Q&A

Q: If the air doesn’t enter by the mouth or by the nose, is there still a breath energy? In other words, does the breath energy mean to breathe inside the body?

A: Yes, there always is an energy in the body as long as you’re alive. When the mind gets very concentrated in the fourth jhāna, the in-and-out breathing will stop, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have breath. The breath energy actually fills the body very intensely at that point.

Q: Concerning the breath when you meditate, how do you breathe in? Does it come in through the entire body, through all the pores, or through one spot, for example, as when it comes in through the bottom of the feet?

A: Actually, it comes in and out all the pores of the body all the time, but there are some times that you want to emphasize the energy in one spot of the body or another—say, when you want to deliver more energy to that spot. You focus on the spot and you visualize it opening up to make it easier for the energy to enter and leave.

Q: I can’t come to establish myself completely in the body or with the breath. I always have a little thought that presents itself. Each time I see it, I’m able to leave for a couple of seconds before coming back to the breath or the body. I’m present for all of this but I can’t arrive at meditating completely with a sensation of the breath or the body. What do I do? I don’t have the impression that I’m agitated. In fact, my mind is calm.

A: When you start meditating, there will be little thoughts nibbling away at the outside of your awareness, and one of the best ways of dealing with them is simply to ignore them. If they do come, think of them as a dog who’s coming around begging for some food. If you give it some food, it’ll come back again. If you don’t give it any food, it’ll come a few more times and whimper and whine, but after a while, it’ll realize that you’re not interested in it and it’ll go away. Simply paying attention to the little thoughts is to feed them. So pay them no attention at all. At first, they may say outrageous things, to get your attention, but if you’re consistent in not feeding them, after a while they’ll go away.

Once I was teaching meditation at a university in America, and the room they gave us had a very loud clock. At the end of the first meditation session, all the students opened up their eyes and said, “That clock!” So I told them, “The clock didn’t destroy your breath, right? It’s just the fact that you paid attention to it. So allow the sound of the clock to go right through you.” In the same way with your thoughts, just allow them to go past and don’t get involved.

Q: After a couple of days of meditation, it actually becomes harder for me. I get a lot of tension in my head, and my mind becomes heavier, with too much striving. I guess I focus around my head. How can I dissipate this tension while meditating?

A: There was a Zen monk named Hakuin who suffered from the same problem. His way of solving it was to imagine a large ball of butter on top of his head, and it was melting all the time, dripping down, down, down his body. So when you focus on the breath, think of the energy going down the body instead of coming up into the head. Another way of avoiding having too much energy or too much tension in the head is to focus your attention on the hands and the feet. Or you can think, excuse me, of the breath coming in and out of your rear end, the coccyx. That way, you can counteract the sensation of having to pull the energy in through the nose when you breathe.

Q: Ajaan, I did not understand how you were able to stop your migraines. I have the same sort of problem. Could you explain more in detail? Thank you.

A: I found that when I had migraines that it was closely related to the rhythm of my breathing. And there was something of a vicious cycle. The pain in the migraine restricted the way I thought I could breathe, and then the more my breathing was restricted, the worse the pain got.

Now, migraines can be a very strict master. In other words, if you find one way of breathing that helps to cure them today, it may not work tomorrow. So you have to explore. However, I found a couple of things that did work fairly consistently: One was to break that vicious cycle by breathing in as much as I could, expanding the belly in all directions as far as I could, and then breathing out as much as I could. If you can keep that up for a couple of minutes, even though it may be painful, it seems to break the vicious cycle. Another way is to release as much tension as you can in the lower part of the back. One of the basic principles that helps you, though, is realizing that if, when you breathe in, you tend to feel that the breath has to work its way around the pain that’s already there, you restrict the breath and aggravate the headaches. To counteract that, you can think of the breath being there in the body prior to the pain. If you hold that perception in mind, it gives you more room to breathe. Those are a couple of tips.

Q: Yesterday when you were saying not to be obsessed with the details when observing the precepts, it made me question myself because I believe that is my case. I can sometimes exasperate the people around me. I have a hard time finding out what are mere details and what is the real heart of the matter. So what are the criteria that I can trust, to use as a measuring stick? When I don’t follow the precepts in detail, what can I do that would not have any consequences or at least minimize the consequences?

A: The important part of the precepts is being sure about your intentions. The people who tend to be obsessed about the details also tend to be unsure about their intentions. This is one of the reasons why doing meditation will help with the precepts. It will help you see: Maybe you did step on the ant but you can be clear about the fact that you didn’t intend to step on the ant. When you can be clear about your intentions, then the issues about the precepts become a lot easier.

Q: When I’m not practicing or on retreat, it’s challenging to abide by the fifth precept, not drinking alcohol or smoking, especially when I’m socializing or simply just want to relax and have some fun. Do you have any advice or suggestions?

