LOOK AFTER YOUR OWN MIND BY AJAHN PASANNO

LOOK AFTER YOUR OWN MIND BY AJAHN PASANNO

I felt very concerned that Jay look after the quality of his own mind and not let peopled distract him due to their own traumas about his imminent death. Jay recognized the dynamic that was going on around him; he was certainly not trying to maintain social contact because of agitation or restlessness. Still, he realized that he had to take responsibility for his own stability. Although he gave himself completely to his friends during the visiting hours, he meditated many of the other hours of the day beginning when he awoke at two or three o’clock in the morning.

During the days before his death, I pushed Jay into not becoming distracted. He had a lot of visitors. I told him it’s best not to get too caught up with all these people. Kendall had told me when I first came that Jay was doing fine, that it was the rest of them who were falling apart. It was very obvious that Jay had touched the lives of many people, and they gathered around him before his death. His sister, Triya, was there. Some of his friends considered him their spiritual teacher. Many of his friends were lawyers, other friends were born-again Christians. So, there were many different needs, and Jay, being kind-hearted and generous, tried to fulfill them all.

I never talked to Jay specifically about the past…I focused instead on his spiritual well-being and on his ability to face death with as composed a mind as possible. I was not relating to him as a person convicted of a crime, I was relating to him as a person facing death.

I gave a short Dhamma talk to him and the guards…

I told the story of the Buddha, just after his enlightenment not wanting to teach, as he thought nobody would understand. I talked about the nature of delusion of the human world and the liberation of the Dhamma. I talked about the Four Noble Truths, about how letting go was not a rejection of anything. I instructed Jay to pay attention to the arising of consciousness, rather than inclining the mind towards that which will result in suffering and rebirth. I told Jay to move instead towards relinquishment and focusing the mind.

In terms of letting go or relinquishment, we talked about forgiveness in the context of “not self.” If we haven’t forgiven, we keep creating an identity around our pain. That is what is reborn. That is what suffers. I asked Jay, “Is there anybody you have not forgiven yet?” I meant the system, his parents, others. Jay thought about it. “I haven’t forgiven myself completely,” he said softly at last. It was touching.

He had a memory of being a person who had been involved in something wrong in the past, yet now in the present he was a different person. It was helpful for him to see that he was not this memory of himself, to let go of the person in the past who was involved in the crimes.

“If I am not the body, not the feelings, not the mind, then what is it that is liberated?” I told him that such a question appearing then in his mind was simply doubt arising. When you let go of everything and experience the peace and clarity inherent in that, you don’t have to put a name or identity on it.

This reflection by Ajahn Pasanno is adapted from the book, The Last Breath.
https://www.abhayagiri.org/books/528-the-last-breath

Source: https://www.abhayagiri.org/reflections/424-look-after-your-own-mind

Taking Responsibility For Ourselves by Ajahn Pasanno

Taking Responsibility For Ourselves by Ajahn Pasanno

The tendency for most people is to create more problems and difficulties for themselves. 

That habit is one of the reasons the Buddha was reluctant to teach. he could see that most people are “obstructed by ignorance and ensnared by craving; hurrying and hastening through this round of rebirths.” But the Buddha also recognized that there were those beings with “little dust in their eyes,” those who are willing to train and who would be lost without the opportunity to manifest the teachings.

So what category do we want to fall into? Do we want to cultivate sīla, samādhi, and paññā, the qualities and practices that lead to freedom, or do we want to neglect inner development and just muddle along, entangled and bound in ignorance? It’s our responsibility to make that choice.

Ajahn Chah used to tell the sangha that he was giving us a suitable environment to develop our own practice: “It’s like providing a pasture for your cows. If there’s a pasture that’s fenced in and has plenty of grass, then the cows can eat the grass and also be safe. 

If they are cows, they will eat the grass. If they don’t eat the grass, then they aren’t cows. In the same way, it’s the nature of practitioners to practice

and train. If they don’t, maybe they’re not practitioners.” It’s up to us to train and make some effort.

We need to make clear in our own minds what we want to be doing. This cannot be emphasized enough. Training the mind requires a great deal of discipline and effort; it’s not always easy to keep that up. 

The mind gets clouded with frustration, boredom, laziness, and all sorts of defilements. 

