“There is a difference when we have samādhi and we don’t have samādhi. We know it clearly…”

“There is a difference when we have samādhi and we don’t have samādhi. We know it clearly…”

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Monk: When someone is in meditation, how would he know that he is in samādhi?

Than Ajahn:  Normally if you are in samādhi, you are totally awake. You know everything that is happening, just like what we are doing right now, knowing that we are talking.

If I compare our talking to our thinking in the mind, we know when we think, right? We know when the mind stops thinking. When the mind stops thinking, we will feel peaceful and calm and happy, so there is a difference when we have samādhi and we don’t have samādhi. We know it clearly just like what we are doing right now.

When we are talking, we know that we are talking. When we stop talking, we know we stop talking and we know the difference. When the mind stops thinking, the mind will become peaceful, happy. It is like lifting a mountain off the chest; you feel contented. So, you know when you are in samādhi.

If you don’t know, that means you fell asleep. Some people sit and they go to sleep and after half an hour they wake up and look at the watch and think that they have sat for half an hour. They don’t know what happened in that 30 minutes. It can happen to you when your mindfulness is very weak. You can sit for five minutes and you can fall asleep and it is not completely sleeping, it is half asleep, but in this kind of situation, you are not in samādhi.

In real samādhi you will be very alert and the experience will be so amazing to you that you will never forget it, this is the real samādhi.

“Singapore via skype, Aug 9, 2015.”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com

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