Becoming a Samaṇa
TODAY I’m giving special instructions specifically for the monks and novices. Set your hearts on listening. Aside from the practice of the Dhamma and Vinaya, there’s nothing else for us to study, talk about, and offer opinions on.
I want each of us to understand that we now have the status of people gone forth, so we should behave in a way that’s fitting for monks and novices. We’ve all passed through the status of lay life. It’s a status marked with turmoil, with no clear patterns for our behavior. So now that we’ve entered the status of samaṇas in the Buddha’s teachings, we have to change our hearts and minds to be different from those of lay people. Our words, our movements, our comings and goings, our ways of eating, stepping forward, and stepping back—everything has to be in line with those gone forth who are called samaṇa, which means people who are peaceful and at respite. Before, we were lay people and didn’t know the meaning of samaṇa—peace and respite. We all let our bodies and minds find enjoyment in line with our defilements and cravings. When our preoccupations were good, they made us glad. When they were bad, they made us sad. That’s called being influenced by preoccupations. When we’re influenced by preoccupations, the Buddha said that we’re not taking care of ourselves. We don’t yet have a refuge, so we let our hearts and minds run loose with enjoyment, with suffering, sorrow, lamentation, and despair. We don’t rein ourselves in. We don’t contemplate things.
In the Buddha’s teachings, when you ordain into the status of a samaṇa, you have to make your body that of a samaṇa. To begin with, you shave your head. You have to cut your nails. Your clothing is the ochre robe—the banner of the noble ones, the banner of the Buddha, the banner of the arahants. The fact that you’ve ordained depends on the legacy, the inheritance left behind by our Foremost Teacher. That’s why our way of life is enough to get by on. Our dwellings, for instance, come from the merit of the faithful who built them. We don’t have to fix our food—and this comes from the legacy, the inheritance left behind by our Foremost Teacher. Our medicine, our clothing: All these things depend on the legacy left behind by the Buddha.
Once you’ve been ordained in the Buddha’s teachings, you’ve been supposed into being a monk, but you’re not yet a genuine monk, you know. You’re a monk on the level of supposition—in other words, you’re a monk as far as your body: the shaved head, the yellow robes. You’re a monk on the level of supposition.
It’s the same as when they carve wood, sculpt cement, or mold bronze to be a Buddha on the level of supposition. It’s not the genuine Buddha. It’s gold, lead, bronze, wood, lacquer, stone. These things have been supposed into being a Buddha, but they’re not the Buddha. They’re the Buddha on the level of supposition, not the genuine Buddha.
It’s the same with you: You’ve been formally declared to be monks who have ordained in the Buddha’s teachings, but you’re not yet monks. You’re supposed monks, not genuine monks. What this means is that your hearts are not yet fully endowed with goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity. Your purity isn’t yet all the way there. You have greed, aversion, and delusion obstructing the arising of genuine monks within you. These things have been with you since way back when: from the day of your birth, from your previous lifetimes. You’ve been nourished with greed, aversion, and delusion all along up to the present. So when people like you are ordained to be monks, you’re still just supposed monks. You still live on the greed, aversion, and delusion in your hearts. Real monks abandon these things. They drive greed out of their hearts, drive aversion out of their hearts, drive delusion out of their hearts. They contain no poison, no danger. If there’s still poison, you’re not yet a monk. You have to drive these things out so that you can reach purity.
So you have to start trying to destroy greed, aversion, and delusion, which are the dominant defilements in each of you. These things keep you fenced into states of becoming and birth. The reason you can’t reach peace is because greed, anger, and delusion are obstacles blocking the samaṇa, peace, from arising in your hearts. As long as it can’t arise, you’re not really monks. In other words, your hearts aren’t yet at peace away from greed, aversion, and delusion.
That’s why we’ve come to practice—to practice so as to eradicate greed, aversion, and delusion from our hearts. Once you eradicate greed, aversion, and delusion from your hearts, you’ll reach purity. You’ll reach genuine monk-ness. At the current level of your practice, you’re monks on the level of supposition. It’s simply a supposition. You’re not yet monks. So build a monk within your heart. You build a monk by means of your heart—not by any other means.
In building a monk by means of your heart, you don’t use just your heart. Two things—one, your body; two, your speech—also have to be involved. Before your body and speech can do anything, it first has to come out of the heart. For things to exist just in your heart and not come out in your actions and speech: That can’t happen, either. So these things are connected with one another.
