A Still Forest Pool

The Insight Meditation of Achaan Chah
Part II Correcting Our Views

Starving Defilements

Those just beginning often wonder what practice is. Practice occurs when you try opposing the defilements, not feeding old habits. Where friction and difficulty arise, that’s the place to work.

When you pick mushrooms to eat, you do not do so blindly; you have to know which kind is which. So too with our practice - - we must know the dangers, the snake’s bite of defilements, in order to free ourselves from them.

The defilements --- greed, hatred and delusion --- are at the root of our suffering and our selfishness. We must learn to overcome them, to conquer and go beyond their control, to become masters of our minds. Of course it seems hard. It is like having the Buddha tell you to split up with a friend you have known since childhood.

The defilements are like a tiger. We should imprison the tiger in a good strong cage made of mindfulness, energy, patience, and endurance. Then we can let it starve to death by not feeding its habitual desires. We do not have to take a knife and butcher it.

Or defilements are like a cat. If you feed it, it will keep coming around. Stop feeding it, and eventually it will not bother to come around any more.

We will unavoidably be hot and distressed in our practice at first. But remember, only the defilements are hot. People think,"I never had problems like this before. What's wrong?" Before, when we fed our desires, we were at peace with them, like a man who takes care of an internal infection by dressing only the external sores.

Resist defilements. Do not give them all the food or sleep they want. Many people consider this the extreme of self-torture, but it is necessary to become inwardly strong. See for yourself. Constantly watching the mind, you may think you are seeing only effects and wonder about the causes. Suppose parents have a child who grows up to be disrespectful. Distressed by his behavior, they may ask, " Where has this child come from? " Actually, our suffering comes from our own wrong understanding, our attachment to various mental activities. We must train our mind like a buffalo: the buffalo is our thinking, the owner is the meditator, raising and training the buffalo is the practice. With a trained mind, we can see the truth, we can know the cause of our self and its end, the end of all sorrow. It is not complicated, you know.

Everyone has defilements in his practice. We must work with them, struggling when they arise. This is not something to think about but to do. Much patience is necessary. Gradually we have to change our habitual ways of thinking and feeling. We must see how we suffer when we think in terms of me and mine. Then we can let go.

A Still Forest Pool

The Insight Meditation of Achaan Chah
Part II Correcting Our Views

Right Understanding

One develops right understanding by seeing impermanence, suffering, and non-self in everything, which leads to detachment and loss of infatuation. Detachment is not aversion. An aversion to something we once liked is temporary, and the craving for it will return.

Imagine some food that you like --- bamboo shoots or sweet curry, for example. Imagine having it everyday for five or six years; you would be tired of bamboo shoots. If someone were to offer you some, you would not get excited. In the same way, we should see impermanence, suffering, and emptiness in all things at all times; bamboo shoots!

We seek not for a life of pleasure, but to find peace. Peace is within oneself, to be found in the same place as agitation and suffering. It is not found in a forest or on the hilltop, nor is it given by a teacher. Where you experience suffering, you can also find freedom from suffering. To try to run away from suffering is actually to run toward it. Investigate suffering, see its causes, and put an end to them right now, rather than merely dealing with their effects.

A Still Forest Pool

The Insight Meditation of Achaan Chah
Part II Correcting Our Views

The Wrong Road

A wandering ascetic, having heard of the Buddha, travelled everywhere looking for him. One night he came to stay in a house where the Buddha was also staying but, not knowing the Buddha's physical appearance, he was unaware of his presence. The next morning he arose and continued on his way, still searching for the Buddha. To search for peace and enlightenment without correct understanding is like this.

Due to a lack of understanding of the truth of suffering and its elimination, all the subsequent factors on the path will be wrong - wrong intentions, wrong speech, wrong actions, and wrong practice of concentration and tranquility. Your likes and dislikes are not a trustworthy guide in this matter either, although foolish people may take them for their ultimate reference. Alas, it is like travelling to a certain town - you unknowingly start out on the wrong road, and since it is a convenient one, you travel it in comfort. But it will not take you where you want to go.

A Still Forest Pool

The Insight Meditation of Achaan Chah
Part II
Correcting Our Views

When you pick mushrooms. Achaan Chah cautions, you must know what to look for. When you understand spiritual practice you must also know what attitudes to nourish, what dangers to avoid, and what mental qualities to encourage.

Here he emphasizes the power of training our endurance and courage, developing a willingness to find the Middle Path and follow it despite temptation and defilement. When greed, hatred, or delusion arise, he says, don't give in to them. Don't be discouraged. Just stay mindful and strong in your resolve.

As your training develops you will see that every single experience you pass through is impermanent, and thus unsatisfactory. You will discover firsthand the endless truth of these characteristics in all existence and begin to learn the way of freedom, of nonattachment. But Achaan Chah reminds us that this requires a willingness to investigate both our sufferings and our joys with the an equal mind.

When the heart becomes calm and the mind clear, we come closer to the truth of what Achaan Chah calls," Just that much." The Dhamma, the truth, is really very simple. All things that arise and pass, the whole world of changing phenomena, is really only "that much!" When we truly discover what this means, then here in our world we can come to peace.

A Still Forest Pool

The Insight Meditation of Achaan Chah
Part 1 Understanding The Buddha's Teaching

Thieves in Your Heart

The purpose of meditation is to raise things up and put them to the test, to understand their essence. For example, we see the body as something fine and beautiful, whereas the Buddha tells us it is unclean, impermanent, and prone to suffering. Which view accords with the truth?

We are like visitors to a foreign country; not knowing the language, we cannot enjoy ourselves. But once we have learned the language, we can laugh and joke with others. Or we are like children who have to grow up before we can understand what the grown-ups are saying.

