Q&A
Q: When I practice walking meditation, I notice something interesting. People pass by me, coming and going, as if they were thoughts. All of them are interesting. They catch my attention and make me want to look, but the exercise is precisely not to cling to any of these thoughts and not to pay them any attention. The funniest part is that in this symbolism, I myself am just another passing thought. I’m trying to keep a serious face, but it’s hard not to laugh. Am I going crazy?
A: A little bit. You don’t have to be grim while you’re doing the meditation. But still remember that there’s a serious purpose for this, which is learning how to hold on to the original thought of staying with the breath, to increase your powers of concentration. So hold on to that thought. If you lose it, pick it up again. That’s the only way that the meditation will make a difference in your mind.
Q: Dear Taan Ajaan, what is the relationship between the ego, the sense of I, control, and the act of pre-judging others without knowing the facts? I would like to understand these relationships clearly, as I’m finding it difficult to feel compassion for a friend who has been pre-judging me without knowing the facts.
A: There is such a thing as a skillful sense of I and an unskillful sense of I. The same holds for the sense of wanting to have some control. There are areas in life where it’s skillful to try to have some control, and others where it’s not skillful. Pre-judging another person is always unskillful, but it doesn’t necessarily have to do with a sense of I or a sense of control. Usually, it has to do more with the sense of not seeing that it’s important to take the time and energy to know the facts of the situation. That’s an attitude that’s hard to have compassion for. In other words, your friend doesn’t see that it’s worth the time or the energy to get to know the facts before passing judgment on you. So your friend is clinging to some views about what should and should not be done. If you want to, you can sit down with your friend and say, “Look, this is the problem: I feel that you don’t give me enough importance.” If the friend doesn’t want to take the time to sit down with you, then maybe you should find another friend.
Q: Considering our field, our karmic seeds, how can we have the wisdom to know the right time to accept the bad karma and when to act against the bad karma?
A: Your first response should always be to try to act against the bad karma. If you’ve tried everything you can think of and the situation cannot be changed, then you tell yourself, “Maybe it is my past bad karma?” In Thailand, doctors have learned this as a category of disease. I doubt that you have this category in Brazil. There the doctors try everything they can think of but then, if nothing works, they say, “Maybe this is a karma disease. Go out and make some merit.” The important point is that they don’t say that right off the bat. They first try to alleviate the situation through medical means.
Q: Is it correct to say that it’s okay not to have control?
A: You have to try to exert some control over your mind and learn how to do it skillfully. That’s what meditation is all about; that’s what mindfulness is all about. This is one of the points that’s most misunderstood about the Buddha’s teachings. We think that mindfulness means just allowing things to arise and pass away on their own, without trying to exert control over them. But the Buddha taught that when you have mindfulness in charge of your mind, if there are skillful qualities that you don’t have yet, you consciously try to give rise to them. Once the skillful qualities are there, you consciously try to maintain them so that they don’t pass away. As for control over things outside, this will depend on the situation. The Buddha didn’t teach his students to be do-nothings. He himself was a very active person. But there were cases when even he couldn’t exert control over a situation, so he had to let it go with equanimity.
Q: What is important to consider in a process of creating my personal and professional identity in a skillful way?
A: The important thing is that if you have a profession, you want to be able to do it well. You want to be the sort of person who’s always willing to learn from your mistakes—and also to do whatever you can do to improve your abilities in your profession.
Once I was sitting on a plane after there had been an orthopedic surgery convention in San Diego. There were two orthopedic surgeons sitting in the row in front of me: an older one and a younger one. The younger one said, “I don’t see why we need to have these continuing education programs. I think my skills are good enough as they are.” The old surgeon said, “No, you can’t think like that. There’s always something to learn.”
I told myself, “I don’t want that younger surgeon operating on me.”
Q: You mentioned that craving to be in becoming and also wanting to stop being in becoming are both ways for producing suffering. Even when becoming is related to the desire to carry out positive things such as good projects that will bring benefit, does it generate suffering? And why does wanting to put an end to becoming also generate suffering? In other words, why does the desire to get out of becoming also cause suffering?
