Posted by: Dhammañāṇa
« on: January 20, 2014, 05:27:34 PM » Thanissaro Bhikkhu - 110424 Remembering Ajaan Lee
Transcribed by Pantheralionel
http://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/y2011/110424%20Remembering%20Ajaan%20Lee.mp3
Ajaan Lee once actually wrote two books, on establishing mindfulness. Each one is distinctive. The first one is distinctive because of the emphasis he placed on the three qualities you bring to the practice -- mindfuless, alertness and harnassing. That's the recurring theme throughout the book. Mindfulness he defines as keeping something in mind. And as he points on just the practice of simply keeping something in mind doesn't guarantee anything good at all -- you can keep anything in mind. When you keep the body and feelings in mind you do not necessarily get anywhere with them. The two other qualities -- they need to UNKNOWNTERM2_1:03 together are they -- the alertness is when you are actually watching what is happening and you keep referring back to the mind. You look at the UNKNOWNTERM3_1:13 keeping track of the mind, how is the mind staying with the breath. It is the alertness that actually keeps you there, keeps you together with the object. And then he says there is UNKNOWNTERM1_1:25 he defines UNKNOWNTERM1_1:30 in different ways as he goes to the book.
First it's just the effort that you put into focusing something, but it's also the effort you put on/into figuring it out, analyzing it, so we are not here just accepting what is happening we are trying to figure out what is happening.. look for the causes because this fits in with the four noble truths -- we are looking for the cause of suffering, we want to see what arises together with the suffering what passes away together with the suffering UNKNOWNTERM4_2:03where it comes from. And this focused analysis is also a burning away of the defilement, as soon as you see the defilement for what it is and how stupid it is, and how harmful it is, and how unnecessary it is, that's what burns it away.
So as we were sitting here meditating it's not just a matter of accepting whatever comes up or being intimate with whatever comes up, or whatever the latest phrases that people like to use. You stick with it, so you can understand it, and it does require some active movement of the mind. This ties in with Ajaan Lee's
teachings on concentration that the role that directed thought and evaluation have in helping you to settle down -- he says the evaluation there is the beginning of discernment. You take your thinking processes and you actually put them to use. You don't try to just UNKNOWNTERM5_3:07 them out of the mind, you figure out which thoughts are useful and whichones are not. You try to use useful kind of thinking, to stay right on target. The image he uses is of a person holding on to a post and then spinning around and around and around the post. He says that as long as you hold on tight to the post the spinning around it doesn't get you dizzy. But if you try to spin around out in the middle of the field
without anything to hold on to you get dizzy and you just fall right down. So there is an active quality to the meditation.
And this fits in with the second book that he wrote on -- Establishing Mindfulness, which ties mindfuless practice together with concentration practice. They are not two separate things, you hold something in mind and you are alert to what's going on, and as you analyze what's going on you get into the First Jhana. And this is not Jhana-lite, you have to remember that Ajaan Lee among all of Ajaan Mun's students was said to have the strongest powers of concentration. The stories of his being able to stop the engine of a bus, getting other people to levitate to the power of his concentration -- his concentration was amazing. So the fact that you are thinking as part of the concentration doesn't mean that concentration is light, it means that you are bringing all of your mental powers to bear. And in some cases you will let go of the thinking to get into really deeper stages of concentration. But you learn how to balance the thinking and the stillness. Cos it is the balance between the two that enables you to develop the discernment that can root out your defilements. Or as he had said, "burn them away".
So it is good to think about this as you practise. If you are having trouble settling down ask yourself what's the problem here. If you don't understand the problem it is hard for the mind to settle down. So it is not just analysing the breath coming in and out it is also analysing how you are relating to the breath, how you are thinking about the breath, what's pulling you away. Cos sometimes in order to stay with the breath you really ahve to do some brush clearing.
If you see that there is a particular concern or a particular obsession you've got that is pulling away your breath you've got to deal with it you can't pretend
it's not there. That's where you use your focused powers of UNKNOWNTERM1_6:07 to look at the defilement, whether it's greed, or lust, or aversion, or delusion, or whatever the defilement is. If it is really insistent keeps
coming back you've got to look at them and figure out why is the mind like this and also look at what the drawbacks are or (as) the Buddha talks about the seeing both the allure and the drawbacks, so that you can figure out the escape.
