A Way into Vipassana Meditation

Welcome to the class. I am very happy to see you. As I
told you before, the most beautiful thing to see is a
person sitting and meditating, very beautiful. Since
I was a young boy whenever I saw someone meditating, I just
wanted to stop and look at that person; sitting so still, his body is
still and also so balanced and dignified. Sitting like this it looks
like a pyramid to me, so stable, so firm, unshakable; it represents
the mind also, so stable, so still. The posture of the body helps
the mind; it makes you go towards stability, calm and peace.

When I see a Buddha statue,
a Buddha meditating, it makes me very peaceful.
I have collected some pictures,
Buddha images that look very peaceful.

Before I go on talking about meditation objects and different
kinds of samadhi (concentration), I want to answer one
question that somebody asked me last week, which is a very
important thing to remember. It has also a deeper meaning...
the beginning stage. This is very humbling, to understand that,
think that we know everything, we have gone very far. If you
haven't overcome a certain stage you are still in the beginning
stage. About the nature of our mind.... I tried to find out in some
books
about meditation, experienced meditators have made records,
and they have found that just as the stillness of meditation is
coming to him or her, the mind is becoming still, the thoughts
slowing down, you become unaware of the surroundings - it
means your mind is becoming more and more collected.... You
are going towards the samadhi state of mind - but just as that
happens; do you know what happens next for some people? Just
as the stillness of meditation is coming to him or her, the beginner...
{A beginner does not mean a person who is just starting
meditating, a beginner means a person who has not gone
beyond that; so you may have been meditating for a long time,
but if you haven't gone beyond a certain stage you are still in
the beginning stage. This is very humbling, to understand that,
because if we have been meditation for a long time we want
to thnk that we know everything,
we have gone very far. If you haven't overcome a certain stage
you are still in the beginning stage}.

So, just as the stillness of meditation is coming to him or
her, the beginner suddenly is brought back to material realities.
Material realities mean the ordinary reality... so... brought back
to ordinary reality by a sudden jerk of the whole body and why
does that happen? It happens to some people; it used to happen
to me. Sometimes it happened like this... I am very still... and
then suddenly I hear some noise and become shocked... and wake up!

When you meditate, you go into a different world, into a
different reality, and this is something you should understand.
It is very similar to 'a trance state', a kind of hypnotic state but
not really a hypnotized state. It is very similar to that. Some
doctors understand very well. When you stop thinking and you
are paying attention to one object, slowly and slowly your mind
becomes collected and you go into a different kind of reality.
So, on the threshold of that reality, you find a lot of difficulties.
Your mind goes back and forth because we are so familiar with
our ordinary reality. We feel safe in this ordinary reality and we
want to take hold of it, keep hold of it, we don't want to let go of
it... this is a protective reaction. We want to protect ourselves.

One way of protecting ourselves is
to keep ourselves in our conscious mind,
to keep our surroundings in our conscious mind,
we want to know what is going around, and
we want to know the state of our body too.

"How is my body now?" When you meditate and your mind
becomes very collected, slowly and slowly you lose awareness
of your surroundings. When you get more and more collected
you lose awareness of your body too sometimes. I mean... you
are aware of the sensations but you are not aware of the shape
anymore. Sometimes the shape and size of your body dissolves
because shape and size is paññatti. The mind puts it together it
makes it into an idea; paramattha has no shape, no size.

If you find that difficult to understand I will give you a
simile - an example from physics, Newtonian science. When
you read that, you find that there is shape, size, and movement,
everything is there. You can predict everything according to
Newtonian physics: the planets move around, you can predict
any time, say ten years from now, that a certain planet will be in
a certain place, you can tell that. It has shape, size and movement
regularity. But when you get down and down to subatomic
particles you lose all that. There is no shape, and you cannot
tell anything for sure, you can only say that there is a certain
percentage of probability for a certain thing to happen. Only
probability, nothing is sure anymore.

In meditation also it happens like that. In our ordinary state
of awareness we are aware of the surroundings, the shape, size,
being, people, east, west, north, south, time, day, and year.

When we meditate we forget about
what year it is, what day it is,
what day and time it is and sometimes also
we forget about where we are.
We are not aware of that anymore,
because all these are just concepts.
You don't know where you are sitting; you don't know
whether you are facing east or west. Sometimes very strange,
you don't know where you are and that is very scary and it
sounds like a kind of mental sickness. Some people forget who
they are because they are mentally sick, but in this state also
sometimes when you go beyond ordinary reality, who you are
does not matter anymore.

'I' is just an idea, you lose all that too.

As you go into that state you come back again and again
because you are very scared of it.... I have to know who I am....
I have to know what is happening around me because otherwise
I am so unprotected. We try to feel secure by trying to know
what is happening around us and by trying to know what is happening
to our body, by trying to be conscious of our body or self,
this is paññatti actually. This is very important to understand
because if you don't, you fear more and more... "I am afraid
to meditate".... This happened to me, suddenly with a jerk I
woke up and I had tremendous fear! We are afraid to go beyond
this ordinary reality, although we want to experience something
deeper, something beyond. Although we are meditating just for
that, the moment we cross that threshold some people are afraid
and feel very insecure.

We feel secure by being in control of our body and
our surroundings. One way of being in control is to know
what is going on, we want to know what is going on around
us and we want to know what is going
on in our body. This is a protective reaction.

When we have been tense for a long time, we become accustomed
to holding on to ourselves. This happens more to people
who are anxious and insecure.

Imagine for example that you are in a deep forest and there
might be tigers, snakes, and other animals around; I lived in the
forest and there were tigers. [Now hunters say that tigers are
afraid of human beings and run away]. When we first go into a
place which is new to us we feel very insecure because there is
real danger: the tigers, the snakes... tigers we can protect ourselves
if we are in an enclosed area. But snakes, it is very difficult
because they are so small and they can squeeze in and come into
your hut because the huts are made of bamboo, not really sealed.
Crawling insects, animals can come in.... So when you sit and
you hear noises like shi... shish..., suddenly you wake up and
you are really afraid, your body reacts; "what is that?" You feel
very insecure. When you find out that it's just a lizard then ok
you go back and meditate but still your mind is not totally in
your meditation, you are still keeping alert. If you keep yourself
alert and try to find what is going on in your surroundings it is
very hard for you to develop deep samædhi. You are still aware,
you are mindful to a certain extent only. You cannot go beyond
that.

