When Nothing’s Happening

Tonight I’d like to address two questions that came up recently. The first is what to do when you’ve hit a plateau. Every time you meditate, things seem to be just the same as they were the last time you meditated. Nothing seems to be improving. Part of the problem may be that that’s the nature of the mountain you’re climbing. Some parts of the trail up the mountain go up, up, up. Others will actually go down for a while, and others cross a plateau before heading up again.

So you don’t complain about the mountain; you just follow the terrain. When you’re on a plateau, it may be a sign that your mind is doing some catching up. Or to change the image: Think of Ajaan Lee’s image of trees. Banana trees have a single top end to the main stem, so they grow fast. Just one stem grows. Oak trees, though, have many stems. One stem may grow fast and the others have to catch up.

Your mind has many members. Maybe one member got up to the plateau, and now the other members have to catch up. You’re learning how to inhabit the area you’ve attained. One way to test this is to try meditating in different circumstances. Sit longer, sit in places that are not quite so ideal, and see what happens. See if you can maintain the level of the plateau.

Another way to test it is to ask yourself, “Maybe you’ve gotten lazy. Maybe you haven’t been paying careful attention.” That’s what is going to be to pull you up, makes you go further: Your insights get more refined because your attention has become more refined.

So start with the breath. Is the breath as totally comfortable as it could be? Is it a comfortable breath filling the whole body, every little square centimeter? Look at the areas where you don’t normally look: spaces between the toes, spaces between the fingers, around your eyes. See if you can maximize the amount of refreshment, pleasure, stillness, you can get out of the breath by being more observant.

So even though you may be just catching up, still you can test it. Try to notice your awareness: Does your awareness fill the body as much as it could? Are there parts that are not as full of awareness as they might be?

And the activities you’re doing: Are you still talking to yourself on subtle levels? Can you abandon those more subtle levels of conversation?

When Ajaan Fuang was teaching, he wouldn’t have you think about the different levels of jhāna. But there are times when you do have to review your practice. Ask yourself, “Exactly where am I on the map? To move on to the next stage, what has to be abandoned? And where right now is that activity that has to be abandoned?”

So you do question your plateau here, just to make sure you haven’t gotten lazy. You want to be more and more observant of more refined things. It’s in the refinement that the concentration deepens and gets stronger.

The other question I want to address—similar, in a way—is when the mind gets still, where do you look for the unfabricated? The answer I gave, of course, was that you don’t look for the unfabricated. You look for where your clingings still are. Remember your duty with regard to the four noble truths. You do want to realize the cessation of suffering, but you don’t do that by realizing the cessation of suffering. The realizing is a result. The cause of that result is that you develop the path.

And in developing the path, you have to comprehend wherever there’s any stress or suffering that you’re doing—remembering that suffering is something you do. As for any craving you’re engaged in, a good test for that is to watch the level of your concentration. You’re focusing not so much on where you want to go, and more on what might be in the way.

You can’t intend to see the deathless and just stick with that intention, because that intention will get in the way of developing the path. You have to focus your intention on what’s getting in the way. So one thing you might do is to ask yourself, “The level of stress in the mind: Does it have its ups and downs? When it goes up, what did you do that could be abandoned? When it goes down, what did you do? What did you abandon at that moment? And when you let go of that again, what happens?”

If it happens that you lose your concentration by letting go of that, it shows that you’ve let go of something that you need to hold on to for the time being. If you let go and find you go into a deeper level of concentration, that’s fine. Learn to settle in and get to know that level of concentration.

But there will come a point where you realize that your concentration is as good as you can get it. If you hang on here, it’s something that has to be maintained. If you go to any other level of concentration, that also has to be maintained. The prospect of having to maintain these things really hits you as a burden. Something in the mind says, “Even though these are the best states of mind I can create, I don’t want to stay here, but I don’t want to go there to another state I create. Isn’t there something that doesn’t have to be maintained?”

