Simply This Moment - Buddhist Meditation and Theravada ...

the thirteenth giving up the criticism of the act of banishment. The same wordpainissagga is giving up views, ways of using the mind, thoughts, perceptions. It’sabandoning on that level; it’s not so much giving up material things such as your robe,your sugar, or worldly possessions, or for a layperson your money, car, etc.. This isgiving up on the very deepest levels of cognition. We can give away many things inthis life but what we find it hard to give up are those things that we call our mentalpossessions – our pride, our sense of self, our knowledge, and our sense of beingsomeone who no one else can tread on, all those senses of an ‘I’. That’s what we findhard to abandon. But it has to be abandoned if one wishes to become Enlightened.The sense of self with all its ramifications – the stupidity, pride, and pain – createsmore fire that burns you inside. It’s called dukkha.Please don’t buy into all of that, allow it to fade, to cease. See if you can give up allof the aspects of self-view, so that when you do the reflection on painissagga it’s notthe worldly material things that you are giving up, it’s the things of the mind. You’reabandoning, giving away, letting go of your past and future. In the saghādisesa rulesa monk is asked in front of the Sagha three times to give something up, give that up,give that up, if you don’t you incur the offence of saghādisesa. The Buddha isasking you to give up your sense of past and future, and if you don’t give it up you getsuffering. Give up your thinking, your thoughts; otherwise you get headaches. Giveup all of your sense of control: of me and mine, my ideas, my rights, my will, mymind, and my plans – see if you can apply painissagga to those. Have the courageand see what happens. What happens is that you become peaceful. These things arethe stuff of fetters, the stuff of defilements, the stuff of craving. When you see thatthrough contemplating painissagga you are abandoning not just the outside world,you are abandoning the inside world. If you develop that painissagga perceptionthroughout the practice of meditation you’ll find that meditation gets so easy. In theIndriya-Sayutta (SN. XLVIII. 9) there is a word that is very close to painissagga,vossagga (relinquishing, giving up). The Sutta says that if you develop that mind ofabandoning you very easily attain samādhi, you attain the jhānas easily.Painissagga, the perception of abandoning the inner thoughts, the inner ideas and theinner illusions, is a beautiful fast track to the deep meditations. See how much you188