An General Talk
Given in Gainesville, FL
January 20, 2005
[It’s OK to be HAPPY]
How many people here have practiced meditation?
Almost everyone. Ah. Good.
My name is Vimalaramsi, Bhante Vimalaramsi and I’ve been teaching
meditation for about 20 years, in Asia and pretty much all over the
world. I teach meditation in a little bit different way then most other
people teach. I practiced in Burma for about three years, very intensive
meditation, 16-18 hours a day. For one stretch, I practiced for about 22
hrs a day. But that, thankfully, was for only about three months. I’ve
practiced with Sayadaw U Pandita, who was the head monk at the Mahasi
Center in Burma. I practiced with other very famous teachers at the
Mahasi Center and I practiced the Vipassana Meditation for about 20
years. I went through all of the things that they say you are supposed
to go through and I wasn’t satisfied with that meditation.
So, when I got done with the meditation of Vipassana, I came back and
I started getting very interested in finding out if what I was actually
practicing was taught by the Buddha or not. So I went to the original
teachings which, this [holding up a book] is called the Middle Length
Sayings, and this is part of the suttas that give a lot of instruction
in meditation. And as I started studying what the Buddha was talking
about with meditation, I started realizing that the instructions that
the suttas give is different from the instructions that I was given and
that’s why I wasn’t really too satisfied with that practice.
Please don’t sit with your legs crossed. [ you hear this request
because it is considered rude to sit with your legs crossed towards an
elder teacher or a Buddha image and also because it has been tested and
found that people only take in about 40% of what they hear if they cross
their arms or legs.]
Um, So I began to practice just the way it says in the suttas to
practice. Now I was doing two different meditations. I was practicing
Mindfulness of Breathing, which is real popular and I was also
practicing Loving Kindness Meditation at different times. I did an 8
month Loving Kindness Meditation retreat. I like to teach Loving
Kindness Meditation to most people. But it’s not suitable [meditation
form] for everyone. It depends on your temperament and that sort of
thing. Mindfulness of Breathing in suitable for everyone.
What I noticed when I was practicing the Mindfulness of Breathing in
Burma at the Mahasi Center and all of this technique was that when
people were practicing the meditation, they had a tendency to get very,
very serious and very, very heavy in mind. When I started practicing the
way that the suttas talk about, I started noticing that I had a lot of
Joy coming up. When I was practicing at the Mahasi Center and I would
get to a place where there was some joy coming up, I would go to the
interview with the teacher and I would say, "I really feel a lot of joy
now." And the first thing they always said to me was: "DON"T GET
ATTACHED!" and geeze! I didn’t want to be attached!
[Laughter] So, I had this happy feeling, I started pushing it down,
getting rid of it! I don’t want to be attached to anything!
TT: 06:00
As I started practicing the way that the suttas talk about, I started
realizing that one of the enlightenment factors is JOY! So, I started
playing with that when I was practicing Loving Kindness Meditation. I
started putting a smile on my lips, then a smile in my heart, and joy
would come up and my mind was very, very ALERT when I had joy in my
mind. My mind was very sharp, very agile. I could see tiny little
movements of mind that I had never seen before.
So I started realizing that, it’s rather important to allow the joy
to come up whenever it wants to come up. And then as I kept reading, I
started running across things like the Buddha said like, "We are the
happy ones!" I, uh, I practiced twenty years of not being happy, being
serious and then I found out it’s OK to be happy and that’s an essential
part of the practice. When you have a happy mind, your mind is very
uplifted, your thoughts are very nice and pleasant, and when something
happens and it makes your mind start to get serious you can notice it
very quickly, you notice when your mind starts to get heavy so you can
start letting that go and get back into your happiness and your joy
again.
[Introducing the Hindrances] [WAR] and other things:
Now one of the things that is a real important aspect of the
meditation, that almost everyone that I know that practices meditation
hates when it happens. And it’s called HINDRANCES. Do you know those?
There’s five of them basically. There’s LUST or GREED, the "I want it
mind." There’s AVERSION or HATRED, the "I don’t want it mind." There’s
SLEEPINESS there’s DULLNESS. There’s RESTLESSNESS and ANXIETY. And
there’s DOUBT. Now, the doubt is whether you are doing this correctly or
not; not you can’t make up your mind which dessert you want! It’s not
that kind of doubt.
Now when these Hindrances arise, they take your mind completely away
from what you are doing and you get caught by them. Now an interesting
thing with the hindrance is that they don’t come up one at a time, they
like to kind of gang up on you. So if you have, let’s say you are
walking down the street, and someone walks up to you, and they say
something not nice and your mind grabs onto that and there’s AVERSION in
your mind. But there’s also makes your mind RESTLESS and you have
anxiety in your mind at that time.
TT: 09:56
These hindrances can arise for anyone and they do arise for everyone.
They can arise at any time when the condition is right for that to
arise, and they will completely grab your mind and you will be caught by
that and one of the ways that you notice that hindrances arise is, you
have repeat thoughts. It’s like it was on a tape deck. You know,
somebody comes up to you and they say something that’s not very nice and
you say something not very nice back to them and all of a sudden, you’re
having this WAR, back and forth. And then they go away. Then what do you
think about? Ahhh. What I said and what they said and what I should have
said and I’m right and they’re wrong. That sound about right?
