Papañca

We sit here just with the body and the mind, focused on bringing them both together in the breath. Sometimes it can get frustrating. The body doesn’t do what you want. It’s not always doing what you want. It gets sick without asking permission. Your voice gives out without asking permission. Your mind starts wandering around without asking permission. It can be frustrating. But the frustration there is not so much the body and the mind or the breath.

It’s the “we” and the “these things are not doing what we want.” That “we” is part of what the Buddha calls papañca. It’s a kind of thinking. Usually when you hear the word “papañca,” especially in modern Dharma circles, it means “a thinking attack.”

I knew of one woman who spent an entire retreat at IMS trying to figure out how the building had been put together, which parts of the building came first, which ones had been added on later. She would do her walking meditation in different areas to figure out where the seams between the buildings were. She said that was a papañca attack.

Actually, that’s not what papañca is.

Papañca is a particular kind of thinking that’s based on particular perceptions. It starts with the perception—“I am the thinker.” There’s an “I” in there. “I’m the one who’s doing the thinking.” “I’m the one who’s inhabiting the body.” “I’m the one who’s using the body.” “I’m the one who’s trying to find what this body needs in the world, what this mind needs in the world.” It spreads out from there.

As long as you’re thinking in those terms, they’re going to come back and assail you, in the Buddha’s words. They’re going to come back and attack you with a sense of frustration.

Once there’s the “I am,” then there’s the world in which “I am.” And you suddenly decide, “Well, maybe this spot right here, being focused on the breath right here, right now, is not where I want to be. I want to be someplace else.” Then the mind is already someplace else, pushing away, pulling away. You’ve sided with a papañca.

You’ve got to learn how to say No to it. And the Buddha gives you some good papañca for saying No. “Think about death,” he says. “Think about how much you’ve suffered.” Papañca includes the questions: “Who am I? Where am I going? Where have I been?” And sometimes it’s good to think about where you’re going, where you’ve been, in a way that brings you back to the present moment.

There was a time when thirty monks came to see the Buddha. The Buddha said to himself, “What can I say to these monks so that they will gain awakening the right here, right now?” So he told them, “Which do you think is greater? The water in the oceans or the blood that you shed from having your heads cut off in many, many lifetimes?”

He went down the long list of different ways you can get your head cut off—one head per life: having been a thief; having been a highway robber; having been an adulterer; having been a sheep; having been a cow; having been a goat. All the times you’ve had your heads cut off, the blood is more than the water in the oceans. All thirty monks became arahants.

Now, that thinking is a kind of papañca, but it’s useful papañca. It gives you a sense of “saṃvega”— a way of thinking about where you’re going.

The other day we were talking about different ways to motivate yourself to practice. One woman said, “My motivation is that I ask myself, ‘Are you ready for your last breath?’” The breath comes in, and when it goes out, it’s not going to come in again. Are you ready for that moment? Are you prepared to drop everything? If not, you’ve got work to do.

That kind of papañca is useful—thinking skillfully about where you’ve been, where you’re going, this “you” you’ve created. It brings you back to the present moment in a way that makes you want to take apart that sense of “what you are,” “who you’ve been,” “who you will be.”

This is why the Buddha recommends just focusing on the body in and of itself and putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world, because as soon as you start thinking of a world, you’re going to start thinking about “who you are” or “who you might be” in that world.

But here you just want to be with the body in and itself, feelings in and themselves, mind in and itself—just these things as you experience them right here, right now, with a minimal amount of “me.” Just enough to want to get these things to come together and to remind yourself that these things are arising within you, and you’re the one responsible for looking after them, putting them in good shape. Just that much “me” or “I” is enough. As for the rest, just let that sense of “me” go, as much as you can. Be here simply with the experience—what is it like to breathe in and breathe out? What is it like for the mind to stay with the breath coming in and going out?

As the forest ajaans say, in this state of mind, there is no woman or man, young or old. It’s just awareness and the sensation of the breathing, the sensation of inhabiting a body, feeling the body from within.

Beyond that, just let things go.

Then you start looking at what’s arising in the body, what’s arising in the mind, what kind of feelings are coming. As the Buddha said, try to develop what are called unworldly feelings or feelings not of the flesh. In other words, we’re not just here watching feelings coming and going.

Those are feelings of the flesh, or worldly feelings. The ones not of the flesh—a pain, say, not of the flesh would be thinking about how there’s so much work to be done along the path.

Think about that in a way that doesn’t get you discouraged. Think about it in a way that says, “If I don’t do it now, when is it going to get done?” Otherwise, your mind goes wandering off, thinking about where you might be right now, where it’d be more pleasant—in other words, greed with reference to the world. You have to remind yourself, “Okay, those places where it’s more pleasant, do they last forever? Are they safe? Can you trust the happiness that comes there?” Well, no. Bring yourself back then.

Focus on the fact that if you don’t get the work done now, when are you going to do it? You’ve got the ideal opportunity. Even if it doesn’t seem perfect, it’s good enough to practice. So take advantage of it.

As for pleasures not of the flesh, those are the ones that come from learning how to breathe in a way that feels really good inside.

When we talk the breath energy in the body—what is that? If you were to take your arm and just hold it out in front of you without touching anything, you’d still know where the arm is even though it’s not touching anything. Those sensations that tell you where the arm is—those are breath sensations.

So try to get in touch with that level of sensation. If it doesn’t seem like anything’s flowing, then just ask yourself, “Where is it tight? Where is it tense? Can you loosen it up?”

When you breathe in, where do you sense motion? Is that the only place in the body where it can be? Or is it simply the place where it’s most obvious?

Try to cast your inner eye around the whole body as you breathe in, as you breathe out. Just notice where you have sensations that are there when you breathe in and are not there when you breathe out. Or sensations that are there when you breathe out, but not when you breathe in. In which areas are the sensations the same? Those same sensations, do they feel comfortable or do they feel blocked?

And how wide is the range of your awareness? Can you keep it with the whole body?

In other words, you’re approaching this not as a person doing these things, just the body and the mind asking questions. Try to keep things on those terms. There’s an awareness that fills the body. There’s also the focused awareness.

How does that focused awareness relate to the background awareness that fills the body? Do they seem like two separate things, or can you see them as part and parcel of each other?

These are questions that deal with body in and of itself, mind in and of itself, feelings in and of themselves, in a way that eventually brings them together. Your awareness fills the body; the breath fills the body. You’ve got these three things that are right there together. They feel good with one another because you’re not pushing and pulling away.

And in that space, whatever your background is—gender, age, whatever—it doesn’t matter.

If you can hold that attitude in mind, then it’s a lot easier to settle down and your thoughts don’t assail you over the fact that you’re with a body that sometimes does what you want and sometimes doesn’t do what you want and a mind that sometimes does and doesn’t do what you want.

It’s a lot easier to be with these things. They’re a lot less trouble. It’s the papañca. That’s the trouble. That’s the troublemaker.

So try to see these things simply in and of themselves—with as little “me” or “mine” as possible, as little of the world v. Usually when there’s a “me” or a “mine,” there’s going to be a world that comes tagging along. For the time being, you don’t want either. There’s just this world right here, the world of the body as you feel it from within, and the awareness as you feel it from within, trying to bring them together.

In that way,you can know what it’s like to be not attacked by your thinking. Your thinking is actually helpful, because it’s not in the terms of papañca. It’s in terms of the establishing of mindfulness—those frames of reference that the Buddha gives us. They’re the means by which we pull out of our various senses of ourselves and our senses of the world, all the different becomings we could create out of sensations in the body and the mind.

We’re in a place where we’re a lot more safe and free from conflict.