Luang Por Sumedho - “We can’t attain it – we realize it”...As we move into different situations, if we exercise our reflective capacities, then we keep learning from life’s experiences. All kinds of strengths and abilities develop to cope with exotic or strange, difficult or uncertain situations that before we would have been absolutely overwhelmed by...
In Buddhist meditation we distinguish between samatha and vipassana, and these are both important to develop. Samatha is to learn how to concentrate the mind on an object like the breath, or whatever sign we are using. Now that has to be developed to where we contain the mind and keep it from wandering. We sustain and hold our attention on the object we have chosen. It’s a mental exercise that gives the mind a kind of sharpness. But as an end in itself it cannot enlighten us. We can’t be enlightened through just concentrating our mind even to a very refined level, like the arupa-jhanas, the formless states of absorption. The insight into the true nature of things is not possible until we start reflecting and looking into, examining and investigating the way things are. Samatha is actually a very simple practice. We tend to complicate it by analyzing and thinking about it – and then, of course it becomes an impossibility. It’s merely that ability to choose an object and hold our attention there, a way of training the mind. Most of our minds have not been trained in that way before we became Buddhist monks. We’re from a society that uses discursive and associative thoughts. Our minds are conditioned to think in rational ways. This sharpens our critical faculties, but also our ability to doubt increases. The more we think about life, the more we experience doubt, uncertainty and anxiety. Our critical faculties are definitely sharpened through modern attitudes, like competition. We’re always busy comparing: “This is better than that. This is good. That is bad. Bad, worse, worst – good, better, best.” Samatha is often easier for people who are even illiterate, their critical faculties not highly developed yet. The mind tends not to wander or doubt so much. People with a lot of confidence, faith and conviction find it much easier than those being caught in anxiety, insecurity, worry and despair. Which is very much the result of a self, created out of desires and fear. We tend to introspect and analyze ourselves. We evaluate and criticize. These kinds of mental habits make concentration increasingly difficult.
Here in Thailand, the Thai monks already have a tremendous amount of faith in and devotion to the Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha. They have a foundation of trust and confidence, of saddha. This is not so common to find amongst the Westerners, because most of us come to Buddhism out of intellectual interest. Sometimes we can appreciate it on that level, but our hearts are completely cold. We can be quite impressed by the brilliance of the teaching, and still not feel very much devotion and gratitude, or any of these more heartfelt qualities, which are definitely helpful and supportive in practising samatha meditation.
Conditions around us are also important. We can’t very well do samatha in a place where there is a lot of sensory impingement and demands. The less there is impinging on us, the easier it is to concentrate our minds. We could go off to a sensory deprivation tank, a cave or some isolated place where we could stay and not have demands and expectations placed on us; where there are no harsh, aggravating and annoying impingements. We can get quite naturally calm with no sounds and nothing to look at. After the initial restlessness and resistance, we go into a concentrated state of mind quite naturally.
Vipassana then is where we use wisdom. The surrounding conditions are not the important issue any more. We’re looking into the nature of things without seeking ideal conditions for that, but just observing the way things are. We use the three characteristics of anicca, dukkha, anatta, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, the paticcasamuppada.... All these different teachings are part of vipassana. They are ways of contemplating, reflecting and observing the way things are. The five khandhas for example. How do we use that particular sequence? Those five concepts of rupa, vedana, sañña, sankhara, viññana are conventions in themselves, and not to be considered from a doctrinal position. They’re perceptions to use and to work with. What is being conscious, anyway? Even though we’re conscious we may not investigate consciousness. Obviously everyone here is conscious, but how many of us really know what that is? What is the difference between perception, volition and feeling? These are just ways of examining and looking at the way things are. All of us have the five khandhas. So this is something we can examine and investigate. Let’s say we investigate the eye and the object. We really examine that in a practical way, looking at something with our own eyes and then the eye-consciousness arises through the contact with the object. The same with sound, smell, taste, touch or thought. All of this we can observe and investigate. Even though there is sound going on all the time, we’re not always conscious of it, are we? When we’re looking at something, we’re conscious through the eye, but we’re not conscious through the ear. Consciousness can move very rapidly. So it seems we can be conscious through all the senses at the same moment. If we examine it more carefully we begin to see that whatever we’re looking at, at that time we’re no longer conscious of a sound. When we’re eating food, notice the consciousness of taste. We can be thinking about something while we’re eating and not be aware of eating. How many of us really taste our food? We often are in a rush, or talking or busy in some other way while eating. We like to have snacks every now and then while reading or watching the television. There is an initial taste of something and then we tend to just eat out of habit. We might be thinking, watching or listening and so no longer aware of tasting.