So as a meditator you need lots of tools and you
realise you have to bring all your mental powers to bear. Some of the
tools are simply being mindful and when you noticed that you slipped off
you come right back, no big problem. Other times you really have to
look into the drawbacks -- why you're lusting after this, why you grieve
for that, why do you hate this, or why you do you dislike that --
what's going on. You've have to dig around. You've to dig back to your
child you just dig around to why right now are you focused on that.
Other times or when you just look at the defilement you relax around it
and it just goes away. As Ajaan Lee says it gets embarraased and it
leaves you. What you are realising you're just holding on to some
tension that you don't have to hold to, you let it go. That's one
tactic. Sometimes you read that that's the big tactic is learning how to
soften up around it or how to relax around it, whatever the problem is.
That works for some problems but not with everything. This again is
part of having a skill or having a full panoply of tools. Cos
you have to remember your defilements have a lot of tools as well.
You have to learn how to be strategic. This is an aspect of the teaching
that most people tend to forget, they think what you have to do is to
follow the Buddha's teachings and do what He tells you to do, you don't
have to think too much about it and then some methods actually advise
against thinking, but you end up in a blind alley. Cos after all what is
this path that we are following? It's made up of the aggregates, it too
is fabricated. And eventually you are going to get rid of these
fabrications. So you are using fabrications to work against
fabrications.
There are alot of paradoxical elements in the
path. You're reading the basic textbook on early Buddhism it all seems
very straightforward and just a little bit too simplistic. Alot of the
people when they are looking for paradox, (they) quickly slip over the
early teachings and move on to the Mahayana. Was talking one time to a
young woman who was taking an introduction to Buddhist Philosophy in a
university nearby, and the professor was saying that ok we have to go
through a little of the Pali Cannon here but then the really interesting
stuff will come in a couple of weeks. And they talked the Four Noble
Truths as if there was nothing paradoxical in there at all. There are
huge paradoxes. Becoming is part of the problem you have to create a
path which is a form of becoming (to kind of) get beyond it. We are
trying to get beyond fabrication but we have to fabricate the path. We
are going to be using insights of what is inconstant, stressful, and
not-self, yet when you are developing concentration you are trying to
create a sense of something that is constant, and easeful, and you've
got under your control. This particularly is one of the paradoxes that
Ajaan Lee liked to focus on. As he said before the Buddha let go of
everything as stressful, inconstant and notself, He first took what was
stressful and turned it into something positive, like this in a way
(we're) working with the breath right now. He took what's inconstant --
this changable mind, and made it steady, solid, and all these things
that are not-self the Buddha learned how to take feeling, perception,
form, fabrications (and) consciousness all these aggregates they are
ultimately beyond our control but He learnt how to bring them under
enough control to turn them into a path. He used the path as a place to
stand so that He can look at His other fabrications in the mind and see
which things were really unskilful when you provide yourself with a
sense of ease that is alot easier to let go of -- the old habits you
have, the feeling ?and the kind of things? that are harmful
both for yourself and for other people.
So you need to work on
this path, strengthen it, keep it going, so you can use it against
everything that is not the path. And then you turn the path on itself,
cos ultimately you want to go beyond both constancy and inconstancy,
stress and ease, self and not-self, and this is another theme you see
often in Ajaan Lee's teachings... ultimately even nirvana, even right
view gets put aside. Nirvana doesn't a need right view or wrong view, it
goes beyond the views. This is something alot of people tend to forget,
they think well the Buddha taught Right View and that's the view of the
Enlightened Mind. Well the Enlightened Mind is something way beyond
Right View.
There's a story in the Cannon when Anāthapiṇḍika who
was a stream winner was asked by some sectarians what does the Buddha
believe, what are His views. And here Anāthapiṇḍika was already a streamwinner but he said I really don't know fully what the Buddha's views are. So the
perspective of an Enlightened One is ?almost something? that lies beyond the
path, the path is our strategy it is our tactic. This is something you
find again, and again and again in Ajaan Lee's teachings. You've got to
think strategically if you're gonna get anywhere on the path. So (it)
just keep stirring you back on yourself, your own powers of observation,
your own ingenuity, your own honesty. Those are the qualities that are
absolutely central to the path.
