An Unentangled Knowing: The Teachings of a Thai Buddhist Lay Woman by Upāsikā Kee Nanayon

Author:Upāsikā Kee Nanayon [Nanayon, Upāsikā Kee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Buddhism, Dhamma, Dharma, Jhana, Meditation, Theravada, Thai
Publisher: Metta Forest Monastery
Published: 2017-02-16T08:00:00+00:00

Simply Stop Right Here

November 28, 1970

Today we have gathered for our regular meeting.

The way we’ve been contemplating to the point of giving rise to knowledge through genuine mindfulness and discernment makes us realize how this is a process of disbanding suffering and defilement. Whenever mindfulness lapses and we latch on to anything, our practice of reading ourselves step by step will enable us to realize the situation easily. This helps us keep the mind under control and does a world of good. Still, it’s not enough, for the affairs of suffering and defilement are paramount issues buried deep in the character. We thus we have to contemplate and examine things within ourselves.

Looking outside is something we’re already used to: Whenever we know things outside, the mind is in a turmoil instead of being empty and at peace. This is something we can all be aware of. And this is why we have to maintain the mind in its state of neutrality or mindful centeredness. We then notice from our experience in the practice: What state have we been able to maintain the mind in? Is our mindfulness continuous throughout all our activities? These are things we all have to notice, using our own powers of observation. When the mind deviates from its foundation because of mental fabrications, thinking up all sort of turmoil for itself as it’s used to doing, what can we do to make it settle down and grow still? If it doesn’t grow still, it gets involved in nothing but stress: wandering around thinking, imagining, taking on all sorts of things. That’s stress. You have to keep reading these things at all times, seeing clearly the ways in which they’re inconstant, changing, and stressful.

Now, if you understand the nature of arising and passing away by turning inward to watch the arising and passing away within yourself, you realize that it’s neither good nor bad nor anything of the sort. It’s simply a natural process of arising, persisting, and passing away. Try to see deeply into this, and you’ll be sweeping the mind clean, just as when you constantly sweep out your house: If anything then comes to make it dirty, you’ll be able to detect it. So with every moment, we have to sweep out whatever arises, persists, and then passes away. Let it all pass away, without latching on or clinging to anything. Try to make the mind aware of this state of unattachment within itself: If it doesn’t latch on to anything, doesn’t cling to anything, there’s no commotion in it. It’s empty and at peace.

This state of awareness is so worth knowing, for it doesn’t require that you know a lot of things at all. You simply have to contemplate so as to see the inconstancy of form, feelings, perceptions, thought-fabrications, and consciousness. Or you can contemplate whatever preoccupies the mind as it continually changes—arising and passing away—with every moment. This is something you have to contemplate until you really know it. Otherwise, you’ll fall for your preoccupations in line with the way you label sensory contacts.

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