When the eye is concentrated on an object of sight, we’re no longer conscious through the body. Hot and cold, pleasure and pain don’t exist at that time. So in dealing with physical sensation we can distract ourselves by looking or listening or turning to something else to get away maybe from physical discomfort. That’s one way of dealing with it. Another way is the investigation of physical pain where we go right to the actual sensation of pain. Looking into the pain itself. Getting to know the difference between the sensation and the aversion that we mentally develop around a sensation. For example we have the pain in our legs. If we go to the actual sensation and concentrate our attention on it, we stop thinking about it. We’re with the sensation, but we’re not creating mental aversion to its seemingly unpleasant appearance. Generally we are not that refined and aware. We tend to just be averse to physical pain and discomfort and try to suppress it, or we use will-power to endure it. When we go to the sensation itself, then there is body-consciousness. We’re not adding aversion on to the pain: “I can’t stand it! I don’t want it!” These are emotional reactions to physical discomfort and pain of any sort. This is to be investigated and observed. When we’re bringing attention to the sensations of the body, whether it’s pleasant, painful or neutral – more and more the body will relax. When we feel tension or stress, if we concentrate right on that spot with an attitude of just bare attention, without aversion to it, then the condition for pain can diminish. What we can’t stand really, is the emotional reaction. Most pain we can bear; it’s when we think: “I can’t stand any more of this,” that we give up and try to get away from it. If we’re caught in that emotional realm of: “I can’t bear it!”, then we can even be thinking that before there is any actual pain. “What if pain arises? I won’t be able to stand it.” We can already be suffering by the possibilities of experiencing pain we don’t yet have. Because of our ability to remember pain we’ve had before and couldn’t stand.
So we investigate just how the mind works. The way things are. If our body is giving us pain – that’s the way it is. It’s not something we’ve created. We’re not deliberately, intentionally trying to make pain arise in our body. But the reaction out of ignorance, desire and fear is having aversion, wanting not to have or to get rid of. Notice how lust and sexual desire make us kind of dull and we lose our ability to discriminate. We can get caught in lustful fantasies, seeking sensual pleasures with mind and body and lose our sense of perspective. We become so eager to get what we want, and to experience the pleasure that we anticipate, that our ability to discriminate becomes inoperative. Aversion and anger tend to make us very critical. Lust does just the opposite. The idea is to get what we are craving for – that is the sole aim and purpose. We can lose our sense of propriety and integrity and a lot of virtuous qualities when we get caught in that lustful tendency of the mind. Now don’t believe me, but watch, examine and investigate how these things affect us: because we all experience these conditions.
In Thailand, I remember, there were hardly any sweets or sweet drinks at Wat Pah Pong. So whenever there was the possibility of anything sweet we would become obsessed with the idea. One time someone gave me a bag of sugar. I took it back to my kuti and took a taste of it. Then suddenly that taste of sweetness created such greed in my mind that I consumed the whole bag of sugar in a very few minutes. Completely out of control, which is surprising, because I wasn’t into sweets very much as a layperson. I would have thought it was disgusting to eat a whole bag of sugar in five minutes. But the conditions were supportive. The fact that I was alone, nobody was watching and no one would know. Also sweetness is a very attractive taste for us. Especially if we’re eating one meal a day and we’re celibate. Usually for a layperson greed is spread out, scattered over quite a range of things so that we don’t notice so much. Thought doesn’t collect on anything as simple and ridiculous as a bag of sugar. But in the homeless life we might find ourselves lusting after a bag of sugar, which we should not have been interested in at all as lay people. Who would ever eat just sugar granules if one can get pralines and fudge and all kinds of much more pleasurable sweets to indulge in? But one thing that this allowed me to see and contemplate was the sweet taste of sugar and that creates in the mind the desire for more. One spoon, we taste it, and then we want more. If we follow that impulse and get caught in that desire for more, then we start satiating ourselves until we have had so much, we can’t handle any more. That’s what lust and greed are like. An experience we all have as human beings. Now with mindfulness then we can taste sweetness and be aware of its pleasant qualities. Through investigation and understanding we no longer create lust around it. It’s as it is. We’re not following, seeking to have it again and again and again until we’re absolutely satiated. Mindfulness allows us to know and be aware of time and place, appropriateness and suitability. It allows us to have integrity, to be considerate and thoughtful in our lives.
