Meditations9 by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Author:Thanissaro Bhikkhu [Bhikkhu, Thanissaro]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Buddha, Buddhism, Dhamma, Dharma, Jhana, Meditation, Breath Meditation, Thai Forest Tradition, Pali Canon, Theravada
Publisher: Metta Forest Monastery
Published: 2019-02-13T08:00:00+00:00

Cut, Cut, Cut

December 2, 2016

The chants we have in the evenings focus on very ordinary things—parts of the body, food, clothing, shelter, medicine; the fact that we’re going to get sick, grow old, die. All very basic stuff. Nothing about emptiness, nothing about interconnectedness—no big abstractions, just concrete details.

There’s a purpose in that. It’s to remind us that if we want to understand our minds, we have to strip things down to the basic details, keep things as simple as possible.

Even the meditation is simplicity itself: Stay with your breath. Come next week to hear a Dhamma talk, and it will be about staying with the breath. Be right with what’s present in front of you, and don’t let things get complicated.

That’s something we’re very good at—we let things get very complicated in our minds. That’s one of the meanings of papañca. We can add all kinds of details, all kinds of ins and outs to our thinking. But that takes us further and further away from the real issues: What are we doing right now that’s causing us suffering? You have to learn how to look right at your own actions, and that requires you to strip things down, make things as simple as possible.

This is one of the reasons why the ajaans go into the forest, to go off to be on their own. They strip away as many issues as they can, to be confronted just by the basic facts of life, the basic facts of survival. If you’re going to live in the forest, you need to have food, clothing, and shelter—very basic, minimal stuff. It’s possible that you’re going to get sick, so you’re going to need medicine, too. And what do you do when those things are hard to come by? You’re thrown back on your own mind.

Of course, if going into the forest were required for awakening, we shouldn’t be here; we should be off someplace else. But it turns out that a lot of the ajaans, many of the ones you often don’t hear about, actually gained their experience of awakening in monasteries. So it’s not necessary that you strip everything down outside, but you do have to learn to strip things down in your own mind.

This is the trick of living in a monastery, living in a community like this: not getting all tied up in knots. Learning how to keep things basic, keep things simple, in your own mind at least. There may be other issues going on outside—there always seems to be a work project of some kind, and there’s the constant work in the kitchen. But compared to the world out there, this is all pretty simple. Of course, we can make it as elaborate as we want in our minds, but that’s against the purpose. The purpose is to keep things simple, keep things basic. And the more you can strip away the issues of the day, the better.

When you sit and close your eyes, you want to have all those things just go away.

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