"Whether you are an artist, a doctor, a photographer or on
the dole, that is your monastery, that is where you
practise."
In
Buddhism we speak of two levels of consideration. The first is
the conventional level of "me", as a person, and "you", as a
person. For example, there is "Viradhammo": fifty-ish, quickly
getting out of shape, has duties, is a senior monk at
Amaravati; his Mom is in Canada - and he has a little scar on
his head with three stitches. That is "me", as a person. There
is the sense here of a person, of social responsibility, of a
position in society; of the age of the body, of its genetic
and cultural make-up. This is the packaged sense of self that
a typical person works with, which is quite valid.
At this level, the considerations are morality, right
livelihood, responsibility for the environment, social action,
expression and creativity. This is one level we operate on,
where we can find all kinds of fulfilment; it is a very
rewarding thing to be able to work to express and create
something. However, it is not liberating - because things
change. We really notice that it is not liberating when
someone criticises what we are doing. You might think you are
doing a great job but when someone pokes a few holes in it,
then you see how un-liberating it is - how bound one can be to
it. If all we are trying to do is to find fulfilment on the
level of family, social action and creativity, then of course
our hearts are never fully appeased, because those conditions
are always changing and they depend on so many other factors
which are beyond our control. If my whole sense of fulfilment
is my family, but then my kids leave home, or someone dies, or
my child comes home with a red Mohican - what do I do if my
whole life is dependent on that?! So we would say that
fulfilment on this level is not where liberation lies, it is
not a refuge - although that is not to put it down.
The second level is the Dhamma level, the level of
liberation of the heart. When we develop a Buddhist lifestyle,
we can see how our families and our social positions can
actually be our `monasteries'. They are the place where we
practise inner vigilance and contemplation. Whether you are an
artist, a doctor, a photographer or on the dole, that is your
monastery, that is where you practise.
"So without
denying the necessity and the challenge of living in the
world, you also recognise the inner world."
I was
in New Zealand for nine years and was involved with a very
beautiful monastery project. During that time there was the
necessity to function on the social level - I had to work and
to organise things - but, through all that, the most important
things to consider were suffering and non-suffering: the inner
world. We built this lovely meditation hall (half my monastic
life has been spent on building sites!). One whole side of it
was open, and we had doors that were ten feet by ten feet -
pretty big doors! However, the joiner who was making the doors
up was not very efficient. He would always tell us that the
doors were coming next week - and this went on for four
months! On the worldly level, we had to say to him, "Hey,
listen! We have a contract, you are not meeting your
responsibilities." But on the inner level, we all had to take
responsibility for our annoyance at this joiner. So both
levels were operating.
This meditation hall is convertible. There is a cloister at
the front, onto which these huge doors open. On top of the
cloister we had a marquee custom - made, so we could double
the size of the hall on big occasions. We got the best
tentmaker in New Zealand to make this marquee - but it was
faulty. We had to take tough steps to ensure he didn't rip us
off, but we still could not hate him. Sometimes we wanted to;
the mind was saying, "What a rip-off! What are we paying this
man all this money for?"
Our practice was right there; the tentmaker was our
monastery. So without denying the necessity and the challenge
of living in the world, we also recognise the inner world. If
we view those two worlds skilfully we find a balance between
conventional reality and the inner work. Then the tentmaker
becomes a person with whom I learn to stand up for what is
right, rather than putting my tail between my legs and running
away. He helps me learn to be patient.
This inner world is what we work with on a retreat.
Although we should not forget the conventional world -
Buddhism is not just a weird experience called retreat! We
cannot spend our life on a retreat, we have to live in the
world. The gift of a retreat, of course, is that we don't have
to do so much social re-organising. If the toast is burned,
it's burned; we don't sue the cooks. So we work with whatever
we have, and we have the freedom to observe. A retreat offers
the opportunity to look at suffering and non-suffering.
"The hub of
the wheel is the centre of knowing and being; this can take it
all. This is where the unconditioned lies."
Maybe
in your own lives you have difficulties to deal with -
mortgages or recalcitrant teenagers? Don't try to solve those
problems now! Instead, I suggest you work with that very
feeling of anxiety or worry as a present condition. This is
the skill of moving from the conventional, social level of
"me", as a person, to the impersonal level of basic Dhamma
elements. This level of the teaching then breaks down our
conscious experience to fundamentals which we can look at, no
matter what our social situation is. For example, thought -
mental activity - is one of the fundamental things we have
been looking at. If this activity is always kept on the
personal level, it's, "Well, what am I going to do tomorrow? I
don't know... We need to do this; but what if we do that? Yes,
let's try this, then we'll do that... " All that is on the
personal level - but on the Dhamma level, this is simply
planning, worry, thought.
If we remain on the personal level, there will always be
this to-ing and fro-ing - struggling. It is only on that
impersonal level of consciousness that we can understand
not-self anatta. It's not that life itself is impersonal - we
still have our individual kamma, but it is on this level that
we can penetrate to a liberating understanding, by passing
beyond ignorance. We are not going to avoid the tentmakers and
the joiners altogether; life is always going to be that way.