And in the prospect of neither staying here nor going there, something may open up. That might be your opening to the deathless. But you have to test it, of course. Once you arrive, the question again is, “Is this something that has to be maintained?” The genuine experience of the deathless will be something you can’t control, because it has nothing to do with intention, nothing to do with kamma at all.

But it’s important that you realize that you can’t just land in concentration and then look around and see where the deathless is. There are some teachings that would suggest that you can, saying that your awareness at the present moment is unconditioned, and if you just stay purely with that awareness, you’ve arrived. But your awareness of the present moment is part of the concentration aggregate. It’s something that you have to comprehend.

And it is conditioned. The fact that it’s aware of something: Whatever that “something” is, it’s part of the conditioning. The fact that there is a present moment there, that present moment is conditioned by fabrication. Remember the Buddha’s statement about the different aggregates. Each aggregate is a potential coming in from the past, and then it’s fashioned through fabrication into an actual experience of the aggregate.

That’s how you have the present moment. This is one of the tests for the deathless. There’s no sense of time or space at all, not even the present moment, as none of the activities that would define space or time are there. There’s no here or there. There’s no coming, going, or staying.

In your everyday awareness, there’s lots of coming and going and staying, and there’s here and there everywhere. So your simple everyday awareness is conditioned. It’s part of your concentration, part of every mind state you have. What you want is something beyond that. So again, you’re not going to be looking for the deathless, you’re going to be looking for what’s getting in the way.

There’s that koan I encountered one time in a book of koans with answers, kind of like a cheat sheet. One koan was about a master who told a student, “See that fire in that little brazier over there? There seems to be nothing but ashes, but there’s a burning coal inside. Find it.” The student takes some tongs and pokes around and pokes around in the ashes, but he doesn’t find anything that’s still burning.

So he goes back and tells the master. The master comes over, takes the tongs, reaches right in, pulls out the one coal that’s still burning, and shows it to the student.

When I read that, I thought to myself, “Well, I know the answer to that one. He told the student to look for a defilement. The student didn’t see the defilement, so the master showed him where it was.”

Then I looked at the supposed answer. The answer was that the student was supposed to be looking for the Buddha nature inside, but he couldn’t find it. The master found it for him. I’m sure that answer is wrong. After all, the whole point of the challenge was to put the fire out, not to treasure the burning coal.

Our problem as meditators is that we don’t see where the fire is still burning, but that’s where we have to focus: on finding where the fire is burning. Then we can put it out. Once it’s out, then in that state of unconditioned awareness, there is no action. This is why they say that arahants have gone beyond good and evil, right and wrong—because there’s no action in nibbāna to be right, no action to be wrong, to be good or evil.

Ajaan Mun makes this point: The four noble truths have their duties. Even the third noble truth has its duty, which is to be realized. So it’s not nibbāna. It’s the realization of nibbāna. That moment of realization: That’s something you do. But then beyond that—nibbāna itself—there’s nothing to be done at all.

So as far as that attainment is concerned, there is no right or wrong, no good or evil. Now, when arahants are engaged with the world and they have to act, they can make mistakes. Not mistakes based on greed, aversion, or delusion. Not mistakes based on breaking the precepts. Simple mistakes based on having the wrong information. That’s possible.

So there is still right and wrong for them in this area. But in the area of nibbāna, there is no right or wrong. As Ajaan Lee says, right view and wrong view are matters of the world. Nibbāna is beyond right view and wrong view, because views are actions—and there’s no action there.

How can there be action? No space, no time: That’s what we’re looking for. But you don’t get there by looking for it. You get there by doing the path, following the duties with regard to the other noble truths. When those duties are done, you’ve developed the path.

Then you see that the path itself is based on some craving, and it’s got some clinging. So you let go of that craving. You comprehend that clinging. You have no passion for it. That’s when the realization of nibbāna comes. And beyond that is *nibbāna *itself.