“When you are in the present, you are ready to enter into samādhi.”

The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart

4 March 2023

“When you are in the present, you are ready to enter into samādhi.”

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Question: Can I ask about the basic, the beginning of the practice, the meditation object? When I use parikamma ‘ Buddho’ or ānāpānasati as the object of meditation, is the aim to get a complete body feeling, to maintain the inside body feeling? Is this called sati?

Than Ajahn: No. The aim is to stop thinking, to stop the mind from wandering all over the world. Bring it back to the present, to the here and now.

Question: Does here and now mean in the body?

Than Ajahn: If you are with your body, then you are not going anywhere. You are in the present. When you are in the present, you are ready to enter into samādhi. Samādhi can happen when the mind is in the present.

Question: Do we focus our attention on our body and if we cannot do it then we use the preparatory work of parikamma?

Than Ajahn: The goal is to stop your mind from thinking. If your mind is thinking, somehow you should stop it by using the body as a point of focus or using parikamma, like a mantra as your point of focus to stop your thinking. When the mind stops thinking, the mind will converge and become one. It becomes singular. In Thai language, it’s ‘sak-ta-wa-roo,’ – means really knowing. It separates itself from the body. It becomes by itself.

Question: Does Thai language ‘jit ruam yai’ mean having just peacefulness? Is it samādhi? And when I reach this state, can I then start to contemplate asubha etc?

Than Ajahn: Yes. When you reach this state then you are in complete control of your mind. 

You can stop your mind from generating all kinds of defilements. If you cannot do this yet, when you come out (of samādhi), you cannot stop your defilement when it starts to manifest. When you have this ‘ruam yai’ then you have the strength to stop your defilement when it appears.

“Monks from Wat Pah Nanachaat, Jun 9, 2015”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com

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