As the Buddha once said, "Bring
me someone who is observant and truthful and I will teach that person
the Dharma." There's not just being observant and truthful, there's also
that own element of ingenuity. You face a problem in your meditation,
the Buddha is not going to be there to whisper in your ear to tell you
what to do. You find yourself facing a wall you gotta figure out maybe
there's some way around the wall, maybe I've created the wall. How can I
uncreate it, (or) how can I stop doing the things that created the wall
because remember look at things as actions -- one of the most useful
ways of looking at problems in the mind it's an activity that's causing
the the problem. Usually it is a repeated activity it is repeated so
often it seems solid. It's like a noise, it gets repeated again and
again and again so quickly, there seems like a steady noise but if you
actually make a recording out of it you'll see that the noise comes and
goes, comes and goes, it's the same with all the problems in the mind
they seem solid but you have to remember that they are activities and
they are results of activities which come and go. You've gotta figure
out (ok) where is the mind doing this activity. That is one of the
meanings of Dharma in action.
So try to use your ingenuity and
turn your perceptions inside out. As the Buddha said "Perceptions are
one of the factors that fabricates the mind." And you have to learn how
to question your perceptions -- the ones that you hold too so steadily,
maybe they are the problem. So this helps to just pull you back from
your perceptions and the way of mastering the aggregates.. the way of
letting go of the aggregates is that you have to just master them first
as activities, and it is only when you have mastered something you will
really let it go or as Ajaan Lee says at that point you can let go like a
wealthy person. If you haven't reached that point if you let go of the
aggregates you let go like a poor person, there's nothing at all. But if
you develop all the good that can come out of the aggregates then when
you let them go they are not going to abandon you, there're there, and
whenever you need them you can pick them up and use them. It's like a
wealthy person that's have lots of wealth in his house, (he) doesn't
have to carry it around it's there though .. for when he needs it.
You have got a lot of good things in these aggregates and it's (about)
learning to figure out what's good in here. It's not all just misery.
The Buddha was able to take His aggregates and not only create states of
concentration, He was able to use the aggregates to act as discernment,
He was able to use the aggregates to develop all kinds of psychic
powers and learn all kinds of things about the world. So there is alot
of good in here to dig out. And it is (about) learning to figure out
which is the good part, and how it can be used wisely, which are the
parts you just have to cast away. That is alot of discernment right
there. And then this is just a matter of discernment that the books can
give us some guidance in but we to learn to use our own powers of
observation and our own ingenuity to make the most of what we've got.
So when you look at Ajaan Lee's teachings these are some of the lessons
that you have learned and the lessons that are really worth taking to
heart.
Legend
A : Unable to comprehend
Z : Second opinion
required
http://web.archive.org/web/20121015183306/http://www.knowbuddhism.info/2012/05/remembering-ajahn-lee-thanissaro.html
Transcribed by Pantheralionel
http://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/y2011/110424%20Remembering%20Ajaan%20Lee.mp3
Ajaan Lee once actually wrote two books, on establishing mindfulness. Each one is distinctive. The first one is distinctive because of the emphasis he placed on the three qualities you bring to the practice -- mindfuless, alertness and harnassing. That's the recurring theme throughout the book. Mindfulness he defines as keeping something in mind. And as he points on just the practice of simply keeping something in mind doesn't guarantee anything good at all -- you can keep anything in mind. When you keep the body and feelings in mind you do not necessarily get anywhere with them. The two other qualities -- they need to UNKNOWNTERM2_1:03 together are they -- the alertness is when you are actually watching what is happening and you keep referring back to the mind. You look at the UNKNOWNTERM3_1:13 keeping track of the mind, how is the mind staying with the breath. It is the alertness that actually keeps you there, keeps you together with the object. And then he says there is UNKNOWNTERM1_1:25 he defines UNKNOWNTERM1_1:30 in different ways as he goes to the book.
First it's just the effort that you put into focusing something, but it's also the effort you put on/into figuring it out, analyzing it, so we are not here just accepting what is happening we are trying to figure out what is happening.. look for the causes because this fits in with the four noble truths -- we are looking for the cause of suffering, we want to see what arises together with the suffering what passes away together with the suffering UNKNOWNTERM4_2:03where it comes from. And this focused analysis is also a burning away of the defilement, as soon as you see the defilement for what it is and how stupid it is, and how harmful it is, and how unnecessary it is, that's what burns it away.
So as we were sitting here meditating it's not just a matter of accepting whatever comes up or being intimate with whatever comes up, or whatever the latest phrases that people like to use. You stick with it, so you can understand it, and it does require some active movement of the mind. This ties in with Ajaan Lee's
teachings on concentration that the role that directed thought and evaluation have in helping you to settle down -- he says the evaluation there is the beginning of discernment. You take your thinking processes and you actually put them to use. You don't try to just UNKNOWNTERM5_3:07 them out of the mind, you figure out which thoughts are useful and whichones are not. You try to use useful kind of thinking, to stay right on target. The image he uses is of a person holding on to a post and then spinning around and around and around the post. He says that as long as you hold on tight to the post the spinning around it doesn't get you dizzy. But if you try to spin around out in the middle of the field
without anything to hold on to you get dizzy and you just fall right down. So there is an active quality to the meditation.
