The Art of Letting Go
August 17, 1956
When you sit and meditate, even if you don’t gain any intuitive insights, make sure at least that you know this much: When the breath comes in, you know. When it goes out, you know. When it’s long, you know. When it’s short, you know. Whether it’s pleasant or unpleasant, you know. If you can know this much, you’re doing fine. As for the various perceptions (saññā) that come into the mind, brush them away—whether they’re good or bad, whether they deal with the past or the future. Don’t let them interfere with what you’re doing—and don’t go chasing after them to straighten them out. When a perception comes passing in, simply let it go passing by on its own. Keep your awareness, unperturbed, in the present.
When we say that the mind goes here or there, it’s not really the mind that goes. Only perceptions go. These perceptions are like shadows of the mind. If the body is still, how will its shadow move? It’s because the body moves and isn’t still that its shadow moves, and when the shadow moves, how will you catch hold of it? Shadows are hard to catch, hard to shake off, hard to set still. The awareness that forms the present: That’s the true mind. The awareness that goes chasing after perceptions is just a shadow. Real awareness—’knowing’—stays in place. It doesn’t stand, walk, come, or go. As for the mind—the awareness that doesn’t act in any way, coming or going, forward or back—it’s quiet and unperturbed. And when the mind is thus its normal, even, undistracted self—i.e., when it doesn’t have any shadows—we can rest peacefully. But if the mind is unstable, uncertain, and wavering, then perceptions arise. When perceptions arise, they go flashing out—and we go chasing after them, hoping to drag them back in. The chasing after them is where we go wrong. So we have to come to a new understanding, that nothing is wrong with the mind. Just watch out for the shadows. You can’t improve your shadow. Say your shadow is black. You can scrub it with soap till your dying day and it’ll still be black—because there’s no substance to it. So it is with perceptions. You can’t straighten them out, because they’re just images, deceiving you.
The Buddha thus taught that whoever isn’t acquainted with the self, the body, the mind, and its shadows, is suffering from avijjā—darkness, deluded knowledge. Whoever thinks the mind is the self, the self is the mind, the mind is its perceptions—whoever has things all mixed up like this—is said to be lost, like a person lost in the jungle. To be lost in the jungle brings all kinds of hardships: the dangers of wild beasts, problems in finding food to eat and a place to sleep. No matter which way you look, there’s no way out. But if we’re lost in the world, it’s many times worse than being lost in the jungle, because we can’t tell night from day. We have no chance to find any brightness because our minds are dark with avijjā.
The purpose of training the mind to be still is to calm down its issues. When its issues are few, the mind can grow quiet. And when the mind is quiet, it’ll gradually become bright, in and of itself, and give rise to knowledge. But if we let things get complicated, knowledge won’t have a chance to arise. That’s darkness.
When intuitive knowledge does arise, it can—if we know how to use it—lead to liberating insight. But if the knowledge concerns lowly matters—dealing with perceptions of the past and future—and we follow it for a long distance, it turns into mundane knowledge. That is to say, we dabble so much in matters of the body and forms (rūpa) that we lower the level of the mind, which doesn’t have a chance to mature in the level of mental phenomena (nāma).
Say, for example, that a vision arises and you get hooked: You gain knowledge of your past lives and get all excited. Things you never knew before, now you can know. Things you never saw before, now you see—and they can make you overly pleased or upset while you follow along with the vision. Why pleased or upset? Because the mind grabs onto them and takes them all too seriously. You may see a vision of yourself prospering as a lord or master, a great emperor or king, wealthy and influential. If you let yourself feel pleased, that’s indulgence in pleasure. You’ve strayed from the Middle Way, which is a mistake. Or you may see yourself as something you wouldn’t care to be: a pig or a dog, a bird or a rat, crippled or deformed. If you let yourself get upset or depressed, that’s indulgence in self-affliction—and again, you’ve strayed from the path and have fallen out of line with the Buddha’s teachings. Some people really let themselves get carried away: As soon as they start seeing things, they begin to think that they’re special, somehow better than other people. They let themselves become proud and conceited—and the right path has disappeared without their even knowing it. This is the way it is with mundane knowledge.
But if you keep one principle firmly in mind, you can stay on the right path: Whatever knowledge appears, whatever the vision—whether good or bad, true or false—you don’t have to feel pleased or upset. Just keep the mind balanced and neutral, and discernment will arise. You’ll see that the vision displays the truth of stress: It arises (is born), fades (ages), and disappears (dies).