When we speak of the heart, of the beauty of the heart, the polished smoothness of the heart, it’s like speaking of a smooth, polished wooden pillar. The wood we use to make a board or a pillar—before it’s smooth and polished and they coat it with shellac to make it beautiful—first has to be cut from a tree. They have to cut off the crude ends and then split it and saw it—all kinds of things. The heart is like a tree. We have to take it from its crudeness, cutting away its crude parts, cutting away its roots, its branches, its bark, destroying everything that’s not smooth and polished. You have to destroy those parts until you reach a state where the wood is beautiful and well proportioned. The fact that it’s beautiful and well proportioned comes from having passed through crude activities.
It’s the same with those of us who are practicing. To come and make our hearts and minds pure and at peace is something good, but it’s hard. We have to start with external things—our body, our speech—and then work inward. Only then will we become smooth, polished, and beautiful. It’s like having a finished table or bed. It’s beautiful now, but it used to be crude. It was a tree, a trunk. So we cut it—cutting the trunk, cutting away the leaves—because that’s the path we have to follow so that it can become a table or bed, so that it can become something beautiful, good, and pure.
In the correct path to peace as formulated by the Buddha, he formulated virtue, concentration, and discernment. This is the path, the path leading to purity, leading to becoming a samaṇa. It’s the path that can wash greed, aversion, and delusion away. You have to go through the steps of virtue, concentration, and discernment. This isn’t different from making a table. When we compare external things and internal things in this way, there isn’t any difference.
So when we train your habits—making you listen to the Dhamma, making you chant, making you sit in concentration—these things grate against your heart. They grate because your heart is sloppy and lazy. It doesn’t like doing anything that clashes with it, that puts it to difficulties. It doesn’t want these things; it won’t do them. That’s why you have to make an effort to endure. We all have to use the qualities of endurance and persistence to slash our way through and keep trying to do these things.
Our bodies, for instance: We used to do things that were fun and unruly, all kinds of things, so now that we’re watching over them, it’s difficult. Our speech used to speak without any restraint, so now that we’re restraining it, it’s difficult. But even though it’s difficult, we can’t let that stop us. It’s like a tree: Before we can make it into a table or a bed, we have to go through difficulties, but we can’t let them stop us. We have to go through those stages. To get the table or bed, we have to go through the crude parts.
It’s the same with us. When the Buddha taught so that he gained students and disciples whose minds succeeded in gaining awakening, all of them started out as run-of-the-mill people when they ordained—run-of-the-mill people just like us. They had the various parts of their bodies—legs, ears, eyes—just like us; greed and aversion just like us. None of their features were in any way different from ours. That was true of the Buddha himself; that was true of his disciples. In every case, they took what wasn’t yet capable and made it capable; what wasn’t yet beautiful and made it beautiful; what wasn’t yet up to standard and brought it up to standard. This has been true all along up to us in the present. We ordain the children of householders—farmers, merchants—people who have been embroiled in every variety of sensual preoccupation. These are the people we ordain and train. And we’ve been able to train them all along.
So understand that you’re just like the noble ones of the past. You have the same aggregates. You have a body, just like them. You have feelings—pleasure and pain—just like them. You have perceptions—recognizing and labeling—just like them. You have thought fabrications and consciousness—good and bad: everything, just like them. So each of you is one more person in the same condition in body and mind like the students the Buddha gained in the past. You’re not different in any way. His noble disciples started out as run-of-the-mill people. Some of them were troublemakers, some of them were fools, some of them were ordinary run-of-the-mill people, some of them were good people—just like you. They weren’t different in any way. So just as he took those people and trained them to practice so as to attain the noble paths and fruitions, we today take the same sort of people to practice—to develop virtue, develop concentration, develop discernment.
Virtue, concentration, and discernment are the names of our practices. When we practice virtue, practice concentration, and practice discernment, we practice right at ourselves. We practice right at ourselves, and that’s when we’re on target. We’re on target with virtue right here, on target with concentration right here. Why? Because the body is right here with us. Virtue is a matter of every part of the body, every part that the Buddha has us look after. With virtue, we’re taught to look after our body. We already have a body. How is that? We have feet; we have hands. We’ve already got a body. This is where we look after virtue. To give rise to virtue, we look after this body we already have. The same with speech: Whether you tell lies or engage in divisive speech, coarse speech, or idle chatter, whether you use your body to kill living beings, steal people’s belongings, or engage in sexual misconduct—all the things that the rules on virtue are concerned with are things that lie right with you. You already have a body. You already have speech. These things are already there with you.
So when you exercise restraint, you watch them. You look. For instance, look at killing, stealing, and engaging in sexual misconduct. The Buddha has you look at crude activities of the body. Killing is using your fist or a weapon in your hand to kill animals, big or small. This is something crude—the sort of thing you used to do before you started observing the precepts. You transgressed. And there were the times when you didn’t restrain your speech: telling lies, engaging in divisive speech, coarse speech, or idle chatter. Telling lies is misrepresenting the truth. Coarse speech is carelessly insulting people: “You pig! You dog!” Idle chatter is speaking playfully about things that serve no purpose, saying whatever comes into your head. These sorts of things we’ve all done in the past. We didn’t exercise restraint. But now, when we look after our virtue, we look: We look at our body; we look at our speech.