The generation of Americans that I was brought up in never admitted that they were afraid of anything. To be a man one had to put on this act – what they call “macho". Strutting around wanting to give that impression of fearlessness. So fear sometimes is not recognized. Strangely enough, some of the most aggressive types of men are often the most frightened. In meditation these masculine and aggressive types of men have to deal with tremendous fear and terror. Now there is a natural fear that arises, like the instinctual fear if a tiger is chasing us. That’s a protective device in nature. It’s not personal and it’s not a fault; it doesn’t make us heedless. That kind of instinctual fear when we see a tiger that looks like he’s ready to attack us makes us act very swiftly in order to protect our life. Then there is also the kind of fear of things that haven’t yet occurred, of possibilities in the future. All the anxieties and worries we create in our lives about the possibility of being hurt or damaged, ostracised or humiliated and insulted; of being deprived and without what we want. There’s the fear of the unknown. We can look into the black night and become frightened, because our eyes can’t see in the darkness of the night. Or being in a closed room with no light – anything could be there. Our sense of security, of knowing isn’t present. We could imagine ghosts, monsters, or there might be scorpions, tarantulas or cobras. In this country it’s quite possible to go into a room where there is a cobra that we can’t see. When we turn the lights on we can look around and know that in this room there isn’t anything dangerous. There’s a lot to be afraid of in this life as human beings. Things can happen to us that we know are quite possible. We can be hit by a car, or be attacked by somebody. Think of what kind of fear and anxiety women have to bear with of being an attractive force to men. They have to be careful not to put themselves in positions where they can be sexually attacked. It’s a possibility of which they’re very much aware of. These are natural kinds of fears and anxieties that our human condition gives us. Being born in this state, then this is the way it is. But then fear becomes neurotic and obsessive and unreasonable. We can be driven by fear that we’ve never really looked at – we’re just suppressing or repressing it out of consciousness. We can be concerned about what people think of us. We’re the kind of creature that cares about what other people think about us. We can be anxious and worried that others don’t like us or don’t want us. We can become quite obsessed reading this into every situation. Fear of being unwanted or despised or looked down on.
Anxiety, worry and doubt – all these imply dealing with unknown things. Instinctive fears deal with the known, with a definite situation. But because we think and imagine, we create a self, a personality, a person. So this person can always be hurt or insulted or offended in some way or another. It’s so fragile, isn’t it? We worry about the future and we feel guilty about the past. We’re anxious about some situation we’re in, that something might go wrong, that something bad might happen. Note this state of mind. Uncertainty, insecurity and worry are so ordinary to our daily life experience and yet we do not understand and merely try to get rid of these. How can I get rid of my worries? What I found helpful is to really notice and to be aware of what it’s like not to know, to be uncertain about things, to be in a state of doubt. Investigating not knowing rather than always trying to know or to dismiss our uncertainty and insecurity. What does it feel like to be worried and uncertain? We look at these different mind states of unknown possibilities. The desire to know and to have security is very strong. To feel that we’re practising in the right way. This is really the best monastery in the whole world. This is definitely our path. It’s the right religion, the right philosophy and psychology. Yes, we’re definitely doing the right thing. Maybe we want somebody to affirm that what we’re doing is right. To have affirmation from teachers or other monks or people around us. To be told: “Yes, you’re on the right path. Yes, this is the perfect place.” What happens if somebody comes here and says: “Oh, this monastery isn’t very good – you should go somewhere else and take somebody’s retreat.” Then what does our mind do? If we’re not really investigating the way things are, then we get caught up in doubt and uncertainty about what we’re doing. Then we go to one of the senior monks and say: “Is this the right way?” and I say: “Yes, it is. This is the right place for you.” “Oh, thank goodness. Somebody said it wasn’t, so I was a bit worried that maybe I was in the wrong place."
