Class 1: Introduction to the Path of Meditation (6/4/2008)

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INTRODUCTION TO THE PATH OF MEDITATION
By Ajahn Brahmavamso
12 December 1997

In the Buddhist Path of Meditation we develop the mind in silence,
peacefulness and stillness. In all types of meditation silence is just
so important for when we are speaking we are not meditating, we are
saying something, we are actually doing business in the world. We are
not stopping, not listening and experiencing the world.

One monk told me about a very young novice who was at Ajahn Chah's
monastery. One evening when Ajahn Chah was giving an all night long
Dhamma talk without stopping, this poor little novice, who was not
sitting on a comfortable cushion but on the hard concrete floor
started to get very sore, bored and upset. He started thinking, "When
is he going to stop?" "Why doesn't he stop?" and these thoughts were
torturing him for sometime until the novice had a moment of insight,
which clearly illustrates what a moment of insight and its effect is.
It was to turn the question around. Instead of thinking, "Why doesn’t
Ajahn Chah stop?" he thought, "Why don’t I stop?" Then as a result of
that thought he stopped, he went silent and sat the rest of the night
in a deep state of concentration, a Jhana. It was the first time in
his life because now he realized how to stop the inner chatter of the
mind.

By realizing that there is no need to externally speak during
meditation you can also realize that there is no need to speak inside
either. You can be silent and can just experience. When there is a
sound you can listen to it with 100% attention, not interfering with
it with your inner speech. When there is a feeling in the body,
instead of getting into a conversation with it you can just experience
it fully, not knowing what it is, not knowing where it has come from,
or where it is going to go. You just know it as it occurs in this
moment. Just knowing, just feeling without saying anything about it.
Just knowing what you see, what is in your mind, what comes in through
all of the senses. Just knowing and experiencing fully by taking away
this inner commentary, this business, this description which is
actually just a veil of ignorance covering the reality of this sensory
experience.

What you say about the world is not what the world actually is. All of
these thoughts, these ideas, this inner commentary is actually the
delusion, which stops you seeing reality. So be quiet, there is no
need to say anything and not only will you then become wise and see
the reality of all of this but also you will become very peaceful and
you will enjoy the beauty and bliss of peacefulness, which meditation
is all about.

As you incline the mind towards this meditation, towards this silence,
towards unity rather than diversity, then you will find that the mind
will be inclining towards a very peaceful and deep reality.

Sometimes people study Buddhism by reading books and listening to
talks but that is really just child's play, preliminary practice,
watching the pots but not cooking the food. To cook the food you have
to practice meditation, to experience what all these books and
teachings are pointing towards--this silence of the mind.

During meditation we develop this silence of the mind. In this silence
the mind starts to manifest to you. As if it is this beautiful Lotus
but it is covered by these five different kinds of weeds that are
growing around it so you do not even know that the very beautiful and
fragrant Lotus is there. The weeds that are smothering the Lotus are
the 5 external senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and physical
touch. The job of meditation is to tranquilize those 5 senses, to take
your attention away from the world of the 5 senses, to get to the
point where those 5 senses turn off and disappear and all that is left
is the mind. It is similar to silence and stillness because for most
people the whole world consists of those 5 senses. We talk about the
world and reality and we take this reality to be that what we see,
hear, smell, taste and touch. We think this is real. We take sensory
experience to be reality not realizing that it is just a cover for
what is truly real. So we are going to turn away from the world of the
5 senses and this turning away is the Path of Meditation.

The physical touch of the body is going to be painful sometimes when
you sit in meditation. It is going to be hot and cold. There are going
to be itches, aches and pains. Remember that that is part of
meditation. The only way you can get some peace in this meditation is
not by getting an air conditioner or heater, or by sitting on a
waterbed instead of sitting on a hard floor. It would not matter there
would still be these aches, pains, and discomforts in the body. The
Buddha pointed out a way of practice called meditation in which you
can sit down in reasonable comfort but not in total comfort. Turn away
from this sense of touch and from all these 5 senses to the point that
they completely disappear. It is only in the disappearance of those 5
senses that there is comfort, peace, that there is a stilling of this
agitation of the sensory world.

