Simply This Moment - Buddhist Meditation and Theravada ...

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delusion because it has kept us going for so many lifetimes. It’s kept us going for thelast twenty-four hours. We’re always doing something or else we want somethingmore, we’re never standing still. If we realize that this is good enough and we trust inthat one hundred percent, we discover that this really is good enough, and we have asmuch as we’ll ever need. We stop wanting more. We stop craving. When we stopcraving, we stop thinking and we stop moving. When we stop moving, we’re in thepresent moment, we’re silent. The longer we keep that stillness the more chancecontentment has to build up. We realize that all the jewels and wealth in the world areright here. All the bliss and happiness we could ever want are right in this moment,and we may even start crying with happiness. We realize we had it all along, but wealways throw away the jewel of Nibbāna for something else.We always want something else. But if we just stop, be empty and be still, we willfind out that contentment is happiness. The more contentment we have the morehappiness we build up. Happiness upon happiness upon happiness! If you do it thisway, I’ll guarantee that there is so much happiness you won’t know how you will beable to take anymore. You get more bliss, more sheer pleasure out of meditation thanyou do from anything else. That’s my experience anyway. We get that, just bystopping, by letting go.We’re not only experiencing pleasure for pleasure’s sake. Even as monks we arepermitted this pleasure, it’s allowable, it’s not dangerous. That needs to be saidbecause sometimes people are afraid of that pleasure. They think there must besomething wrong with the bliss of jhāna. It’s really strange how some people areafraid of the beautiful pleasures, the good pleasures. But they are not afraid of thecrazy pleasures, the pleasures of sex, the pleasures of food, the pleasures ofconversation and the pleasures of craving. People are not afraid of those pleasures,but they are afraid of the really wholesome pleasures. What foolishness!The pleasures of deep meditation, stillness, letting go, giving up, renouncing;stopping, these are all words referring to the same thing: emptying – going to thatemptiness, just fathering that emptiness, and seeing it grow like a beautiful lotusflower. The most beautiful lotus flower we have ever seen in the mind’s eye is justopening and opening. We’re going to see why. We are going to have the insight and63
the wisdom of the Four Noble Truths. We will know what suffering is, what dukkhais, not as an intellectual theory, but as an experience. We’ve been there; we’ve felt itand we’ve been burnt up with craving. We’ve reached out and blown the bliss, andwe know that is suffering. We know the suffering of being lost in the illusion of theworld, of always having to go backwards and forwards, seeking this and seeking that,trying to build our happiness on other people, on other things, and seeing that all thoseother things and people are completely unreliable. We cannot depend upon them,they let us down. Our false scaffolding of happiness crashes and we crash and injureourselves with it.We’ve been there and done that so many times. There is happiness in the world andthat happiness is inside of us. We don’t have to go anywhere else to find it. We haveto go inside ourselves. We won’t find happiness by stepping out into the world or bystepping out to Thailand, or Sri Lanka, or wherever else we want to go. We will onlyfind happiness and liberation inside this body and mind. Wherever we happen to beon this planet that is the only place we can find happiness. We carry it around withus, so what is the need to go elsewhere, except inward? Stop and see that suffering,and know that suffering. How many more years do we have to follow suffering andbe a victim of suffering? Instead distrust suffering, distrust craving, distrust thinking;just stop for a few moments and look.Look into this present moment. Look at what happens when we don’t follow craving,when we really let go. Look at what happens when we follow instead the Third NobleTruth: painissagga, abandoning, cāga, giving up, mutti, freeing. Free fromattachment, anālaya, not providing a roosting place for this craving, being completelyempty of any possibility of a perch for craving to hold on to. No thought, no wanting;completely content in this moment. If craving comes in, know it, and just stay still. Ifany thought comes in, be like people who are quiet in a theatre or in a concert hall,just maintain that peace. We can create that peace within our mind, it’s not just anexperience of pleasure it’s the manifestation of the Dhamma. It is the Four NobleTruths in action. We haven’t followed craving, we’ve let go, we’ve given up, and‘Wow!’64
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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
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
Page 62 and 63: monastic life does respect the sile
Page 66 and 67: This is the opposite of suffering.
Page 68 and 69: ight view. It’s very hard for a h
Page 70 and 71: always be on the wrong path, and on
Page 72 and 73: “Look, if this is causing sufferi
Page 74 and 75: out of control. The monastery goes
Page 76 and 77: the past and the future, and we’r
Page 78 and 79: at all. Who can trust memory? In me
Page 80 and 81: can. Give it full attention every m
Page 82 and 83: in the morning, afternoon or evenin
Page 84 and 85: yourself from all that’s happened
Page 86 and 87: mutti is releasing and anālaya is
Page 88 and 89: instructions without question.It’
Page 90: comes into the mind, then we start
Page 93 and 94: hold in the mind’s eye and I was
Page 95 and 96: of letting go, not stages of attach
Page 97 and 98: Sayutta there is something that imp
Page 99 and 100: pushes you out of sasāra whether y
Page 101 and 102: 7 DHAMMA PRACTICE10 th May 2000I’
Page 103 and 104: Adult people look after their own k
Page 105 and 106: many people in the world who write
Page 107 and 108: What if you make that your goal, an
Page 109 and 110: things really complicated. It’s s
Page 111 and 112: ‘The monks here, or the teacher,
Page 113 and 114: 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 -
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Painissagga: “Letting go”, aban
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