A: There are two questions here. The first question is, are there some states of becoming that are worth the suffering involved in order to do something good? The question will depend on the situation. It is possible there are some states of becoming that actually are beneficial for you and for other people. For instance, you take on the state of becoming of being a good parent. As anyone among you who has been a parent knows, there will be suffering in that state of becoming. But you’ve decided that it’s worth it.
And, of course, the suffering involved in creating the becoming of a state of right concentration is always worth the effort involved.
The second question is about wanting to put an end to becoming. This is one of the more subtle points in the Buddhist teachings. The general desire to not have to come back to any more states of becoming is one of the things that motivate us on the path. But you don’t accomplish that by destroying the states of becoming you already have. If you want to destroy a state of becoming, you have to take on the identity of the destroyer, and that’s another state of becoming.
The Buddha’s strategy is to ferret out the steps that lead up to a new state of becoming and to try to develop dispassion for those steps before they result in a new state of becoming. As for the states of becoming already there, you allow them to pass away on their own. You don’t have to destroy them. They’ll naturally pass away at some point.
Q: What will be the most skillful action one can do with regard to the aggregates in the process of dying?
A: The most skillful thing would be to let go of them. If you’re not ready to totally let go of them, try to hold on to the fabrication aggregate that says, “If I’m going to be reborn, I want to be reborn in a place where I can practice the True Dhamma.” Some of the skills you’ve learned as a meditator will also come in handy at that time. The ability to see your awareness as one thing and pain as something else will be very useful. Your ability to get let go of distracting thoughts will also be very useful. So think of the meditation as practice in learning how to die skillfully without fear or distraction.
We had an old layman who was dying at the monastery. Bit by bit he was losing his faculties and abilities. Then one night, some people were invading the monastery and burning some of the trees. He found out about this. He hadn’t stood up for two weeks, but he suddenly got up on his feet and started yelling at the people who were burning the trees. We had to tell him, “Don’t get distracted, okay? Calm down, calm down.” If he had died at that moment, he would have gone to a bad place. As the body approaches death, you’ll see how quickly distracting thoughts can take over the mind, so the ability to say No to your distracting thoughts will be very useful at that time. So work on that skill.
By the way, the old man was able to calm down, and two days later he died peacefully.
Q: Are the jhānas important to make progress on the path? If so, how should one train in order to enter the jhānas?
A: The jhānas are essential. The Buddha treats them as the heart of the path, saying that the other factors of the path are their supports or requisites. The guided meditations we’ve been giving you every morning are instructions on how to enter jhāna. We’re secretly trying to get you in jhānas without your knowing it (laugh).
Q: What are insights and what is the explanation for these events?
A: An insight is when you see what you’re doing that’s causing suffering, you realize that you don’t have to do it, and you can stop. As your practice develops, those insights will get more and more subtle, but that’s the basic structure of every insight: “I’m doing this, it’s causing suffering, but I don’t have to do this, so the suffering is unnecessary. Why am I doing it?” And you stop doing it.
Q: Is it possible to make use of experiences of becoming such as dreams or images that arise during meditation when the focus is lost? If so, how can they be used? Because they arise anyway, how can this experience be used on the path?
A: In the beginning stages of the path, whatever comes up in your meditation, aside from the topic you’re focused on, you have to let it go, let it go, let it go. When you get really good at letting these things go, then you can start letting them in bit by bit. You ask yourself “What insight does this give into what I’m doing to cause suffering that I don’t have to cause?” If there’s no answer, then you just let it go. If there is an answer, and it seems to be in line with what you know of the Dhamma, test it to see if the lesson is valid.
Q: About becoming: For a long time, I’ve noticed in myself a difficulty in being 100% present. My mind always tells me or makes me imagine that it could be in other places, even when the place where I am is a good place, like now on a retreat. Is always being in a becoming a way of producing karma in the present, or basically: Is becoming also producing karma?