There are many teachings that can help us; for example the
Four Noble Truths or Dependent Origination paticca-samuppada.
Sometimes, we might feel over-whelmed if we try to figure
these out, but in time we come to see that it's a really
beautiful package, intellectually very lovely. More than that,
these teachings encourage us to look in the right place, and
show us the path to freedom. They take us away from the
personal situation with the joiner or the tentmaker, directly
to a fundamental sense of stress. So we develop the ability to
examine on this level all the time. If I can look at the "aggro"
I feel towards the joiner and take it out of the personal
realm by simply looking at it as stress, then I will be able
to understand any "aggro" I may have for the rest of my life
and know how to deal with it.
Last night we talked about craving tanha, the sense of
wanting: wanting to become, wanting to get rid of, or simply
wanting something essentially nice. Craving is a fundamental
human characteristic, neither right nor wrong, just part of
the package. The three kinds of tanha - bhava tanha, vibhava
tanha and kama tanha - should be understood.
Bhava tanha is the craving for being. Notice how much on
retreat we are being something or someone? Sometimes there is
a feeling of being kidnapped by the memory; we find ourselves
back in time. Or maybe it is a future possibility; in thought,
there is the sense of being a person - of becoming - through
anticipation and expectation. If we are not aware of that,
then our attention will be pre-occupied, kidnapped by a
constant level of stress in the mind. Then there is vibhava
tanha, which is a repression. We have a lot of ideals about
what we should not be and what we should not have. Vibhava
tanha is the desire to get rid of those things.
Kama tanha is the craving for sense pleasure. Around the
body there is a lot of kama tanha. We like comfort in this
body, we don't like arthritis or pain; yet one of the lessons
in this life, for some seemingly cruel reason, is that we need
to witness to bodily pain. That is part of life. So, on the
social level, we deal with the pain. We find some Chinese
herbs or get the acupuncturist to poke us, whatever we have
faith in; we work on that level. But, on the Dhamma level, we
reflect: there is sickness. Why is there sickness? Because
there is birth. That is just the way it is - like it or not.
So sickness is something which needs to be learned about, as
is pain.
On a retreat you get pain; I hope you don't get too sick or
painful, but you will probably feel some pain in the knees or
the back, or somewhere. So there is pain, and there is craving
for comfort; that is a basic, fundamental instinct which needs
to be understood. Now if one can understand the craving for
non-pain and be at peace with pain, then one obviously has
done oneself a great service. So try to use the feeling of
pain to examine craving, to understand the wanting and see the
end of wanting. The same holds true for the emotions and the
way sense-consciousness works.
The Buddha encouraged us to consider how human
consciousness and the human body are involved with pleasant,
unpleasant and neutral feelings and sensations; to use feeling
(vedana) as a framework for contemplation. When you are
thirsty, you drink a glass of orange juice; it is pleasant.
When you are sitting here and your knees hurt, that is
unpleasant. That is very obvious. So no matter what you are
finding pleasant or unpleasant - the body, the weather, a
person, or your own mind - notice the feeling of
pleasant-unpleasant-neutral; consider
attraction-repulsion-neutrality.
When we are not in touch with Dhamma we often don't
consider these fundamental states of mind. We just enjoy the
pleasant and try to minimise the unpleasant - which seems like
a logical thing to do. But then that keeps us very restless,
because no matter how hard we try to do this, there will
always be pleasant, unpleasant and neutral.
Sense-consciousness is this way.
Seeking the pleasant, trying to be rid of the unpleasant is
samsara. The more we do this, the more we want to do it, and
the more we have to do it. We become addicted to this way of
operating. We get into this very restless phenomenon called
rebirth – becoming, doing, all the time. And this takes us
away from our real home. This takes us away from the
unconditioned, because pleasure and pain are always
conditioned. As they change, we feel the need to change. As we
grasp pleasure and pain, we find ourselves being spun around
the samsaric wheel.
The wheel is one of our traditional images. The rim of the
wheel represents sense experience - the contacts we
experience, pleasant and unpleasant - all of it spinning
around. Grasping the rim of a wheel simply wrings us around
with the general momentum. So grasping the pleasant, then
trying to hold onto it and afraid of losing it, we make
tremendous effort to keep it going; or getting angry at the
unpleasant - in both cases we continue to spin around
endlessly. But the hub of the wheel is the centre of knowing
and being, and this can take it all. This is where the
unconditioned lies. If we can summon awareness and be that
still centre of knowing, there are still comings and goings -
but we have a refuge. This is what Ajahn Chah called, "our
real home."
This is the basic structure that the Buddha asks us to look
at. Our sensitive body contacts objects. That contact produces
pleasant, unpleasant, neutral feelings - vedana. From there
comes craving tanha, the grasping of craving upadana, and the
whole process of becoming bhava and rebirth jati. If one
carries on like this over time, it becomes a habit. It is then
very difficult to return to the still centre of being, because
one is so restlessly engaged with that which moves, with the
emotions and the thoughts.