This is what is called the Path of Meditation, the quieting down of
the world of the senses. We shut our eyes in meditation so we do not
see what is around us. Very often when I close my eyes I use the
metaphor, the skillful means of imagining that I am in one of the
remote places I have been as a Monk, in mountains, in caves, in remote
jungles, wherever there is solitude. When I close my eyes I imagine
that I am in that solitude. That imagination, that using of the mind
to imagine solitude all around me for many miles becomes a very useful
psychological cue for developing that feeling of peace inside of the
mind. For many miles there is no living being and I am completely
alone. The hermit in the jungle, desert or mountains, alone with no
business in the whole world. That immediately cuts away at a lot of
the business and concerns in our life because so much of that business
is concerning other people, our relations to them and our duties
towards them.

During meditation you have no duties to these people; you have no
responsibilities at all, you have literally and metaphorically joined
a monastery for the period you meditate. You have left the world. You
have not go a husband, wife, parents, children, family and friends
etc, during your meditation you have not got a job, occupation, or any
responsibility whatsoever. You imagine that and there is a lot of
truth to that imagination. When you imagine that, it becomes very easy
to let go of a world in which you have no business for the period of
meditation. It means that that world disappears little by little until
it cannot reach you anymore. When it cannot reach you then you feel
the solitude of a hermit, you feel some of the joys of being in a
monastery, you feel the solitude of having left all of that behind.
You feel alone and free like a bird with no baggage. So we use these
imaginations, these ways of regarding the world with our eyes closed.

Whatever noise there is here just in the background. Although we are
in the middle of the city we could as well be in the middle of the
mountains, or jungle because the noise is only like the wind in the
distance, just a hum. It is pretty constant which means that very soon
the sense of sound will disappear. I am talking about the external
sound but the most difficult sound to turn off is the inner sound. The
ability not to say anything about what you are experiencing. If you
can notice that the inner sound conversation, chatter is just so much
noise, such a disturbance, like a noisy neighbor when you want to be
peaceful and quiet. So see if you can tell that noisy neighbor to be
quiet for this period of meditation. You do not need that chatter. If
you really want to be quiet, to stop that inner chatter then you can
do it so easily. So often the reason why the inner chatter persists is
just because we do not want to stop it, we are too interested in it,
too used and too attached to it as a deep habit of the mind.

When we have shut our eyes we make a commitment to inner and outer
silence, we are just sitting still and the feelings in the body such
as aches, pains and itches come and go, we do not bother with them at
all. Imagine that you are reading a good book or watching the
television or going to the movies and you know that you can let go of
the physical body. You can be reading that book and be in physical
discomfort but do not realize it until you finish the chapter. You can
have all sorts of aches and pains while you are watching television
that you do not realize until the movies finishes and you get up. You
know when you are absorbed in something else that the body disappears.
This disappearance of the body is what we are aiming for.

So the Buddha taught this way of meditation, which is a very gradual
process for moving away from the body and gaining access to the mind.
This way of meditation, in brief is in six stages:

Stage 1: awareness of the present moment
Stage 2: silent awareness of the present moment
Stage 3: silent awareness of the breath
Stage 4: full awareness of the breath from the very beginning to the
end
Stage 5: calming down the breath until you get to:
Stage 6: the appearance of the Samadhi-nimitta.

Samadhi-nimitta means the sign of Samadhi, of this inner stillness. It
is also called the Citta-nimitta the sign of the mind where the mind
starts to manifest to you. Stage six is the stabilizing of that sign
of the mind or, if you prefer, the plunging into the sign, which
causes complete absorption in the realm of the mind. This absorption
is called Jhana

This is what we are going to be doing in meditation. It is great fun
to do this. If you can actually get all the way into a Jhana, a state
of absorption, it will be one of the most amazing and profound
experiences of your life. These are very powerful and moving
experiences of great stillness where many unpleasant and disturbing
things disappear. Not only is the experience of a Jhana very beautiful
but also it is also full of wisdom and insight. The insight of the
experience is what these beautiful Jhana states are, to understand how
they are brought about and what stops you from getting into the
understanding why you do not go for this beauty and bliss, why you do
not access and enjoy it. This is where you find out about the Dhamma,
the Teaching, the Truth of Existence that is what the Buddha spent all
his time talking about. If you follow this particular path of
developing the mind all along the way you pick up all of this wisdom.