To go beyond that you need to
develop some kind of trust and security;
this is very important.

It is very good to meditate with another person whom you
trust, your teacher, a family member or a good friend... you feel
that if "anything should happen to me, somebody is around to
help me," for beginners this is very important. In Burma when
we meditate many teachers say surrender your body to Buddha.
Symbolically you give yourself away to the Buddha; it is not mine
anymore, so if it is not mine anymore I don't need to worry about
it. This is symbolical giving away. Try to find out some ways to
make yourself feel secure and to trust your surroundings. In this
place you don't need to be afraid of anything. Everybody around
here is a meditator and the place is very safe and secure. Before
you meditate it is important to develop some kind of mettæ (loving
kindness), because metta makes you feel quite secure.

I live in the forest sometimes with no building, no dwelling
place. Sometimes sitting under a tree, sometimes just a simple
hut, sometimes made from robes. We sit and meditate and when
we develop strong metta, that strong metta, makes us feel very
secure. I have been living in the forest for more than twenty
years and never been hurt by anything, real deep forest sometimes,
only a few huts surrounding, to get my food. I want to
get deeper and deeper into the forest, far away from civilization,
because civilization is so disturbing.

Anyway... if you trust yourself, that means you feel
more secure... trust yourself, trust your practice!
For beginners it is very important to find
very secure surroundings.

So we become accustomed to holding on to ourselves, we
become so attached to ourselves, we try to protect ourselves all
the time... keeping a grip of ourselves... see if you can really feel
that "I am trying to be in control of my body and mind", we are
all trying to be in control, but in meditation if you try to do that
you cannot develop deeper understanding and go beyond.

You learn to let go...
let whatever happens happen, because
some of the things you experience in meditation are so
extraordinary that if you try to be in control you back off.
You cannot go further! "Keeping a grip on ourselves"
we do this unconsciously, that is the problem.
Because consciously you try to give up the control, to let go,
but unconsciously you are afraid, you are insecure. So you are
still trying to be in control because this fear, anxiety has been
ingrained in us. We don't know how long, it might be millions
of years, it is ingrained in our DNA I think; this is not an easy
thing: to unconsciously guard against the threat of psychological
disintegration.

'Psychological disintegration' what does that mean? Integration
means we have the idea of who we are. Disintegration
means it is anatta, no self; no control. Are you willing to go into
that stage?

There is no self, there is no control,
there is just physical and mental process going on!
The moment you try to control it you are out of it,
you are out of your meditation...
Meditation is a kind of surrender.

We always want to be in control of ourselves "I know who
I am, I know what I am doing" with that attitude we cannot
cross the threshold! There is no 'I' anymore, there is no 'I'
meditating
anymore, and you are not in control of your meditation
even. You are just purely aware of what is happening, just purely
aware without control, just like you are looking at the road. You
are sitting outside and looking at the road, you are not in control
of any car. They are just coming and going, you can just sit
and watch... I know what is going on but I have no control!
You need to develop that kind of mental state, no control, that
is why I try to tell people don't resist, don't control, just let go
and be just an uninvolved observer.

The moment we see we are losing control, the moment we
don't feel 'I am' anymore, we have a certain kind of fear developing.
But this does not happen to everybody. Only to some
people it really happens. Then, we let go into the meditative
process.... Whenever that happens try to calm down again and
just tell yourself that there is no danger, no fear. Trust yourself,
trust your practice, and go on. We are no longer holding on to
ourselves. When we are meditating we are not holding on to
ourselves, or keeping a grip of ourselves. See if you are doing
that, trying to be in control, trying to do something. Our mind
suddenly feels that we are in danger and the sudden jerk of the
body is a protective reaction to put us on guard again. So the
moment we cross over to another reality we wake up with a
jerk, we want to be in control again. This is a kind of protective
reaction of body and mind. This sudden jerk of the body it is not
very common but it may be quite frightening. Just tell yourself,
encourage yourself that it will go away as you develop deeper
peacefulness and deeper wisdom, it will go away. This will happen
a few times, going back and forth.

Sometimes the beginner may be disturbed by a sudden feeling
of acute panic. The first thing is that your body wakes in a jerk,
your body reacts, but in other cases the body is still very quiet, it
does not shake. The body is in a still position but the mind reacts.
Sometimes the beginner may be disturbed by a sudden feeling of
acute panic just when the stillness of mind comes to him. The
meditation is abruptly brought to a halt, it comes to a stop; you
wake up. This is another variety of the unconscious protective
reaction. The person who is chronically tense and anxious feels
that if he was to let go something terrible would happen to him
mentally. He feels that "If I let go I don't know what will happen,
maybe something very strange can happen and I may not be in
control, I may not be able to come back to my normal way of
being", there are many such a people among us.

That is why in order to develop self confidence and courage
we need to practice, to keep five precepts, that makes you feel
very courageous.

If you are keeping the five precepts
you have less fear, this is real.
If you believe that you are a kind, virtuous person,
it gives you a lot of strength and courage.
Also develop metta, when you are a loving person it makes
your mind very calm and peaceful. We are protected by our own
metta. Sometimes you feel there is a kind of protection around
you, like radio waves, like a magnetic field, you feel like you
are protected by your loving kindness. Whoever comes into this
field will not hurt you. Even though they come to you with the
intention to hurt you, when they cross into your field of kindness,
they change their mind... "Oh, I am not going to say anything,
I am not going to do anything", this is very real! Try to
develop loving kindness. The stronger you try to develop this
kindness the stronger your field of metta will be and you will feel
protected by your own metta. Many people ask me "How do I
protect myself?"

You protect yourself by developing metta and
also by developing mindfulness.
Both of them can protect you and also
trust in the Buddha, trust in the practice.

Before you go into deep samadhi, sit down and reflect on
your good qualities. Develop metta and reflect on the qualities
of the Buddha and then tell yourself "I will go deep into
my practice but if any real danger comes I will wake". You can
determine that and if you do that a few times you'll find that
if something happens, you are already awake. This is very real
because in some places where we live we have to do that, not
only for danger but if you wish to get out of your samadhi at a
certain hour you can do that too. You sit and meditate, and
before you meditate you say "I am going to sit for two hours after
that I will wake up" and you go deep into samadhi and meditate
and when the time comes you are already awake. Look at the
clock and you see it is the right time, just one or two minutes
plus or minus.