If you get hooked on your intuitions, you’re asking for trouble. Latching onto false things can harm you; latching onto true things can harm you. In fact, the true things are what really harm you. If what you know is true and you go telling other people, you’re bragging. If it turns out to be false, it can backfire on you. This is why sages say that knowledge and views are the essence of stress. Why? Because they can harm you. Knowledge is part of the flood of views and opinions (diṭṭhi-ogha) over which we have to cross. If you hang onto knowledge, you’ve gone wrong. If you know, simply know. If you see, simply see, and let it go at that. You don’t have to be excited or pleased. You don’t have to go bragging to other people.
People who’ve studied abroad, when they come back to the rice fields, don’t tell what they’ve learned to the folks at home. They talk about down-home things in a down-home way. They don’t talk about the things they’ve studied because (1) no one would understand them; (2) it wouldn’t serve any purpose. Even with people who would understand them, they don’t display their learning. So it should be when you practice meditation. No matter how much you know, you have to act as if you’re stupid and know nothing—because this is the way people with good manners normally act. If you go bragging to other people, it’s bad enough. If they don’t believe you, it can get even worse.
So whatever you know, simply be aware of it and let it go. Don’t let there be the assumption that ‘I know.’ When you can do this, your mind can attain the transcendent, free from attachment.
Everything in the world has its own truth in every way. Even things that aren’t true are true—i.e., their truth is that they’re false. This is why we have to let go of both what’s true and what’s false. Even then, though, it’s the truth of stress. Once we know the truth and can let it go, we can be at our ease. We won’t be poor, because the truth—the Dhamma—will still be there with us. It’s not a bunch of empty words. It’s like having a lot of money: Instead of lugging it around with us, we keep it piled up at home. We may not have anything in our pockets, but we’re still not poor.
The same is true with people who really know. Even when they let go of their knowledge, it’s still there. This is why the minds of the noble ones aren’t left adrift. They let things go, but not in a wasteful or irresponsible way. They let go like rich people: Even though they let go, they’ve still got piles of wealth.
As for people who let things go like paupers, they don’t know what’s worthwhile and what’s not, and so they throw away all their worthwhile things. When they do this, they’re simply heading for disaster. For instance, they may see that there’s no truth to anything—no truth to the khandhas, no truth to the body, no truth to stress, its cause, its disbanding, or the path to its disbanding, no truth to unbinding (nibbāna). They don’t use their brains at all. They’re too lazy to do anything, so they let go of everything, throw it all away. This is called letting go like a pauper. Like a lot of modern-day ‘sages’: When they come back after they die, they’re going to be poor all over again.
As for the Buddha, he let go only of the true and false things that appeared in his body and mind—but he didn’t abandon his body and mind, which is why he ended up rich and hunger-free, with plenty of wealth to hand down to his descendants. This is why his descendants never have to worry about being poor. Wherever they go, there’s always food filling their bowls. This kind of wealth is more excellent than living atop a palace. Even the wealth of an emperor can’t match it.
So we should look to the Buddha as our model. If we see that the khandhas are no good—inconstant, stressful, not-self, and all that—and simply let go of them by neglecting them, we’re sure to end up poor. Like a stupid person who feels so repulsed by a festering sore on his body that he won’t touch it and so lets it go without taking care of it, letting it keep on stinking and festering: There’s no way the sore is going to heal. As for intelligent people, they know how to wash their sores, put medicine on them, and cover them with bandages so that they’re not disgusting. Eventually, they’re sure to recover.
In the same way, when people who are disgusted with the five khandhas—seeing only their drawbacks and not their good side—and so let them go without putting them to any worthwhile or skillful use, nothing good will come of it. But if we’re intelligent enough to see that the khandhas have their good side as well as their bad, and then put them to good use by meditating to gain discernment into physical and mental phenomena, we’re going to be rich and happy, with plenty to eat even when we just sit around and relax. Poor people are miserable when they have friends, and miserable when they don’t. But once we have the truth—the Dhamma—as our wealth, we won’t suffer if we have money, and won’t suffer if we don’t, because our minds will be transcendent.
As for the various forms of rust that have befouled and obscured our senses—the rust of greed, the rust of anger, and the rust of delusion—these all fall away. Our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind will be all clean and bright. This is why the Buddha said, ‘Dhammo padīpo: The Dhamma is a bright light.’ This is the light of discernment. Our heart will be far beyond all forms of harm and suffering, and will flow in the current leading to nibbāna at all times.