Why are we kidnapped so much? Even though we sit here
determining, "I will not get kidnapped!" - it's very hard,
isn't it? Don't think you are alone in this, we are all in the
same boat! It is very difficult because of our habits, our
kamma. Even though we might have really good intentions,
situations arise where we feel anger or fear. That is kamma.
What we are trying to do is to break up all these kammic
patterns. The way we can do this is by beginning to look at
Dhamma, rather than remaining stuck on the level of
personality. The contemplation of feelings vedanupassana is
one of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. It requires
careful attention to notice this basic structure of the way
that some things attract our attention, while others repel. We
can try it with an emotion, with a bodily feeling, with a
thought; or with people. On this retreat maybe you find
difficulty with someone, or maybe you fall in love with them.
Notice how some people are physically very attractive, while
some are not. Some people have a lot of charisma, and others
don't. Notice how you are attracted or repelled; look at that
very simple movement of the heart. This is where our habitual
emotions are really arising from.
If you can know that movement and learn to not follow or
react to it, then you begin not to suffer. For example, your
own psyche, the things you don't like about yourself, the
emotions you think should not be there; all these come up as
very unpleasant. So ask, "What does an unpleasant emotion feel
like?" Or in meditation you might sometimes experience
tranquillity, bliss or bright lights, or notice how beautiful
silence is, how really attractive that is... but then comes
the coarseness of the sound of the JCB! So we attach to the
pleasant and the refined, and we try to get rid of the ugly.
But what is it that knows pleasant and unpleasant?
Sometimes when you are sitting, the mind is bored, the eyes
look around, and you find yourself attracted to someone...
ah!... and then you start to create. Romance. There is the
creation of "me" and "that person", and what "we" are going to
do, what is going to happen to "us" - sometimes it's called a
"vipassana marriage" - and then suddenly the bell rings! It
can happen with hatred too, for example when there is
something unappealing about someone. Rather than just noticing
our desire to pull away from them, sitting with that until it
reaches neutrality - we become very critical, caught in
aversion, and try to push them away. But in contemplation of
feelings, we can simply bring up an image of a person, and be
mindful of the attraction or aversion. That takes us to peace
of the mind - to neutrality, rarther than identification with
the feeling itself.
Quite often we are so caught up with the craving for
pleasure that we don't even notice neutrality, which we find
boring. As Luang Por Chah said, the neutral, the ordinary is
like the space between the end of the out-breath and the
beginning of the in-breath. It is very calming but we don't
tend to notice it, because we want excitement – we seek to
react to difficult or frightening things.
The practice of vedanupassana requires refined attention;
taking this theme for contemplation to break down the whole
self-structure. So no matter what you may be as a self, as a
person, suggest to yourself that today you are going to simply
try to notice attraction and repulsion in the mind. That way
you are contemplating Dhamma, instead of just being a person.
Then ask, "What is it that knows that which you are noticing?"
That knowing is where we find our freedom. This structure is
very analytical, but in Buddhism we need a certain amount of
analysis.
You have a body with senses; you live in an environment
with which you have contact; that contact produces pleasant,
unpleasant and neutral feelings. Right there is where you
work. Then you have tanha: wanting the pleasant, not wanting
the unpleasant, and the sleepiness and delusion around the
neutrality. When that wanting arises, there might be grasping
of it, believing in it; you really think that if you follow it
you will be truly happy, or that to get rid of it will be the
right thing to do. So there is belief in the wanting, and the
grasping upadana. From the grasping comes the sense of
becoming; one gets involved in this whole process and is
reborn into the new situation. From there emerges the sense of
dissatisfaction, and you get lost in that: "Oh, here I go
again!"
Notice how birth and death work. You are bored with
meditation, your knees are hurting, you want to get up and do
something interesting. Then we get a pleasant beautiful,
creative idea that is really going to help the world. Rather
than simply noticing this as a pleasant idea, craving develops
to keep it going. We start to think, we grasp the craving and
them we create something. This is where we seek rebirth; we go
on from one to the next to another. It is important to notice
this, because at that point we have a choice. If we can see
craving clearly and not grasp it, we save ourselves a rebirth,
and experience the silence of the mind. If, on the other hand
we choose to be reborn then out next option will be a death.
Death is when the dancing will not stop; it continues on and
on in the mind. That is the decline the kamma of attachment;
rather that face that decline into despair and boredom, we
seek an alternative rebirth. That is why boredom and
disillusionment are so very important. If we can simply bear
to be with the ending of a cycle, that acceptance can take us
beyond rebirth.
So we choose. Sometimes we will be able to notice that
movement towards the pleasant, and we will say, "No, I don't
really need that". At other times we will get caught up with
the pleasure. Then we will experience its decline, and have to
bear with that. Remember that if you are reborn, you will need
to die again!
Nibbana, liberation, is that which is not born and does not
die, it carries us beyond the cycle - not in terms of whether
we will be a rabbit in the next life - but right now. If you
get that principle right, it will always work for us in this
way.
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