Who’s doing the looking? Who are you using to do the looking? When you kill an animal, who knows? Is your hand what knows? Or who is it? When you go to steal something, who knows? Is your hand what knows? Or who is it? When you engage in sexual misconduct, who’s the first to know? Is your body what knows? When you tell a lie, who’s the first to know? When you use coarse speech or engage in idle chatter, who’s the first to know? Your mouth? Or do the words know first? Think about this. Whoever’s the one who knows, get that one to look after your body and speech. Whoever’s the one who knows, get that one to keep watch. Get the one who’s been making the others act—making them do good, making them do evil—get that one to look after them. Catch the thief and make him the village headman. Get that one to look after the others. Get that one to contemplate.
When we’re told to look after the actions of the body, who will do the looking? The body doesn’t know anything at all. The body walks, steps on things, goes everywhere. The same with the hand: It doesn’t know anything. It catches hold of that, touches this—but only when someone else tells it to. It catches hold of that, then puts it down. It takes it up again, throws this away to take something else. In every case, there has to be someone to tell it to. It doesn’t know anything. There has to be someone else to tell it, someone else to give the orders. The same with our mouth: Whether it lies or tells the truth, when it engages in divisive speech or coarse speech, there’s someone who tells it to.
For this reason, when we practice, we establish mindfulness—the ability to recollect—right at the knower, the one that’s aware. If we’re to steal, kill, engage in sexual misconduct, tell lies, speak divisive speech, coarse speech, or idle chatter—any of these things—the knower is what leads the way in acting or speaking. Wherever it is, stay with it. Bring your alertness, your mindfulness always there with the knower, to get that one to look after things, to be aware.
This is why the Buddha’s rules deal with crude things: Killing is evil; it’s against the precepts. Stealing is wrong. Sexual misconduct is wrong. Telling lies is wrong. Using coarse speech or engaging in idle chatter is wrong. These are things for us to remember. These are his rules, the laws of the Lord Buddha. So now we’re careful about them. The one who used to break them—who used to order us to kill animals, to steal, to engage in sexual misconduct, to tell lies, to speak divisively, to speak coarsely, to engage in idle chatter, to act without restraint in various ways—singing, dancing, whistling, playing musical instruments: The one who used to order us to do these things has now turned into the one who looks after our behavior. We use mindfulness—alertness, the ability to recollect—to make it exercise restraint, to look after itself, to look after itself well.
If it’s able to look after itself, then the body isn’t hard to look after, for the body lies under the governance of the mind. Our speech isn’t hard to look after, for our speech lies under the governance of the mind. When that’s the case, looking after the precepts—looking after our body and speech—isn’t hard. We make ourselves aware in every posture—standing, walking, sitting, or lying down, every step of the way. Make sure that you know what you’re doing before you do it, that you know what you’re saying before you say it. Don’t act or speak before you know what you’re doing. Know first, and only then act or speak. Be mindful—recollect—before you act or speak in any way. You have to recollect first. Practice this until you’re quick at it. Practice being ahead of the game. Be quick at being able to recollect before you act, to recollect before you speak. Establish mindfulness in your heart like this. Get the knower to look after itself—for it’s the one who acts. Because it’s the one who acts, things won’t work if you have anyone else looking after it. You have to get it to look after itself. If it doesn’t look after itself, things won’t work.
The Buddha taught that looking after the precepts isn’t hard if you look after yourself. If any forms of harm are about to arise by way of your bodily actions or speech, then if mindfulness is in place, you’ll recognize them. You’ll have a sense of right and wrong. This is how you look after your precepts. Your body and speech depend on you. This is the first step.
If you can look after your bodily actions and speech, then they’re beautiful. At ease. Your manners, your comings and goings, your speech, are all beautiful. This kind of beauty is the beauty that comes from having someone shape and mould them—someone who keeps looking after them and contemplating them all the time. It’s like our home, our sala, our huts, and their surrounding areas. If there’s someone to sweep them and look after them, they’re beautiful. They’re not dirty—because there’s someone to look after them. It’s because there’s someone looking after them that they can be beautiful.
