Simply This Moment - Buddhist Meditation and Theravada ...

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on just one sense, the physical sense of the breath. Allow that to be the only thing youare paying attention to – not listening, not smelling, not tasting, not hearing – justfeeling the breath and nothing else. Then allow that to disappear and with it the fivesenses. Letting go of the breath you realize that these five senses are the cause ofmisery, because when they go you are happy. The bliss you get when the five sensesdisappear is much greater than anything you can get through the senses. Even in theheaven realms, where the five sense pleasures reach their limit, they are still muchlower than the happiness and bliss of the jhāna realms.So this teaching – if you can experience these things – shows us the cause ofsuffering. Worldly suffering is just these five senses. I don’t know why people wantto protect the five senses. I know that a couple of the monks are going to see theoptician tomorrow; maybe if they became blind, that would be one less sense to worryabout. My nose is sensitive to pollen and I get hay fever, but it’s not sensitive tosmells. I remember telling Ajahn Jagaro how happy I was, because if a lady wearsperfume or if she smells of sweat, it all smells much the same to me because of mynose. That’s one sense base I don’t have to worry about. Isn’t that wonderful?It’s wonderful when the senses disappear. You get a feeling of freedom. It’s as if themind is freed from the burden of the five senses, from the irritation of the five senses,always having to be looking and seeing. When you look at your room, you have to goand tidy it up or dust it or something because it’s never tidy, at least not for very long.When you see things in the monastery, you see everything that needs doing, all thebricks that need moving, all the work that is required. When you start listening towhat people say, you sometimes get angry, because what they say is not what theyshould be saying. It’s not correct. They haven’t got it right. These five senses createso many problems in the world that it’s surprising people celebrate them. They havegreat big parties and fireworks displays because they are celebrating the sight and thesound of bangs. Or take the great orchestras: the poor men and women in thoseorchestras, in those fancy clothes, have to practice and practise to be able to playmusic like that. What suffering! They think they are getting somewhere in life.223
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be a maestro of silence, to be able to let go of all of thatand have the bliss, which is greater than any symphony?This is where one starts to see the cause of a huge amount of worldly suffering: justthese five senses. With the arising of that type of knowledge you begin to see withinsight, based on the experience of the five senses. You also experience what it’s likewhen the five senses are not there. You compare the two and it’s just as plain as thenose on Pinocchio’s face that the five senses are so much suffering, and the blisswhen the five senses are not there is so much greater.These are experiential insights that you cannot dismiss. With the insights that you getthrough thinking and through inference, you can sometimes have the wrong insightbecause you haven’t got the full information. Many people get lost in that way. Butthe experiential insights that arise can’t be put aside. That’s why anyone who hasthese deep experiences, even early in their life, just can’t forget them. They are themost important things in your life. Eventually, sooner or later, they’ll lead you intobrown robes and keep you there. These experiences are showing you that there issomething else that is important in life.Letting GoThe Buddha said that delusion, avijjā or ignorance, the first factor of DependentOrigination, is the root cause of the whole of sasāra. When the Buddha taughtDependent Origination he was talking about how sasāra works and how this wholeprocess of mind goes from life to life. When the mind gets involved with the bodythere is the illusion that these five senses are important, and that fun and enjoymentare to be found there.Lack of insight into the five senses and the five khandhas is suffering, and because ofthat the sakhāras will go on planning and doing, through body, speech, and mind.That planning and doing, through body, speech and mind is all coming from theillusion of the ‘doer’, the ‘house builder’, the ‘maker’. And that’s all coming from the224
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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
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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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Page 175 and 176: so difficult to attain. It is becau
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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
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Page 209 and 210: You will find simplicity means that
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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
Page 223: up. You see that anger is not the c
Page 227 and 228: Once you can see this whole cause a
Page 229 and 230: whether you like it or not. So you
Page 231 and 232: anymore than you can break the laws
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Page 235 and 236: experiences, resting on them, based
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Page 239 and 240: Instead of having kāmacchanda we h
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Page 243 and 244: Sloth and TorporSloth and torpor ar
Page 245 and 246: wherever you want mind, I’m compl
Page 247 and 248: Wherever there’s thinking, it goe
Page 249 and 250: 17 I KNOW YOU MĀRA25 th August 200
Page 251 and 252: “Come on, who do you think you ar
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Page 255 and 256: unfolding. In fact, the more you le
Page 257 and 258: they’ve got into that habit. What
Page 259 and 260: As the Buddha said in the Indriya S
Page 261 and 262: about anything because worrying is
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Page 265 and 266: There is just so much happiness. Th
Page 267 and 268: see so much detail. It was always t
Page 269 and 270: after us, yet there is this loud mu
Page 271 and 272: When you start to see that, it’s
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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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