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Observations on the Art of Meditation by Translated from the Thai This work may be freely copied, printed, and redistributed
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To lead your daily life by keeping constant supervision over the
mind is a way of learning what life is for. It's a way of learning how
we can act so as to rid ourselves more and more of suffering and
stress -- because the suffering and stress caused by defilement,
attachment, and craving are sure to take all sorts of forms. Only by
being aware with true mindfulness and discernment can we comprehend
them for what they are. Otherwise we'll simply live obliviously, going
wherever events will lead us. This is why mindfulness and discernment
are tools for reading yourself, for testing yourself within so that
you won't be careless or complacent, oblivious to the fact that
suffering is basically what life is all about.
This point is something we really have to comprehend so that we
can live without being oblivious. The pains and discontent that fill
our bodies and minds all show us the truths of inconstancy, stress,
and not-selfness within us. If you contemplate what's going on inside
until you can get down to the details, you'll see the truths that
appear within and without, all of which come down to inconstancy,
stress, and not-selfness. But the delusion basic to our nature will
see everything wrongly -- as constant, easeful, and self -- and so
make us live obliviously, even though there is nothing to guarantee
how long our lives will last.
Our dreams and delusions make us forget that we live in the midst
of a mass of pain and stress -- the stress of defilements, the pain of
birth. Birth, ageing, illness, and death: All of these are painful and
stressful, in the midst of instability and change. They're things we
have no control over, for they must circle around in line with the
laws of kamma and the defilements we've been amassing all along.
Life that floats along in the round of rebirth is thus nothing but
stress and pain.
If we can find a way to develop our mindfulness and discernment,
they'll be able to cut the round of rebirth so that we won't have to
keep wandering on. They'll help us know that birth is painful, ageing
is painful, illness is painful, death is painful, and that these are
all things that defilement, attachment, and craving keep driving
through the cycles of change.
So as long as we have the opportunity, we should study the truths
appearing throughout our body and mind -- and we'll come to know that
the elimination of stress and pain, the elimination of defilement, is
a function of our practice of the Dhamma. If we don't practice the
Dhamma, we'll keep floating along in the round of rebirth that is so
drearily repetitious -- repetitious in its birth, ageing, illness, and
death, driven on by defilement, attachment, and craving, causing us
repeated stress and pain. Living beings for the most part don't know
where these stresses and pains come from or what they come from,
because they've never studied them, never contemplated them, so they
stay dhamma and deluded, wandering on and on without end....
If we can stop and be still, the mind will have a chance to be
free, to contemplate its sufferings and let them go. This will give it
a measure of peace, because it will no longer want anything out of the
round of rebirth since it sees that there's nothing lasting to it,
that it's simply stress over and over again. Whatever you grab hold of
is stress. This is why you need mindfulness and discernment to know
and see things for yourself, so that you can supervise the mind and
keep it calm, without letting it fall victim to temptation.
This practice is something of the highest importance. People who
don't study or practice the Dhamma have wasted their birth as human
beings, because they're born deluded and simply stay deluded. But if
we study the Dhamma, we'll become wise to suffering and know the path
of practice for freeing ourselves from it....
Once we follow the right path, the defilements won't be able to
drag us around, won't be able to burn us, because we're the ones
burning them away. We'll come to realize that the more we can burn
them away, the more strength of mind we'll gain. If we let the
defilements burn us, the mind will be sapped of its strength, which is
why this is something you have to be very careful about. Keep trying
to burn away the defilements in your every activity, and you'll be
storing up strength for your mindfulness and discernment so that
they'll be brave in dealing with all sorts of suffering and pain.
You must come to see the world as nothing but stress. There's no
real ease to it at all. The awareness we gain from mindfulness and
discernment will make us disenchanted with life in the world because
it will see things for what they are in every way, both within us and
without.
The entire world is nothing but an affair of delusion, an affair
of suffering. People who don't know the Dhamma, don't practice the
Dhamma -- no matter what their status or position in life -- lead
deluded, oblivious lives. When they fall ill or are about to die,
they're bound to suffer enormously because they haven't taken the time
to understand the defilements that burn their hearts and minds in
everyday life. Yet if we make a constant practice of studying and
contemplating ourselves as our everyday activity, it will help free us
from all sorts of suffering and distress. And when this is the case,
how can we not want to practice?
Only intelligent people, though, will be able to stick with the
practice. Foolish people won't want to bother. They'd much rather
follow the defilements than burn them away. To practice the Dhamma you
need a certain basic level of intelligence -- enough to have seen at
least something of the stresses and sufferings that come from
defilement. Only then can your practice progress. And no matter how
difficult it gets, you'll have to keep practicing on to the end.
