Q & A
Q: I can either breathe automatically without being aware of my breath or when I observe my breath, I feel I am controlling it. Only once I had the experience of observing my breath without controlling it. It was a deep spiritual experience, but it only lasted ten seconds. How am I supposed to interpret this experience? Why isn’t it happening again? What can I do to have this experience every time that I meditate?
A: I’d like to have that every time I meditate. We are always controlling the breath to some extent or another, except when the mind is in very deep concentration. The way to duplicate the experience of sensing the breath without controlling it is first to learn how to control it skillfully—in other words, to maintain the breath at a comfortable rhythm, with the sense of ease spreading throughout the body. There will come a point where the breath is comfortable enough that the mind puts aside its desire to control, and you can simply be one with the breath.
An image I use is that it’s like focusing a camera lens. Normally the point of focus is outside of the lens. This is how we normally relate to the breath. The mind is at one point, the breath at another point. Now, if you can imagine the focal point being inside the lens, that’s the stage where the breath is not under your control. In other words, you can be aware of the breath without controlling it.
Now, in terms of the Buddhist map of mental states that you can get into when you meditate, this would be the same as the second jhāna. The way to get to the second jhāna first is to get really good at the first jhāna. Have your mind centered on one spot and then fill your body with your awareness. Then allow the breath to be as comfortable as possible, and when it’s comfortable, allow that sense of comfort to spread through the body, too, dissolving away any patterns of tension you may feel in the body.
Q: What to do to cure negative emotions that come from an avid desire that can’t be realized? Is it necessary to separate oneself from the source of the desire or should one confront it to observe what will happen?
A: First, what do you understand to be the source of the desire? Remember, the source of the desire is not, say, the person outside or the thing outside. The source of the desire is actually inside your own mind.
Ajaan Fuang once made the comment that the things that we desire most in life—especially in terms of the pleasures of the senses—are things we used to have in a previous lifetime. Then he said to think about that for a few minutes: Even if you get what you desire again, you’re going to lose it again and miss it again, so the question is: How many times do you want to keep on losing it?
In other words, the desire comes from a sense of lack. When you realize that you’ve had this object many times before, but then you’ve lost it again, tell yourself you don’t really lack that thing. You’ve had it enough already. You can be perfectly happy without it. When you’ve decided that you’ve had enough, that will end the desire and the suffering that goes along with it.
Q: Yesterday you said that at the moment of death, images of intense pleasure could arise. That is a possibility, yes? There might be a temptation to go to a marvelous world that awaits us, but there might also be the choice not to come back, to cut this chain of lives. Is this what you actually said? At every moment of death, would we have this choice with a mind that is acutely desiring to cut the chain of saṁsāra?
A: Many things can possibly arise at the time of death. There can be some visions of intense pleasure, but also some visions of possible pain and suffering. We will have the choice at that moment—if we have our wits about us, we’ll be able choose where we want to go. The problem, though, is that you may see a world of suffering awaiting you, and you think back on the bad things you’ve done in the past, you think that you deserve to suffer, and you’ll actually feel compelled to go to that world of suffering.
This is what happens to most people when they die: Different visions will appear to them, based on their past kamma, and they will go to one or feel compelled to go to another because of their memories. We’ll get into this topic in a couple of days. You would think that people would automatically go to the places that look happy, but sometimes you can see a strange tendency even as you’re meditating, when a sense of pleasure comes to you and you feel that you don’t deserve it, or that you’re not good enough for it. This is one of the reasons why, when we meditate, we try to think of healthy narratives of our ability to become happy. We’re practicing how to formulate new narratives so that we can have a healthy attitude toward pleasure, remembering the good things we’ve done. This is one of the reasons why, in Buddhist countries, when someone is dying, people around them will try to remind them of the good things they have done in terms of their virtue and generosity.
Now, simply willing the process of rebirth to end is not enough to make it end. You have to understand the process of becoming, as we described it last night, and learn how to abort that process. What usually happens at death is that the mind wants to find a new location in space and time. This is a very old habit that we’ve been through many, many times before: trying to find a new location, thinking, “I can’t stay here, I have to go someplace else.” To get out of saṁsāra, we have to learn how to break that habit: learning how not to feel compelled to stay someplace or to go someplace.
One of the reasons why, when we meditate, we try to get out of the worlds of our distractions is so that we can begin to break that habit. After all, if you can be distracted while you’re sitting and meditating in this beautiful place, what’s it going to be like when you’re dying in a hospital and there are lights and beeping sounds all around you and people crying? So, the first step in getting out of saṁsāra is learning how to get past your distractions. We’ll talk about this in more detail in a few days.
Q: Some people have skills to hear, see, or communicate with other beings, humans who have passed away, with souls, but not in a Catholic context. Those souls have a center and a mind, a center and a mind to gather a soul body and energy body and centered together. Also, human beings in transition, dying, will be reborn in the next life as human beings with the kammic potential in this center and mind as a continuity of the process of the mind. How to explain this apparent split or bifurcation of this center or mind?
A: There is no split or bifurcation. There are lots of alternatives that face us after death. Some human beings, when they die, go to a higher level where they can just stay there with an energy body, as a deva or brahmā. Some of those beings on the higher levels then become deluded, thinking that they have found their permanent place, but they haven’t. They will eventually fall from that state and take rebirth on a lower level. Other human beings come back as human beings, or on a lower level. It depends on your past kamma and on your state of mind at death. But none of these states of being are permanent. The higher beings can fall; the lower animals can come back up. So our task is to try to come back to a good level where we can practice so that ultimately we get out of this mess entirely.
And it is a mess. Ajaan Mun said that he could remember having been reborn as a dog 500 times, simply because it appealed to him at the time.
One thing you have to watch out for at the moment of death is the worlds that appear attractive but have bad potentials. I don’t know if any of you saw the movie Ice Age 2. I happened to see it on a plane ride one time. A child sitting in the seat in front of me had the whole Ice Age series, which he watched going over the Pacific. In the second film, there’s a scene where the main characters, female and male animals, are drifting in a boat in a fog and suddenly they see beautiful mermaids and mermen appearing brightly in the fog, and all of the animals are really attracted to them. But as you get closer to them, you begin to realize that in the images of the mermaids and mermen, there’s a lot of static. If you look into the static, you see piranha fish with teeth and fangs. So, watch out! Look carefully. Another good reason not to come back.
Q: Is there something we can do to try to create the conditions for a good rebirth when it comes to our animals and pets? I’m thinking of the last days and moments of death itself. My sister’s cat is dying and visibly suffering. How to help it grow on the path?
A: Basically, what you want to do is help calm the animal’s mind and also try to eliminate as much of its pain as you can. Show that you love it, and that will be very encouraging for it. Now, for an animal that’s not yet dying, you try to do your best to keep it from killing other animals. Again, Ajaan Mun: He had a cat and, as he told the other monks at the monastery, the cat used to be a tiger. So he told them do their best not to get the cat angry, so as to raise the level of its mind. When animals are around humans, it’s good for them. It helps them to develop more human characteristics.