When you go into real sleep also, many meditators can do
that... You have meditated and you want to go to sleep, normal
natural sleep, so you tell yourself "Now I am going to sleep but
after four or five hours sleep I will get up". With that determination
in your mind slowly go to sleep and you'll wake up
at the determined time. Maybe you have heard or read about
these things. This is real, you can do this. The same thing you
can do if any real danger comes, "I will be awake, and I'll know
what to do". In some cases when people meditate for a long time
- sometimes they can meditate all day without getting up even
- they have to do that. In the meditation instruction books
they say that you have to do that, you have to do this kind of
determination because there can be real danger. What happens
if a fire breaks out in the forest? It is quite a common thing to
happen, so you determine that "If there is any danger I will wake
up". So, this is a very good question somebody asked last week.
Please ask me questions like this and give me time to prepare so
that I can give you a very clear answer.

This week I would like to talk a little bit more about paññatti
and paramattha again and then I would like to talk about three
different kinds of samadhi.

Paramattha is something you experience directly
without thinking about it.
Paramattha is that inherent quality of
mental and physical process.
In fact paramattha is the qualities and you
cannot know anything beyond qualities.
Scientists are trying to find out what is ultimate reality.
Until now they have not found it because the deeper they go
the more it becomes illusive; matter has no shape, no size. The
smallest particle of matter, something like photons; light is photons,
just packets of energy that have no mass. Can you imagine
something with no mass? Just pure energy, this is light; what is
beyond that nobody can tell. The only thing we can know about
it is the quality, nothing more than that.

In meditation also, direct experience is the quality.

For example when you touch something what do you feel?
You feel it is warm, that is the quality. You feel it is soft, that
is also the quality. You feel some sort of vibration, movement,
which is also the quality. But we cannot touch leg. Leg is something
you put together in your mind. You cannot tell the quality
of your leg. You cannot even touch your leg actually. Try to
understand this. In the beginning it is very hard to understand
this. "What... I cannot touch my leg? Here it is!!!" But how do
you know that this is a leg? It is because you put together many
ideas. If you touch something, you close your eyes... and touch
something... can you tell what it is? Can you tell the shape?
You cannot, you can only tell the shape only when you get in
contact... it is a flat surface... but you cannot tell the shape of
the ball! How do you tell the shape of the ball? Because you look
at it and put the idea together, or you can touch and you can
say that... "Oh I know the shape... it is a round ball... it is hollow
inside... it is about one cm thick...." How do you tell that?
You put so much data together, but if you take only one datum
you cannot tell anything, except the quality... it is hard... it is
cold... nothing more than that.

 In meditation we come down to
this simple pure sensation, nothing added.

That is what I tried to talk about Thursday, but I don't
expect that people can understand it right way.... Nothing
added, just direct experience, that is what we are trying to
get because this is really what is happening all the time. The
moment we experience something we try to put together many
ideas, to form an idea about it from the past memories, from the
eyes and from other information too. Try to understand the idea
of what paramattha is, because this is the object of our vipassana
meditation.

Unless you can keep your mind on paramattha you cannot
really develop deep insight. You can develop deep samadhi by
concentrating on any object: sound or shape, colour, a word,
an idea, even nothingness. Once I tried to meditate on nothingness,
tried to develop some samadhi by practicing anapana
(concentrating on the breath at the nostrils), and then tried to
develop some samadhi by staring at a disk, a light brown earth
colour disk, staring at it and keeping my mind into it and even
when I close my eyes it is in my mind. So I try to get inside that
image. Later I got a piece of wood and cut a circle inside and
put that on the window, so that I cannot see anything outside,
trees or houses, and look at the hole and see that this is a hole.
Hole means.... there is nothing there, so just staying in the hole
and thinking that there is nothing there... nothing is there; and
it is very strange, your mind can get absorbed in this nothingness
and it becomes very peaceful, very, very peaceful. Even
now I would like to do that; however I don't want to do that
anymore because you cannot develop deep insight; you can get
absorbed and get very peaceful. Do you know why it is peaceful?
Because where there is nothing, there is nothing to disturb
your mind... you cannot think about nothingness... it is the
end of everything! It is very similar to but it is not Nibbana. You
are just looking at nothingness and trying to keep that nothingness
idea in your mind. Sometimes you close your eyes and you
can still see a bright hole and you are thinking nothing... just
nothing... hard to talk about but it feels really peaceful.

What I mean is that you can develop samadhi by concentrating on any
object; you can just sit and recite "coca cola, coca cola"... the
whole day. Your mind can get absorbed... any word, any sound,
any shape, any image, any idea; once you can get absorbed into
you develop samadhi.

So that is the meaning of samadhi...
to get absorbed into some concept,
some non changing sensation or idea even.

When you want to develop deep insight about reality;
you have to be in touch with reality.
But in fact we are always in touch with reality; always.
But we change that reality into a concept.
All the time we are changing reality into concept.

What do we see? We see reality actually, but immediately
after that we change it into concept. We see only colours -
black, red, brown, white - but from our past experience we
know this is a human being and this is somebody I know. If you
forget about your memory you don't know who it is; if you see
something you haven't seen before what idea do you form? For
example here people bring many different kinds of fruits and
cakes and bread. Sometimes I don't know what these things are,
I have to ask people... what is this? I want to know, what I am
eating! I feel insecure if I don't know what I am eating.

When we don't know something we feel insecure, we want to know...
what is this... how do you make this... is it agreeable for me, I
want to know... if people bring something and put it down...
fruit, cake... any kind of pastry very beautiful shapes... it looks
like a prawn... and I was looking at it... what is this? Sometimes
they bring swine meat but if they don't tell me I won't know and
before I eat it, can I guess the taste? No way!! I can sit there and
think about what it tastes like and spend the all day and will
never find out. Can I ask another person "Tell me what it tastes
like?" This person will be telling me the whole day what it tastes
like and I would be listening and still wouldn't know. The only
way to find out is to put it into your mouth, chew and then you
will know what it is.

