The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.
16 July 2023
Q: My mind has been quite restless lately and I cannot concentrate on breath meditation, Buddho meditation or mettā as I was doing last month. So I switched to “The Five Recollections“, doing more contemplation. I spent quite a bit of time on death contemplation, reflecting that death is sure, death is certain, that I won’t take anything with me when I die. When I finish “The Five Recollections“, I go to “asubha” because I’ve had certain issues with sensual desire and I think it would help. So when I finished this contemplation it is about one hour. I have a bit of calm and peace. But I have the sense that I should rather be doing breath meditation or mettā and calming the mind first and then do contemplation after. But it is just very difficult to do it that way and it wasn’t working recently. Could you please advise?
Tan Ajahn: Sometimes you can use contemplation as a means of calming your mind if your mind is really restless and you cannot concentrate on your breath or on a mantra. Then you might want to use contemplation. But you have to contemplate on something like death or the 32 parts of the body, or like you said the 5 recollections, aging, sickness, death and separation. This will calm your mind down but not all the way to jhāna, it will calm your mind down to normality. Bring it back to normal so that you can then use watching your breath as a means of getting you in deeper. In order to go deeper into jhāna you need to watch your breath or recite a mantra.
Q: Sometimes when I am contemplating death or the 32 parts of the body then my mind becomes very still and I don’t want to continue doing the 32 parts, I just want to stay there and watch the breath.
Tan Ajahn: Yes, then you should start watching your breath. Once you can watch your breath then keep watching it because if you don’t watch your breath then your mind won’t go any deeper than that. If you want it to go deeper, you have to be absorbed with your breath, watching your breath.
But then there’s another level of contemplation after you come out of meditation. When your mind comes out of meditation and you have a calm mind and equanimity then you want to contemplate to let go of your attachment to your body. This is another level of contemplation. You teach your mind to let go.
Q: When should I do that?
Tan Ajahn: Ideally when you first come out of meditation your mind is more calm and neutral so it can accept the truth more easily than if it is not calm and neutral. But keep telling your mind that your body is not you, it is anattā. Your body is anicca , it’s going to get old, get sick and die. The body is not beautiful, is not good looking. It has the 32 parts and one day it’s going to turn into a corpse. This is something you want to keep teaching your mind so it doesn’t forget. So when the time comes when you get sick you say, “Ah this is normal”. You don’t get excited. Or when you have to die you know that this is normal.
What can you do? You cannot prevent it, you cannot stop it.
Q: So Tan Ajahn if I start my practice by contemplating, and as a result my mind becomes calm, then do I come back to contemplation again? Is that the way it should be?
Tan Ajahn: That’s for another level. The first level you contemplate to calm the mind. But then the next contemplation level is to teach the mind not to forget the nature of the body as being anicca and as being anattā. That there is no self in this body. The body is just made up of the four elements. This body is not good looking. It might be good looking on the outside, but once you go under the skin then you can see all the other parts of the body.
This is to teach your mind to see the body clearly. And to see it all the time. Eventually the goal is every time you see your body or my body or anybody’s body, you’ll see the entirety of information that you’ve been teaching your mind with. The body is anicca, everybody’s going to die. This body is asubha - nobody is good looking. Everybody is ‘no self’ in the body. It’s just the four elements. This is something you want to teach your mind until it becomes automatic every time you see a body; your body or anybody else’s body. But this will take a lot of contemplation, not just one or two times, you have to do it all day long, as much as possible. Which might not be possible right now because you might have to go do something else. When you go do something else then you will not be able to contemplate on this. This is like studying the nature of the body.
Q: Tan Ajahn, just one more quick thing. What happens with mettā, I think it is important especially because sometimes I get very adverse to the place near where I live. So I can see now it is not a problem but I can see in the future it will be a problem.
Tan Ajahn: Mettā is another subject you have to study besides the body. That’s why you need lots of time when you practice. If you are just a part time practitioner you won’t have much time to do everything.
Q: So I just ignore mettā right now? Even in the time that I have to meditate?
Tan Ajahn: It depends on whether you have a problem with mettā or not. If you have a problem with the lack of mettā then you have to keep teaching yourself how to have mettā.
Mettā means to forgive when somebody hurts you. If you can forgive someone, this is mettā. If you can make somebody happy then this is mettā. So it depends on what you need to contemplate, what you need to imbibe your mind with. If you think you lack mettā then you need to do a lot of mettā study. But if you lack the information about your body then you have to do the study of your body. But eventually you will have to do everything. These are subjects that you need to have in order to graduate. They are courses on the path to enlightenment.
Student: Thank you Tan Ajahn, that helps a lot.
“Dhamma in English, April 11, 2023.”
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
YouTube: Dhamma in English.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g
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