Simply This Moment - Buddhist Meditation and Theravada ...

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and thoughts – apart from the experience of the breath. It means that the mind is yetto be fully involved in the breath. The mind is still keeping these other things on thebackburner, so to speak, ‘just in case’. It has not yet fully abandoned interest in thoseother objects.One way of overcoming this problem is to maintain the attention on the breath byputting the breath in the centre of your mind’s ‘field of vision’. I am using ‘field ofvision’ as a metaphor. The mind does not see, the mind experiences, but we have touse a metaphor from the world of sight to talk about the mind. The central object inyour mind should always be the breath. If there are any disturbances – disturbancesmean anything other than the experience of breath, including thoughts and ordersfrom yourself – keep them on the edge of your awareness. Keep your mind fullyfocussed on the full experience of the breath, developing joy in this breath. This willkeep it centred.We find that when the mind wanders, it wanders from what was once our centre toone of these peripheral objects. Those peripheral objects, as it were, take over ourmind, become the object of our attention, and the breath just disappears off the edgeof the screen, like something falling off the edge of the table into the great void. Wehave lost the breath! However, if we keep the experience of the breath in the centre ofour mental screen and maintain our attention there, then it is only a matter of timebefore all those peripheral objects themselves will fall off the screen and disappear.This is because the result of focussing our attention on one thing is for the mind tonarrow down, for the field to get smaller and smaller, until it just sees what is in thecentre. What was on the edge becomes completely out of vision and you are left withjust the experience of the breath. This is the way one drops attention to the body,drops attention to sounds and such things as thoughts, which can roam around in themind.If one focuses just on the breath, on the experience of the breath, and maintains thatlong enough, everything else disappears, except for the experience of the breath. Ifeverything else has disappeared and we only have the full experience of the breathfrom moment to moment maintained for a long time, then we know that we have thefirst level of what really can be called samādhi. We have an object and we have11
maintained our attention on it. When we have attained to this stage our attentionshould be relatively effortless because we have already abandoned the disturbances.They have fallen off the screen. We have full attention on a coarse object, the breath.In the Ānāpānasati Sutta (MN 118) that stage is called sabba-kāya-patisavedī,experiencing the whole body of the breath. The whole body of the breath means justthe breath, fully on the breath. Fully means that there is no room for anything else.All other disturbances have no door into the mind at this stage.It is not all that necessary to develop a perception of a ‘beautiful breath’ at this stage.It is so peaceful just watching the breath from its beginning to its end. The thoughtshave been given up. The sounds have disappeared and the body is no longerdisturbing you. Just gaining this much is a great release for the mind. The mind haslet go of a lot at this stage, in fact it has let go of many of the hindrances. It has only alittle bit of restlessness left to truly overcome.Once we have got to this stage, we need to know it and maintain it. We need to startthe fourth practice in the Ānāpānasati Sutta: the passambhaya kāya-sakhāra, thesettling down and tranquillising of the object of meditation. Once we have samādhion the object – and not before – we tranquillise or calm the object. If you find thatyou are unable to maintain your attention on such a fine object, make the object a bitcoarser. I remember Ajahn Chah once teaching that if you lose attention on the breathand you cannot find the breath, just stop breathing for a few moments. The nextbreath will be a very coarse breath and you will find it easy to watch. You have beenbreathing but the breath became very refined, too refined for you to notice. So youhave to stay with a coarser object and keep on that coarser object until you can reallymaintain full attention on it. Sometimes this is a bit restraining and restricting,because very often at this stage you are getting very close to very beautiful states ofmind.Sometimes you may want to rush forward into a samādhi nimmitta, or rush into ajhāna. But you will find that if you do not make this stage of full awareness of thebreath solid, a samādhi nimmitta, once it arises, will very quickly disappear again; andif you do go into a jhāna, you will bounce straight out again. That is because the12
Page 2 and 3: Simply ThisMoment!A COLLECTION OF T
Page 4 and 5: CONTENTSPage1 Ways and Means into J
Page 6 and 7: This gives one great insights into
Page 8 and 9: ūpaloka, even though we are only a
Page 10 and 11: too much body-awareness. With body-
Page 14 and 15: faculty of the mind to sustain and
Page 16 and 17: - and this is a natural phenomena -
Page 18 and 19: involved I stress the word ‘fully
Page 20 and 21: though he was a Noble disciple pass
Page 22 and 23: Anyone who claims the experience of
Page 24 and 25: Sometimes people have so little con
Page 26 and 27: the shelf and we know how this whol
Page 28 and 29: The Delusion of Freedom‘That whic
Page 30 and 31: monk telling me once that his fathe
Page 32 and 33: say that in the Anupada Sutta (MN 1
Page 34 and 35: it’s been still for a long time,
Page 36 and 37: 3 DETOXIFYING THE MIND2 nd of Febru
Page 38 and 39: consciousness - or as I would prefe
Page 40 and 41: is letting go of the pleasures of t
Page 42 and 43: never overcome thirst in that way.
