Mindfulness of breathing, skilfully practised, makes us aware of the body without losing our sense of space. The result is that we develop awareness of our body within an open spacious mind rather than experiencing the mind within the body. The body, thought and feeling then appear as not-self within the detached, empty mind. This experience leads to a joyous letting go and freedom from suffering. I offer this for your reflection Ajahn Kalyāno http://www.openthesky.co.uk The law is not shaken from the treetops By commandments gusting from heaven Blood paints history in a stillness and silence Which promises a different justice... Cool water rises from the soil Pale blue flowers awaken Forget-me-not Biographical story...
Once upon a time I was a student of anatomy. I used to have weekly classes in the morgue examining preserved specimens of parts of human bodies. One week an arm, the next week half a head...However much I tried to be scientific about it this was always a confronting, emotionally challenging experience. After every session all my colleagues went to the pub. I didn't drink and went alone back to my room to meditate. One of these days I spent a whole afternoon examining the hamstrings of a dead man's leg, playing with the different tissues to get the feel for their texture so that I could feel for the different structures under the skin of a live patient. This was my most intimate contact so far. I left the session feeling strange, disoriented. As I was walking along the street on my way home I felt my own legs underneath me and to my complete surprise a perfect image arose of the inside of one of my legs, like x-ray vision. I saw my hamstrings working bathed in the most sublime, cool light. For a moment I felt an enormous sense of lightness and freedom. I had never felt happier yet I knew not why. That moment changed my life. A part of me, a part that has grown and grown, has been looking for that sense of freedom ever since. Biographical story...
Many years ago as a layman I was travelling in the south of Chile. One full moon night I had a very powerful, lucid dream where I was kneeling down, sick and covered in warts and my Dhamma teacher at that time, Ajahn Sumedho, appeared and cured me with a great blast of light. The following morning I was walking along with my Chilean companion. I had a wart on my hand that had been there almost two years. I had a habit of scratching it but as I began to do this, remembering the dream of the night before, it immediately came off. I was completely stunned and stood there looking at my companion who began to smile. Before I could tell her about the dream she began to tell me how in the night she had taken some threads from my shirt and buried them in the ground, saying an ancient magic spell. She knew me and my scientific background and was pleased to be able to show me there may be more to life than I might have thought. But all I could think about was Ajahn Sumedho. Many years later as a monk I was able to tell Ajahn Sumedho the story. He laughed out laud and said, jokingly, "Yes Kalyano, at night I fly around the world curing people of their warts." I could not seem to get him to take the story seriously but the fact was that the dream and the period that followed had felt like some kind of deep healing and had, in addition, opened up my whole view of the world. It was one of the reasons I had ordained with him as a monk, for the magic. Colours gather light and gradually fade Gently into humble pastel shade Changing the very fabric of the mind Such are the denim devas Coming to save us In so many ways, even as far as uploading consciousness and achieving 'virtual immortality', man seems to be hoping to be saved by the computer. I would say the opposite could be true. Ultimately man's survival in more ways than one relies not on the computer but on doing what the computer cannot do. Firstly this is because in that way we are not made redundant by computers. Secondly, much deeper than this, because the impermanent, conditioned mind is like a computer programmed for survival. I would say that it is our own inner computer that binds us to an impermanent world. This can include binary feeling as data even though the inner computer does not feel. The mind and body become entangled through this encoding. Feeling, pleasant and unpleasant is the binary code of the body that locks our minds into associative spins between mind and matter. By contrast freedom lies in the great mysteries of consciousness and beauty. These two should be the focus of our efforts to avoid becoming trapped in an automatic world of binary thought and feeling. Here is all the wild, natural magic of the mind that emerges from emptiness and returns to emptiness in its pure acts of creativity. The mind that includes emptiness cannot be coded and drawn into the endless reactive stream of the conditioned mind. The mind can even become based in its perception of emptiness. This is freedom. Also, as a footnote, I think that if we consider the nature of mind in a deep way, not just on a superficial level as merely thought, computer analogies to human consciousness start to look fundamentally flawed. On a deeper level of information we cannot divide physical and mental processes. In a computer the