The same with our bodily actions and speech: If there’s someone looking after them, they’re beautiful. Evil, obscene, dirty things can’t arise. Our practice is beautiful. fidi-kalyāṇaṁ, majjhe-kalyāṇaṁ, pariyosāna-kalyāṇaṁ: Beautiful in the beginning, beautiful in the middle, beautiful in the end. What does this refer to? One, virtue; two, concentration; three, discernment. These things are beautiful. They start by being beautiful in the beginning. If the beginning is beautiful, then the middle is beautiful. If we can exercise restraint with ease, always being watchful and careful to the point where our mind is firmly established in the act of looking after things and exercising restraint, always intent, always firm, then this quality of being firm in your duties, firm in your restraint, is given a different name. It’s called “concentration.”
The quality of exercising restraint, always looking after your body, looking after your speech, looking after all the things that would arise in this way: This is called “virtue.” The quality of being firm in your restraint is called something else: “concentration,” the firm establishing of the mind. It’s firm in this preoccupation, firm in that preoccupation, always restrained. This is called concentration. This level of concentration is external, but it has an internal side as well. Make sure to have this with you always. This has to come first.
When you’re firm in these things—when you have virtue and concentration—then you will also have the quality of contemplating what’s right and what’s wrong. “Is this right?” “Is this wrong?” These questions will arise with every preoccupation that comes into the mind: when sights make contact, when sounds make contact, when smells make contact, when tactile sensations make contact, when ideas make contact. A knower will appear, sometimes happy, sometimes sad, sometimes pleased. It will know good preoccupations, bad preoccupations. You’ll get to see all kinds of things. If you’re restrained, you’ll get to see all kinds of things coming in, as well as the reactions in the mind, in the knower. You’ll be able to contemplate them. Because you’ve exercised restraint and are firm in your restraint, then whatever passes in there, the reactions in terms of your bodily actions, your speech, and your mind will show themselves. Things good or evil, right or wrong will arise. And then when you choose or select the proper preoccupation, this is what’s called “a thin layer of discernment.” This discernment will appear in your heart. This is called virtue, concentration, and discernment all at once. This is how they first arise.
What arises next will be attachment. This is where you’re attached to goodness. You’ll be afraid that your mind will be negligent or mistaken in various ways, afraid that your concentration will be destroyed. This will arise because you love your concentration a lot. You’re very protective, very diligent, very persistent. When any preoccupation makes contact, you’re afraid of it. Wary. Concerned. You see this or that person acting wrongly, and you see everything. You’re very possessive. This is a level of virtue, a level of concentration, a level of discernment: the external level. You see things in line with the Buddha’s laws. This is a beginning stage. It has to be established in your mind. You need to have it in your mind. These qualities arise really strongly in the mind—to the point where, wherever you go, you see everyone acting wrongly. You get happy and sad, you start having doubts, all kinds of things. You’re always ready to pounce on other people’s mistakes. This is going overboard, but that’s not a problem for the time being. Let it go overboard for now. You first have to look after your bodily actions, look after your speech, look after your mind as much as you can. There’s nothing wrong with this.
This is called one level of virtue. Virtue, concentration, and discernment are all there together. In terms of the perfections, this is the first level of the perfections: dāna-pāramī, sīla-pāramī. That’s one level, the one you’ve already reached. The next level—dāna-upapāramī, sīla-upapāramī—is something else that has to grow out of this. It takes things to a level more refined than this. You’re distilling something refined out of something crude, that’s all. You don’t get the next level from anything else far away.
When you’ve established this foundation, practicing it in your heart in the first stage, you develop a sense of conscience, a sense of fear both in private and in public places. The heart is really afraid, on edge at all times. The mind takes its sense of right and wrong as its preoccupation at all times. It’s preoccupied with exercising restraint over your bodily actions and speech, always firm in this way. It’s really firmly attached. This is virtue, concentration, and discernment in line with the Buddha’s rules.
As you keep looking after things in this way, keep practicing continually, continually, continually in this way, these qualities will grow full in your heart. But this level of virtue, concentration, and discernment hasn’t yet reached the level of jhāna. These things are still fairly crude. They’re refined, but they’re the refined level of what’s crude. They’re the refinement of ordinary, run-of-the-mill people who’ve never done this before, never restrained their behavior before, never meditated, never practiced before. So for them, this level is refined.
It’s like five baht or ten baht, which have meaning for poor people. For people who have money by the millions, five or ten baht mean nothing. That’s the way it is. If you’re poor, you want a baht or two. This has meaning only for people who are poor and lacking. Your ability to abandon gross forms of harm has meaning for ordinary run-of-the-mill people who’ve never abandoned them before. And you can be proud on this level. You’ve fully completed this level. You’ll see this for yourself. All those who practice have to maintain this in their hearts.
When this is the case, you’re said to be walking the path of virtue, the path of concentration, the path of discernment: virtue, concentration, and discernment all at once. They can’t separate out. When your virtue is good, the firmness of the mind grows even firmer. When the mind is firm, your discernment gets sharper. These things become synonyms for one another. You practice continually, continually. It’s right practice without gaps.