A: It is a form of present karma. You have to ask yourself, “Am I making the best use of my time?” It’s the mind’s natural habit to keep on creating these states of imaginary becomings. One of the purposes of the meditation is learn how to turn the process off and on. If you can’t turn off the process, you’re wasting your time, so it is a kind of karma.
Q: Why does a person attract many responsibilities in life? What’s the reason that a person is like a magnet that attracts various responsibilities? Is it karma?
A: Yep. The question is, how do you learn how to say No? There are times when, if you take on too many responsibilities, none of them get done well.
When I started translating the teachings of the ajaans from Thai into English. Ajaan Fuang told me, “Watch out. People will ask you to translate more, taking up all of your time, and you have to learn how to say No.” One of the monks who worked and lived at the monastery was a construction monk and again, he was often asked to work on construction projects. So, every construction project he worked on, he always left one little corner unfinished. That way, if someone asked him to work on another project he didn’t want to take on, he could say, “Well, this other project isn’t finished yet.”
One time I had to get the signature of the Supreme Patriarch in Thailand for some documents. As we were chatting for a bit, he could see that my Thai was pretty good. He said, “Could you translate some of my books into English?” Remembering the trick I had learned from the construction monk, I told the Supreme Patriarch, “I still haven’t finished translating Ajaan Lee.” So he said, “Okay, finish with Ajaan Lee first.” I still haven’t finished with the Ajaan Lee.
One of my favorite pastimes is to collect stories of how people could politely say No to the king in Thailand. It’s not easy to say No to a king, but there was one time when Ajaan Suwat—the founder of our monastery in San Diego—was back in Thailand for the cold season. The king invited him to the palace for a meal. After the meal, the king asked him “Why do you keep going back to America? If Westerners want to study the Dhamma, they can easily fly here to Thailand. Why don’t you come back and help the Thai people?” Ajaan Suwat answered, “I’m in America, not for the Westerners, but for the Thai people who have no one to depend on.”
Q: Considering the karmic debt to one’s parents, what if you have abusive parents who demand emotional closeness and presence in their lives, despite continuous bad treatment during contact with them?
A: Basically, your responsibility to your parents is to make sure they don’t fall into poverty and that they have someone to look after them when they get sick and die. If they’re emotionally abusive, you can stay at a distance and send monetary help. That’s your responsibility. We have lots of Thai people in America who are doing just that with their parents in Thailand. They’ve come to live in America because their parents are abusive.
Q: Is there something like an individual karma in the sense of a mission to be fulfilled during one’s lifetime?
A: It’s like the people landing in the airport in Sao Paulo. Some people come to Brazil because they have a particular mission; some come to say, “What the hell? I’ll just come and see what I find.” Human birth is like that. Some people are born with a sense of something they really want to accomplish. Others came just because this looked like a good place to explore. Either way, once you’re here, try to make good use of your opportunities to develop your perfections: generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment, persistence, endurance, truth, determination, goodwill, and equanimity. That way, you’ll have something good to take with you when you fly to your next destination.
Q: When I’m meditating, sometimes I don’t feel my arms and legs. At that moment, if an image of a person arises in my mind, I can’t access any feeling to practice mettā. I don’t feel joy or sadness. Is this a good or a bad thing?
A: This is a state of equanimity, but you have to ask yourself whether it’s small-hearted equanimity or large-hearted equanimity. If it comes after a sense of joy in the meditation and the mind settles down, that’s large-hearted equanimity. It’s good. But if there has been no sense of joy or well-being before that, it’s small-hearted and is sometimes accompanied by a defeatism or resentment. Try to back up and induce a sense of joy.
Q: The people who are important in our lives, who make a good impact on our lives: Are they all people with whom we have past karma? The people in our families, people with whom we have relationships and friendships: Are we all related through past karma?
A: The Buddha said it would be hard to find someone who has not been your father or your mother or your sister or your brother or your son or your daughter in some previous lifetime. And he added that the proper reaction to that thought would be, “I need to get out of saṁsāra.” Just think about that. You’ve had a relationship like that with everyone in this room; at the time, the relationship was very meaningful. But now you look at these people and you feel nothing at all. That’s the nature of human relationships. Scary.