We are always in contact with reality but immediately we
change it into concept. When I see some very strange fruit I
have never seen before like kiwi. The first time I ate kiwi was
here in Australia. I don't know what it is but I can see the colour
and when I put all the different colours together I get the shape.
In painting there is a system called pointillism; you take a very
sharp something and then you make a small point and then you
put the points together and then make a picture, so to take this
as an example. We see only small colours then put it all together
and create a shape in our mind. It is our mind which creates a
shape. Our eyes cannot see shape. This is also another difficult
thing to understand. If you take away colour what is there to
see? Nothing left, everything disappears. It is the same thing
with sound. We hear sound which is real, we don't hear words.
Words are something we create in our minds; we learn... it is
a learning process, depending on our memory. When you go to
a country where people speak a language you don't understand
you hear the sound but you don't understand the meaning.

The sound is real but the words and
the meaning are something we create...
It is very useful, I don't mean that it is useless but
when we want to develop deeper understanding of
the reality which is beyond the reality of ordinary reality
we need to go beyond words and meanings.

When a meditator is meditating and he is really mindful and
really sharp on the point, on the moment, if somebody speaks
nearby, this person can hear the sound but will not understand
the meaning, this is one of the tests.

In some monasteries in Burma they do that. When some
body develops some sort of samadhi; the teacher will say "go and
sit near a group of people talking and meditate." Deliberately
the teacher puts the student in a noisy place, like you go and sit
in the kitchen and listen to people talking and if you can really
become mindful you can hear the sound but you don't understand
the meaning. It does not disturb you anymore, because
it does not create any idea in your mind; just sound passing
away... passing away.... For a beginner it is difficult. Even here
there are cars going along the road, you get disturbed "Oh, so
many cars going along the road" but when you become really
mindful you hear the sound but it does not disturb your mind.
Try to find that out more and more, what paramattha is, and
what is paññatti.

You cannot see movement even.
This is another thing very strange to understand,
because we always think that we see movement.
Movement is the domain of your bodily sensation,
not the domain of your eye.

How do we think that we see movement? Something appears
and disappears, another thing appears and disappears. Let's say
you have a computer screen and you have a program which will
flash a very small dot and it will disappear, another flash very
close to the same dot, not on the same space but very close
nearby; flash it disappears; another dot flash and it disappears.
It happens very quickly; what do you see? You see a dot moving,
but actually it is not a dot moving. Try to understand this; there
is no such thing as movement. We cannot see a movement;
something appears and disappears, another thing appears in a
different place and disappears; another thing appears in a different
place and disappears. Now let's take another example; light
a candle. Can you move the flame from this place to that place?

Think of the flame only, don't think of the candle, and try to
get your mind on the flame. The flame is something burning
and disappearing all the time, so you cannot move the flame of
a candle from this place to that place. When you brought it here
that flame disappeared a long time ago but something gives that
continuity, keeps burning... try to get closer and closer to this
idea of impermanence

That's why Buddha said "niccam navava sankhara",
all conditioned phenomena are always new,
there is nothing old.

Old means the same thing, there is no such thing as the
same thing. You might have read in some philosophy books, I
don't remember who said it, but someone said that "you can't
get into the same river twice"; but I would like to say that you
can't even get into the same river once. Where is the river?
What do you mean by you? When you take the big picture of a
river, you get the idea of river. When you take that of a person
as something enduring then you can say that this person goes
into that river and he comes back again and he cannot go back
into the same river again because the water is moving. Even the
idea of river is something you put together in your mind and
the idea of a person also is something you put together and it is
always changing all the time.

Take another example so that you'll have many examples
and get the meaning very clear. Take a big canvas bag, fill with
sand, very fine sand and tie it with a rope and hang it on a long
rope; make a small hole at the bottom. What will happen? The
sand will fall down, what do you see? You'll see a line. Is that
line real? Is that line really there? No; it seems like a line and
then you take hold of the bag and push it again. What will you
see? You'll see a line moving. Is that moving line real? No, there
is no moving line. There are just fine grains of sand falling in
different places, an illusion of a line moving back and forth, but
there is no line, only fine grains of sand... falling... falling.... If
you forget about the bag of sand and look at the line you get a
better idea, there is no line actually.

It is the same thing with our body;
it is always arising and passing away.
The shape is not the domain of your eye;
it is something the mind puts together.

Also smell; you can smell the smell and we say "this is rose",
but the smell is not rose. Rose is an idea that we create in the
mind. The smell is real, but the name is something you have
learnt and you put this smell with the shape and colour of the
rose, ordinary reality rose. If you don't put things together how
do you understand pure sensations only? Sometimes my teacher
asked me "Is sugar sweet?" He asked me again and again when I
was studying meditation. I said what a question to ask.... I said
"Yes, sugar is sweet"; he said "Really?" I thought "What does
he mean by that? I can't understand that question, why is he
asking me if sugar is sweet"; he said "is the name sugar real or is
that a concept?" I said "The name is just a name, concept," then
he said "The name is not sweet...." I said "Yes, you are right...
the name is not sweet." Then he said "What is sweet?" It is not
sugar anymore. You can only say that sweet is sweet and even
this name sweet is a name only, and what is that; some sensation
on your tongue which you call sweet and you put that idea
together. If you show it to somebody without telling the name
or the taste and ask what is the taste of this? He will not be able
to tell you.

We create our own reality, this is necessary,
important for functioning in our ordinary way of being
but it becomes a hindrance in understanding
extraordinary reality.

This reality is also reality; I am not invalidating this ordinary
reality, because Buddha spoke about different levels of reality.
There is agreed upon truth or conventional truth. It is a truth, it
is not a lie but when you want to understand paramattha reality,
which is a kind of transcendental reality, we have to go beyond
this ordinary truth. But we get stuck in this ordinary truth we
don't want to let it go. We get trapped in this ordinary truth. So
my teacher many times he tells me that we are trapped in concepts,
we are imprisoned by concepts. When first he spoke about
that I could not understand what it meant. We are trapped, we
are imprisoned in concept... but I tried to understand... what
does he mean? How are we imprisoned in concept? After a few
months I began to understand....

 Yes, we are imprisoned in concepts;
ideas are what makes you happy or unhappy.
If you really get in touch with paramattha
there is nothing to make you happy or unhappy.