So if you practice in this way, you’re said to have entered the first stage of the path of practice. This is a crude level, something a little hard to maintain, but the refined levels of virtue, concentration, and discernment all come out of this. It’s as if they’re distilled from this same thing. To put it in simple terms, it’s like a coconut tree. A coconut tree absorbs ordinary water up through its trunk, but when the water reaches the coconuts, it’s sweet and clean. It comes from ordinary water, the trunk, the crude dirt. But as the water gets absorbed up the tree, it gets distilled. It’s the same water but when it reaches the coconuts it’s cleaner than before. And sweet. In the same way, the virtue, concentration, and discernment of your path are crude, but if the mind contemplates these things until they’re more and more refined, their crudeness will disappear. They get more and more refined, so that the area you have to maintain grows smaller and smaller, into the mind. Then it’s easy. Things get closer to you.
Now at this stage, you don’t make any big mistakes. It’s simply that when any issue strikes the heart, a question arises. For example, “Is acting in this way right or wrong?” Or: “Is speaking in this way right?” “Is speaking in this way wrong?”: this sort of thing. You abandon things and come closer and closer in—continually, continually closer in. Your concentration is even firmer; your discernment sees even more easily.
The end result is that you see things simply in terms of the mind and its preoccupations. You don’t go splitting off to bodily actions or speech. You don’t go splitting off to anything at all. When we talk about affairs of body and mind, the body and mind depend on each other. You see what exercises control over the body: the mind. Whatever the body does is because of the mind. Now, before the mind exercises control over the body, the impulse comes from the preoccupations making contact with the mind and then exercising control over the mind. So as you keep on contemplating inwardly, inwardly, your subtlety will gradually develop. The end result is that there’s nothing but the mind and its preoccupations. In other words, the body, which is a physical phenomenon, becomes non-physical. The mind no longer grasps at its physicality. It turns its aspect as a physical thing into something non-physical: a mind object or preoccupation that makes contact with the mind. Eventually, everything is just a matter of the mind and its preoccupations—the preoccupations that arise along with our mind.
Our mind. This is where we begin to fathom the nature of our mind. Our mind has no issues. It’s like a scrap of cloth or a flag that’s fastened to the end of a pole and just stays there: Nothing happens. Or like a leaf left to its own nature: It stays still; nothing happens. The fact that the leaf flutters is because of something else: the wind. The nature of the leaf itself is that it stays still and doesn’t do anything to anybody. The fact that it moves is because something else comes and makes contact. When the wind makes contact, the leaf flutters back and forth.
It’s the same with the nature of our mind. There’s no love, no hatred, no blaming of anyone. It stays as it is in that way—a condition that’s really pure, clear, and clean. It stays in peace, with no pleasure, no pain, no feelings at all. That’s the genuine condition of the mind. The reason we practice is to explore inwardly, explore inwardly, explore inwardly, to contemplate inwardly until we reach the primal mind: the primal mind that’s called the pure mind. The pure mind is the mind without any issues. No preoccupations are passing by. In other words, it doesn’t go running after preoccupations. It doesn’t criticize this or that, doesn’t get pleasure in this way or that. It’s not happy about this thing or sad about that. And yet the mind is always aware. It knows what’s going on.
When the mind is in this state, then when preoccupations come blowing through—good, bad, whatever the preoccupations: When they come blowing or cogitating in, the mind is aware of them but stays as it is. It doesn’t have any issues. It doesn’t waver. Why? Because it’s aware of itself. It’s aware of itself. It’s constructed freedom within itself. It’s reached its own condition. How has it been able to reconstruct its primal condition? Because the knower has contemplated in a subtle way to see that all things are simply manifestations of properties and elements. There’s nobody doing anything to anybody. As when pleasure or pain arises: When pleasure arises, it’s just pleasure, that’s all. When pain arises, it’s just pain, that’s all. It doesn’t have any owner. The mind doesn’t make itself the owner of pleasure, doesn’t make itself the owner of pain. It watches these things and sees that there’s nothing for it to take. They’re separate kinds of things, separate kinds of affairs. Pleasure is just pleasure, that’s all. Pain is just pain, that’s all. The mind is simply what knows these things.