Q: When I notice unskillful actions being carried out by others, should I act only when it apparently doesn’t pose a risk to me?
A: That’s really going to depend on the situation. When protecting your child involves some risks, you have to be willing to take the risks.
Q: Yesterday you addressed the fear related to power and suggested how to deal with it, but within the Buddha’s teachings, what is the origin of fear and what is it related to?
A: Fear comes from clinging, from the fact that there’s something you’re very attached to and you’re afraid you’re going to lose it. Now, living in this world, many of the things on which your happiness is based are eventually going to leave you. So, from the Buddhist point of view, the best thing to do is to find a basis for your happiness inside your mind, so that when the things you’re dependent on outside leave you, you’ll still not feel helpless or abandoned. You still can depend on the good qualities of your mind.
For instance, you’re very dependent on your body, you’re very dependent on your brain working well, but there’s no guarantee that these things will last very long. So, the Buddha’s approach is to use these things as best as you can to develop something of more solid value inside.
A: Before the Buddha went off on his own to practice, he studied with two teachers who taught methods of formless concentration. But he realized, after he’d reached these attainments, that these were not the deathless. They were fabricated states of mind, and everything that’s fabricated is eventually going to fall apart. Now, if you attain these formless states and then die in them, there are levels of the heavens where you’re in a formless of state and you’re basically incommunicado. It’s as if you’ve turned off your cell phone. After the Buddha gained awakening, those two teachers were the first two people he thought of going to teach, but even he couldn’t get in touch with him, because they had died and taken rebirth in the formless realms, and so were totally cut off from the world outside them.
Q: I have difficulty with “worship” and “reverence.” I’m grateful for the knowledge that the Buddha left us, but I don’t understand why it’s necessary to worship or revere him. Can you help me understand?
A: In Asia, when you bow down to someone, that doesn’t mean that you’re going to obey that person. It means simply that you’re opening your heart to learn from that person. I think that explains a lot.
Q: Why the three salutations to the Buddha and the monks?
A: The three salutations represent what’s called the Triple Gem. The Triple Gem basically is the Buddha, the Dhamma—his teachings—and the noble Sangha.
Now, these are also called the three refuges, because you take them as your guides in how to find true happiness and safety.
The traditional teaching is that you can take refuge on three levels. On the external level, the Buddha was Prince Siddhartha 2,600 years ago, who left home and then became awakened. The Dhamma is the teachings that he left behind and that have been recorded. The Sangha is all those who have followed his teachings and attained at least the first level of awakening.
Then there’s the internal level of each refuge. In the case of the Buddha, you take his qualities and try to develop them within yourself. The same with the Dhamma and the same with the Sangha: In other words, you make yourself your own refuge by developing the qualities that they used to become refuges. In the Buddha’s case, this would be qualities of wisdom, compassion, and purity.
Finally, on the ultimate level, all three refuges come together as you attain the ultimate safety of nibbāna.
So when we bow down, that’s what we’re thinking: “These are the people I want to learn from, and I want to develop their qualities within my own heart.” Showing reverence physically is a reminder to keep your mind open to learning from the Triple Gem.
Q: Dear Taan Ajaan, is it appropriate to extend the sublime attitudes to loved ones who have already passed away? And to whom should the merit be dedicated?
A: You develop thoughts of goodwill and the other sublime attitudes for everybody, living and dead, because dead people are still alive someplace else in a new birth.
As for merit, if there are specific people who were close to you who have passed away, you may want to dedicate the merit specifically to them. At the end of a practice like this, you just say, “May they know that I have done this for them, and may they rejoice in the merit I’ve done.” Now, there may be a lot of people who’ve passed away who don’t know that the merit has been dedicated to them, in which case, the merit comes back to you. Merit doesn’t get lost. It’s not like a package you try to send through the post office. You always gain merit from dedicating merit. Whether the recipient gains it is up to his or her present condition and state of mind.
Alternatively, you can dedicate merit to all those who may know of the good you’ve done and would appreciate a share of it. You don’t have to limit it just to relatives or to people you know personally.
