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elcome to the class. I am very happy to see you. As I told you before, the most beautiful thing to see is a person sitting and meditating, very beautiful. Since I was a young boy whenever I saw someone meditating, I just wanted to stop and look at that person; sitting so still, his body is still and also so balanced and dignified. Sitting like this it looks like a pyramid to me, so stable, so firm, unshakable; it represents the mind also, so stable, so still. The posture of the body helps the mind; it makes you go towards stability, calm and peace.about the nature of our mind…. I tried to find out in some books about meditation, experienced meditators have made records, and they have found that just as the stillness of meditation is coming to him or her, the mind is becoming still, the thoughts slowing down, you become unaware of the surroundings — it means your mind is becoming more and more collected…. You are going towards the samædhi state of mind — but just as that happens; do you know what happens next for some people? Just as the stillness of meditation is coming to him or her, the begin-ner… [A beginner does not mean a person who is just start-ing meditatstart-ing, a beginner means a person who has not gone beyond that; so you may have been meditating for a long time, but if you haven’t gone beyond a certain stage you are still in the beginning stage. This is very humbling, to understand that, because if we have been meditating for a long time we want to think that we know everything, we have gone very far. If you haven’t overcome a certain stage you are still in the beginning stage.]
So, just as the stillness of meditation is coming to him or her, the beginner suddenly is brought back to material realities.
Material realities mean the ordinary reality… so… brought back to ordinary reality by a sudden jerk of the whole body and why does that happen? It happens to some people; it used to happen to me. Sometimes it happened like this… I am very still… and then suddenly I hear some noise and become shocked… and wake up!
When you meditate, you go into a different world, into a different reality, and this is something you should understand.
It is very similar to ‘a trance state’, a kind of hypnotic state but not really a hypnotized state. It is very similar to that. Some doctors understand very well. When you stop thinking and you are paying attention to one object, slowly and slowly your mind becomes collected and you go into a different kind of reality.
So, on the threshold of that reality, you find a lot of difficulties.
Your mind goes back and forth because we are so familiar with our ordinary reality. We feel safe in this ordinary reality and we want to take hold of it, keep hold of it, we don’t want to let go of it… this is a protective reaction. We want to protect ourselves.
One way of protecting ourselves is to keep ourselves in our conscious mind, to keep our surroundings in our conscious mind,
we want to know what is going around, and we want to know the state of our body too.
“How is my body now?” When you meditate and your mind becomes very collected, slowly and slowly you lose awareness of your surroundings. When you get more and more collected you lose awareness of your body too sometimes. I mean… you are aware of the sensations but you are not aware of the shape anymore. Sometimes the shape and size of your body dissolves because shape and size is paññatti. The mind puts it together it makes it into an idea; paramattha has no shape, no size.
If you find that difficult to understand I will give you a simile — an example from physics, Newtonian science. When you read that, you find that there is shape, size, and movement, everything is there. You can predict everything according to Newtonian physics: the planets move around, you can predict any time, say ten years from now, that a certain planet will be in a certain place, you can tell that. It has shape, size and move-ment regularity. But when you get down and down to subatomic particles you lose all that. There is no shape, and you cannot tell anything for sure, you can only say that there is a certain percentage of probability for a certain thing to happen. Only probability, nothing is sure anymore.
In meditation also it happens like that. In our ordinary state of awareness we are aware of the surroundings, the shape, size, being, people, east, west, north, south, time, day, and year.
When we meditate we forget about what year it is, what day it is, what day and time it is and sometimes also
we forget about where we are.
We are not aware of that anymore, because all these are just concepts.
You don’t know where you are sitting; you don’t know whether you are facing east or west. Sometimes very strange, you don’t know where you are and that is very scary and it sounds like a kind of mental sickness. Some people forget who
they are because they are mentally sick, but in this state also sometimes when you go beyond ordinary reality, who you are does not matter anymore.
‘I’ is just an idea, you lose all that too.
As you go into that state you come back again and again because you are very scared of it…. I have to know who I am….
I have to know what is happening around me because otherwise I am so unprotected. We try to feel secure by trying to know what is happening around us and by trying to know what is hap-pening to our body, by trying to be conscious of our body or self, this is paññatti actually. This is very important to understand because if you don’t, you fear more and more… “I am afraid to meditate”…. This happened to me, suddenly with a jerk I woke up and I had tremendous fear! We are afraid to go beyond this ordinary reality, although we want to experience something deeper, something beyond. Although we are meditating just for that, the moment we cross that threshold some people are afraid and feel very insecure.