The normal view is that the elements of our life, beginning with the body, are stable. One child plays with his balloon until it catches on a branch or a thorn and bursts, leaving him in tears. Another child, smarter than the first, knows that his balloon can burst easily and is not upset when it does. People go through life blindly, ignoring the fact of death like gourmets feasting on fine foods, never thinking they will have to excrete. Then nature calls, but having made no provision, they do not know where to go.

There is danger in the world – danger from the elements, danger from thieves. These dangers have their counterpart in the temples too. The Buddha taught us to investigate these dangers and gave the name bhikku to one who ordains. Bhikkhu has two meanings: one who begs and one who sees danger in the round of samsara, of grasping. Beings experience greed, hatred, and delusion. Succumbing to these defilements, they reap the results, increase their bad habits, make yet more karma, and again succumb to defilements.

Why can’t you get rid of greed, hatred, and delusion? If your thinking is wrong, you will suffer; if you understand correctly, you can end suffering.

Know the workings of the karma, of cause and effect. Attachment to pleasure brings suffering in its wake. You gorge yourself on good food, but stomach trouble and intestinal discomfort follow. Or you steal something and are happy with it, but later the police come around to arrest you. When you watch, you can learn how to act, you can learn to end grasping and sorrow. The Buddha, seeing this, wanted to escape from the real dangers of the world, which we have to overcome within ourselves. External dangers are not as frightening as the dangers within. What are the elements of this inner danger?

Wind. Things come at the senses, causing compulsion, lust, anger, and ignorance to arise, destroying what is good in us. Normally, we see the wind only as that which blows the leaves about, not seeing the wind of our senses, which, unwatched, can cause the storms of desire.

Fire. Our temple may never have been struck by fire, but greed, hatred, and delusion burn us constantly. Lust and aversion cause us to speak and do wrong; delusion leads us to see good as bad, bad as good, the ugly as beautiful, the valueless as valueble. But one who does not meditate does not see this and is overcome by these fires.

Water. Here the danger is the flood of defilement in our hearts submerging our true nature.

Thieves.The real thieves do not exist outside us. Our monastery has been thieves only once in twenty years, but inwardly the five gangs of attachment, the aggregates, are ever robbing, beating, and destroying us. What are these five aggregates?

1. Body. It is a prey to illness and pain; when it does not accord with our wishes, we have grief and sorrow. Not understanding the natural aging and decay of the body, we suffer. We feel attraction or repulsion toward the bodies of others and are robbed of true peace.

2. Feeling. When pain and pleasure arise, we forget that they are impermanent, suffering, not self; we identify with our emotions and are thus tortured by our wrong understandings.

3. Memories and perceptions. Identifying with what we recognize and remember gives rise to greed, hatred, and delusion. Our wrong understanding becomes habitual, stored in the subconscious.

4. Volitions and other elements of mind. Not understanding the nature of mental state, we react, and thoughts and feelings, likes and dislikes, happiness and sorrow arise. Forgetting that they are impermanent, suffering, and selfless, we cling to them.

5. Consciousness. We grasp that which knows the other aggregates. We think, "I know, I am, I feel," and are bound by this illusion of self, of separation.

All these theives, this wrong understanding, leads to wrong action. The Buddha had no desire for this; he saw that there was no true happiness to be found here. Thus, he gave the name bhikkhu to those who also see this danger and seek a way out.

The Buddha taught his monks the true nature of the five aggregates and how to let go of them without clinging to them as me or mine. When we understand them, we will see that they have potential for great harm or great value, but they do not disappear. They are simply no longer grasped as our own. After his enlightenment, the Buddha still had physical ills, had feelings of pain and pleasure, had memories, thoughts, and consciousness. But he did not cling to them as being self, as being me or mine. He knew them as they were, and the one who knew was also not I, not self.

Separating the five aggregates from the defilements and from clinging is like clearing the brush in the forest without destroying the trees. There is just a constant arising and falling away; defilement cannot gain a foothold. We are simply being born and dying with the aggregates; they just come and go, according to their nature.

If someone curses us and we have no feelings of self, the incident ends with the spoken words, and we do not suffer. If unpleasant feelings arise, we should let them stop there, realizing that the feelings are not us. " He hates me, he troubles me, he is my enemy." A bhikkhu does not think like this, nor does he hold views of pride or comparison. If we do not stand up in the line of fire, we do not get shot; if there is no one to receive it, the letter is sent back. Moving gracefully through the world not caught in eveluating each event, a bikkhu becomes serene. This is the way of Nirvana, empty and free.

Investigate the five aggregates, then; make a clean forest. You will be a different person. Those who understand emptiness and practice accordingly are few, but they come to know the greatest joy. Why not try it? You can abolish the thieves in your heart and set everything right.

A Still Forest Pool

The Insight Meditation of Achaan Chah
Part 1 Understanding The Buddha's Teaching

The Chicken or the Egg?

During his first visit to England, Achaan Chah spoke to many Buddhist groups. One evening after the talk he received a question from a dignified English lady who had spent many years studying the complex cybernetics of the mind according to the eighty- nine classes of consciousness in the Buddhist abhidharma psychology texts. Would he please explain certain of the more difficult aspects of this system of psychology to her so she could continue her study?

Dharma teaches us to let go. But at first, we naturally cling to the principles of Dharma. The wise person takes these principles and uses them as tools to discover the essence of our life.

Sensing how caught up she was in intellectual concepts rather than benefiting from practice in her own heart, Achaan Chah answered her quite directly, " You, madam, are like one who keeps hens in her yard," he told her, " and goes around picking up the chicken dropping instead of the eggs."