And then just like it was on the tape deck, it plays over again. And
then a little while later, it plays over again. And then you kind of
distract for awhile and then you relax for a little while and then all
of a sudden, there it is again! OK. That means there is an attachment
and that is the source of suffering. This is what the Buddha called, The
First Noble Truth. There is SUFFERING.
The second Noble Truth is, the Cause of Suffering is Craving. Now,
one of the things that I noticed when I was practicing for so long and
so intensively with the Mahasi Sayadaw Method, was that whenever a
hindrance arose, my mind would get tight. And I just didn’t much pay
attention to it, I was following the instructions that they told me how
to handle a hindrance and that is: ‘Watch it until it goes away.’ But,
when I got back to the instructions in the suttas themselves, the
Mindfulness of Breathing Sutta, the instructions for the meditation is
four sentences:
You understand when you take a long breath, you understand when your
breath is long on the in-breath and you understand when it is long on
the out-breath. You understand when you have a short breath on the
in-breath or on the out-breath. But the key words here are "you
understand". Now those instructions that I just gave you, did it say
anything about your nose, your upper lip, your abdomen? No, because
that’s not in the instructions.
The instructions that are given by most people, they tell you to put
your attention at your nostril tip or on your upper lip or watch the
rise and fall of your abdomen. These instructions come from commentaries
and they don’t necessarily agree with the suttas. So the keyword is "you
understand" when you’re breathing a long breath, you understand when you
are breathing a short breath, you understand when your breath is fine,
you understand when your breath is coarse, you understand when your
breath is fast, you understand when it’s slow. You know what your breath
is doing. That’s what it means.
The next part of the instructions, it says,
"He trains thus. He tranquilizes his bodily formation on the
in-breath and he tranquilizes his bodily formation on the out-breath."
Now what does that mean? If there’s any tightness anywhere in your
body, you relax. You tranquilize it. Sometimes you will be sitting and
all of a sudden you will notice that your hand is real tight. You let it
go. You relax. Sometimes you can be sitting and one of your shoulders
will raise up. And you notice that, and you relax, and you let it go.
TT: 15:01
Now the next part of the instruction is very, very important. And
this is the part that is NEVER talked about! It says:
"He trains thus. He tranquilizes his bodily formation on the
in-breath and tranquilizes his bodily formation on the out-breath."
So, on the in-breath, you relax, on the out-breath, you relax.
Now, as I was doing this, I noticed that there was some tightness in
my head, wrapped around my brain. There’s a tightness there. And as I
noticed that, I started relaxing it, letting it go. And then I started
noticing, every time a feeling arises in the body, every time a thought
arises in the mind, there’s this little tightness in your head. So relax
it. Now I was just talking about the Second Noble Truth. The Second
Noble Truth is the CAUSE of Suffering is Craving.
What I discovered was that Craving manifests as this tightness! And
what I saw as I did meditation retreats with this was that this is part
of a very quick thing that happens and it is part of the "I like it" "I
don’t like it" thing that tightens your mind. And it tightens your body.
But when you’re practicing the Mindfulness of Breathing on the
in-breath, you tranquilize your bodily formation.
One thing that I found out since coming back to America, I’ve been
back about five years, is that everybody in America thinks that their
body is from here down [ pointing from the chin down to the toes!] . And
their mind is from here up! When, in fact, your body is from here down [
from top of head down to toes!] .
SO, you relax that tightness in your head, in your mind. As you let
go of that, you feel your mind kind of open up, and expand a little bit,
and then it becomes calm. There’s no thought at that moment. Then you
bring your attention back to breathing, on the in-breath, relax that
again. On the out-breath, relax again. There’s a distraction, let it be,
relax, come back to the breath, relax.
So, you are using the breath as the reminder to relax both your mind
and your body. This is revolutionary! It really is. And this is the main
difference between what the Buddha taught and what everybody else
taught. Everybody else, when they were practicing meditation, their mind
would be on their object of meditation and it would get distracted.
That’s just one of the things that happens, You have a thought come up,
a memory, whatever, a sensation in your body. And you let go of that,
and immediately, come back to your object of meditation: the Breath. And
you focus just on that one point.
But the way the Buddha taught, was, your mind gets distracted, you
let it go and notice that tightness, that is craving, and relax and let
that Craving go. Now you don’t have any thoughts in your mind. Your mind
is very clear, your mind is very bright, your mind is very alert. And
you bring that mind back to the breath, and then you do it some more.
You keep on relaxing, relaxing, continually, until your mind gets
distracted again.
TT:19:50
Almost everyone that talks about meditation, they say that, uh,
SAMATHA [serenity] that’s a Pali word that means Tranquility in Pali,
but it’s been mistranslated for years and years and people call that
absorption; being absorbed into your object of meditation. In other
words, your mind will grab on that and not let it go, and your mind
sticks to it. But actually the word ‘Samatha’ means Tranquility,
Serenity, Calmness, Collectedness. And when you do this long enough, you
get into a state that is called ‘jhana’.
