand the nature of discernment. We take imitation discernment, adulterated with concepts, and use it to smother the real thing, like a man who coats a piece of glass with mercury so that he can see his reflection and that of others, thinking he’s found an ingenious way of looking at the truth. Actually, he’s nothing more than a monkey looking in a mirror: One monkey becomes two and will keep playing with its reflection until the mercury wears off, at which point it becomes crestfallen, not knowing what the reflection came from in the first place. So it is when we gain imitation discernment, unwittingly, by thinking and conjecturing in line with concepts and preoccupations: We’re headed for sorrow when death meets us face-to-face.

The crucial factor in natural discernment comes solely from training the mind to be like a diamond that gives off its own light—surrounded by radiance whether in dark places or bright. A mirror is useful only in places already well-lit. If you take it into the dark, you can’t use it to see your reflection at all. But a cut jewel that gives off its own light is brilliant everywhere. This is what the Buddha meant when he taught that there are no closed or secret places in the world where discernment can’t penetrate. This jewel of discernment is what will enable us to destroy craving, clinging, and obscured awareness, and to attain the highest excellence: unbinding—free from pain, death, annihilation, and extinction—existing naturally through the reality of deathlessness (amata-dhamma).

By and large, we tend to be interested only in discernment and release. At the drop of a hat, we want to start right in with the teachings on inconstancy, stress, and not-self—and when this is the case, we’ll never get anywhere. Before the Buddha taught that things are inconstant, he had worked at knowing them until they revealed their constancy. Before teaching that things are stressful, he had turned that stress into pleasure and ease. And before teaching that things are not-self, he had turned what is not-self into a self, and so was able to see what is constant and true, lying hidden in what is inconstant, stressful, and not-self. He then gathered all of these qualities into one. He gathered all that is inconstant, stressful, and not-self into one and the same thing: fabrications (saṅkhāra) viewed in terms of the world—a single class, equal everywhere throughout the world. As for what’s constant, pleasant, and self, this was another class: fabrications viewed in terms of the Dhamma. And then he let go of both classes, without getting caught up on ‘constant’ or ‘inconstant,’ ‘stress’ or ‘ease,’ ‘self’ or ‘not-self.’ This is why we can say he attained release, purity, and nibbāna, for he had no need to latch onto fabrications—whether of the world or of the Dhamma—in any way at all.

This was the nature of the Lord Buddha’s practice. But as for our own practice, most of us act as if we have everything figured out beforehand and have succeeded even before we start. In other words, we want simply to let go and attain peace and release. But if we haven’t laid the full groundwork, our letting-go is bound to be lacking: Our peace is bound to be piece-meal, our release is bound to be wrong. Those of us who sincerely mean well and want only the highest good should ask ourselves: Have we laid the proper foundation? If we don’t lay the proper foundation for release and letting go, how will we ever be free?

The Buddha taught that virtue can overcome common defilements, the gross faults in our words and deeds; that concentration can overcome such intermediate defilements as sensual desires, ill will, torpor, restlessness, and uncertainty; and that discernment can overcome such subtle defilements as craving, clinging, and obscured awareness. Yet some people whose discernment is sharp, who can clearly explain subtle points of doctrine, can’t seem to shake off the more common defilements that even virtue can overcome. This shows that something must be lacking in their virtue, concentration, and discernment. Their virtues are probably all on the surface, their concentration splotchy and stained, their discernment a smeared-on gloss—like the glass coated with mercury—which is why they can’t attain the goal. Their actions fall under the old saying: Keeping a sword outside the scabbard—having a way with words and theories, but no center for the mind; laying an egg outside the nest—looking for goodness only outside, without training the mind to be centered; resting a foundation on the sand—trying to find security in things of no substance. All of this is bound to bring disappointment. Such people have yet to find a worthwhile refuge.

So we should lay the groundwork and put the causes into good working order, because all the attainments we hope for come springing from causes.

attanā codayattānaṁ

paṭimaṅse tamattanā

Rouse yourself. Train your own heart.

Start pondering your own in-and-out breath.

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“A Guided Meditation.”

A Guided Meditation

NAVIGATIONBooks/Noble Strategy/A Guided Meditation

Sit comfortably erect, without leaning forward or backward, left or right. Close your eyes and think thoughts of goodwill. Thoughts of good will go first to yourself, because if you can’t think goodwill for yourself—if you can’t feel a sincere desire for your own happiness—there’s no way you can truly wish for the happiness of others. So just tell yourself, “May I find true happiness.” Remind yourself that true happiness is something that comes from within, so this is not a selfish desire. In fact, if you find and develop the resources for happiness within you, you’re able to radiate it out to other people. It’s a happiness that doesn’t depend on taking away anything away from anyone else.

So now spread goodwill to other people. First, people who are close to your heart—your family, your parents, your very close friends: May they find true happiness, as well. Then spread those thoughts out in ever widening circles: people you know well, people you don’t know so well, people you like, people you know and are neutral about, and even people you don’t like. Don’t let there be any limitations on your goodwill, for if there are, there will be limitations on your mind. Now spread thoughts of goodwill to people you don’t even know—and not just people; all living beings of all kinds in all directions: east, west, north, south, above, and below, out to infinity. May they find true happiness, too.

Then bring your thoughts back to the present. If you want true happiness, you have to find it in the present, for the past is gone and the future is an uncertainty. So you have to dig down into the present. What do you have right here? You’ve got the body, sitting here and breathing. And you’ve got the mind, thinking and aware. So bring all these things together. Think about the breath and then be aware of the breath as it comes in and goes out. Keeping your thoughts directed to the breath: That’s mindfulness. Being aware of the breath as it comes in and out: That’s alertness. Keep those two aspects of the mind together. If you want, you can use a meditation word to strengthen your mindfulness. Try Buddho, which means “awake.” Think bud- with the in-breath, dho with the out.

