Can Luangphor gives us some pointers on balancing samādhi and vipassanā?

The teachings of Ajahn Suchart.

Question:  Can Luangphor gives us some pointers on balancing samādhi and vipassanā?

Than Ajahn:  Yes, actually, it’s not balancing them. When you first start, you have to develop samādhi first before you can go to vipassanā level. Only when you’re at the vipassanā level, then you have to balance them because your mind needs resting. Samādhi is a resting place for the mind, while vipassanā is a working place for the mind. It’s similar to you going to office to work and going home to eat, sleep and rest. Once you have rested, you refresh yourself, then you get up in the morning and go back to office to work. This is the same way when you are at vipassana level.

But if you haven’t yet got samādhi, you cannot go up to the vipassanā level because your mind doesn’t have the strength to develop vipassanā. 

In order to develop vipassanā, you have to have a calm and clear mind. If your mind is still cloudy with delusion—with greed and hatred, your mind will just be thinking about greed and hatred and you will not be able to direct your mind to study the true nature of things. 

Therefore, the first thing you have to develop is appanā-samādhi. In order to have appanā-samādhi, you need to develop continuous mindfulness.

So, these are the steps you have to do: first, you have to develop continuous mindfulness because with continuous mindfulness then you can bring your mind to appanā-samādhi; next, after you are capable to enter appanā-samādhi all the time, when you withdraw from that samādhi state, you can start working on developing vipassanā. It’s like before you can go to work, you have to have a house to stay and have food to eat, so that you have the physical strength to do work. If you are homeless and have no food to eat, how can you go to work? Right now, your mind is like a homeless person—your mind has no home and no food. 

The mental home and mental food is samādhi; and the money to buy the mental home and mental food is mindfulness. So, you need to raise some money first, then you can buy a home and you can buy some food. 

Once you have a home to stay and food to eat, then you will have the strength to go and do work. This is the process.

When you first start, you have to go step by step. But once you get to the vipassanā level, then you have to come back to samādhi because after you contemplate or study the nature of things, after a while, your mind can get tired. When your mind is tired, it will not be efficient, then you have to stop contemplating and go back to rest in samādhi. After you have rested, when you withdraw from that samādhi state, then you can continue on with the contemplation again.

Layperson:  Thank you khrub.

“Dhamma in English, Jan 3, 2019.”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com

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