Before, when there was a basis for greed, aversion, or delusion, the mind would take these things on as soon as it saw them. It would take on pleasure; it would take on pain. It went right into them to feed on them. “We” took pleasure and pain without stop. That’s a sign that the mind wasn’t aware of what it was doing. It wasn’t bright. It didn’t have any freedom. It went running after its preoccupations. A mind that runs after its preoccupations is a destitute mind. When it gets a good preoccupation, it’s good along with it. When it gets a bad preoccupation, it’s bad along with it. It forgets itself, that its primal nature is something neither good nor bad. If the mind is good along with its preoccupations, that’s a deluded mind. When bad comes and it’s bad, too; when pain comes and it’s pained, too; when pleasure comes and it’s pleased, too, the mind turns into a world. Its preoccupations are a world. They’re stuck with the world. They give rise to pleasure, pain, good, bad—all kinds of things. And they’re all not for sure. If the mind leaves its primal nature, nothing’s for sure. There’s nothing but taking birth and dying, quivering and wavering, suffering and lacking—nothing but difficulties for a long, long time. These things have no way of coming to closure. They’re all just part of the cycle. When we contemplate them with subtlety, we see that they have to keep on being the way they’ve been in the past.
As for the mind, it doesn’t have any issues. When it does have issues, it’s because we grasp onto things. Like the praise and blame of human beings: If someone says, “You’re evil,” why do you suffer? You suffer because you understand that they’re criticizing you. So you pick that up and put it in your heart. The act of picking it up—knowing it and taking it on that way—is because you’re not wise to what it is, and so you catch hold of it. When you do that, it’s called stabbing yourself with clinging. When you’ve stabbed yourself, there’s becoming that gives rise to birth.
With some people’s words, if we don’t pay them any attention or take them on—when we leave them simply as sounds, that’s all—then there are no issues. Say a Khmer person curses you: You hear it, but it’s just sounds—Khmer sounds, that’s all. They’re just sounds. When you don’t know their meaning, that they’re cursing you, the mind doesn’t take them on. In this way, you can be at your ease. Or if Vietnamese or any other people of different languages curse you, all you hear are sounds. You’re at your ease because you don’t bring them in to stab the mind.
This mind: Speaking about the arising and passing away of the mind, these things are easy to know when we keep on contemplating in this way continually, continually inward. The mind gradually becomes more and more refined because it has passed through the crude stages of the practice. Your concentration gets even more inwardly firm, more inwardly focused. The more it contemplates inwardly, the more sure it is that this state of mind isn’t influenced by anything. The mind like this is really convinced that it isn’t influenced by anything, by any preoccupations. Preoccupations are preoccupations; the mind is the mind. The fact that the mind is pleased or pained, good or bad, is because it falls for its preoccupations. If it doesn’t fall for its preoccupations, it has no issues. It doesn’t waver. This condition is called a condition of awareness. All the things that it knows are manifestations of the properties and elements. They simply arise and pass away, arise and pass away.
Even though you sense this, you can’t yet let go. But at this point, whether you can or can’t let go doesn’t matter. Simply hold to this awareness or this perception as a first stage in dealing with the mind. You keep going inward, grinding down and killing your defilements continually.
And when you then see, the mind withdraws. Our Foremost Teacher or the texts call this the “change-of-lineage mind” (gotarabhū-citta). This is the mind transcending the human lineage—the mind of a run-of-the-mill person—and heading toward being a noble one, which comes out of run-of-the-mill people like us. The gotarabhū individual steps into the nibbāna mind but can’t yet go all the way. He withdraws to continue practicing on another level. To compare this with a person, it’s like a person who’s trying to cross a stream. One foot is on this bank of the stream; the other foot is on the far bank of the stream. He realizes that there is a this bank and a far bank, but he can’t yet get across. So he pulls back. The state of understanding that there is both a this bank and a far bank: That’s the gotarabhū individual or the gotarabhū mind. What this means is that he understands but can’t yet get across. He pulls back after realizing that these things exist. Then he carries on, developing his perfections. He sees that this is for sure, that this is the way things are, and that he’s going to have to end up going right there.
To put it in simple terms, at this point we see the condition of our practice: that if we really contemplate what’s happened, we’ll see that the mind has a path it will have to follow. We know the first step of the path is that gladness and sadness are not the path for us to follow. We’re sure to understand this—and that’s the way it really is. If you’re glad, it’s not the path because it can give rise to stress. If you’re sad, it can give rise to stress. We think in these terms, but we can’t yet let these things go.
So where will we go so that it’s right? We take gladness and sadness, put them on either side, and try to walk right down the middle. When we keep this in mind, we’re right on the path. We comprehend this, but we can’t yet do it. As long as we can’t yet do it, then if we get stuck on pleasure or pain, we always know we’re stuck—and that’s when we can be right. When the mind is stuck on pleasure in this way, we don’t approve of it. When the mind is stuck on pain, we don’t despise it. We now get to watch them. Pleasure is wrong. Pain is wrong. We understand that they’re not the path. We know, yet even though we know, we can’t let them go. We can’t let them go, and yet we know. When we know, we don’t approve of pleasure, we don’t approve of pain. We don’t approve of either of them, and we have no doubts, for we know that they’re the same in not being the path. This way isn’t the path; that way isn’t the path—so we take the middle as our constant preoccupation.