So I found out; all the idealisms all the isms - communism,
democracy, Buddhism - are actually a prison. Whatever ism...
because we get attached to the idea; we are imprisoned, we are
not free. You can function even better in this ordinary reality
because you are not imprisoned anymore; you know what is going
on; you can function very well; adapt in any place. It is much
easier if you understand the other reality. We take this reality so
seriously that it hurts; we cannot let it go because it hurts.

Try to understand why we are meditating,
what we are aiming at, and
what kind of reality we are trying to understand.

This is just another step from this conventional reality to
another... how do I say it... the real reality, because I don't want
to use the word 'ultimate reality' because I've discussed about this
with Venerable Nanavisuddhi about this word 'ultimate' and we
got so confused, that we had to drop the word ultimate.
What do we mean by ultimate? It is very difficult to talk
about. It is a deeper reality which is not created by our mind.
Even then we have to understand this reality and go even beyond
that, there is another reality there, which is beyond mental and
physical process. From this conventional reality we go to paramattha
reality where there is just process, just phenomena, nothing
lasting, not being. From there we go into another reality
where there is no phenomena... which is also another reality
which is very difficult to understand and very difficult to talk
about, but that will come later. I'll try my best to talk about it
and hope that I won't make you more confused because they are
things that are beyond words. We try our best to talk about it.
Later we will talk about this paramattha more and more.

Now I will talk about the three different kinds of Samadhi
(concentration).

The first samadhi that I want to talk about is jhana. You
have heard about the word jhana. Jhana is, to get absorbed into
some idea, like metta.

You develop metta by thinking of loving thoughts... "May
I be happy... may I be happy... may I be peaceful," and after a
while you really feel that... "I really want to be happy", but it
is very strange... people are very strange... do you really want
to be happy? We should ask these simple questions again and
again; do you really want to be happy? What do you mean by
happy and do you know how to get this happiness? Whatever
we do every day we are doing it because we think that it will
make us happy. We have been doing that for so long. Have
you found that happiness? We can develop that happiness...
"I want to be happy" and you can share that wish with other
people also... "Just like me, he also wants to be happy, she also
wants to be happy", so, you are putting yourself and another
person on the same level, you are not making any difference.
"Just as I want to be happy... he wants to be happy... she wants
to be happy, no difference! Can I have the same equal wish for
another person, no better or no worse?" You cannot say "I wish
other people happier than me", no... That is not real metta, we
have to be together. So after a while you can really feel that...
"Oh...I really want that person to be happy." In the beginning it
is difficult to have that sort of kindness towards total strangers,
so just think about your parents, your teachers or your brothers,
sisters or your spouses.

This is another difficulty again. Because I once tried to
teach metta meditation to somebody and that person said "I
don't want to think about myself". I said "Just develop metta to
yourself; may I be happy;" and that person said "I want to forget
about myself, I hate myself", because she had done so many terrible
things... she was very aggressive and unkind, she cannot
even be kind to herself. I asked her "Can you have metta for
your parents?" She said "I hate my father. He was an alcoholic
he left the family and he died, so we were very poor and we had
a difficult time when we were young; he didn't care about us, he
didn't love us." So I said "What about your mother?" "Oh; when
my father left her she went to live with her boy friend"... "So
what happened to you?" "My brother and I somehow we tried
to survive, and my mother sometimes came and gave us some
money to eat." I said "what about your teachers?" She said "I
can't think of my teachers, I can't think of them as somebody
who has done something good to us." Very difficult for her to
have real metta for herself and others; I felt so disheartened.
I thought this is something very strange, because normally we
think we love ourselves and at least we love somebody. There is
somebody in our life that we love, but this person says that there
is nobody that she can love, nobody for whom she has lovingkindness.
At last I asked her "Is there anybody in this world that
you can really feel kindness for?" After a while she said "Well...
I love my dog, and it is not my dog actually, it is a dog of a person
with whom I share the house. It is not really my dog, but I love
that dog." I found out slowly and slowly that some people find it
very difficult to develop metta.

Metta meditation it is very important for vipassana.
That is why I try to emphasize it.
If you don't have metta your heart is dry,
you cannot even practice vipassana.

You need the base, the foundation: metta and also trust,
respect for Buddha, trust and respect for yourself and for your
teacher and trust in the practice, also the method you are practicing.
If you don't have those things there is no point in practicing
meditation. Sometimes you can fool yourself just imagining
"I am happy, I am peaceful", but you cannot get beyond that,
you just imagine; it is not real and you can get absorbed in any
idea, even metta.

 Also Buddha, sometimes I get very absorbed in thinking
about the qualities of the Buddha, it makes me feel very
happy, very peaceful; because the state, the quality of your mind
depends a lot on the object of your mind. When you think about
somebody that you hate you feel hatred, you feel anger, you
don't feel peaceful but when you think about somebody who
is very loving, kind and peaceful, somebody like the Buddha...
just imagine somebody like that. I don't have any direct contact
and relationship with the Buddha but I had a personal relationship
with my meditation teacher, my first meditation teacher. I
don't know whether he is still living, he was a layman, a musician
a musical instrument maker and everyday I think about
him because he made a big turning point in my life. He was so
calm and peaceful all the time, it is not so amazing to see a monk
calm and peaceful, it is not something extraordinary to see; but
it is to see a layman so calm, peaceful and so kind. I never saw
him becoming upset or arrogant, putting down another person,
getting angry, saying bad things about people... he kept five precepts
without effort, he never talked about that and he was kind
to everybody but he never spoke about metta. That is something
very extraordinary; he does not say "I am a very loving person".
People love him very much but he was not biased to anybody,
a very unusual person, a very highly developed person, he does
not get attached to anybody, young or old, he treats everybody
equally. He was not married; he was living with his mother, an old
mother
He said "as long as my mother lives I will look after
her, after that I will become a monk".

He loved his mother very much and he was the only
son and his father had died. He is
really looking after his mother very lovingly, with real metta
not just a duty. His mother loves him very much also.
To see somebody like that also make you understand
something very deep.     It is beyound words.
Even to talk about loving kindness is also very difficult.
I had a very bad relationship with my parents;
many times I really hated them for not doing enough
for me.
This person, my teacher loved his mother with all his heart and
this mother loved her son with all her heart, they were really
devoted, but not too attached, this is very unusual...
not too attached. Whenever I think of him it makes me very peaceful...
this person is extraordinary!.