Now jhana is always described as having an absorption, your mind
stays on your object of meditation, no matter what happens, it doesn’t
move, just stays there. And it suppresses distractions from arising. And
these distractions are called HINDRANCES. But that’s not the way the
Buddha taught. The way the Buddha taught, was, every time your mind gets
distracted, you let it go, you relax, and you come back. Eventually, the
distraction will become weaker and weaker until finally, it goes away.
It doesn’t arise any more. And when that happens, there’s a real strong
feeling of RELIEF. And right after that feeling of relief, Joy comes up,
all by itself! Really happy feeling, because you have let go of an
attachment. And I’ll explain what an attachment is in a little while.
Right after Joy arises, it will be there for a little while and then it
will fade away. When the joy fades away, then you feel completely
comfortable, in your mind, in your body. And your mind stays on your
object of meditation without any effort at all. You can still hear
things. If someone comes up and they touch you, you would feel it. That
doesn’t happen when you have absorption because your mind is absorbed so
much on just that one sensation, that everything else is kind of pushed
down. Now what I just described for you is called the first jhana.
So, when you’re practicing meditation, I’ve been to a lot of
different kinds of meditation teachers who have talked about this and
they uh, they talk about their minds being very focused and very
centered and very concentrated. Now the word concentration is kind of an
interesting word, especially in this culture because it doesn’t mean the
same as concentrated in Asia. You know when you’re reading a book and
you’re really into it and someone comes up and talks to you and you
didn’t hear them? Your mind is very concentrated. You’re really
focusing. And to the exclusion of everything else around you. And that’s
what most people call jhana.
But, when you start comparing what the Buddha was talking about, you
start seeing that the jhana he was talking about was a little bit
different. It doesn’t have that deep one-pointed mind that suppresses
things. Your mind is very alert. Your mind is very aware. But it’s calm.
It’s still. There’s not a lot of moving.
TT: 25:00
A lot of times when people have meditation instructions given to them
they say, "Well, just empty your mind." Does that sound familiar? How in
the world are you supposed to do that? Never had any instructions that
told me how. The thing is, your wandering mind is not your enemy. You’ve
been working all day. You had a lot of things going on. You sit down to
meditate. What’s your mind going do? It’s going to keep doing what it’s
been doing all day. It’s going to be running over here, thinking about
this, thinking about that, and that’s OK. It’s to be expected. Don’t
dislike that.
As soon as you recognize that your mind is not on the breath, and
relaxing, then simply let go of that thought. Don’t continue thinking
it. It’s not an important thing. And then, you’ll notice there’s some
tension and tightness. Relax, and gently, come back to the breath, and
relax again. You might only get part of one relax in before your mind
jumps away again. That’s fine. Every time you let go of a distraction
and relax and come back to the breath, and you relax, you’re developing
your awareness. When you first start meditating, your mind is going to
flip-flop all over the place. That’s not a problem. That’s not something
to fight with. That’s not something to try to stop from happening. It’s
only to be recognized as, "Ah! Got caught by that one! That was away two
or three minutes thinking a lot!" OK. Fine. As soon as you recognize it,
then just let it go. Don’t continue thinking it. Relax, because that
tension is there, come back to the breath. As you do that more and more,
your mind will stop going away for such long periods of time, and it
will start staying on the breath sometimes two or three breaths before
it runs away again.
And that’s fine.
As you become more familiar with being able to recognize that
distraction, hindrance, and let it go, and relax, and come back, you are
learning how your mind is moving. So your mind is on your breath,
relaxing, and all of a sudden, you’re thinking about what happened this
morning. How did it do that? How did your mind go from being here and
being very calm and balanced and relaxed to being over there? It is a
Process that you will be able to recognize as you go deeper into your
meditation. The wandering mind is what the Buddha called Restlessness.
And sometimes a wandering mind is great fun. Oh, you can plan. Oh boy.
You can plan really well. And it’s enjoyable. That is Restlessness with
the "I like it" mind. The GREEDY MIND. See, there’s two hindrances right
there. As you continue to let it go and relax, then you’ll see how your
mind jumps from one thing to another. And as you recognize that, your
mind won’t be distracted for so long, and when you come back to the
breath, it will stay there for longer; natural process.
TT: 29:49
As you do this over a period of time and it doesn’t take all that
long, well, let’s do it another way. Every time your mind wanders away,
that hindrance is there. If you don’t like those thoughts, if you try to
push those thoughts away, if you try to stop those thoughts from coming
up, you’re fighting with it. You get real serious with it and you are
identifying with those thoughts or with those feelings. You’re taking
them very personally. Any time you see that your mind is getting
serious, there’s an attachment. And that attachment, has Craving in it.
And that Craving is the cause of Suffering. Now, every time you let it
go and you relax, you let go of that Craving, and you come back to your
meditation object, the breath, and relaxing; every time you do that,
that is called the CESSATION of Suffering. That’s the Third Noble Truth.
This is the practical Noble Truth.
As you continue doing that more and more, you’re letting go, you’re
not resisting the thoughts, you’re just saying: "You’re there." OK fine,
relax, and let it be there. You just don’t pay attention to it anymore.
