“When your samādhi is strong, besides the ability to stop the mind, you also have the strength to bring the mind to think of any subjects you want.”

“When your samādhi is strong, besides the ability to stop the mind, you also have the strength to bring the mind to think of any subjects you want.”

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Question:  When I’m staying in a monastery or in meditation retreats, my mind is more or less stable, there is joy and ease, there is no thoughts, is this enough to contemplate for example the composition of the body or is it still not calm enough and it’s better to strengthen the samādhi as much as possible?

Than Ajahn:  If you can enter samādhi any time you want, that’s calm enough. Then, when you are not in samādhi, you can contemplate on asubha or contemplate on impermanence of things and see what happens when your desire comes up. For example, when your sexual desire comes up, can you bring up the contemplation of asubha or does the asubha entirely disappear and all you see are just a pleasant and good-looking body? If all you see are just a good-looking body that means you have no strength to bring up your asubha contemplation: that means your samādhi is not strong enough. When your samādhi is strong, besides the ability to stop the mind, you also have the strength to bring the mind to think of any subjects you want. If you cannot bring up the subject that you want that means your samādhi is still not strong enough; your mindfulness is not strong enough. So, you should go back and do more samādhi.

Layperson:  Perfectly clear. Thank you very much.

“Dhamma in English, Nov 26, 2018.”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com

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