The Skill of Release: Teachings of Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo, translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu.

The Skill of Release: Teachings of Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo, translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu.

Sitting here and bringing the mind to stillness is not really all that hard to do. The reason it seems hard is because we misunderstand things. Our views are wrong, and so are our presuppositions. If we study so as to understand this point, we’ll know the truth.

For example, when we think that the mind goes here or there, that’s not the truth. It’s just a preconceived notion. Actually, the mind stays with the body at all times. What goes is just the light, as with a flashlight. 

The bulb stays in the flashlight; it’s simply the light that goes flashing out. The bulb and the light are two different things. The bulb has light, but the light outside of the flashlight doesn’t have a bulb. 

The mind—awareness itself—stays with the body with each in-and-out breath. The knowledge that goes flashing out isn’t the real thing. You can’t take the light and put it back in the flashlight, just as when a person tries to catch a light beam it doesn’t stick in his hands.

So if the mind is always in the present, why do we practice concentration? We practice concentration because there are two kinds of fire or electricity in the mind: hot fire, the fires of passion, aversion, & delusion; and cool fire, the fire of jhāna, or mental absorption. 

If we understand how to train the mind, we’ll meet with the cool fire. Hot fire is bad for the nerves of our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and body. Our sense organs are like light bulbs. The nerves of the senses are like the filaments in the bulbs. If we hook them up to the wrong kind of current, they’ll explode immediately. 

If we hook them up to the right current but never turn them off, they’ll wear out. 

So we practice concentration because we want cool electricity, the cool fire of jhāna. Cool electricity does no damage to our senses and enables us to use our senses to see the truth, to understand everything we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and think about. This way the mind can be cool and at peace.

This is the skill of insight meditation. When sights strike against the eye, perceptions arise right at the contact, and we can see them with discernment. When sounds strike the ear, when smells strike the nose, when flavors strike the tongue, when tactile sensations strike the body, or ideas strike the mind, discernment gets right there in between them. 

This way sights don’t stick to the eye, and the eye doesn’t stick to sights; sounds don’t stick to the ears, the ears don’t stick to sounds, and so forth. This is intuitive insight, or six-factored equanimity, which can let go both of the senses and of their objects. The true mind stays cool and at peace, like the cool fire that lasts and poses a danger to no one.

When people don’t train their minds, they have to live with hot fire, which wears down different parts of their minds, such as the nerves of their eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and body. When these nerves wear down, they become ignorant. Their eyesight is darkened. When they see sights, they don’t know the truth of those sights. This is called unawareness. Their ears go deaf: When they hear sounds, they don’t know the truth of those sounds. The same holds for their nose, tongue, body, and mind. Whatever they sense, they don’t know the truth of those things. This is called unawareness. It gives rise to craving and defilement, and leads to suffering. This is what it means to be ignorant of the truth.

People ignorant of the truth are like the blind. They have trouble everywhere they walk, thinking that high things are low and low things are high—as when a blind person walks along level ground, lifting his feet up high because he’s afraid he might trip over something. In the same way, people who don’t know the truth think that deep Dhamma is shallow, shallow Dhamma is deep; high Dhamma is low, low Dhamma is high. That’s Wrong View. 

When your views are wrong, your practice is wrong; your release is wrong—like lifting your feet to walk up a set of stairs that doesn’t have any steps. There are people who want to put themselves on a high level but without the proper basis. Their minds don’t have any concentration. They keep walking, thinking, imagining about high-level Dhamma, but they end up back where they started. They’re like a blind person trying to climb a staircase whose bottom step is missing. He’ll just keep stomping on the same spot of ground. In the same way, people on a low level who think they’re on a high level end up sinking further and further into the ground. The more they try to climb up, the deeper they go. Like an elephant fallen into the mud: The more she struggles, the deeper she sinks.

The steps of the stairs are virtue, concentration, and discernment. If we follow the steps, we’ll get to where we want to go—like a person with good eyesight climbing stairs that actually have steps. 

People who practice concentration can know things whether their eyes are opened or closed, because they have brightness within them.

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The Skill of Release: Teachings of Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo, translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu.

https://www.dhammatalks.org/ebook_index.html#skillofrelease

10 August 2023