If we can gain release from pleasure and pain, this will appear as the path. Our mind will step into it and know, but it can’t yet go all the way. So it withdraws to continue practicing.
When pleasure arises and we get stuck on it, we take the pleasure up to contemplate. When pain arises and we get stuck on it, we take the pain up to contemplate—until our knowledge is equal to the pleasure, equal to the pain: That’s when the mind will let go of pleasure, let go of pain, let go of gladness, let go of sadness. It lets go of all these worlds. The mind can become lokavidū, expert with regard to worlds. When it lets go, when the knower lets go, it settles right down at that spot. Why can it settle there? Because it already entered there before—that spot that it knew but couldn’t go to.
So when the mind is stuck on pleasure and pain, and yet we don’t fall for them, we keep trying to clear them away: That’s when we reach the level of a yogāvacara—a person traveling the path but not yet reaching the end.
These conditions are things we can focus on in the moments of our own mind. We don’t have to examine any preoccupations at all. When we’re stuck on either side, we make ourselves know that they’re wrong for sure, because both sides are stuck in the world. Pleasure is stuck in the world. Pain is stuck in the world. When we’re stuck in the world, the world can come into being. Why? This world can come into being and get established because our knowledge isn’t quick enough. The world doesn’t come into being from anything else. And because our knowledge isn’t quick enough, we enter in and label things, fabricate fabrications.
Right here is where the practice is fun. Whatever we’re stuck on, we attack it right away without letting up. If we’re stuck on pleasure, we attack it right away. The mind doesn’t let up. If we’re stuck on pain, we catch it right away and contemplate it.
This is where the thread is about to enter the eye of the needle. The mind doesn’t let up on these preoccupations—and it doesn’t resist the practice. Even when we’re wrong, we know we’re wrong. The mind isn’t heedless. That big mind isn’t heedless.
It’s kind of like walking along and stepping on a thorn. We don’t want to step on thorns, we’re as careful as can be, and yet we still step on it. Are we content to step on it? When we step on it, we’re not content when we know the path. We know that this is the world, this is stress, this is the cycle. We know—and yet we still step on it anyhow. The mind goes along with pleasure—happy or sad—and yet we’re not content. We try to eradicate these things, eradicate the world out of the mind at all times. The mind at this point keeps building, practicing, developing: This is the effort of the practice. The mind contemplates, talks to itself about what’s happening inside it.
These sorts of things: When the mind uproots a world, it keeps moving inward, moving inward. At this point all the knowers, when they know, simply know without reacting. Their knowledge is equal to things, totally clear, and they don’t take part in anything at all. They’re not slaves to anyone. They don’t take part in anything. They know, but they don’t take. They know and put things down. They know and let go. There’s still pleasure there, there’s still pain—whatever there is, it’s still there, but the mind doesn’t take it up.
When we see this, we know: Oh. This is what the mind is like; this is what preoccupations are like. The mind separates from preoccupations. Preoccupations separate from the mind. The mind is the mind. Preoccupations are preoccupations. When you’re aware of both these things, then when they make contact, you know right then. When the mind makes contact with preoccupations, you know right then.
When the practice of a yogāvacara senses this at all times—whether standing, walking, sitting, or lying down—that’s called practicing the practice in the shape of a circle. It’s right practice. We don’t lose presence of mind. We don’t look simply at crude things. We look inwardly at things that are refined. We put external matters aside and watch just the mind and the body, or just the mind and its preoccupations. We watch them arise, watch them disband, watch them arise and disband, watch them disband and arise—disbanding, arising, arising, disbanding, disbanding and then arising, arising and then disbanding—until ultimately we watch just the disbanding: khaya-vaya, ending, disintegrating. Ending and disintegrating are their normal nature.
When the mind is like this, it doesn’t trace things anywhere. It’s up on what it’s doing. When it sees, it simply sees, that’s all. When it knows, it simply knows, that’s all. It does this on its own. This is something that can’t be fabricated.
So don’t go groping around in your practice. Don’t have any doubts. This applies to your following the precepts, as I’ve already said. Contemplate to see what’s wrong and what’s not. When you’ve seen that it’s wrong, abandon it. Don’t have any doubts. The same with your concentration: Keep making the mind quiet, making it peaceful. If there are thoughts, don’t worry about it. If there are no thoughts, don’t worry about it. Get acquainted with the workings of the mind. Some people want the mind to be peaceful but they don’t understand peace. They don’t understand the peace of the mind.