It’s so easy to slip into wanting to ignore the training or feeling forced to carry it out because the ajahns keep pestering us. Training the mind is not about trying to fulfill some duty perfunctorily. It’s not an obligation to the precepts or training rules, to some standard within a monastery or a particular place. Such inclinations and approaches don’t get us anywhere; they miss the point.

So what is the point? The point is to take responsibility for ourselves. We need to recognize when the mind feels oppressed and resistant to training; we need to notice when the commitment to training feels overbearing or not worth the effort required. 

That awareness helps raise the energy in the mind and helps create a sense of spaciousness and ease. We can remind ourselves that training the mind is a rare and precious opportunity; we can reflect on our own good fortune to meet the dhamma in this lifetime. We can then recommit to making good use of this opportunity.

DON’T HOLD BACK

PASANNO BHIKKHU.

THE DELIGHTS OF DANA By Ajahn Pasanno

THE DELIGHTS OF DANA
By Ajahn Pasanno

 

Whenever I think of myself I feel depressed,” Ajahn Sumedho, the abbot of Amaravati Buddhist Centre, once said. When dana—generosity, giving, sharing—is the center of our lives instead of me and my, there is no need to be depressed. There is relief and release rather than anxiety and obsession. 

Dana creates a dramatically different focal point. The perspective changes from “What can I get?” to “What can I give?”

In the late 1980s, the Thai monk Ajahn Suwat was teaching a ten-day retreat at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) with Ajahn Geoff (Thanissaro) as his translator. 

Ajahn Suwat had been in America for some time but he hadn’t taught a retreat to Westerners before. After several days, Ajahn Suwat asked Ajahn Geoff, “Why do the students seem so unhappy? They’re meditating. They’re here. 

But they seem so grim and not at all like they’re enjoying themselves.” After thinking about it, Ajahn Geoff said, 

“They know how to meditate, but not how to practice dana.” 

He saw a direct relationship between the lack of happiness and the lack of a foundation in dana.

In Thailand, where I lived for many years, generosity and giving are a child’s first teachings in Buddhism. 

Pregnant women go to the temple, offer food and dedicate merit: “May my child be healthy and happy.” When children are little, they get up early with their families to make offerings to the monastics walking by on almsround. 

Someone helps each child put a spoonful of rice in the alms bowl, and everyone claps and says, “Great!” Children get the idea: Wow, giving is good. 

They grow up associating generosity with pleasant feelings because it is a cultural value.

There are many different translations of the word dana. 

Basically, it is the quality of generosity in which we give physically and from the heart. 

Hearts with dana are generous, open-palmed and liberal in terms of willingness to give, share, be present and help others. All of those qualities lead us away from me and my needs, me and my preferences, me and my demands, me and my expectations, me and my desires, me and my firm place in the center of the universe.

At the root of generosity is the perception that there is always something to share. 

In fact, you don’t need a lot in order to give. For almsround in the northeast of Thailand, people share what they have even though most are very poor. 

One of the villagers there who helped establish Wat Pah Nanachat, Ajahn Chah’s forest monastery for foreigners, once commented, “I really don’t have any money, but I’m not poor.” Sometimes we have a lot, but we feel it’s not enough and that we have to protect what’s there. We don’t even think about sharing what we have. That’s a state of lack and of being truly poor. On the other hand, giving and sharing come from a place of wealth.

There’s an old story about the difference between heaven and hell. The hell realms are filled with people who sit at long banquet tables piled high with all sorts of delicious foods and drinks. But everyone is completely miserable and hungry because the utensils are too long to maneuver. No matter how hard they try, they can’t put the food into their mouths. The heavenly realm is the same: the tables are laden with the same delicious foods and drinks and with the identical long utensils. But the people are happy and bright because they use the utensils to feed one another. There is no hunger or frustration, only fullness and well-being within the identical conditions. Giving and sharing is what turns a hell realm into a heavenly one.

One of the doorways out of suffering is generosity. It’s important to realize that dana is not just about material giving. It also involves service and keeping one’s eyes open for what needs to be done. 

How can I help? Who is in need of assistance? In order to feel comfortable helping others, we have to leap over the hurdle of self, of me and mine. Acts of service invite us to step out of the conditioned boundaries that we set up for our imaginary selves.