And this fits in with the second book that he wrote on -- Establishing Mindfulness, which ties mindfuless practice together with concentration practice. They are not two separate things, you hold something in mind and you are alert to what's going on, and as you analyze what's going on you get into the First Jhana. And this is not Jhana-lite, you have to remember that Ajaan Lee among all of Ajaan Mun's students was said to have the strongest powers of concentration. The stories of his being able to stop the engine of a bus, getting other people to levitate to the power of his concentration -- his concentration was amazing. So the fact that you are thinking as part of the concentration doesn't mean that concentration is light, it means that you are bringing all of your mental powers to bear. And in some cases you will let go of the thinking to get into really deeper stages of concentration. But you learn how to balance the thinking and the stillness. Cos it is the balance between the two that enables you to develop the discernment that can root out your defilements. Or as he had said, "burn them away".
So it is good to think about this as you practise. If you are having trouble settling down ask yourself what's the problem here. If you don't understand the problem it is hard for the mind to settle down. So it is not just analysing the breath coming in and out it is also analysing how you are relating to the breath, how you are thinking about the breath, what's pulling you away. Cos sometimes in order to stay with the breath you really ahve to do some brush clearing.
If you see that there is a particular concern or a particular obsession you've got that is pulling away your breath you've got to deal with it you can't pretend
it's not there. That's where you use your focused powers of UNKNOWNTERM1_6:07 to look at the defilement, whether it's greed, or lust, or aversion, or delusion, or whatever the defilement is. If it is really insistent keeps
coming back you've got to look at them and figure out why is the mind like this and also look at what the drawbacks are or (as) the Buddha talks about the seeing both the allure and the drawbacks, so that you can figure out the escape.
So as a meditator you need lots of tools and you
realise you have to bring all your mental powers to bear. Some of the
tools are simply being mindful and when you noticed that you slipped off
you come right back, no big problem. Other times you really have to
look into the drawbacks -- why you're lusting after this, why you grieve
for that, why do you hate this, or why you do you dislike that --
what's going on. You've have to dig around. You've to dig back to your
child you just dig around to why right now are you focused on that.
Other times or when you just look at the defilement you relax around it
and it just goes away. As Ajaan Lee says it gets embarraased and it
leaves you. What you are realising you're just holding on to some
tension that you don't have to hold to, you let it go. That's one
tactic. Sometimes you read that that's the big tactic is learning how to
soften up around it or how to relax around it, whatever the problem is.
That works for some problems but not with everything. This again is
part of having a skill or having a full panoply of tools. Cos
you have to remember your defilements have a lot of tools as well.
You have to learn how to be strategic. This is an aspect of the teaching
that most people tend to forget, they think what you have to do is to
follow the Buddha's teachings and do what He tells you to do, you don't
have to think too much about it and then some methods actually advise
against thinking, but you end up in a blind alley. Cos after all what is
this path that we are following? It's made up of the aggregates, it too
is fabricated. And eventually you are going to get rid of these
fabrications. So you are using fabrications to work against
fabrications.
There are alot of paradoxical elements in the
path. You're reading the basic textbook on early Buddhism it all seems
very straightforward and just a little bit too simplistic. Alot of the
people when they are looking for paradox, (they) quickly slip over the
early teachings and move on to the Mahayana. Was talking one time to a
young woman who was taking an introduction to Buddhist Philosophy in a
university nearby, and the professor was saying that ok we have to go
through a little of the Pali Cannon here but then the really interesting
stuff will come in a couple of weeks. And they talked the Four Noble
Truths as if there was nothing paradoxical in there at all. There are
huge paradoxes. Becoming is part of the problem you have to create a
path which is a form of becoming (to kind of) get beyond it. We are
trying to get beyond fabrication but we have to fabricate the path. We
are going to be using insights of what is inconstant, stressful, and
not-self, yet when you are developing concentration you are trying to
create a sense of something that is constant, and easeful, and you've
got under your control. This particularly is one of the paradoxes that
Ajaan Lee liked to focus on. As he said before the Buddha let go of
everything as stressful, inconstant and notself, He first took what was
stressful and turned it into something positive, like this in a way
(we're) working with the breath right now. He took what's inconstant --
this changable mind, and made it steady, solid, and all these things
that are not-self the Buddha learned how to take feeling, perception,
form, fabrications (and) consciousness all these aggregates they are
ultimately beyond our control but He learnt how to bring them under
enough control to turn them into a path. He used the path as a place to
stand so that He can look at His other fabrications in the mind and see
which things were really unskilful when you provide yourself with a
sense of ease that is alot easier to let go of -- the old habits you
have, the feeling ?and the kind of things? that are harmful
both for yourself and for other people.