There are two kinds of peace: the peace of concentration and the peace of discernment. The peace of concentration is deluded, very deluded. The peace of concentration comes when the mind grows still from not having any preoccupations—and then it gets stuck on the pleasure. But when it meets up with preoccupations, it crumbles. It’s afraid of preoccupations, afraid of pleasure, afraid of pain, afraid of criticism, afraid of praise, afraid of sights, sounds, smells, tastes. This kind of concentration is afraid of everything. Once you gain it, you don’t want to come out to the rest of the world. A person with this kind of concentration stays only in caves, feeding on pleasure, and doesn’t want to come out. Wherever it’s quiet, that’s where he goes to hide out. It’s really stressful, this kind of concentration. You can’t come out and live with other people. You can’t stand to look at sights, listen to sounds—you can’t stand to experience anything. You have to keep staying in a quiet place; you can’t let anyone speak. The place has to be quiet.
This kind of peace is useless. When you reach that level of peace, you have to come out. The Buddha never said to practice in that way. If you’re practicing in that way, stop. When you’re peaceful, come out to contemplate. Use the peace of the mind to contemplate. Apply it to preoccupations. Use it to contemplate sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, and ideas. First come out and then use the peace to contemplate. For instance, you can contemplate hair of the head, hair of the body, nails, teeth, skin—these kinds of things. Contemplate inconstancy, stress, and not-self. Contemplate the entire world.
Once you’ve used the peace of the mind to contemplate, then when the time comes to be quiet, sit in concentration and let the mind grow peaceful inwardly. Then bring the peace out again to contemplate. Use it to train yourself, to cleanse the mind, to contend with things. When you develop awareness, bring it out to contend with things. Use it to train yourself, to practice—because if your awareness stays only in there, you won’t know anything. It simply pacifies the mind. Keep bringing it out to contemplate what’s outside and then let it go back in to be quiet, like this over and over again until the mind’s big level of peace arises.
As for the peace of discernment: When the mind is peaceful and then comes out, discernment isn’t afraid of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, or ideas. It’s fearless. As soon as these things make contact, it knows them. As soon as they make contact, it discards them, puts them down, lets them go. This is the peace of discernment.
When the mind reaches this stage, it’s more refined than the peace of concentration. It has lots of strength. When it has lots of strength, it doesn’t run away. When it has strength, it’s not afraid. Before, we were afraid of these things, but now that we know them, we’re not afraid. We know our strength. When we see a sight, we contemplate the sight. When we hear a sound, we contemplate the sound. That’s because we can contemplate. We can hold our ground. We’re fearless. Brave. Whatever the manifestations of things like sights, sounds, or smells, when we see them today, we let them go today. Whatever they are, we can let them all go. We see pleasure, we let it go. We see pain, we let it go. Wherever we see these things, we let them go right there. Mmm. We let them go right there, discard them right there, continually. We don’t take up anything as a preoccupation. We leave things where they are. We’ve come to our home.
When we see something, we discard it. Whatever we see, we look. When we’ve looked, we let go. All these things come to have no value. They can’t do anything to us. This is the strength of insight (vipassanā). When we reach this stage, we change the name to “insight.” We see things clearly in line with the truth. That’s it: We see things clearly in line with the truth. This is a higher level of peace: the peace of insight.
The peace that comes through concentration is hard. It’s really hard, for it’s really afraid. So when the mind is fully peaceful, what do you do? You bring it out to train, to contemplate. Don’t be afraid. Don’t stay stuck. When you do concentration, you tend to get stuck on nothing but pleasure. Yet you can’t just sit there and do nothing. Come out. When there’s a battle, you’re taught to fight. You can’t just stay in a foxhole and avoid the bullets. When the time comes really to do battle, when the guns are firing—boom! boom!—then if you’re in a foxhole, you’ve got to come out. When the time really comes, you can’t fight by crouching in a foxhole. It’s the same here. You can’t let the mind stay there cowering.
This is what you have to pass through in the beginning stages with virtue and concentration. You have to train yourself to explore in line with the established maps and methods. That’s the path you have to follow.
At any rate, what I’ve told you here is just a sketch. When you practice, don’t have any doubts. Don’t doubt these instructions. When there’s pleasure, look at pleasure. When there’s pain, look at pain. As you look at it, try to grind it down, kill it, put it down, let it go. When you know preoccupations, keep letting them go. Whether you want to sit in concentration, do walking meditation, or think about things, it doesn’t matter. Try to make your awareness up to the moment, equal to what’s going on in the mind. If you’re thinking a lot, gather all your thoughts together and cut them off in this way: “The things you’re thinking, the things you’re describing are nothing but thoughts, that’s all. All these things are inconstant, stressful, and not-self. None of them are for sure.” Discard them right then and there.