And you gently come back to your breath, and you relax. Now because you
don’t have any resistance to it, you’re not trying to control it, you’re
not trying to make it be something other than what it is, it starts to
lose energy, and it gets a little bit weaker and a little bit weaker as
you recognize that your mind is going to it. And then finally one time
you let it be, and it just says: "I give up!" Whoosh! That’s enough! And
that’s when you have the relief because you’ve let go of the
identification with those thoughts and feelings.
Now, when the Buddha was talking about the Three Characteristics of
All Existence, he said that everything is impermanent. Everything is
changing, continually changing. Everything is a form of
unsatisfactoriness because we don’t’ want things to change, we want it
to be the same. We want it to be still. We want things to be the way we
want them to be. But it’s never like that and that’s unsatisfactory. And
the last characteristic is that every thought, every feeling, every
emotion, every sensation that arises in your body is impersonal.
Now a lot of you have done meditation. When you’re sitting in
meditation and you get an itch, what do you do first? First thing, your
mind goes to it, grabs on to it, and your mind says: " God I hate that!
I wish it would stop! I wish it would go away! I wish it would stop
bothering my meditation!" But actually, that is your best friend at that
time because that’s part of the hindrance. "I don’t like that feeling! I
want that feeling to be different than it is!"
Now, being impersonal means, did you sit while you’re in meditation
and say, "Well, I haven’t had a miserable itch for awhile. I guess it’s
time for it to come up! Don’t you think?" No. It came up because
conditions are right for it to arise. You didn’t ask it to be there. It
came up by itself.
What you do with what arises in the present moment, dictates what
happens in the future!
TT: 34:56
This is the same with all emotions. This is the same with all
sensations. It’s the same with thoughts. If in the present moment, you
don’t like what is happening, then your mind grabs onto that and says,
"NO! I want it to stop!" and that emotion, that sensation, that thought
gets bigger and more intense. And, you can look forward to having it
come up more and more.
Now, in Buddhism, there are some Pali words that are becoming more
and more known. One of the words that’s known is "Dhamma". Um, people
that practice Mahayana Buddhism, they call it Dharma. That’s Sanskrit.
Doesn’t sound as nice on the ear. I like Dhamma better. Dhamma means the
Truth. It means, this is the way things are. It also means the teaching
of the Buddha and some other definitions, but, for our purposes right
now, we’ll just say that it means the truth.
When an itch arises, when a feeling arises in your body, when a
thought arises, the truth is, it’s there! Profound, isn’t it? [laughter]
It’s there! And it’s OK for it to be there. It has to be OK, because the
truth is, it’s there! Now if you fight with the truth, if you try to
control the truth, if you try to make the truth BE the way YOU want it
to be, you can look forward to a lot of suffering. OR, you can allow the
truth to be there, relax, and come back to your object of meditation.
Now the thing with an itch or a pain that arises in your body, or uh,
thoughts that keep recurring, the thing is they’re not going to go away
right away!
So, your mind is going to bounce back to it! Now HOW did your mind do
that? What happened first? What happened after that? What happened after
that? What happened after that?
There’s a word that is very much used in the Buddhist circles and
that word is mindfulness. And, when, the word mindfulness is kind of
like the word God. You hear it, you know it, everybody is supposed to
know what it means but nobody really gives you a good definition.
Mindfulness means, your observation of how your mind moves. So that’s
what I’ve been talking about. When your mind is on your object of
meditation and a pain arises in your knee, a pain arises in your back.
An itch arises, the feeling like you want to cough, whatever. When your
mind gets pulled to that, it didn’t just all of second just jump there.
There are some things that arose and passed away very quickly and then
your mind became completely distracted.
As you become more familiar with HOW your mind moves, your
observation power becomes stronger, and you will be able to recognize it
more quickly. I can tell you exactly HOW all of those things arise. It’s
real interesting stuff. First there’s contact. Then a feeling arises.
Now feeling, is either pleasant or unpleasant or neutral. Right on the
heels of that feeling arising, there is craving and it always manifests
as a tightness in your mind and your body. And sometimes it’s very
subtle. Sometimes it’s very gross. Right on the heels of that, are the
thoughts about the feeling; why you like it and why you don’t like it.
And that’s called clinging.
TT: 40:40
By the time you get to clinging you’re pretty much caught. So, how do
you handle this?
First, you notice those thoughts, and you let the thoughts go! And
relax. You feel your mind kind of expand and take a little step down.
Next, you’ll notice that there is a tight mental fist wrapped around
that feeling. That is aversion. I don’t like that feeling there. I don’t
like it distracting me. I don’t want it there. But the truth is, when
the feeling arises, it’s there. So, you allow the feeling to be there.
"You want to be there, fine you can be there!" It’s only this cough.
It’s only this want to sneeze. It’s only this itch. It’s only this pain.
No big deal. It’s fine for it to be there. It has to be, because, that’s
the truth. And you can’t fight with the truth. You can’t control the
truth. All you can do is observe the truth. Allow the truth to be there
by itself.
Now you relax again. You feel that expansion, and, calmness. And you
bring your mind back to the breath, and you relax again. And your mind
gets pulled back to it. And you notice: "Well, there’s all these
thoughts about it again."