We feel secure by being in control of our body and our surroundings. One way of being in control is to know what is going on, we want to know what is going on around
us and we want to know what is going
on in our body. This is a protective reaction.
When we have been tense for a long time, we become accus-tomed to holding on to ourselves. This happens more to people who are anxious and insecure.
Imagine for example that you are in a deep forest and there might be tigers, snakes, and other animals around; I lived in the forest and there were tigers. [Now hunters say that tigers are afraid of human beings and run away]. When we first go into a place which is new to us we feel very insecure because there is real danger: the tigers, the snakes… tigers we can protect our-selves if we are in an enclosed area. But snakes, it is very difficult because they are so small and they can squeeze in and come into your hut because the huts are made of bamboo, not really sealed.
Crawling insects, animals can come in…. So when you sit and you hear noises like shi… shish…, suddenly you wake up and you are really afraid, your body reacts; “what is that?” You feel very insecure. When you find out that it’s just a lizard then ok you go back and meditate but still your mind is not totally in your meditation, you are still keeping alert. If you keep yourself alert and try to find what is going on in your surroundings it is very hard for you to develop deep samædhi. You are still aware, you are mindful to a certain extent only. You cannot go beyond that.
To go beyond that you need to develop some kind of trust and security;
this is very important.
It is very good to meditate with another person whom you trust, your teacher, a family member or a good friend… you feel that if “anything should happen to me, somebody is around to help me,” for beginners this is very important. In Burma when we meditate many teachers say surrender your body to Buddha.
Symbolically you give yourself away to the Buddha; it is not mine anymore, so if it is not mine anymore I don’t need to worry about it. This is symbolical giving away. Try to find out some ways to make yourself feel secure and to trust your surroundings. In this place you don’t need to be afraid of anything. Everybody around here is a meditator and the place is very safe and secure. Before you meditate it is important to develop some kind of mettæ (lov-ing kindness), because mettæ makes you feel quite secure.
I live in the forest sometimes with no building, no dwelling place. Sometimes sitting under a tree, sometimes just a simple hut, sometimes made from robes. We sit and meditate and when we develop strong mettæ, that strong mettæ, makes us feel very secure. I have been living in the forest for more than twenty years and never been hurt by anything, real deep forest some-times, only a few huts surrounding, to get my food. I want to get deeper and deeper into the forest, far away from civilization, because civilization is so disturbing.
Anyway… if you trust yourself, that means you feel more secure… trust yourself, trust your practice!
For beginners it is very important to find
very secure surroundings.
So we become accustomed to holding on to ourselves, we become so attached to ourselves, we try to protect ourselves all the time… keeping a grip of ourselves… see if you can really feel that “I am trying to be in control of my body and mind”, we are all trying to be in control, but in meditation if you try to do that you cannot develop deeper understanding and go beyond.
You learn to let go…
let whatever happens happen, because
some of the things you experience in meditation are so extraordinary that if you try to be in control you back off.
You cannot go further! “Keeping a grip on ourselves”
we do this unconsciously, that is the problem.
Because consciously you try to give up the control, to let go, but unconsciously you are afraid, you are insecure. So you are still trying to be in control because this fear, anxiety has been ingrained in us. We don’t know how long, it might be millions of years, it is ingrained in our DNA I think; this is not an easy thing: to unconsciously guard against the threat of psychologi-cal disintegration.
‘Psychological disintegration’ what does that mean? Inte-gration means we have the idea of who we are. DisinteInte-gration means it is anatta, no self; no control. Are you willing to go into that stage?
There is no self, there is no control,
there is just physical and mental process going on!
The moment you try to control it you are out of it, you are out of your meditation…
Meditation is a kind of surrender.
We always want to be in control of ourselves “I know who I am, I know what I am doing” with that attitude we cannot cross the threshold! There is no ‘I’ anymore, there is no ‘I’ medi-tating anymore, and you are not in control of your meditation even. You are just purely aware of what is happening, just purely aware without control, just like you are looking at the road. You are sitting outside and looking at the road, you are not in con-trol of any car. They are just coming and going, you can just sit and watch… I know what is going on but I have no control!
You need to develop that kind of mental state, no control, that is why I try to tell people don’t resist, don’t control, just let go and be just an uninvolved observer.