You do need a goal to gain wisdom. It is like going to University and
taking a degree in a subject. It is not the degree that gives you all
the knowledge it is all the things you learnt on the way. That is
where you really gain your understanding, knowledge and wisdom. It is
as if the degree, the qualification at the end is a carrot that makes
you go that much further. You may get that carrot or you may not get
it, but it does not matter because without that carrot you would never
have striven so much and traveled so far. So I never feel that I am
pushing people too far when I talk about Jhanas. Even if you do not go
all the way you still go much further than you would if I never
mentioned them. By going much further you will learn so much more
about the body and mind, so much more about the way you look at the
world and the habits which you have developed over this life and
previous lives which stop you from experiencing the bliss of freedom.

This is all what you learn as you go this path of quietness. Ajahn
Chah said again and again that one cannot split up the path of
Vipassana, insight and the path of Samadhi, peace. These two go
together, have to go together. But if we emphasise wisdom then due to
our western conditioning we start thinking too much, we start
conceptualizing too much thinking that wisdom lies in these ideas. But
wisdom lies in the silence beyond ideas. As the Buddha said "Whatever
you think, it will always be something else." The reality will be
different than thought, beyond thought, completely separate from what
you can ever imagine it to be. This is why the true wisdom is so rare
in this world, because people try to reach it just through thought,
through conceptualizing, through reading, studying, and listening to
others.

The best advice people can give if they give a talk is the advice to
be quiet. Listen, experience and stop then you might see something.
Really all I need to teach is just that one word “stop” and if people
could actually understand the power of that word they would not need
any more teachings. All my talks are elaboration on the same subject
of “stop” in the same way as one can elaborate one thing in millions
of different ways. Just as a Lotus flower held between two mirrors
produces hundreds of images so all these talks I give are just
hundreds of images of the same thing. The main point of this
meditation is to develop that peacefulness, quietness, silence,
emptiness, that "stoppingness" of the mind.

As I mentioned there is a clear path into that stillness, a gradual
training which is like a ladder. You have to go on the first rung
before you can go to the second rung & 3rd & 4th & before you can go
to the last rung and then you are up in the loft. You have to go rung
by rung. In the same way you have to really go rung by rung from
awareness of the present moment, to silent awareness of the present
moment, from silent awareness of the breath, to plunging into the
Samadhi-nimitta. This is the way of Buddhist meditation. I shall
describe each one of these steps as we go along. I shall describe what
you should be doing and what you should look out for. I shall describe
all the skillful means for gaining the beautiful states of Jhana and
also I shall describe the obstacles that stop you from gaining them.
If you know the obstacles and dangers then you are halfway in
overcoming them. The next thing is to apply the skillful means for
overcoming them.

Remember that Buddhist meditation has been going for two thousand five
hundred years. It is not a new thing. It is a well worn path and the
techniques for overcoming the obstacles have been refined down so well
that basically there is no doubt about the instructions, about what to
do and how to do it. It is just a question of not resisting of not
trying to find your own quick way, of just giving in by following
these beautiful instructions of the Buddha.

It is like the instruction manual you get when you buy a television.
Isn't it the case that so few people ever read these instructions
until something goes wrong? Then they realize that if you would have
read and followed the instructions that nothing would have gone wrong.
So I am going to give you those instructions, which are necessary for
meditation. The manual which has been written by the Lord Buddha on
how to meditate on how to free the mind, how to experience the Jhanas
and the bliss of the stages of enlightenment. This manual is so well
written but the biggest problem is in the first place, listening to
it, taking it seriously and carefully following these instructions.

There is something inside each of us that I call the donkey mind. No
matter how beautiful something is in front of you the donkey mind will
say "No, I do not want to go!" "I do not want to do this because it
was not me who invented all of this". It is just that rebelliousness
in the mind. This donkey mind that is always so stubborn and will
never do what it is told, is recognized in the Teachings of the
Buddha. Ways are given in these teachings to overcome the donkey ness
of your mind and little by little you can trick the donkey into
getting into these beautiful states of peace.