So you let the thoughts be and you relax, and then you notice that
tight mental fist wrapped around that, and you let that be, and you
relax. And then you bring that relaxed mind back to your meditation, to
the breath; on the in-breath, relax, on the out- Oops! There goes again!
Sound familiar?
Hahahahahaha!
See, it doesn’t matter how many times your mind gets distracted by
it. It doesn’t matter at all. What matters is what you do with it when
you notice you have become distracted. What arises in the present
moment, dictates what happens in the future! If you fight with the
present moment, you try to say: "I hate this feeling! I want it to stop!
And Ooooooh!" and then come back to your object of meditation, you can
look forward to a lot of suffering, and it gets bigger and more intense.
Until it turns into an emergency and then you have to do something like
scratch or rub or stretch or whatever. But at that time, you are not
meditating, you are being involved with a hindrance, the dislike of that
sensation!
But as you practice over a period of time, it becomes easier to
recognize this as a process and as you let it go, and you relax, and you
come back, and you bounce back and forth, a few times, a few hundred
times? Ah, sometimes a few thousand times? Every time you let it go and
you relax and you come back, your observation of how this process works
becomes sharper.
Now, one of the favorite words in all of Buddhism is being attached.
And it’s one of the more misunderstood words. Somebody comes up to me
and they say, "Do you like Ice Cream?"
And I say, "Yeah! I love Ice Cream!"
TT: 45:00
"OH! YOU’RE ATTACHED!"
You ever hear that one? "How can I give up my attachment to liking
chocolate?"
"I’m too attached!"
But people don’t really understand what attached means is you’re
identifying with those thoughts and feelings as being your’s personally,
when, in fact, it is an impersonal process. That’s how you become
attached. You take this "like" and you say, "this is ME. This is MINE.
This is who I AM. And "I" like it and I am going to keep liking it!
Whether anybody else likes me to do it or not."
But as you start to let go of the thoughts and you relax, you let go
of the feeling and you relax, and you come back to your object of
meditation, you start to lose the attachment to that feeling sensation,
thought, whatever it happens to be.
And THIS is purifying your mind.
This is helping your mind to see that everything that arises is part
of an impersonal process. To let it be, and relax into it, and then come
back to your breath.
Now I give a lot of retreats. And when I teach retreats you can only
sit for so long when you have to get up and stretch your body, you know?
I tell people that they have to sit at least for 30 minutes. That’s
pretty easy. It really is. And then get up, but keep your meditation
going while you walk. And you can walk at a moderate pace back and
forth, keeping your eyes down, but staying with your breath, and
relaxing. So everything that you do turns into part of the meditation.
You don’t focus on your feet. If you are focusing on your feet, you
never see the subtle tensions and tightness that arise in your body and
in your mind. You stay with the breath and after you walk for a little
while, your circulation is pretty good, then you go back and sit again.
When your sitting meditation gets good, then you stay with it.
Sometimes you’ll sit for 45 minutes, everything is going good, sit for
an hour! Fine. Next time you try it, then, 30 minutes is like 4 hours!
So you sit for no less than 30 minutes. But when your meditation is
good, extend it as long as you can. And that way, you’ll be able to see
more and more subtle movements of mind.
Now when I was practicing in Burma, they were real big on: "Life is
suffering! And, by golly, you WILL SUFFER!"
[laughter]
So what they said, was, when a sensation arises in your body, you put
your attention RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THAT SENSATION! You can be sitting
and you get a pain in your knee. Put your attention right in the middle
of that sensation and watch it until it goes away! "
What does that do? It makes your mind skrooooosh! [Tighten]. And you
can focus on it. You can get real deep concentration. But the pain gets
real intense. So intense that sometimes there can be tears coming down.
It can get very, very, strong if you put your attention into that
sensation.
TT: 49:40
[A more loving way of teaching a westerner or anyone]
So this is another way that I teach a little bit more, lovingly? You
don’t have to make yourself suffer. You don’t have to have this pain and
sit with it and grit your teeth and force your mind to look at that.
What you do is notice that your mind went to it, allow it to be, relax,
and come back. Now when you do that, one of two things is going to
happen. Either the pain is going to go away or it’s not. But if it
doesn’t, you start getting more and more balance in your mind until it
doesn’t even pull your mind to that sensation anymore.
[sitting positions]
Now when I was in Asia, they insisted that everybody sit on the
floor. In Asia, they don’t have a lot of furniture. They didn’t when I
was there. They always sat on the floor. They were used to sitting on
the floor. When I went to Asia, I was 40 years old. I spent forty years
sitting in a chair. They told me I had to sit on the floor! And then
they told me "Oh you can’t use a cushion!" Sit flat on the floor. My
legs and feet went to sleep in five minutes! So I started using a
cushion. I didn’t care what they said. And I would get up and I would do
my walking meditation and I would see these Burmese monks come up and
they would ‘kick’ the pillow that I was sitting on. They thought it was
really disgusting.
Now if you’re not used to sitting on the floor, and you do sit on the
floor, and you sit cross-legged, you can start to notice that your body
doesn’t really like that so much. [ laughter ] Right? And all these
pains come up and, oh boy, it’s really intense. But they tell you,
"Don’t move!"