This practice isn't something you do from time to time, you know.
You have to keep at it continuously throughout life. Even if it
involves so much physical pain or mental anguish that tears are
bathing your cheeks, you have to keep with the chaste life because
you're playing for real. If you don't follow the chaste life, you'll
get mired in heaps of suffering and flame. So you have to learn your
lessons from pain. Try to contemplate it until you can understand it
and let it go, and you'll gain one of life's greatest rewards.
Don't think that you were born to gain this or that level of
comfort. You were born to study pain and the causes of pain, and to
follow the practice that frees you from pain. This is the most
important thing there is. Everything else is trivial and unimportant.
What's important all lies with the practice. * * *
Don't think that the defilements will go away easily. When they
don't come in blatant forms, they come in subtle ones -- and the
dangers of the subtle ones are hard to see. Your contemplation will
have to be subtle, too, if you want to get rid of them. You'll come to
realize that this practice of the Dhamma, in which we contemplate to
get to the details inside us, is like sharpening our tools so that
when stress and suffering arise we can weaken them and cut them away.
If your mindfulness and discernment are brave, the defilements will
have to lose out to them. But if you don't train your mindfulness and
discernment to be brave, the defilements will crush you to pieces.
We were born to do battle with the defilements and to
strengthen our mindfulness and discernment. We'll find that the
worth of our practice will grow higher and higher because in our
everyday life we've done continuous battle with the stresses and pains
caused by defilement, craving, and temptation all along -- so that the
defilements will grow thin and our mindfulness and discernment
stronger. We'll sense within ourselves that the mind isn't as troubled
and restless as it used to be. It's grown peaceful and calm. The
stresses and sufferings of defilement, attachment, and craving have
grown weaker. Even though we haven't yet wiped them out completely,
they've grown continually weaker -- because we don't feed them. We
don't give them shelter. We do what we can to weaken them so that they
grow thinner and thinner each time.
And we have to be brave in contemplating stress and pain, because
when we don't feel any great suffering we tend to get complacent. But
when the pains and sufferings in our body and mind grow sharp and
biting, we have to use our mindfulness and discernment to be strong.
Don't let your spirits be weak. Only then will you be able to do
away with your sufferings and pains.
We have to learn our lessons from pain so that ultimately the
mind can gain its freedom from it, instead of being weak and losing
out to it all of the time. We have to be brave in doing battle with it
to the ultimate extreme -- until we reach the point where we can let
it go. Pain is something that's always present in this conglomerate of
body and mind. It's here for us to see with every moment. If we
contemplate it till we know all its details, we can then make it our
sport: seeing that the pain is the pain of natural conditions and not
our pain. This is something we have to research so as to get to
the details: that it's not our pain, it's the pain of the
aggregates [form, feeling, perception, thought-formations, and
consciousness]. Knowing in this way means that we can separate out the
properties -- the properties of matter and those of the mind -- to see
how they interact with one another, how they change. It's something
really fascinating....Watching pain is a way of building up lots of
mindfulness and discernment.
But if you focus on pleasure and ease, you'll simply stay deluded
like people in general. They get carried away with the pleasure that
comes from watching or listening to the things they like -- but then
when pain comes to their bodies and minds to the point where tears are
bathing their cheeks, think of how much they suffer! And then they
have to be parted from their loved ones, which makes it even worse.
But those of us who practice the Dhamma don't need to be deluded like
that, because we know and see with every moment that only stress
arises, only stress persists, only stress passes away. Aside from
stress, nothing arises; aside from stress, nothing passes away. This
is there for us to perceive with every moment. If we contemplate it,
we'll see it.
So we can't let ourselves be oblivious. This is what the truth
is, and we have to study it so as to know it -- especially in our life
of the practice. We have to contemplate stress all the time to see its
every manifestation. The arahants live without being oblivious because
they know the truth at all times, and their hearts are clean and pure.
As for us with our defilements, we have to keep trying, because if we
continually supervise our mind with mindfulness and discernment, we'll
be able to keep the defilements from making it dirty and obscured.
Even if it does become obscured in any way, we'll be able to remove
that obscurity and make the mind empty and free.
This is the practice that weakens all the defilements,
attachments, and cravings within us. It's because of this practice of
the Dhamma that our lives will become free. So I ask you to keep
working at the practice without being complacent, because if in
whatever span of life is left to you, you keep trying to the full
extent of your abilities, you'll gain the mindfulness and discernment
to see the facts within yourself, and be able to let go -- free from
any sense of self, free from any sense of self -- continuously. K. Khao-suan-luang
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