Another teacher was an old Sayadaw who died when he
was ninety years old. He was also very mellow, kind and sweet.
He never treated anybody with disrespect. I never saw him getting
upset or worried about anything. Sometimes I got worried;
when I went to America with him, just before we went, the
time was getting very close, we already had our plane tickets
and flight schedule but we didn't have our passports... so, I said
"Sayadaw, in a week we have to leave but we don't have our
passports yet"; he said "don't worry" very simple, don't worry.
How can he just say like that without worrying? It was very hard
for me to understand in the beginning. People just loved him.
He could not speak a word of English. Many westerners looked
at him and felt very amazed... "Look at this person", so gentle,
so mellow, even in his voice he didn't have any tension, very
soft and sweet voice, very calm, but with a lot of energy and
strength, not weakness; it is gentleness and softness together
with strength and confidence. You cannot learn something like
that from a book. You have to be with that person, and you can
see that, he is like this and I can be like him. That gives you a
lot of courage, hope.

 It is very important to learn meditation from a teacher.
Although you can learn basic meditation instruction from any
book, basic instruction is not very difficult to learn. But to really
develop these higher qualities you have to be with a teacher,
who is a living quality, a living example of loving kindness, living
example of contentment, serenity, peacefulness, liberation
and he is so free. You have to live with that person for a long
time. I lived with my teacher for about five years. The longer
you live with that person the more you learn this is real; he
is not playing a role. Anybody can play a role, you can watch
a movie and somebody is there, he is acting the part of a very
serene and developed person, but this is just acting... only after
you have lived with that person for a few years then you really
find out.

When you think of the Buddha try to find out more and
more about the Buddha, his purity, his freedom, his wisdom,
his metta, his karuna (compassion) and his selflessness, get
immersed in his qualities and you'll feel them.... Because the
mind consciousness depends on the object, when you keep a
symbol, this is a symbol, an idea, Buddha is an idea for us. We
think about it... the idea of the Buddha, his purity, his freedom,
his serenity, his wisdom, his metta and karuna,... The more you
think about it the more your mind will tune into that quality and
you feel that quality in you, inside you, because the more you
think about the Buddha metta, the more you feel it. It becomes
yours and you aspire to that sort of thing... "I want to be like
that"... so you set a goal... "this is my ideal... although I will
never be able to reach that high ideal like the Buddha, at least I
can get to a certain stage."

Anybody who becomes enlightened,
a disciple of the Buddha even, is called a follower.
He was the leader you are a follower,
He was enlightened and you can also be enlightened;
you are also enlightened if you have attained
enlightenment.

To have a very clear idea of what we want to do and what
our goal is, is very important. Being vague; "Oh well, I want to
meditate and I want to be happy" you don't have a very clear
idea, you don't have enough energy. The more you can define
your goal, your ideals, the more energy you'll have, the more you
can put time and energy into what you do. Be very clear about
what you want to do. I am giving you just a general idea so that
you can develop it.

Before you meditate, just for a few minutes reflect on the
purity, the serenity, the peacefulness, the freedom, the wisdom,
the metta and karuna of the Buddha, and you can get absorbed
into that, feel very calm and peaceful. After that if you meditate
on a vipassana object, your mind will stay there longer, because
this idea of the Buddha conditions your mind to let go of other
worldly cares and you don't think that they are important anymore...
about my car, about my business, about this and that...
those things can wait... Because sometimes when you sit and
meditate you start thinking... "I have to pay that bill... I need
to make a call, it is very important"... just when you start to
meditate something important comes into your mind that is distracting.
That is why I am telling you to prepare your mind.

This preparation is very important.
Don't think that you are wasting your time because
you are preparing, because the more you prepare
yourself the easier it is for you to meditate.
You can let go of all those things... that bill is not important,
that phone call is not important anymore, it can wait for
two hours, or any other thing.... You'll find the best way to deal
with it, but right now leave everything behind.... You can let
go of all that.

When you think of somebody like the Buddha
who is so free, it makes it easier for
you to let go of other things.

For me my real experience is my teacher. When I think
about him I can let go, I get some feeling of his freedom, of his
detachment, his contentment. Prepare your mind like that.

When you can get really absorbed in this object, a disk
white or brown or just even a hole or even metta meditation or
meditating on Buddha... when your mind gets really absorbed
and stays there without getting distracted that is called jhana.

Jhana has two meanings,
one is getting absorbed and another meaning is burning.
It burns the defilements, temporarily at least.
You get really absorbed and forget about anything else, your
mind really gets into that object and stays with it, it is
unshakeable.
Sometimes you cannot even move the mind into another
object. It goes back into the same object and stays there, very,
very strong absorption but that is quite difficult to develop. But
you can develop access concentration quite easily. Access
concentration,
means closer, you are not inside but very close. Like
you come to this place, you are not inside this hall but you are
just near the door. Access concentration is like that, very close
to absorption, which means that your mind can stay with that
object for a few minutes then you get distracted for a while and
you come back again... get a little bit distracted... come back
again... it goes on and on like that. This is enough to practice
vipassana.

To be able to practice vipassana you don't really
have to develop absorption jhana, but
you need a certain amount of quietness and
stability of your mind.

Even if you haven't developed that amount of samadhi you
can just go ahead and meditate on a vipassana object. Let's say
when we meditate, we concentrate our mind on breathing, one
breath... two... for quite a long time you can stay with your
breath. In the beginning when I meditated I tried to breathe
in very deeply, unnaturally. I knew it was unnatural, but it was
very useful because when I breathe deeply like this I stay with
my breath easier. You cannot run away because it takes up your
whole mind. You stay with it but you cannot do it for too long
because you get very tired after a while and the body gets very
hot. In the beginning I sat only for ten minutes doing that deep
breathing. It is tiring in the beginning, but after you do it for a
while you don't get so tired anymore. You don't even feel that
you are breathing in very hard. You are very calm and your body
is doing the breathing. The mind is with the breath. You are
not thinking about anything anymore. You cannot think about
anything anymore.

