Simply This Moment - Buddhist Meditation and Theravada ...

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How often is it that people start to meditate and they can’t get the breath to be calmand peaceful? You know the reason for that, it’s because they are still controlling.Controlling the breath makes it very unpleasant. Leave it alone, let it go, don’t beconcerned about it, and then it’s very easy. Why is it that when we are listening to atalk, eating lunch, or walking back from the dining room to our huts, we breathe quitenaturally, quite easily, quite comfortably? That is because we are nor really payingany attention. Why is it that when we pay attention to things they start to getuncomfortable? The reason is because when we pay attention we tend to getinvolved. It’s the ‘doer’, the ‘controller’ again. It’s the doer and the controller actingin such a subtle way that many people can’t see it. They are trying to make the breathpeaceful and quiet but it doesn’t become peaceful and quiet. Why is that? It isbecause we are trying to do it; we are not practising equanimity; we are actually doingsomething.In the same way when there is pain in the body, or when there’s irritation in ourmonastic life, when there is irritation in the breath that we’re watching, tryequanimity, upekkhā. Don’t try to change the way the breath is going in and out.Don’t try to make it longer or shorter or smoother or whatever: even if it’suncomfortable be equanimous with it. Just leave the breath alone; just watch andinvestigate. Be curious about what’s happening now. If we can practise that degreeof looking on with equanimity, with real upekkhā, then it’s a great tool for ourmeditation. If the breath starts to be quiet and starts to smooth out and becomecomfortable, that’s a sign you’ve been practising upekkhā. You know what upekkhāmeans and you also know how to apply it. When we practise upekkhā on theuncomfortable breath it turns into a very comfortable peaceful breath.We gain a lot of insight with such experiences because that degree of upekkhā canactually develop the breath into the ‘beautiful breath’. If you want the breath to bebeautiful what should you do next? Practise upekkhā, just look on, just wait, bepatient, don’t try to do anything. The ‘doer’ comes from the fault-finding mind:when it sees faults it’s not satisfied, it’s not content, and it’s going to do somethingabout it. That’s the nature of the fault-finding mind, it’s a condition for doing. Oncewe have upekkhā, there’s no fault-finding. We are just looking without judging,171
without valuing, without weighing one against the other. We are not weighing theordinary breath against the beautiful breath. We are not weighing the beautiful breathagainst the nimmitta. We are not weighing nimmittas against jhānas. We are notweighing anything or evaluating; we are just looking on to see what happens. And ifwe have done upekkhā enough to turn the uncomfortable breath into a comfortablebreath, then we can very easily continue that degree of upekkhā, that ‘just looking’aspect of the mind, just upekkhā, upekkhā, upekkhā. You’ll notice the breath will getbeautiful all by itself. It will get soft and peaceful, slow and refined. It will becomecalm because this is what upekkhā does.Upekkhā takes the business away, takes all disturbances away. It takes the wind fromthe leaf so that the leaf wobbles and shakes less and less. This is just what you’reseeing, the mind vibrating less and less as it gets more and more still, as it gets moreand more beautiful, as it gets more and more energy. But be careful in these stages:when you start to get energy in the beautiful breath and lots of bliss comes up, thatcan excite the mind. And so instead of looking on with upekkhā you start to getexcited. Looking on with excitement. “Wow! This is really good; at last I’m gettingsomewhere.” That’s not upekkhā, that’s another type of wind, and it starts to shakethe leaf again.The Perfection of EquanimityIf you develop upekkhā from the very beginning you can very easily carry it though asan important aspect of your attention. Remember also, upekkhā is just lookingclosely. Be very careful here that when the breath becomes refined, you don’t get lostin a lack of mindfulness, where you can’t really see clearly what’s going on. If youcultivate upekkhā, it’s a very clear seeing, but a very silent seeing. It’s like seeing justwith eyes and having no hands to mess things up, just the armless seer. If you can dothis then everything starts to happen as a natural process because the ‘doer’ has beentaken away and you are just looking on with upekkhā.When the beautiful parts of the meditation start to happen, the beautiful breath and thenimitta start to come up, the mind doesn’t wobble and shake because it’s been set upwith upekkhā. The mind is generating the ability to just look on clearly without172
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Simply ThisMoment!A COLLECTION OF T
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CONTENTSPage1 Ways and Means into J
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This gives one great insights into
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ūpaloka, even though we are only a
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too much body-awareness. With body-
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and thoughts - apart from the exper
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faculty of the mind to sustain and
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- and this is a natural phenomena -
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involved I stress the word ‘fully
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though he was a Noble disciple pass
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Anyone who claims the experience of
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Sometimes people have so little con
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the shelf and we know how this whol
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The Delusion of Freedom‘That whic
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monk telling me once that his fathe
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say that in the Anupada Sutta (MN 1
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it’s been still for a long time,
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3 DETOXIFYING THE MIND2 nd of Febru
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consciousness - or as I would prefe
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is letting go of the pleasures of t
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never overcome thirst in that way.
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Use the triple practice of sãla, s
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after another, hundreds, thousands
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much fire in their minds. This is w
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4 LOOKING FOR THE SWEET CHILLISeeki
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Listening to fine music. Is this it
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freedom is not freedom at all becau
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We have a story in Buddhism of the
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This is real contentment! This is r
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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
Page 121 and 122: told me in Malaysia and Singapore t
Page 123 and 124: When Jerusalem fell in 70AD, becaus
Page 125 and 126: To question is a right for people.
Page 127 and 128: embarrassed by my fellow Buddhists.
Page 129 and 130: many countries between laws which a
Page 131 and 132: It’s a very narrow truth. The tru
Page 133 and 134: guilty you have to be punished! You
Page 135 and 136: the Zendo - but the more you smile
Page 137 and 138: Having planed off the rough parts,
Page 139 and 140: got the flu and cancelled your appo
Page 141 and 142: I was taught to choose to watch the
Page 143 and 144: From Diversity to UnityMeditation i
Page 145 and 146: usually if someone is dead they wou
Page 147 and 148: There are other cases like that. On
Page 149 and 150: 10 CONDITIONED REALITYDhammaloka Bu
Page 151 and 152: The Buddha very clearly outlined th
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Page 155 and 156: way, there has to be some other exp
Page 157 and 158: Seeing Truth and RealityI want part
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Page 161 and 162: was able to follow to get into deep
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Page 165 and 166: that the air around it is not movin
Page 167 and 168: and find out what that pain really
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Page 171: just observing. Surely the thinking
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Page 179 and 180: the mind, and that’s the jhānas.
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Page 183 and 184: can try it with virāga.VirāgaPeop
Page 185 and 186: with all of its difficulties and al
Page 187 and 188: clinging stops us from experiencing
Page 189 and 190: the thirteenth giving up the critic
Page 191 and 192: 13 THE OUTFLOWINGS OF THE MIND12 th
Page 193 and 194: from peace. The will ‘to be’ is
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Page 201 and 202: 14 STARVING THE TIGER TO DEATHOverc
Page 203 and 204: inappropriate for a monk to be doin
Page 205 and 206: When a person really understands wh
Page 207 and 208: getting angry and upset. This way y
Page 209 and 210: You will find simplicity means that
Page 211 and 212: use them to make progress in your m
Page 213 and 214: By developing seclusion from all th
Page 215 and 216: People in the world say everything
Page 217 and 218: 15 THE LAW OF CONDITIONALITY3 rd Ja
Page 219 and 220: elate that sort of smell to a very
Page 221 and 222: 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 -
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Painissagga: “Letting go”, aban
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