Page 44 and 45: Use the triple practice of sãla, s
Page 46 and 47: after another, hundreds, thousands
Page 48 and 49: much fire in their minds. This is w
Page 50 and 51: 4 LOOKING FOR THE SWEET CHILLISeeki
Page 52 and 53: Listening to fine music. Is this it
Page 54 and 55: freedom is not freedom at all becau
Page 56 and 57: We have a story in Buddhism of the
Page 58 and 59: This is real contentment! This is r
Page 60 and 61: Watch this inner conversation going
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monastic life does respect the sile
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delusion because it has kept us goi
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This is the opposite of suffering.
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ight view. It’s very hard for a h
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always be on the wrong path, and on
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“Look, if this is causing sufferi
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out of control. The monastery goes
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the past and the future, and we’r
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at all. Who can trust memory? In me
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can. Give it full attention every m
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in the morning, afternoon or evenin
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yourself from all that’s happened
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mutti is releasing and anālaya is
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instructions without question.It’
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comes into the mind, then we start
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hold in the mind’s eye and I was
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of letting go, not stages of attach
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Sayutta there is something that imp
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pushes you out of sasāra whether y
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7 DHAMMA PRACTICE10 th May 2000I’
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Adult people look after their own k
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many people in the world who write
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What if you make that your goal, an
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things really complicated. It’s s
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‘The monks here, or the teacher,
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and surrender to the path. Surrende
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8 HUMAN RIGHTS IN BUDDHISMDhammalok
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doesn’t really have any meaning o
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These things are not freedoms, they
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told me in Malaysia and Singapore t
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When Jerusalem fell in 70AD, becaus
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To question is a right for people.
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embarrassed by my fellow Buddhists.
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many countries between laws which a
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It’s a very narrow truth. The tru
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guilty you have to be punished! You
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the Zendo - but the more you smile
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Having planed off the rough parts,
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got the flu and cancelled your appo
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I was taught to choose to watch the
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From Diversity to UnityMeditation i
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usually if someone is dead they wou
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There are other cases like that. On
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10 CONDITIONED REALITYDhammaloka Bu
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The Buddha very clearly outlined th
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even your bare perception is alread
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way, there has to be some other exp
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Seeing Truth and RealityI want part
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talked with one of the people - who
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was able to follow to get into deep
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ideas are not actually the true Nib
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that the air around it is not movin
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and find out what that pain really
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mantras, all words of instructions,
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just observing. Surely the thinking
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without valuing, without weighing o
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so difficult to attain. It is becau
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12 REFLECTIONS THAT ARE CONDUCIVETO
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the mind, and that’s the jhānas.
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need the calm which is developed by
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can try it with virāga.VirāgaPeop
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with all of its difficulties and al
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clinging stops us from experiencing
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the thirteenth giving up the critic
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13 THE OUTFLOWINGS OF THE MIND12 th
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from peace. The will ‘to be’ is
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the future, to fantasies, to the pa
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taught here. Going into the present
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that the core of all this is ‘emp
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14 STARVING THE TIGER TO DEATHOverc
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inappropriate for a monk to be doin
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When a person really understands wh
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getting angry and upset. This way y
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You will find simplicity means that
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use them to make progress in your m
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By developing seclusion from all th
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People in the world say everything
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15 THE LAW OF CONDITIONALITY3 rd Ja
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elate that sort of smell to a very
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When you start to see the will ceas
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up. You see that anger is not the c
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Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be a
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Once you can see this whole cause a
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whether you like it or not. So you
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anymore than you can break the laws
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is the barrier of the five hindranc
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experiences, resting on them, based
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attention to the sensory world, we
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Instead of having kāmacchanda we h
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distraction of ill-will? Outside, w
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Sloth and TorporSloth and torpor ar
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wherever you want mind, I’m compl
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Wherever there’s thinking, it goe
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17 I KNOW YOU MĀRA25 th August 200
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“Come on, who do you think you ar
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you don’t have a clue, that so ma
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unfolding. In fact, the more you le
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they’ve got into that habit. What
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As the Buddha said in the Indriya S
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about anything because worrying is
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seeing clearly. Sometimes people ge
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There is just so much happiness. Th
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see so much detail. It was always t
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after us, yet there is this loud mu
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When you start to see that, it’s
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this. So if we see where that disco
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mindfulness, you get pīti, more jo
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you can meditate, you can teach, be
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and restlessness cannot survive. Th
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19 PERFECT STILLNESS29 th June 2005
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Have You Come Here to Die?At one re
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At the last retreat I taught in Ipo
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process is about. You also understa
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go of everything. Letting go is wha
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the moment. It doesn’t matter wha
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moving up and down, the nimmitta is
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So, look upon your life as a journe
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Nirodha. Nirodha means cessation, t
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20 THE ENDING OF EVERYTHING7 th Dec
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delusion, to think of things as bei
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samatha and also the word upasama b
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quoting the suttas here; they are t
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I was talking earlier this evening
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opposite is true. The less ‘self
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senses are. Before that it’s just
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The mind creates; this is what it d
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Get into the jhānas, the real jhā
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whatever things come into existence
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2. Dukkha - suffering.3. Anattā -
Page 321 and 322:
Painissagga: “Letting go”, aban
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