Like Fundamentalist Christianity. Everything is affirmed over and over again. If one goes to a born-again Christian meeting, it’s a continuous affirmation of: “This is the only way. Jesus is our Saviour. This is right. All the others are wrong. It’s the only way.” “Do the Buddhists...?” “No, no! They’re totally wrong. It’s wrong, wrong! Jesus didn’t teach Buddhism: he taught Christianity.” “What about Roman Catholics?” “No, No! Popery and all that.” Endless prejudices except for one particular form of Fundamentalist Christianity, which is the only way. So I might say: “Venerable Sir, please give me a testimonial about your experience with this particular religion and how the Lord came and saved you.” The Venerable Sir gets up and says: “I used to be a sinner and drink liquor. Then I discovered Jesus and now I am saved. My whole life has changed. I used to be an alcoholic and gamble and be totally immoral. Now I’ve given it all up.” Everybody is weeping and crying and everybody is affirming: “Praise the Lord."
In Buddhism we’re looking at doubt, rather than trying to convince ourselves that Buddhism is the right way. We want to investigate and look into the nature of things. It’s not a matter of trying to tell everyone that this is the best way, Buddhism is the only way, that’s for certain.
In vipassana we’re looking at the way things are. So when there’s doubt we investigate what it is to be wobbly, anxious and worried. Real confidence comes with Stream Entry (the first stage of awakening). It’s when we’re not affirming the Eightfold Path as a belief, but we’re actually getting through the doubt by understanding its nature. To enter the Stream we have to really know sakkaya-ditthi, silabbata-paramasa and vicikiccha (personality view, attachment to practices and conventions, doubt) – those three fetters. They’re not to be rejected but to be investigated. Often times we just want affirmation like: “Am I a Stream Enterer yet, Ajahn Sumedho?” People love to speculate about who’s a Stream Enterer or who’s an arahant. But it’s not a matter of somebody becoming a Stream Enterer, but of recognizing those fetters for what they are and no longer being deluded by them. Because as long as we are caught in doubt and uncertainty, and keep following it, we’re definitely not going to see the Path, the way out of suffering. To get affirmation isn’t the way out of suffering either, because it always needs to be reinforced. People have to agree with us: “Yes, this is the way.” “Yes, you have attained.” “Yes, yes, yes.” “All the great Ajahns have agreed that I am a full fledged Stream Enterer. I have a certificate. Here, see, it has the signature of important bhikkhus on it. There’s a seal and even the Sangharaja signed.” This is being preposterous of course. It’s not affirmation that we are anything, but recognizing the nature of doubt and the attachment to self-view and to conventions.
Now what is more preposterous than wanting to become a sotapanna. If we ask: “Am I a sotapanna yet?” there’s still doubt in our mind, isn’t there? That’s vicikiccha. Or if we say: “I am a sotapanna,” that’s self-view, sakkaya-ditthi. So we investigate: “I am, I should be, I am not, am I? have I?” – this way of thinking. The value of teachings like sotapanna, anagami, arahant is that they’re not attainments but used as reflections. Then more and more a relinquishment and letting go can take place, rather than achieving or attaining something. We can’t attain it – we realize it through letting go and understanding the nature of things. On the personal level we want to attain it. Once we appreciate these teachings as ways for reflecting on attachments, there’s no need to hold on to a view of having become something or having not become anything. We can equally hold the view that we haven’t attained anything, even though we might have been a monk for all those years. Or being super modest: “Oh, I couldn’t possibly... little old me. Dare to assume that I’ve entered the Stream? Someone might condemn me as being uttarimanussadhamma-parajika.” So we use our reflective capacity instead of judging that there are certain things we have to get rid of in order to become a Stream Enterer. We investigate Vinaya and tradition. Now some people take the idea of not being attached to the opposite extreme and say we shouldn’t have rules and tradition. Ceremonies and celibacy: it’s all rubbish. One just gets attached to it and one shouldn’t be attached to anything. That kind of thinking is still sakkaya-ditthi, isn’t it? Other people really hang on to Vinaya and tradition, trying to protect it by all means in order to make sure that everything is going to be all right. We have to get rid of, kill, annihilate and burn at the stake any blasphemers or heretics that threaten the purity of our tradition. “Got to keep my Vinaya pure, and if some woman comes along and touches me – dares to touch me – am I pure or not? How do I know I didn’t set myself up? Maybe latent sexual tendencies are there lurking and I’m placing myself in a position very convenient for a woman to come along and touch me. Then I’ll have an offence.” We can make the whole Vinaya structure incredibly burdensome through foolish and blind attachment to it and strange views about purity and impurity rather than using Vinaya for restraint and as a way of reflecting, limits we can use and standards to work from.