software does not have a formative effect on the hardware so these are easy to divide. By contrast in biology the information contained within living organisms has a formative role in the development and control of the body. If we understand our minds to be like computers we are limiting their potential to form the very substance that carries the information. These days meditation is becoming associated more and more with a passive, accepting state. We just watch the mind and accept whatever happens. This can be a great way to relax but does not integrate very well into active daily life. So we become two people almost – the active person and the passive one. However, if a mind develops calm through meditation, we can discover that we do not need to continue to be passive in order to relax. The calm, patient mind can remain calm in activity. Then, moreover, we begin to realise that the calm mind sees differently and we can feel differently about our activities – even to the point where this changes our priorities. We begin to enjoy more peaceful leisure pursuits or we look for a more peaceful way to make a living. We move out into the countryside, perhaps. Gradually we find ourselves becoming one person and the endless inner conflicts and dialogues begin to disappear to leave the mind clear, whole, unified. I offer this for your reflection Ajahn Kalyāno http://www.openthesky.co.uk Refuge respect at my father's table love on my mother's knee here before and after and here before and after me When we have the conditions to dedicate ourselves to meditation and study, we can do well developing our practice. If, however, we cannot learn to protect our mindfulness our path will be a manic one of gain and loss. A healthier practice is to develop our mindfulness in good conditions and then seek to protect and maintain it through challenging situations. This, in addition to the solitary practise, is the second way to strengthen our minds. As we develop our practise further, toward samādhi, more refined states can give us the impression of being somehow concrete and stable in and of themselves (as being an 'energy' or 'our true nature') but this is not the case. In this sense the brightness and space of samādhi can be deluding. These states are a manifestation of emptiness – not something but an absence of something. We can need to think like this, talk about our experience like this, to change our perception of the results of our practice, or we will be heading in the wrong direction, towards spiritual materialism and not toward freedom. Ultimately all our states of mind, without exception, arise and are sustained by a perception. So it is wisdom, stable, liberating perception, that protects the mind. When, over time, we discover the vulnerable nature of refined states, instead of looking to stabilise them with wisdom we can try to do so in other (dysfunctional) ways. Typically we can shut ourselves away and just end up worrying about the next time we have to go out! There are also many more subtle dysfunctional ways arising from a lack of understanding of the mind. For example we can find ourselves defending the brightness of the mind against the darkness of others. The brightness of our mind is effected by our own dark side but not directly by that of others. When we start to see the darkness of the impure mind, we can falsely see that we are directly effected by the impure thoughts of others, we can take this darkness to be poisoning us without the other person saying a word. The darkness of others' minds is not a threat, it cannot effect us directly but only if we share or are affected by the unwholesome perceptions that are at its source, not through some mysterious dark energy. All states of mind arise from perception. If we see the suffering of such darkness we will be moved to compassion. Compassion is not poison. What we will also discover is that not all negative thoughts are dark. Some wise thoughts are negative but take the mind even brighter as it lets go of attachment. The distinction we have to make is between wholesome and unwholesome, skilful or unskilful rather than between positive or negative. Wholesome or skilful thoughts are that which lead to a more peaceful happy mind – the happiness of peace being the happiest happiness of all. A mind that is reliant on being positive to be happy is a mind that is relying on the world. If we have an inner happiness we can see both the positive and negative things of the world equally. This distinction of wholesome or unwholesome will be made for us once we start to be able to see the brightness or darkness of the heart or 'citta' directly. There are very many surprises here for the practitioner discovering what is truly a spiritual path and what is not. It is important to realise that we then have a different value system. Sexual desire for example darkens the mind. It is not that we think that there is something wrong with sex but that we come to enjoy and value the bright mind more highly. Until we can see like this for ourselves (this is quite late on in the path) we are reliant on faith and the guidance of others further on in the path. I offer this for your reflection Ajahn Kalyāno http://www.openthesky.co.uk |
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