Try to breathe as comfortably as possible. A very concrete way of learning how to provide for your own happiness in the immediate present—and at the same time, strengthening your alertness—is to let yourself breathe in a way that’s comfortable. Experiment to see what kind of breathing feels best for the body right now. It might be long breathing, short breathing; in long, out short; or in short, out long. Heavy or light, fast or slow, shallow or deep. Once you find a rhythm that feels comfortable, stay with it for a while. Learn to savor the sensation of the breathing. Generally speaking, the smoother the texture of the breath, the better. Think of the breath, not simply as the air coming in and out of the lungs, but as the entire energy flow that courses through the body with each in-and-out breath. Be sensitive to the texture of that energy flow. You may find that the body changes after a while. One rhythm or texture may feel right for a while, and then something else will feel more comfortable. Learn how to listen and respond to what the body is telling you right now. What kind of breath energy does it need? How can you best provide for that need? If you feel tired, try to breathe in a way that energizes the body. If you feel tense, try to breathe in a way that’s relaxing.

If your mind wanders off, gently bring it right back. If it wanders off ten times, a hundred times, bring it back ten times, a hundred times. Don’t give in. This quality is called ardency. In other words, as soon as you realize that the mind has slipped away, you bring it right back. You don’t spend time aimlessly sniffing at the flowers, looking at the sky, or listening to the birds. You’ve got work to do: work in learning how to breathe comfortably, how to let the mind settle down in a good space here in the present moment.

Each time you return to the breath, try to breath in a way that feels especially gratifying. That makes you more and more inclined to want to return.

When the breath starts feeling comfortable, you can start exploring it in other areas of the body. If you simply stay with the comfortable breath in a narrow range, you’ll tend to doze off. So consciously expand your awareness, section by section, throughout the body. A good place to focus first is right around the navel. Locate that part of the body in your awareness: Where is it right now? Then notice: How does it feel there as you breathe in? How does it feel when you breathe out? What way of breathing would feel good there? Watch it for a couple of breaths, and notice if there’s any sense of tension or tightness in that part of the body, either with the in-breath or with the out-breath. Is it tensing up as you breathe in? Are you holding onto the tension as you breathe out? Are you putting too much force on the out-breath? If you catch yourself doing any of these things, just relax. Think of that tension dissolving away, both in the sensation of the in-breath and in the sensation of the out-breath. If you want, you can think of the breath energy coming into the body right there at the navel, working through any tension or tightness that you might feel there …

Then move your awareness to the right—to the lower right-hand corner of your abdomen—and follow the same three steps there: 1) locate that general part of the body in your awareness; 2) notice how it feels as you breathe in, how it feels as you breathe out, to see what kind of breathing feels good there; and 3) if you sense any tension or tightness in the breath, just let it relax … Now move your awareness to the left, to the lower left-hand corner of your abdomen, and follow the same three steps there.

Now move your awareness up to the solar plexus … and then to the right, to the right flank … to the left flank … to the middle of the chest … After a while move up to the base of the throat … and then to the middle of the head. Be very careful with the breath energy in the head. Think of it very gently coming in, not only through the nose but also through the eyes, the ears, down from the top of the head, in from the back of the neck, going deep into the brain, very gently working through and loosening up any tension you may feel, say, around your jaws, the back of your neck, around your eyes, or around your face …

From there you can move your attention gradually down the back, out the legs, to the tips of the toes, the spaces between the toes. As before, focus on a particular part of the body, notice how it feels with the in-breath and out-breath, relax any sensation of tension or tightness you might feel there, so that the breath energy can flow more freely, and then move on until you’ve reached the tips of the toes. Then repeat the process, beginning at the back of the neck and going down the shoulders, through the arms, past your wrists, and out through your fingers.

You can repeat this survey of the body as many times as you like until the mind feels ready to settle down.

Then let your attention return to any spot in the body where it feels most naturally settled and centered. Simply let your attention rest there, at one with the breath. At the same time let the range of your awareness spread out so that it fills the entire body, like the light of a candle in the middle of a room: The candle flame is in one spot, but its light fills the entire room. Or like a spider on a web: The spider’s in one spot, but it knows the whole web. Be keen on maintaining that broadened sense of awareness. You may find that it tends to shrink, like a balloon with a small hole in it, especially on the out-breath, so keep broadening its range, thinking “whole body, whole body, breath in the whole body, from the top of the head down into the tips of the toes.” Think of the breath energy coming in and out of the body through every pore. Make a point of staying with this centered, broadened awareness as long as you can. There’s nothing else you have to think about right now, nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. Just stay with this centered, broadened awareness of the present …

When the time comes to leave meditation, remind yourself that there’s a skill to leaving. In other words, you don’t just jump right out. My teacher, Ajaan Fuang, once said that when most people meditate, it’s as if they’re climbing a ladder up to the second story of a building: step-by-step-by-step, rung-by-rung, slowly up the ladder. But as soon as they get to the second story, they jump out the window. Don’t let yourself be that way. Think of how much effort went into getting yourself centered. Don’t throw it away.

The first step in leaving is to spread thoughts of goodwill once more to all the people around you. Then, before you open your eyes, remind yourself that even though you’re going to have your eyes open, you want your attention to stay centered in the body, at the breath. Try to maintain that center as long as you can, as you get up, walk around, talk, listen, whatever. In other words, the skill of leaving meditation lies in learning how not to leave it, regardless of whatever else you may be doing. Act from that sense of being centered. If you can keep the mind centered in this way, you’ll have a standard against which you can measure its movements, its reactions to the events around it and within it. Only when you have a solid center like this can you gain insight into the movements of the mind.

Contents | The Noble Eightfold Path : 13 Meditation Talks

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