Simply This Moment - Buddhist Meditation and Theravada ...

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these things disappear, you’ve samatha-ed them. At last you don’t have a body: youcan’t feel it, it’s gone. You can’t hear sound, and you can’t even think. The mind hasbecome so still, its ability to control the world through thought has disappeared andvanished. You’ve samatha-ed it. When you’ve samatha-ed it the body vanishes fromyour existence.Samatha-ed means that it has Nirodha-ed temporarily – it’s gone. People say, “Butit’s still there”. That’s not the point. If you are not observing it, it’s gone. That’sbasic quantum theory if you want to be scientific about it. You need an observer tocreate reality. That’s the experience you have in the deep meditations. The bodysimply is not there and you don’t give a damn about it. If you can achieve that stateyou know that ‘body contemplation’ has done its work. Its purpose is to let go, toallow things to vanish, to see a world, kāmaloka, disappear. You’ve heard me saybefore that it’s very important to experience things vanishing and disappearing.To understand this, the best simile is the simile of the tadpole leaving the water as afrog. Only when the tadpole has left the water as a frog can it really know what wateris. Before then it may have had theories about water, it may have heard about waterfrom this monk or that monk or this Kruba Ajahn or that book or whatever, but it willnot know what water is. When the tadpole becomes a frog and leaves the water, itknows from its own experience, not just from beliefs or theories. It now sees whatit’s like when there is no water left. It’s a powerful insight which changes the wholeway the frog looks at life. This is what happens when you gain the jhānas. You’vesamatha-ed the body and the five senses and they’ve disappeared. You know whatNirodha means now; you know what the body is. You won’t understand the body byjust contemplating it up and down if it hasn’t yet disappeared; all you will know arethe changes of the body, not the essence of a body. In the same way the tadpole mightknow the colours in the water and might know the cold or the heat in the water, but itwon’t know the essence of the water until it’s disappeared.Body contemplation reaches its fulfilment when the body disappears; that’s its job.Its purpose is to get you into jhānas, nothing more than that. When the jhānas happenthen you will have an opportunity of knowing what the body is and what the five309
senses are. Before that it’s just theory and beliefs; it’s not substantial, and it willnever get you anywhere. It will just make you argue more with other people. That’swhat is meant by being attached to views not experience. When you get into jhānasthey will be the foundation that gives you the data for Enlightening insight. At leastyou’ve known that what arose from a cause has now ceased. The body has gone, youunderstand that. That is how the Buddha taught, and you gain incredible faith in theteachings of the Buddha, faith based on your own experience. When you see yourmind disappear you understand what the teachings really mean. You understand thatthe whole purpose of going through the jhānas and the arūpa (immaterial) attainmentsis to see the whole world of the mind disappear.In the medieval period of Christianity, long after the time of the Buddha, some of theChristian ascetics started to talk about union with God. What does that mean? If anyof you experience a first jhāna you’ll understand what that means. Many of us werebrought up in a Christian tradition and can look at the experience of a first jhāna andunderstand why anyone from that Christian tradition would interpret and perceive thatas union with God. That union is ekaggatā, the oneness of mind. The God perceptionis the incredible pītisukha of that state, the incredible power and bliss. I remember asa young man how I used to go to rock concerts. There was this guy called EricClapton playing for ‘The Queen’. People would shout, “He’s God. Eric Clapton isGod. He’s God. He’s God”. The reason they would say that is because theydeveloped incredible bliss. You can really get high on that music. This is an examplethat ‘God’ is what gives you enormous happiness and power. It’s very easy to seewhy Christians and even Hindus take those experiences as ultimate reality: the sameconsciousness, unchanging, and pure and blissful.If you experience those states and you know them from your own experience, you’llalso understand why those states that occur just before the jhānas were calledpabhassara citta by the Buddha. The five hindrances have been overcome and themind is incredibly radiant. That’s the nimmitta, brilliant and bright. You may evenapply that description to the first jhāna. You still have a bit of a wobble there, enoughto see or get a handle on the mind state, on the object of your mind in that experience,and it is pabhassara (very bright, radiant) for sure, powerful and pure. The great thing310
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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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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
Page 259 and 260: As the Buddha said in the Indriya S
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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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Page 277 and 278: you can meditate, you can teach, be
Page 279 and 280: and restlessness cannot survive. Th
Page 281 and 282: 19 PERFECT STILLNESS29 th June 2005
Page 283 and 284: Have You Come Here to Die?At one re
Page 285 and 286: At the last retreat I taught in Ipo
Page 287 and 288: process is about. You also understa
Page 289 and 290: go of everything. Letting go is wha
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Page 295 and 296: So, look upon your life as a journe
Page 297 and 298: Nirodha. Nirodha means cessation, t
Page 299 and 300: 20 THE ENDING OF EVERYTHING7 th Dec
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Page 303 and 304: samatha and also the word upasama b
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Page 307 and 308: I was talking earlier this evening
Page 309: opposite is true. The less ‘self
Page 313 and 314: The mind creates; this is what it d
Page 315 and 316: Get into the jhānas, the real jhā
Page 317 and 318: whatever things come into existence
Page 319 and 320: 2. Dukkha - suffering.3. Anattā -
Page 321 and 322: Painissagga: “Letting go”, aban
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