A meditation retreat is like going on a holiday, something that I look
forward to. As soon as I get into a meditation center I thing "Great".
Because I can do all of this meditation and I know to what beauty and
peace this will lead. It is like being released from prison. Imagine
that you are in prison and you can go on parole. You are out of prison
and soon will have to go back again.

So enjoy every moment of this meditation. This is such an important
teaching because meditation is not hard, it is not torture.
Meditation, if you know its way and meaning, is the most beautiful
path. If you can develop that appreciation of the joys of silence,
solitude and peace then you are halfway to success in meditation.
Never look at meditation as something hard, because if you do you are
adding this perception, which really does not belong to meditation. In
meditation you are letting go of suffering, of burdens, of all of that
which creates problems tension, tightness and pain in the body and the
mind. If you let go of that which is suffering that which manifests in
its place is the beautiful peaceful happiness. To use a simile of the
Buddha it is like when the clouds break and disperse and the radiant
full moon can be seen in the sky, but when the clouds are there the
full moon is as if not there at all. When the clouds of doing business
thinking and worrying disappear the radiant mind will appear. It is
such a wonderful sight, so peaceful, so beautiful and it is achievable
for you.

It is good to have a reasonable goal for oneself in the meditation,
especially during a retreat. Once you have set yourself the goal of
what you want to achieve and you have made it very clear then do not
keep thinking about it every moment in your meditation and get
frustrated when you have not got there yet. Once you have a major goal
then see if for every meditation you can set a little goal. When you
set goals in each meditation then set reasonable goals. Be realistic
about your abilities and about what you can achieve at the very
beginning of your meditation, set that realistic goal which is just
testing you a little bit, pushing you a little bit further. Tell
yourself "This is what I want to achieve", then trust in the mind to
remember what it is supposed to do and you do not need to think about
that goal anymore. The trouble with people in the world is that when
they have goals then they keep worrying about them every moment.

Setting a goal is like aiming your arrow as an archer - as an archer
when you put the bow up you put an arrow in the bow and pull the arrow
back as you stretch the wood of the bow, that is when you aim--at the
beginning of the shot. Once you have let the arrow go then you cannot
aim anymore. The aiming has been done, now you just follow with your
eyes the flight of the arrow and see where it goes. In the same way at
the beginning of your meditation you put your meditation object as it
were in the bow. You aim by setting yourself a goal, you pull the bow
back with all of your strength and then you let go. You follow the
arrow of your meditation object and see where it goes. If you had a
good aim at the beginning, if the goal has been very well and
carefully set then it is amazing to see how the mind will do the job.
You do not need to keep on reminding, forcing and disturbing it.

This is one way you will learn how to work with this mind. If you do
not give the mind any goal at all then it might feel a little bit
peaceful at first but you find that the mind will go all over the
place like an arrow, which has not been directed at all. There is no
effort at the beginning and that is why it feels peaceful but you do
not achieve anything since the mind is just an ordinary wandering
mind. So set yourself reasonable goals for each of your meditations
and see how far you can get. See how much you can learn on the way.

Two or three minutes before the end of each meditation you should see
how far you have come. See what your state of mind actually is. Give a
very short assessment; peaceful or agitated, free or imprisoned,
bright and happy or tense and stressed. See what type of mind you are
experiencing and continue the reviewing of your meditation by seeing
what you have been doing during this meditation. This is where you
learn about meditation.

If you find that your mind is not very peaceful you understand that
this is because you have been wasting your time by thinking,
fantasizing and dreaming, not really following the instructions. When
the mind is peaceful, bright and beautiful you look back and you find
that you understood the instruction because you followed them
correctly.

Like a bird that soars in the sky so the meditator delves into the
beautiful depths of the mind. Those of you who are philosophically
inclined and are interested in the nature of the mind will understand
through your own experience in meditation the nature of the mind and
with it you will understand the nature of that which you call self,
god, the world, the universe, the whole lot. It is there you will
understand these things, it is there you will become enlightened, not
in the realm of thought but in the realm of inner silence of the mind.
This meditation is wonderful, it promises so much and much of what it
promises it will give you.