The Art of Letting Go ~ AJAHN LEE: --

The Art of Letting Go
~ AJAHN LEE: --

When you sit and meditate, even if you don't gain any intuitive insights, make sure at least that you know this much: 

When the breath comes in, you know. 

When it goes out, you know. 

When it's long, you know. 

When it's short, you know. 

Whether it's comfortable or uncomfortable, you know. 

If you can know this much, you're doing fine. As for the various thoughts and concepts (sañña) that come into the mind, brush them away — whether they're good or bad, whether they deal with the past or the future. Don't let them interfere with what you're doing — and don't go chasing after them to straighten them out. 

When a thought of this sort comes passing in, simply let it go passing on. Keep your awareness, unperturbed, in the present.

When we say that the mind goes here or there, it's not really the mind that goes. Only concepts go. Concepts are like shadows of the mind. If the body is still, how will its shadow move? The movement of the body is what causes the shadow to move, and when the shadow moves, how will you catch hold of it? 

Shadows are hard to catch, hard to shake off, hard to set still. The awareness that forms the present: That's the true mind. The awareness that goes chasing after concepts is just a shadow. Real awareness — "knowing" — stays in place. 

It doesn't stand, walk, come, or go. As for the mind — the awareness that doesn't act in any way coming or going, forward or back — it's quiet and unperturbed. And when the mind is thus its normal, even, undistracted self — i.e., when it doesn't have any shadows — we can rest peacefully. But if the mind is unstable, uncertain, and wavering, concepts arise and go flashing out — and we go chasing after them, hoping to drag them back in. The chasing after them is where we go wrong. This is what we have to correct. Tell yourself: Nothing is wrong with your mind. Just watch out for the shadows.

You can't improve your shadow. Say your shadow is black. You can scrub it with soap till your dying day, and it'll still be black — because there's no substance to it. So it is with your concepts. You can't straighten them out, because they're just images, deceiving you.

The Buddha thus taught that whoever isn't acquainted with the self, the body, the mind, and its shadows, is suffering from avijja — darkness, deluded knowledge. Whoever thinks the mind is the self, the self is the mind, the mind is its concepts — whoever has things all mixed up like this — is deluded and lost, like a person lost in the jungle. To be lost in the jungle brings countless hardships... No matter which way you look, there's no way out. But if we're lost in the world, it's many times worse than being lost in the jungle... We have no chance to find any brightness because our minds are dark with avijja.

The purpose of training the mind to be still is to simplify things. When things are simplified, the mind can settle down and rest. And when the mind has rested, it'll gradually become bright, in and of itself, and give rise to knowledge. But if we let things get complicated — if we let the mind get mixed up with sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, and ideas — that's darkness. Knowledge won't have a chance to arise.

Source: The Art of Letting Go. 

Thai Forest Kammaṭṭhāna Tradition