After you develop a certain level of concentration, go back
to normal breathing because if you stay with this gross false
breathing you will be aware of this gross sensation and your
samadhi will be gross because samadhi depends on the object.
When the object is very gross the samadhi also is very gross,
very coarse.
When you breathe normally
your breath becomes
very soft and slow. If you can stay with that soft and slow breath
your concentration becomes stronger and stronger. The more
the object becomes subtle the more you can stay with that subtle
object, the stronger your concentration becomes. The false
breathing is useful but you have to let go of it after a while. You
need to know what is useful and when to let go of it. If you do
that without developing any samadhi you can develop some sort
of concentration and after a while you feel this air moving in
and out, you can really feel it, you can feel it as just pure
sensation.
In the beginning you think that "I am breathing". The air
is coming in, the air is going out. I feel it near my nose. After
a while you forget about I am breathing. There is no 'I' and no
breathing anymore. There is no air coming in, there is no air
going out. There is no nose any more. There is sensation and
awareness and that becomes pure sensation and pure awareness,
not thinking about sensation anymore. You are directly
in touch with this sensation and it is just sensation, not even
air anymore. Air is an idea, nose is an idea, coming in is an
idea, going out is another idea, and "I am meditating" it is also
another idea. All of that goes away and your mind is directly in
touch with one sensation and there is pure awareness. Nothing
added, no concept added. You are not even thinking about arising
and passing away, you are not even thinking about sensation
and awareness even.

 Don't think about anything at all because we are in the habit
of thinking, trying to understand by using this thinking process.
This thinking process happens in our left side of our brain, if you
want to get a clear idea, an interesting idea, we think and we use
the left side of our brain; but meditation is intuitive. So when
we meditate we use the right side of our brain. If you understand
how these two sides of the brain work you'll understand what
you are doing when you are meditating. Be very clear about this;
when we are really meditating we are not trying to understand
anything intellectually. No intellectual process. Thinking is an
intellectual process. We have to go beyond that. If we still try
to use or take the help of this intellectual thinking we will be
stuck in this ordinary reality, because thinking is ordinary. If we
really want to experience extra-ordinary reality we have to let
go of thinking.

Before you meditate, read books, try to find out what samadhi
means, what nama means, what rupa means, what anicca (impermanence)
means, what dukkha (suffering or oppression) means,
what anatta means.

But when you really meditate, let go of all that.
Just be directly in touch with whatever is;
be very, very simple!

You have to be as simple as possible. Just be in touch with
the sensation don't try to think whether it is arising or passing
away, whether it is dukkha or anatta, whether is nama or rupa
even. Without thinking, if you can stay like that for a long time
it will appear spontaneously, intuitively, what it is and 'what it
is',
is something you cannot talk about. You cannot really talk about
anicca. You cannot think about anicca actually, because when you
really experience it; it is something you cannot talk about. The
moment you try to think about it, it is not there anymore. That's
why when you are meditating you cannot say "Oh... something
is arising and passing away, that is anicca." At that moment you
are not meditating anymore, you are using your thinking process;
you are in ordinary reality again.

It will happen, naturally many, many times in your meditation
practice because we are used to thinking and analysing. We
think that only when we think about something that we can
understand it. We try to go back to think, analyze and understand.
It will happen many, many times and when it happens just
look and just say... "thinking".... Even thinking "this is nama",
this is a thought and when you think, "this is rupa" this is also
a thought. If you think "this is arising and passing away, this is
anicca", it actually is another thought.

Watch those flashes of thoughts coming into your mind.
The more you can see the more you can let go.
It won't go immediately, it is very difficult, but gradually
those flashes of naming will go away slowly and
slowly and then with no words arising in your mind
you can be directly in touch with what is and
you understand it without conceptualizing.

If you can do that the rest is quite easy. The difficulty is that
we always try to think about it and we get distracted. If we can
be really in touch with one sensation, one awareness, the rest
will come quite easily.

Gradually I'll explain about the stages of vipassana ñama
(insight knowledge), how they develop. It is very interesting,
very natural, although it is better for you not to know about this
and just meditate. Before I meditated I didn't read these things.
I just went to the forest to meditate and my teacher told me
not to read any books. Quite often I would go and listen to his
dhamma talks and after a while he said "don't come to dhamma
talks". He wouldn't let me come and listen to dhamma talks
even, "go away and just meditate, if you have any questions,
come, if you don't have any questions just meditate". Some
times I tried to get a book because I liked to read, and tried to
hide the book somewhere, and then some days he would ask me
"are you reading?" "Not much... not much"... because I was
really scared that he asked me, he said "don't read, you have got
enough to do and you'll have more time to read later, give up
reading, just meditate, be in touch with your body and mind".
After I had meditated for three years I started reading Dhamma
books and found out that it was really true... what is in the
book, I have experienced all those things and now I find out it
is in the books. Then I have more confidence in the teaching
... this is real!

What did I do when I meditated? I did something very simple,
actually. I didn't do anything. I just tried to be in touch with
what is happening right now; when I found myself thinking I
tried to get in touch with my thoughts. At first I would be thinking
for a long time and then I remembered "I am thinking"...
and I thought "where did I start?" And then I would try to trace
back the thoughts. It was very interesting, how it links one thing
to another, thoughts and ideas they link. Then when I got to
the starting point I thought "I started here, ended there and the
two have not anything to do with each other!" And then slowly
and slowly I would start thinking and catch myself thinking and
it stopped... It is very hard to stay in that state. I had to get
in touch with some other sensations immediately otherwise I
would start thinking about another thing. Then slowly, in slow
motion I see the words forming in my mind. It is very interesting,
slow motion words, ideas coming in my mind, one word
after another and then stop thinking again!

 Later I found out that whenever I think about a word there
is some sort of emotion that comes with it, which is beyond
words. Later I found out that before I think about something
there is already some vague idea in my mind about what I want
to think, whether about a person, about food or about some
thing to do. Before I form a word in my mind I have a very
vague feeling of what it is, something is coming up, it is very
subtle. When I become aware of it, something coming up, it
disappears again... and I settle down again. Because there is
something coming up I was not in a really settled state. My mind
has some sort of agitation. It is jumping, and something is pushing.
When I become aware of this feeling or emotion or a desire
to do something, even a desire to drink a cup of water, I can see
the desire and it disappears. Sometimes, I see the image of the
cup of water in my mind. When I want to drink I see the image
of the water pot, the cup of water and I feel the thirsty sensation
and when I become aware of that, it disappears again and my
body and mind settle down again. All the time there is something
churning inside like a pot boiling. The more you become
aware of that the more it settles down and then I just stopped
thinking, not doing anything.