I don’t teach that way. You want to sit in a chair. Fine. Sit in a
chair. You don’t have to make pain come up. It comes up all by itself.
You don’t have to force pain to come up. And I don’t want you to sit in
a way that will cause you to have pain come up. I want you to sit in a
way where your mind is very alert, your mind is very aware and if a pain
comes up and you sit with it for awhile, but it’s still there and it
seems to be getting more intense, and you get up and you start doing
your meditation, your walking meditation, and the pain doesn’t go away,
I don’t want you to sit like that again. Because that’s going to hurt
your body.
Now when I was in Burma, they decided that I was at a place where I
should sit for a long period of time. I went to a retreat. First day of
the retreat I went in and I talked to the teacher, the Sayadaw there,
and he said, "How long do you sit?"
And I’d been doing this for years. "I sit for an hour. I walk for an
hour."
He said, "Fine. Sit longer."
I said, "OK."
So the next day I came into the teacher and he said, "How long did
you sit?"
"Well, I sit for two hours and I walk for an hour."
He said, "Fine. Sit longer!"
I said, "Uh, OK."
So the next day I come in and I don’t look particularly happy, and he
said, "How long did you sit?"
I said, "I sat for three hours. It was a killer. Walked for an hour."
He said, "Good. Why don’t you sit longer?"
‘Oh man!’ "OK."
So, this is four days into a retreat. Now if you’ve ever done a
retreat, you know that the first couple of days of a retreat your mind
is real active and running all over the place anyway, and here I was
with a teacher that was forcing me to sit for long periods of time.
So the next day I came into the teacher, and I was shaking my head
and he said, "How long did you sit?"
I said, "Four hours. It was really hard. Lot of pain comes up."
He said, "Did you move?"
I said, "Yeah, I moved all over the place. It was hurt! I got cramps
and all kinds of stuff."
He said: "Well, don’t move."
TT: 55:02
"Oh. Man. OK."
Next day I come in to talk to the teacher, I have tears coming down.
I’m not really crying, but the pain is so intense, that it caused my
eyes to water. And he said, "Well, how long did you sit?"
I said, "I sat for four hours. I never want to do that again."
"Did you move?"
"No. I didn’t move."
"Good. Why don’t you sit longer?"
"No.[ audience laughter] That’s long enough!"
But he kept after me and after a few days I started sitting for long
periods of time. And I was sitting on the floor and my legs were crossed
and all of that. And I started sitting for 6 hours, 7 hours, 8 hours
like that. And then I started noticing that my ankles started to swell
really a lot.
I went to the teacher and I told him that my ankles were swelling up
a lot.
And he said to me, "Well, that’s because you’re sitting with your
legs too tight."
And I still have that problem, because I was not sitting in an
appropriate way. I was sitting in a way that actually hurt myself. And I
did that because the teacher encouraged me to do that. I don’t encourage
anyone to sit that way. I might encourage you to sit for 6 or 7 hours
but you are going to do it in a comfortable position and you’re going to
be ready to do it. It will happen naturally.
I have students that can sit for long periods of time. Now what’s the
advantage of sitting for a long period of time without moving your body?
You get to watch HOW your mind moves much, much more precisely. Your
awareness at that time is much quicker. You’re able to see how mind
starts to grab onto things and you can let it go very quickly and it’s a
pleasant experience. So, I’m not going to force you to have a lot of
pain come up.
[hindrances]
Now, Hindrances are real peculiar things because this is where all of
our attachments are. This is where, some past memories can be, and let’s
say, you can be sitting and all of a sudden, anger arises, or sadness
arises, or some kind of depression arises, or boredom arises, or
whatever the catch of the day happens to be. And it pulls your mind to
that and you’ll get caught with it for a little period of time. As soon
as you notice it, then you let it be and you relax and you come back to
your meditation, to the breath and relaxing. And then you bounce back
and forth. And as you do that you start seeing this is part of a process
too.
It’s very necessary to your spiritual growth to have the hindrances
arise. Because that’s where your belief is that this is who I am. "I’m
mad" and "I don’t like it." And "I want it to be different that it is."
You hear all those "I’s"? That identification? That taking it
personally? That heavy mind? That mind that gets so caught up in the
dislike of a feeling that you don’t even know where you are? Have you
ever had somebody say something to you and you get really mad and then
you get into the car and then you back up and hit something?
Know what I mean? Were you really driving? No. You weren’t driving.
You were caught by what happened awhile back! And you were so caught up
in your thoughts and in your dislike of the thoughts your want for
things to be different than they are that you didn’t know what you were
doing in the present moment.
TT:1:00:00
Now, you’re going to like this. The fastest way to let go of an
emotional state, the fastest way to let go of a hindrance, is to Laugh
at Your Self for getting caught by it! Somebody can say something and it
really ticks you off, and you walk away, and your feet are stomping into
the ground, and your mind is er-er-er-er that no good….. and if you
notice that and you laugh at yourself for acting this way, you’re not
caught by it anymore. It goes from, "I’m mad and I don’t like it" to "
Oh. It’s only this anger! Hah! Look at that!" Easy to let it go.