I remember I spent a vassa at Wat Khao Chalahk. The Vinaya there is very strict and the monks are quite obsessed about it. I thought: “I’m from Wat Pah Pong. We have good Vinaya,” and so I announced myself. They said: “Oh yes, the Wat Pah Pong Vinaya is not so good. Ours is much better.” So I got intimidated. Their Vinaya is better than ours. I want to keep the best Vinaya and I got really interested. Then I went to a small island where one of these monks was living as a kind of hermit. I stayed with him for a while and then left. Later he told the other monks that I didn’t have a very good understanding of Vinaya. When I heard that I was really angry. I was ready to go right back to that island and punch him in the nose. I thought my Vinaya was really good and then he said it wasn’t. That’s an insult to me. But that’s also sakkaya-ditthi. Is that a skilful use of Vinaya? This kind of comparing: “My Vinaya is better than yours. How dare you accuse me of not keeping good Vinaya?” It’s not because Vinaya is the problem – the danger lies with sakkaya-ditthi, silabbata-paramasa and vicikiccha. I talk about my own experiences, so others don’t have to be ashamed about having foolish thoughts and attachments – as long as we are willing to learn from them and see them clearly, rather than to suppress or believe them.
Another aspect to reflect on is the two sects of Dhammayut and Mahanikay. If we go to a Dhammayut forest temple thinking we’re very strict and pure (not touching money, practising like good kammatthana forest monks), they look at us suspiciously, once they find out we’re Mahanikay. They put us at the end of the line and treat us like we’re not really proper monks sometimes. In such situation we might see sakkaya-ditthi arising: “How dare they!” kind of self-views. To me it seems much better to watch that than to make much of it and be carried away by indignation, because we’re treated in a way we think we shouldn’t be treated. When we’re practising Dhamma we’re taking life as it is. We’re not trying to make everything fair and just – straighten out the world and make everything as it should be. We’re willing to use life’s unfairness and each experience for practising Dhamma: To recognize the way things are. If we feel angry for being looked down on and regarded as something inferior, not as good, but we think we are quite as good or even better, then that’s an opportunity to see sakkaya-ditthi. We investigate and learn to use life’s experiences wisely.
Western women who come to Thailand get easily offended by the fact that monks, the men, get all the attention. Women are always in the back, tyre-flat against the wall in the furthest part of the room. They’re always supposed to lower themselves and be respectful in the presence of monks. So Western women can be quite upset about this. They even write articles about how unfair and wrong it is. How women can become enlightened just like men. There’s no difference at all. They become quite indignant. But if we’re really serious about understanding Dhamma (not that I’m justifying this as an ideal form for women), if we want to get beyond suffering, it’s good to use the situation for watching our minds, rather than stomping away in a huff thinking it’s not fair and we’re being looked down on or something even worse. Much more benefit comes from just observing and using such experiences through reflection. We’re not going around asking life to be fair anymore. In England that’s the whining pommy-cry, isn’t it? “It’s not fair. It shouldn’t be like this!” A kind of a wimpy cry. I’m all for fairness actually, but so much of life is unfair anyway. As Dhamma we can use the unfairness of life with wisdom rather than being offended and upset; thereby missing the opportunity for enlightenment.
I remember Chithurst when we first moved there ten years ago. I could observe how the mind, if one would let it, would get involved with wanting this monastery to be successful, or doubting whether it was the right decision to move there. More and more we start working with the flow of life. We see what we are doing and the things that are happening to us, how they affect the mind. The “I am,” the self-view, the doubts that arise. Having very set views about how things should be done in a monastery, and then feeling threatened when we can’t force the situations into being exactly as we think they should be. In Thailand the monasteries are so much integrated and part of society but moving to a country like England, we are on the fringes; we’re the odd-balls. There we can’t make the monasteries exactly as they are in Thailand. We observe the mental and emotional reaction. I could see things like fear of everything falling apart and going wrong. Once I would give in to something, then the whole thing would just degenerate and fall apart. A kind of panic and hysteria of: “You got to hang on and hold it up! Make it and force it and push it into exactly what it should be.” A terrible kind of mental state to have to live with. So more and more in our life as we move into situations that are different, if we develop our reflective capacities then we keep learning from life’s experiences. All kinds of strengths and abilities develop to cope with exotic or strange, difficult or uncertain situations, that before we would have been absolutely overwhelmed by. If we practise in order to observe the way things are, then there’s a fearlessness in the mind. We get beyond the fear of life and the possibilities of humiliations, things going wrong and falling apart or losing control. All that, having been investigated, is no longer a problem in the mind. There’s this willingness to look at life honestly and courageously rather than being a wimpy monk hiding away because we might lose our purity if we step out of our cave. If we’re frightened, worried and anxious and we don’t investigate, confront and learn from these mental states, then we always will be worried and anxious about things. Becoming obsessed with states of mind we make cowards of ourselves. We can’t rise up to life at all, always having to make sure everything is going to be all right: nothing to threaten us. We settle for mediocrity and comfort, for security and safety because going to the unknown, looking into the dark, the possibilities that await us in the future, may be threatening situations – that completely overwhelms our minds. We want to have a guarantee that we’re going to be safe. Monastic life, the life of a samana, is one of uncertainty. One meal a day, not hoarding up things, not having security, like money in the bank and food stored away in our kutis – always living on the edge. Possibilities of having to go without a meal, of not getting what we want. So in the situation we’re in now, at this moment, we have the opportunity to use the tradition, the Vinaya, the practice of Dhamma.