So you need to work on
this path, strengthen it, keep it going, so you can use it against
everything that is not the path. And then you turn the path on itself,
cos ultimately you want to go beyond both constancy and inconstancy,
stress and ease, self and not-self, and this is another theme you see
often in Ajaan Lee's teachings... ultimately even nirvana, even right
view gets put aside. Nirvana doesn't a need right view or wrong view, it
goes beyond the views. This is something alot of people tend to forget,
they think well the Buddha taught Right View and that's the view of the
Enlightened Mind. Well the Enlightened Mind is something way beyond
Right View.
There's a story in the Cannon when Anāthapiṇḍika who
was a stream winner was asked by some sectarians what does the Buddha
believe, what are His views. And here Anāthapiṇḍika was already a streamwinner but he said I really don't know fully what the Buddha's views are. So the
perspective of an Enlightened One is ?almost something? that lies beyond the
path, the path is our strategy it is our tactic. This is something you
find again, and again and again in Ajaan Lee's teachings. You've got to
think strategically if you're gonna get anywhere on the path. So (it)
just keep stirring you back on yourself, your own powers of observation,
your own ingenuity, your own honesty. Those are the qualities that are
absolutely central to the path.
As the Buddha once said, "Bring
me someone who is observant and truthful and I will teach that person
the Dharma." There's not just being observant and truthful, there's also
that own element of ingenuity. You face a problem in your meditation,
the Buddha is not going to be there to whisper in your ear to tell you
what to do. You find yourself facing a wall you gotta figure out maybe
there's some way around the wall, maybe I've created the wall. How can I
uncreate it, (or) how can I stop doing the things that created the wall
because remember look at things as actions -- one of the most useful
ways of looking at problems in the mind it's an activity that's causing
the the problem. Usually it is a repeated activity it is repeated so
often it seems solid. It's like a noise, it gets repeated again and
again and again so quickly, there seems like a steady noise but if you
actually make a recording out of it you'll see that the noise comes and
goes, comes and goes, it's the same with all the problems in the mind
they seem solid but you have to remember that they are activities and
they are results of activities which come and go. You've gotta figure
out (ok) where is the mind doing this activity. That is one of the
meanings of Dharma in action.
So try to use your ingenuity and
turn your perceptions inside out. As the Buddha said "Perceptions are
one of the factors that fabricates the mind." And you have to learn how
to question your perceptions -- the ones that you hold too so steadily,
maybe they are the problem. So this helps to just pull you back from
your perceptions and the way of mastering the aggregates.. the way of
letting go of the aggregates is that you have to just master them first
as activities, and it is only when you have mastered something you will
really let it go or as Ajaan Lee says at that point you can let go like a
wealthy person. If you haven't reached that point if you let go of the
aggregates you let go like a poor person, there's nothing at all. But if
you develop all the good that can come out of the aggregates then when
you let them go they are not going to abandon you, there're there, and
whenever you need them you can pick them up and use them. It's like a
wealthy person that's have lots of wealth in his house, (he) doesn't
have to carry it around it's there though .. for when he needs it.
You have got a lot of good things in these aggregates and it's (about)
learning to figure out what's good in here. It's not all just misery.
The Buddha was able to take His aggregates and not only create states of
concentration, He was able to use the aggregates to act as discernment,
He was able to use the aggregates to develop all kinds of psychic
powers and learn all kinds of things about the world. So there is alot
of good in here to dig out. And it is (about) learning to figure out
which is the good part, and how it can be used wisely, which are the
parts you just have to cast away. That is alot of discernment right
there. And then this is just a matter of discernment that the books can
give us some guidance in but we to learn to use our own powers of
observation and our own ingenuity to make the most of what we've got.
So when you look at Ajaan Lee's teachings these are some of the lessons
that you have learned and the lessons that are really worth taking to
heart.
Legend
A : Unable to comprehend
Z : Second opinion
required
http://web.archive.org/web/20121015183306/http://www.knowbuddhism.info/2012/05/remembering-ajahn-lee-thanissaro.html