At that moment, you are practicing the entire 8-fold path! OK? You’re
practicing the 8-fold path by laughing with yourself for getting caught.
It changes your perspective. It changes your view of what is happening
in the present moment.
The 8-Fold Path
Now, when I talk about the 8-fold path, I change the words around a
little bit from what most people think the 8-fold path is. It’s a bunch
of Right this and Right that and I don’t like that. So I change it to
Harmonious. And the first part of the 8-fold path is Harmonious
Perspective. Most people call this Right View. But it’s a harmonious
perspective when you can see that what you were identifying with and
taking personally is an impersonal process. You’ve changed your
perspective to: "I’m mad and I don’t like it" to "Oh, it’s only this
anger. It’s not even mine. I didn’t ask it to come up." So, you have a
harmonious perspective with that.
Now the second part of the 8-fold path is called, by most people
Right Thought. And there’s nothing further from what the actual Pali is
talking about. It is Harmonious Imaging. OK? The imaging is …holding
onto concept that "I am that thought, that feeling." And that brings up
an image in your mind and in your body. Harmonious imaging means letting
it be.
Now the next part of the 8-fold path is generally called Right
Speech. Now when I was practicing in Burma, Right Speech, Right Action ,
Right Livelihood ; they said these three things are morality. And they
don’t have much to do with the meditation. You took your five precepts.
You took your eight precepts, that’s what it’s talking about. But I
don’t go along with that. When I was practicing that way, I did believe
what they were telling me about this stuff so it turned in from and
8-fold path to a 5-fold path. But Right Speech is what I call Harmonious
Communication and that’s the communication with yourself of letting go
of these angry thoughts and communicating, "Oh. It’s only this. It’s
only this feeling."
TT: 1:04:54
The next is Right Action; Harmonious Movement. When you have a mind
that is pulled down and very tight that’s identifying with the thoughts,
and identifying with the feelings, your mind is very heavy. And that
movement is very sluggish. Your mind is very caught up in the whole
process. But the Harmonious Movement is being able to watch, letting go,
and watching your mind move from a heavy state to a light state.
The next is called Right Livelihood. I love this one. I call it
Harmonious Lifestyle. If you practice being happy and having a happy
mind, you are practicing Harmonious Lifestyle. If you are practicing
having an uplifted mind and wishing other people happiness and you give
them a smile, that is Harmonious Lifestyle. If you smile with yourself
for being caught, that is Harmonious Lifestyle.
The next is, they call it Right Effort and it’s in four parts. But, I
call it Harmonious Practice. The four parts of this is:
Recognizing when your mind has unwholesome states in it.
Letting go of those unwholesome states, and relaxing.
Bringing up a wholesome state and
Keeping that wholesome state going.
When you laugh with yourself for being caught in an emotional state,
you are bringing joy up. That’s a very wholesome thing, isn’t it? Lot
more wholesome than dislike, or anger, or sadness, or depression or
whatever the catch of the day is; fear, anxiety.
The next part of this is called Right Mindfulness and I call it
Harmonious Observation. Harmonious Observation means being able to see
this as it happens without trying to control it, just laughing with it,
watch it.
Now the last, when I was in Burma they called it Right Concentration.
And they said, "Well, you don’t practice this kind of concentration when
you are practicing Vipassana." So, they were actually teaching me, the
4-fold path. Now, the Buddha said that Right Samadhi [ Sama+dhi] ‘sama’
means "tranquil" and ‘dhi’ means wisdom and I translate that a little
bit more by saying "collectedness of mind". It’s a mind that’s very
still, calm, and stays with your object of meditation very easily. The
Buddha described it as being in one of the 4 jhanas. Now, jhanas, at the
start of the talk, I started talking about the jhana being the, in this
country, it’s called absorption, and that’s really a long way from the
true definition.
Jhana arises because you have let go of an attachment. Then you have
Joy and Happiness and Equanimity and all those other wonderful states of
mind that can arise. It is a level of understanding, that’s what
a jhana is. It’s not an absorbed mind, that you sit like a rock and
somebody can come up with a stick and beat you on the head and you don’t
even know it happened. It’s not that kind of mind! It’s a mind that is
very alert and balanced and a mind that is really beginning to
understand ‘everything that arises is part of a process.’
TT: 1:10:04
Now that’s the 8-fold path. And the act of laughing with yourself for
being caught means you’re practicing all 8 of those at the same time!
Great Stuff, Huh?
Too many times, I’ve been to different meditation retreats that other
teachers are teaching and I walk around and I look at people and their
face is very screwed up and their trying real hard and they’re VERY
serious. You come and do a meditation retreat with me, the first thing I
am going to tell you to do, is you got to smile. And a smile is
incredibly important to the practice because the corners of your lips
dictates what’s happening in your mind. When the corners of your lips go
down, so does your mind. Your mental states get heavy and you start
identifying very strongly with those mental states. Corners of your
mouth go up, so does your mind. It helps joy to arise.
Now, you remember a little while ago, I said I was told, "Don’t be
attached when you have joy arise!" How are you attached when joy arises?