A: To begin with, smoking is not forbidden by the fifth precept.

As for drinking: When you come home after work, instead of pouring yourself a glass to drink, lie down on the floor and relax all the muscles in your body, starting with the top of the head and going down to the feet. That’s how you can relax without drinking. As for fun, there are many ways of amusing yourself that don’t have to involve drinking.

And as for socializing, this group has heard this point before, but I’ll mention it again: Tell your friends that your doctor says that you can’t drink. Don’t tell them that your doctor is the Buddha. This is actually an old image that goes way back to the Pāli Canon, that the Buddha was the best doctor of all, so you’re not lying.

Q: A fugitive is demanding protection with me. I have accepted to hide him in my house. The fugitive is a political opponent to the government. The regime is repressive and tyrannical. The police pound at my door and ask if I have the fugitive in my house and I respond No. Is this a lie?

A: That would be a lie, and the way around that situation would be to figure out some way to not give information about the fugitive to the police without, at the same time, lying. This sort of thing is going to be a challenge for each of us as we practice the precepts. My experience has been that the ways of not giving information will vary from culture to culture and language to language. It would be hard to tell you how to do it in France, but I could tell you how we might do it in America: Look the police in the eye, act indignant, and tell them that you are hiding nothing shameful in your house and that they’re welcome to search to confirm that. This strategy, though, might not make sense in France.

Following the precepts requires that you use your imagination and discernment. So when you find yourself suddenly waking up in the middle of the night and can’t get to sleep and you don’t know what to think about, come up with your own answer to this question.

Q: How do you cultivate skillful mind states when the body is not well without using nostalgia?

A: One of the easiest things is to develop thoughts of goodwill: May all beings be happy. To whatever extent you’re able to stay focused on that thought, stay focused there. That gives energy to the mind.

Q: A preoccupation that causes me to worry: what to do with all of the photos and albums of photos and everything that have piled up over the course of time. Nobody wants to take them. I’m in the process of detaching from everything that would encumber me in the last part of my life. Now is the time of aging, illness, death, and insight into death. I want to be as free from the past as much as I can.

A: You can do one of two things with your photos. One is to burn them all. The other is to hide them away someplace, say, in an attic or basement somewhere, with the thought that maybe some day, somebody will come across them in two generations and will find them fascinating and valuable. But as for you, you can say, “I’ve had enough of that.” This is when you think about what Ajaan Maha Boowa had to say: Direct your thoughts to the goodness you can still squeeze out of your body in this last part of your life. When you think about death as being the end of everything, you feel like you have less and less time and opportunity to do good things. But when you think about death as being a transition to a new chapter, you can think about what would be a good transition and what would be a good way to start the next chapter.

In other words, think about your next life and the best way to prepare for it. It’s as when you travel. When I come to France, I think about what I may be doing in France so that I can prepare when I pack my bags. Preparing for the next lifetime is like sending a package in the mail to yourself ahead of time.

Q: When rapture or intense joy can be felt, are they related to our true nature, to our Buddha-nature within us, or is it just a play of the mind? Where Hinduism and Christianity see the intervention of divine grace, how does Buddhism interpret these states that are more or less ecstatic?

A: Buddhism interprets these emotions as the result of your actions: either your past actions or your present actions right now. What appears to be grace is actually the result of your past actions, or of present actions that you may not be aware that you’re doing.

Q: How do we know what kind of being we were in our previous lives and what levels we were in? Can the first rebirth be something other than a living being, for example, something like a rock?

A: You don’t really need to know what kind of being you were in a past lifetime. The most important thing is to focus on what you’re doing right now. As for how the process of rebirth begins, the Buddha says that it’s incomprehensible. The process has been going on for a very, very, very long time, in many, many, many universes. It’s so long that it’s longer than this universe we’re in right now, that’s for sure. So, the question is not “How do things get started?” but: “Do you want to keep on repeating the process again and again?” If you want a way out, the Buddha shows you the way.

And no, you can’t be reborn as a rock. You can only be reborn as a living being.

Q: “Everything is conditioned, everything is co-produced by dependent co-arising, everything is a creation of the mind.” …

A: Maybe not. The Buddha says all dhammas are forerun by the mind—in other words, your experience of things is based on your intentions. As for things in and of themselves out there, the Buddha doesn’t talk about them.

Q: Continuation of the same question: “So therefore, is the self something instantaneous and ephemeral?” If not, how would you explain anattā and how should we understand the title of the book by Ajaan Chah, There Is No Ajaan Chah? The notion of a person that you spoke about yesterday is not quite clear to me.

A: The Buddha never said that there is no self; he never said that there was a self. What he did say is that the things that we hold on to through our idea of self cause us to suffer. When we hold on to our idea of self, of what we are, that causes us to suffer. So the teaching on not-self is basically a teaching on what is worth holding on to or identifying with, and what is not worth holding on to or identifying with.