The awareness is just there,
not trying to be aware of anything... just there,
like a big piece of mirror, everything that passes in front
of the mirror is reflected in the mirror.
The mirror is not trying to take any object.

The object passes, sensation happens and automatically it
is aware of it and it goes away. The awareness is just there. You
are not doing anything. At that stage meditation is not something
that you do. Meditation is something that is happening
naturally. But it will take sometime to get there. One person
said "You have been meditating for a long time and maybe you
forgot how hard it is for a beginner"; I think that is true. When
I think about all that again I remember that in the beginning I
wanted to run away. I felt so hopeless and I thought "this is not
for me although I really want to do it". I had the habit of thinking
too much; I liked to read psychology, philosophy, comparative
religions, which had me thinking too much. I wanted to become
a writer also. Sometimes I would be sitting and I would be writing
an article, a dhamma article, wonderful thoughts coming
in my mind, wonderful ideas developing in my mind. I thought
"oh... this is wonderful, I have to write this. Nobody has ever
thought like me!! I can really explain this, I can really inspire".
Then my teacher said "don't write, don't even make a record of
your meditation," because if you try to keep a record when you
sit and meditate you'll think "uh ha... this is wonderful, I will
write it down" and at that moment your meditation is gone. You
can't go beyond that.

You even have to let go of your insight,
"this is happening, ok, let go, let go".
Do you see how much you have to let go?
We get attached to our understanding,
our deep understanding.


QUESTION &  AN S W E R:

The word khanika samadhi is very difficult.
Most people don't understand clearly what it means because
when you translate it, it means momentary concentration,
and what does the word momentary mean? It has this name,
khanika samadhi so that we can talk about different samadhi.
In jhana samadhi, appana-samadhi or upacara samadhi,
absorption concentration and access concentration, the
mind is in touch with a concept that does not change. The
object of samadhi is something that does not change. The
object of vipassana is a process, not a thing, which means
the object of vipassana is something changing. Something
changing means it stays for a while and it goes away. For the
time being the object is there and the awareness is there.
The awareness of that object is there, because awareness
and object arise together. When the object is not there anymore,
the awareness of that object is not there anymore.
But a new object arises and the mind is aware of that also.
Because the object lasts only for a moment the awareness or
samadhi for that object lasts only for a moment, naturally.
This awareness repeats again and again on different objects;
it might just be brief but is continually aware of it.

 In breath and out breath are two different things. Even
the sensation that is happening in one breath is changing. It
takes about two three seconds. It changes quite a lot. Even
though the same thing repeats again and again there is a
kind of change. For example you touch like this many times.
Even though you felt the same thing every time, it is a new
sensation. If you are aware of every time you touch yourself
like this you'll develop khanika samadhi and you can stay
with this khanika samadhi for long time. It might be for a
few seconds and it will become a few minutes and it can
become a few hours even. Some people when they develop
very deep samadhi in meditation, vipassana meditation,
the awareness and the object become like glue; it is like
something very sticky that you throw to the wall and sticks
there. In the beginning it is like you are throwing a tennis
ball to the wall. It touches the object and bounces back.
But after a while you throw something and it stays there.
Although the object is arising and passing away your awareness
is continuously aware of that arising and passing away.
There is continuity there. Because the object is changing we
call it khanika samadhi.

 It does not mean that just by developing a few minutes
of concentration we can develop deep wisdom or attain liberation.
But we begin with a few seconds of concentration
and develop it into more and more seconds and it become
one, two, three minutes and so on. It will stay for one or two
minutes and you get distracted for a few seconds and you
become aware of that and you are back; it happens like that.
In jhana samadhi you can determine that "I will be with
this object for an hour without distraction". It is like you
are hypnotizing yourself and giving yourself suggestions, and
you can stay with that object for one hour without moving.
But with vipassana the object is always changing. No matter
how many changes in objects it does not matter, as long as
you are aware of it, it is ok.

 In a certain stage of vipassana meditation when you
have developed awareness so that you are aware of one
thing after another arising and passing away in front of you,
just like you are sitting looking out from the window and
you see one car after another passing. You are not trying to
think about the car whether it is a Toyota, Mazda, yellow or
white. You are aware of that, one thing after another going
away, no choice.

In the beginning of meditation
you choose a suitable object of meditation -
breathing, rising and falling or touching sensation
in your body, whatever is suitable - and
after a while you have no choice anymore.
You stay aware!
The objects might change all the time but
your awareness is continuous.
In meditation things always change.
The meditation experience does not stay
the same all the time.

Sometimes your mind can get absorbed into one thing
and you see the same type of sensation - not one thing but
the same type - for example, you touch like this, it is the
same type of sensation although it is not one sensation, but
the same type of sensation arising and passing away. You can
see the object, you can see the awareness both arising and
passing away, very quickly. Sometimes you become aware
of different things arising and passing away, not the same
type of object, different types of objects arising and passing
away very fast, but no matter how fast they arise and pass
away, you can keep up with it just like a juggler, juggling
balls and rings, many things at the same time. The awareness
becomes like that.

Don't expect that your meditation will be the same
always. Sometimes your awareness becomes very broad;
sometimes it closes down and down to one thing only, to
one very subtle thing. Sometimes you need to understand
when the scope is too broad and you cannot keep up with
it anymore, you lose your concentration, you get distracted;
at that time you should understand "now I need to close
down". When you close down and down to one thing, the
more you become concentrated on one object, the more
subtle the object becomes and after a while it seems it is
disappearing, you cannot experience it anymore. It happens
sometimes, the samadhi becomes too strong and you lose
the clarity of the object. In that kind of situation you need
to choose another thing, two things so that you keep awake.
Sometimes you get absorbed and it becomes like samatha.
You don't see arising and passing away anymore. You get
absorbed and you stay there.

 In vipassana samadhi just to be absorbed and still and
calm it is not enough, we need to see the characteristics of
the object.

There are two characteristics of the object in meditation.
One is the natural characteristic and another
one is the shared characteristic.

Natural characteristic means, let's say hardness, softness,
heat and cold. Hotness and coldness are not the same as
heat and cold, they are different, but what is common is
that both arise and pass away. That is common, shared. This
natural, inherent characteristic is a shared characteristic,
meaning whatever it might be, everything arises and passes
away, and they are common in that regard.


u jotika A Map of the Journey

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