We use the form as a criterion and a standard to observe with rather than as an attachment or forming opinions about it as being useless.
This monastery here, this is the way it is. Wat Pah Nanachat, it’s like this. We can think: “I want a more remote monastery without a lot of visitors coming.” We can be very offended by a coach-load of tourists coming to watch “phra farang” and take pictures of them. We can be caught up in sakkaya-ditthi, silabbata-paramasa and vicikiccha over something like that. But if we’re turning towards Dhamma, we can use the situation for watching our minds and observing the way things are.
There was this one phra farang (Western monk) years ago who was always looking for the perfect monastery. I went to visit him once but he wasn’t there. A beautiful place with caves, absolutely ideal. Then a few months later I met this monk in Bangkok and I said: “You aren’t at that monastery any more?” And he said: “No, it wasn’t the right place.” “Why? It seemed like a wonderful place to me.” He said: “Oh, I couldn’t bear it. They gave me this kuti which was too close to the next one. Every time I walked to the meeting hall I had to pass right in front of this other monk’s kuti. That disrupted my practice, so I left.” Then he said: “But I found this really fantastic place in the South and I’m going there.” A few months later I met him again so I asked how his super-duper place in the South was. He said: “Well, I thought it was really going to be the ideal place. But you see, every time on almsround these dogs would start chasing and biting me. So I had to leave.” He ended up disrobing. Endlessly looking for the ideal place is still being bound to the three fetters. Now here at Wat Pah Nanachat, can we accept the way it is without judging it? I’m not asking anyone to approve or like the way it is, and I’m not dwelling on the things we dislike about it – but I’m asking people to observe: it’s like this; this is the way it is here; it’s this kind of a place. Then we can be aware of our own: I like it; I don’t like it; I want to find a better and more quiet place; I want to be alone, I don’t want to be in a community with a lot of monks – and so on and so forth.
I remember years ago visiting a monastery. The farang monks there were saying: “Oh, this is the best monastery. There’s hardly any monks here. Tan Ajahn will only accept eighteen monks at the most at any time. Most of the time there are less. It’s a really good place for practice.” A few years later they were complaining: “Oh, now we have about twenty-five monks. It’s not like what it used to be. We can’t practise any more. We’ve got to find another place.” Endless measuring, thinking there’s a perfect place in this world to meditate – all we have to do is to find it. The perfect forest monastery with just the right number of monks, an enlightened teacher, the ideal kuti and walking path, everything just super-duper perfect. Remote, without tourist coaches coming in, no noise from the highway and no low-flying aircraft or transistor radios from the rice paddies. The food is adequate, vegetarian, whole-grain, organically grown and the abbot is a certified arahant – it’s the perfect place. I keep looking for it. Somewhere it exists, maybe? But rather than spending our life trying to find that, the way of Buddha-Dhamma is to see the way things are. Nothing is preventing us from looking at the way it is, is it?
Touring coaches, noise from the highway, low-flying aircraft, any kind of food – all of this. There is nothing that isn’t Dhamma about it. It may not be what we want and so sakkaya-ditthi arises because we don’t like it. In order to develop we need to really penetrate this. We use the situation, the frustrations, the injustices, the unfairness, the mosquitoes, the hot weather, the interruptions and distractions to observe. Allowing ourselves to witness greed, hatred and delusion, and the whole range of fetters that affect us if we’re ignorant and heedless.