In the beginning of the practice, you have to hold on to the idea of your self as responsible for doing the practice, as competent to do the practice, and that you’ll benefit from the practice. Then, as your practice progresses, you’ll find that there are fewer and fewer things that are worth holding on to—until you actually get to the end of the path, and then you let go of the path, too. That’s when you see everything as not-self. When the mind gains freedom through that act of letting go, then you let go of that perception of not-self as well. That’s the last step to reach awakening. In that case, nibbāna would be neither self nor not-self.

There’s a book on this topic in the back of the room, Les sois et le pas-soi—Selves & Not-Self, and I recommend that you look at it.

As for the book about Ajaan Chah: At that point in time, Ajaan Chah wasn’t Ajaan Chah anymore. He had let go of everything, but he was still alive. People are defined by their attachments. When there’s no more attachment, then they’re not defined, so you can’t say anything about them.

Q: When there is no person or being, why is there an illusion that there is a person or a being? It is so strong and difficult to overcome. What point of view is the best practice for seeing that there is no person?

A: As long as there is the process of becoming, there is a person being created by this process. The practice is not so much seeing that there never was anybody. Basically, it’s seeing how you are creating that person all the time, and you have to decide whether you want to keep on creating that person or not. The Buddha gives you instructions on how to stop, with the assurance that when you stop, it does not lead to annihilation. What’s left is the ultimate happiness. And as Ajaan Suwat once said, once you’ve attained the ultimate happiness, you don’t care whether there’s a being there or not. Everything is satisfied.

Q: As for the topic of anicca, what is the difference that you see between impermanence and inconstancy?

A: Impermanence covers things like mountains, which can be pretty stable. You know that someday the mountain will be demolished through geologic forces, but you feel, “As long as I’m alive, it’s not going to be demolished, so I can safely build my house there.” Pāli actually has another word for impermanent: adhuva. Inconstancy, anicca, is like a mountain that’s subject to earthquakes all the time: Would you still want to build your house there? No, because it’s too undependable. That’s inconstancy.

Q: When do we produce penetrative visions or insight? Is it during the meditation? Is it during another moment during the day? Do they happen during dreams? Is it an intellectual comprehension of phenomena as they are? And how do we know that this is not the fruit of our own imagination?

A: To begin with, genuine insights don’t happen during dreams.

An actual insight is when you see that you’re creating suffering and you don’t have to. Then you can stop creating the cause. The measure of how true it is, is how much suffering stops. Insight is not insight into things as they are, it’s insight into things as they function, and particularly how they function to cause suffering and how you can stop doing that. We’re the ones creating the causes of suffering, and insight shows us, one, that we’re doing it, and two, how we can stop.

Q: What’s the difference between samādhi and nimitta?

A: The word nimitta has two meanings. In the commentaries, it’s a vision that can occur during concentration. In the suttas, it’s the theme that’s the focus of your concentration, such as the body in and of itself. Samādhi is the actual solidity of your mind as you’re concentrating.

This afternoon, we had a question that was quite long. I’ll just give you the general outlines, but I think it’s of interest to everyone. The person said there was a relative who had done something that was very hard to forgive. The relative never asked for forgiveness and is now dead. The person who wrote the note said that he or she is still angry with the dead relative and tries to send thoughts of goodwill to him, but realizes that it comes only from the head and not from the heart.

The solution to this is, one, to realize what forgiveness means and, two, to realize what goodwill means. To forgive doesn’t mean that you wipe the slate clean. It means that you decide not to try to get revenge. As for goodwill, remember that goodwill is a wish for happiness, and when you extend goodwill to someone, it means basically, “May this person understand the causes for true happiness and be willing and able to act on them.” So if somebody’s done something really bad, what you’re basically hoping for is that they will see the error of their ways and make up their minds not to repeat that kind of action. You’re not saying, “May you be happy as you are,” but “May you be happy through learning how to act skillfully.”

As for the fact that this action has happened, remember what the Buddha said about our many lifetimes: We’ve been through many, many, many universes. The Buddha doesn’t advocate a big bang theory. It’s more like a bang, bang, bang, bang theory. When the Buddha described his memory of previous lifetimes, he remarked that those who are able to remember forty universes of lifetimes have a very short memory.

So think about all the different things that we’ve all done to one another in those many lifetimes. Just imagine how many lifetimes you’ve been through in all that time. You’ve done many, many good things, and many, many bad things. For the bad things you did in the past, I’m sure you would want to be forgiven. So try to extend this attitude toward other people for their bad actions. When you can think in these terms, it’s a lot easier to let go of your anger and to actually feel goodwill.

So for this last session of the afternoon, you may want to spend some time thinking goodwill for all the beings there are and giving forgiveness to yourself for all the bad things you’ve done, even the many things you can’t remember.