Abhayadana is a higher form of practicing dana. In Thai, abhaya is usually translated as “forgiveness.” We give forgiveness by not holding a grudge, ill will or aversion. A lot of joy enters the heart when forgiveness is cultivated. 

The highest form of dana is Dhammadana, which means the giving of Dhamma, the teachings. Traditionally, making teachings available to others by supporting the printing of Dhamma books is one of the highest forms of giving. But there are many other ways that Dhammadana can be practiced in daily life. 

People often think they need to be a monastic or a teacher to give teachings, but this is not so. Any kind of advice that is grounded in Right View and Right Understanding, given with an open heart and good intentions, is Dhammadana.

The Thai forest master Ajahn Chah said that to practice Dhammadana, we don’t have to teach or to say anything at all: “It’s enough to set a good example and follow the precepts.” He often told how the Buddha’s chief disciple Sariputta first became interested in the Holy Life simply by seeing monks walking on almsround. The dignity, composure and clarity of the simple activity of walking inspired a lot of faith in Sariputta.

When parents asked Ajahn Chah what they should teach their children, he would say, “It doesn’t matter what I say. 

What do you say? What do you do?” If there is a tree far away and a tree close by, which tree will a vine climb? 

The closest tree, of course. It’s the same with parents. Their example has a bigger effect than anyone else’s. The examples we set in the monastery, within society and within families are all aspects of Dhammadana. The gifts of giving, virtuous conduct and living a life with Dhamma at its center have an extraordinarily powerful effect.

When we think of the people who have had the biggest positive impact on our life, we value them because they have been trustworthy, kind and patient with us. They’ve made us feel good, no matter how bad we feel about ourselves. 

This kind of giving is not beyond the capacity of any of us. Increasing well-being and decreasing suffering are gifts we can all give.

We can even bring an attitude of sharing into our meditation practice while sitting alone on our cushions. Meditation is not just about me. Sharing it with those we care about and with all beings has a different effect. This kind of giving transforms the heart by taking us out of the capsule of self and me. We quickly realize that the me and mine universe is terribly cramped and crowded. When we turn our attention to the world outside ourselves, we realize it is spacious and expansive.

It doesn’t really matter when or how we begin practicing dana. It is a matter of realizing that generosity forms the foundation of a heart that is free and unencumbered, opening to the way things truly are.

From the Fall 2007 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 24, No. 1)

Text © 2007 Ajahn Pasanno

Is there Any Hope? by Ajahn Pasanno

Is there Any Hope?
by Ajahn Pasanno

One of the Thai women meditating here had an insight into the quickness of the mind. Even meditating with the wholesome desire to bring the mind to a place of peace, tranquility, and clarity, she could see the mind go out to the sound of a dog barking. Then there was some other sound or distraction and the mind went out to that. The mind doesn’t stay still, even when we have the intention to train the mind. It’s just so quick.

She wanted to know if that insight, according to the Buddha’s teachings, is what constitutes becoming and birth. I explained that it does. In terms of analyzing the movement of the mind, when the mind moves, there is a becoming, and when it becomes something, it fastens onto an idea, a concept, a sound, or a place—it takes birth there.

Given that the mind moves so quickly, she also wanted to know, “Is there any hope?” Yes, obviously there is hope. Otherwise, the Buddha wouldn’t have taught us how to train our minds—to find that point of stillness where there is no birth and no death. But it’s about learning to understand how the mind moves like it does and what it fastens onto. We need to see what it’s drawn to and what it’s repelled by, because that in itself is a becoming as well. We take birth on a moment-to-moment basis according to our likes and dislikes.

That same process generates birth at the death of the body. Even though the overwhelming tendency of the mind is towards goodness, we still need to incline and condition the mind in that direction. During the death process, the senses naturally start to break down and attention turns inward to the heart itself. A strong practice carries that momentum of attention so that we are focused on that which is clear, steady, and peaceful. We naturally relinquish the things that create dissonance and discontent within the mind.

This kind of letting go is what the Buddha referred to as Right View from a supramundane or transcendent perspective.
The supramundane aspect is couched in a more visceral, experiential mode. The foundation of one’s entire being is on a moment-to-moment basis and embodies the Four Noble Truths. There is a natural, unshakeable recognition of the nature of dukkha, its cause, its cessation, and the path leading to cessation.

This reflection by Luang Por Pasanno is from the book, Don’t Hold Back.