The moment we see we are losing control, the moment we don’t feel ‘I am’ anymore, we have a certain kind of fear devel-oping. But this does not happen to everybody. Only to some people it really happens. Then, we let go into the meditative process…. Whenever that happens try to calm down again and just tell yourself that there is no danger, no fear. Trust yourself, trust your practice, and go on. We are no longer holding on to ourselves. When we are meditating we are not holding on to ourselves, or keeping a grip of ourselves. See if you are doing
that, trying to be in control, trying to do something. Our mind suddenly feels that we are in danger and the sudden jerk of the body is a protective reaction to put us on guard again. So the moment we cross over to another reality we wake up with a jerk, we want to be in control again. This is a kind of protective reaction of body and mind. This sudden jerk of the body it is not very common but it may be quite frightening. Just tell yourself, encourage yourself that it will go away as you develop deeper peacefulness and deeper wisdom, it will go away. This will hap-pen a few times, going back and forth.
Sometimes the beginner may be disturbed by a sudden feeling of acute panic. The first thing is that your body wakes in a jerk, your body reacts, but in other cases the body is still very quiet, it does not shake. The body is in a still position but the mind reacts.
Sometimes the beginner may be disturbed by a sudden feeling of acute panic just when the stillness of mind comes to him. The meditation is abruptly brought to a halt, it comes to a stop; you wake up. This is another variety of the unconscious protective reaction. The person who is chronically tense and anxious feels that if he was to let go something terrible would happen to him mentally. He feels that “If I let go I don’t know what will happen, maybe something very strange can happen and I may not be in control, I may not be able to come back to my normal way of being”, there are many such a people among us.
That is why in order to develop self confidence and courage we need to practice, to keep five precepts, that makes you feel very courageous.
If you are keeping the five precepts you have less fear, this is real.
If you believe that you are a kind, virtuous person, it gives you a lot of strength and courage.
Also develop mettæ, when you are a loving person it makes your mind very calm and peaceful. We are protected by our own mettæ. Sometimes you feel there is a kind of protection around you, like radio waves, like a magnetic field, you feel like you are protected by your loving kindness. Whoever comes into this field will not hurt you. Even though they come to you with the intention to hurt you, when they cross into your field of kind-ness, they change their mind… “Oh, I am not going to say any-thing, I am not going to do anything”, this is very real! Try to develop loving kindness. The stronger you try to develop this kindness the stronger your field of mettæ will be and you will feel protected by your own mettæ. Many people ask me “How do I protect myself?”
You protect yourself by developing mettæ and also by developing mindfulness.
Both of them can protect you and also
trust in the Buddha, trust in the practice.
Before you go into deep samædhi, sit down and reflect on your good qualities. Develop mettæ and reflect on the quali-ties of the Buddha and then tell yourself “I will go deep into my practice but if any real danger comes I will wake”. You can determine that and if you do that a few times you’ll find that if something happens, you are already awake. This is very real because in some places where we live we have to do that, not only for danger but if you wish to get out of your samædhi at a certain hour you can do that too. You sit and meditate, and before you meditate you say “I am going to sit for two hours after that I will wake up” and you go deep into samædhi and meditate and when the time comes you are already awake. Look at the clock and you see it is the right time, just one or two minutes plus or minus.
When you go into real sleep also, many meditators can do that… You have meditated and you want to go to sleep, normal natural sleep, so you tell yourself “Now I am going to sleep but after four or five hours sleep I will get up”. With that deter-mination in your mind slowly go to sleep and you’ll wake up at the determined time. Maybe you have heard or read about these things. This is real, you can do this. The same thing you can do if any real danger comes, “I will be awake, and I’ll know what to do”. In some cases when people meditate for a long time
— sometimes they can meditate all day without getting up even
— they have to do that. In the meditation instruction books they say that you have to do that, you have to do this kind of determination because there can be real danger. What happens
if a fire breaks out in the forest? It is quite a common thing to happen, so you determine that “If there is any danger I will wake up”. So, this is a very good question somebody asked last week.
Please ask me questions like this and give me time to prepare so that I can give you a very clear answer.
This week I would like to talk a little bit more about paññatti and paramattha again and then I would like to talk about three different kinds of samædhi.
Paramattha is something you experience directly
without thinking about it.
Paramattha is that inherent quality of
mental and physical process.
In fact paramattha is the qualities and you cannot know anything beyond qualities.
Scientists are trying to find out what is ultimate reality.
Until now they have not found it because the deeper they go the more it becomes illusive; matter has no shape, no size. The smallest particle of matter, something like photons; light is pho-tons, just packets of energy that have no mass. Can you imagine something with no mass? Just pure energy, this is light; what is beyond that nobody can tell. The only thing we can know about it is the quality, nothing more than that.