"Oh! This is a great feeling. I really like that, I want it to stay
around." Fastest way to make it disappear. By being attached to it. It
is a Feeling. Remember I told you a little earlier there’s three kinds
of feeling. There’s a pleasant feeling. There’s an unpleasant feeling.
There’s a neutral feeling. OK? Same coin. Different sides.
What do you do with an unpleasant feeling? You see it, that your mind
has gone to it. You allow it to be. You relax. You come back to your
object of meditation. What do you do when joy arises? You see your mind
has joy in it, you allow it to be, you relax, you come back to your
object of meditation. You’re not going to get attached that way! But it
is nice. And the Buddha said "this is a pleasant abiding ‘here and now’,
and, it is! It’s no fooling!
The more you can practice having a smile on your face with your daily
activities, the easier it is to see what your mind is doing in the
present moment. Your mind in light, your mind is agile, and when it
starts to get heavy, you notice it really quickly. So, if you can let go
of that one, that’s not worth hanging onto and relax, and start smiling
again.
The meditation is about being observant and watching how mind moves.
It’s much easier to watch your mind move when it’s happy then it is to
watch it when it’s unhappy because you start identifying with all of
these thoughts and these feelings. Now, you’re sitting in meditation and
you have a hindrance come up; a sadness, a depression, a dislike, fear,
anxiety, whatever it happens to be. And you sit with that and you let it
go and you relax and you come back to your object of meditation and you
bounce back and forth and you might not have let it go all the way but
you only have so much time to sit. Now I got to get up and I got to do
my daily activities. But you start feeling more balanced in your mind.
And then, with your daily activities, if that sadness starts to creep up
again, you’re able to see it more easily and let go of it more easily.
The meditation is so that you can have a truly balanced mind that
doesn’t shake and wobble. It doesn’t grab onto things and say, "I don’t
like this!" "I do like this!" "I want this!" "I don’t want that!" One of
the reasons everybody gets so tired, and, you got to sleep, you got to
have 8 hours of sleep because you’re spending a whole day going "I like
this!" "I don’t like this!" "I like this!" "I don’t like this!"
[laughter]
TT1:15:08
And your mind is completely worn out! It says, "Uh! I got to go to
bed! I’m wiped out!" [laughter]
As you begin to be more aware of how your mind is moving, then it
doesn’t happen like it’s on a roller coaster. You don’t go through these
high highs and these low lows. It starts to be more like little waves.
And as you get better at doing it, the equanimity can get stronger. And
then somebody can come up to you and they can say incredibly not nice
things and your mind has such balance in it that you go, "OH. OK. No
problem."
Practicing being happy is the path of the Buddha. Everybody thinks
that if you’re on the spiritual path, you better be serious with it. And
I agree. Be seriously happy. The more you can smile into things, the
more balance you have in your mind.
7 Enlightenment Factors.
Now they’re seven enlightenment factors Right?
You have Mindfulness, Investigation of your experience, Energy, JOY,
Tranquility, Collectedness, and Equanimity. Now, Joy is right in the
middle of that. That’s your balancing factor. It is very necessary for
Joy to be there. If you miss one of those Enlightenment factors you’ll
never get enlightened.
Everything has to be in balance. The more you can practice smiling,
the more you can practice having an uplifted mind, letting go of heavy
thoughts, of emotion, laugh when you get caught at these things. You
know the world out there, is getting more and more crazy. I mean, when I
came from Asia, I spent 12 years in Asia. And when I came back, in the
airplane, right before we landed, I landed in San Francisco, I started
to feel very strong FEAR, ANXIETY, and GREED. Now, I’m starting to feel
really, really intense FEAR and really, really intense GREED.
Now, how do you cope with these kinds of things? How do you handle
these kinds of things? You can take these thoughts and these feelings as
yours personally and you can fight with them and cause yourself to get
depressed and frustrated and angry and all of those kinds of things, or
not. It’s your choice. This is why I like the Buddha’s teaching; because
you have to be responsible for yourself. When you are really responsible
for yourself and watching your mind and letting go of this stuff, and
you start cultivating an uplifted mind, you start affecting the world
around you in a positive way.
You know I have people that come up to me and they say "Well, there
is all this Tsunami, there’s this terrible thing and what can I do? It
makes me so sad."
What you can do is make yourself happy and start affecting everyone
else around you. Keep your mind uplifted. If you feel like going out and
gathering things and sending it off to Asia, and helping those people,
you can do that. That’s up to you. But watch your own mind. Watch how
your mind gets caught in dislike and dissatisfaction.
TT: 1:19:46
Since coming back to this country, I’ve really noticed some key words
that seem to be used a lot.
Stress. Depression. Anxiety. I never heard those words over in Asia.
But they’re used a lot here. And I read in the paper some years ago,
couple anyway, that, I think it was by next year, 1 in 4 persons was
going to be taking drugs for depression. Well, I know how to get rid of
depression. Be happy. Smile. And give it away! Give your smile away. Say
things that make other people happy.
Let’s share some merit.
……..
Transcribed by KK
December 30, 2005
Gainesville, FL
Berlin-1 Apr 09
Vietnamese