Q & A

Q: What is really samādhi, if not stillness? (This person is quoting a certain ajaan he’s referring to as Ajaan X.)

A: Samādhi is not only calm, but also an intense focus. The mind gathers around one object. With right concentration, you’re also alert and mindful at the same time.

There are states of stillness that count as wrong concentration. Two are very common. One is called delusion concentration, in which you’re focused on an object, such as the breath, and as it gets very pleasant, you drop the object and you just focus on the pleasure. You get into a state which is very pleasant, but you don’t really know what your object is. It’s as if you’re in a pleasant fog. Sometimes you come out of that state and you ask yourself, “Was I awake or was I asleep?” It’s not very clear. This is one of the obstacles that comes as the mind begins to settle down but is not yet thoroughly focused on its object.

The way around that—as the mind settles down and there’s a sense of pleasure—is to tell yourself, “I’ll let the pleasure do its work, while I stay focused on my breath.” This is where you do things like spreading the breath sensations through the body, to make sure that the breath is connected in all parts of the body, and that all the parts, even the tiny ones, are getting nourished by the breath. In other words, you give the mind work to do. That gets you firmly established in your object.

The image I have in mind for delusion concentration is of someone on a scaffolding next to a building. A cloud comes by and it looks very comfortable, so he jumps off the scaffolding onto the cloud.

The other type of wrong concentration is called the state of non-perception, in which you refuse to focus on any object at all. If anything comes up, you let it go, let it go, let it go, let it go. You go into a state where you have no sense of the body at all and no sense of the world outside you. There’s a tiny bit of awareness. Time can pass very quickly without your realizing it. Several hours feel like just a few seconds. This is very still, but it’s wrong concentration. There’s no discernment, no mindfulness, no alertness at all. The weird thing about this type of concentration is that you tell yourself that you’re going to get out at 10 p.m., say, and you come out right at that hour.

Q: I have trouble concentrating when I’m walking. To get my mind concentrated, I breathe in, making the breath energy come up from the foot all the way to the head in front, all the way up to the head as it’s placed there. And then I make it come back down again when I make the next step. This practice necessitates that I walk very slowly, step by step, synchronizing my breath with my walking. Is this technique correct?

A: It’s useful sometimes. If you find that it helps to establish concentration, then you can do that. But then once the concentration is established, try to find just one spot in the body where you stay focused, because you want to get so that you can walk without synchronizing your breath with the steps. Keep your attention there. Try to choose a spot that’s least affected by the movement of the feet, because you want to get so that you can cross the street safely while you’re doing walking meditation.

Q: Is it possible to be in the first jhāna, all the time, 24 hours?

A: If you’re speaking, you’re not in jhāna. You can listen while in jhāna, which is why people listening to the Buddha could attain awakening while listening. Someone who is skilled in jhāna can enter and leave it at will. If you live all alone, I guess you could be in jhāna all the time, but that would require a lot of skill.

Q: How do I know that the sensations I feel when I’m moving my breath through the body are a direct result of that breath, versus latent or pre-existing? Does it matter or not? If not, why not?

A: One way to test whether what you’re feeling is a result of what you’re doing right now is to change what you’re doing. If the results change, then obviously it’s a result of what you’re doing right now. If it doesn’t change, then it’s a result of other things. But most likely you’ll find, especially with the breath, that if you change your intention for how to breathe, it’ll have an immediate effect on how you experience the body.

Q: Ajaan, concerning working with pain, first, I can sit on the ground for 30 minutes before my right leg falls asleep and becomes painful. Then I can sit in a chair for an hour before pain starts, and so far, for this retreat, I’ve decided to use a chair.

Next bullet point, my goal would be to sit for longer periods of time on the ground.

Finally, what are your thoughts on using the retreat to work with pain, or is it a better idea to make this a long-term goal for after the retreat? Thank you.

A: I would say that you use the last session that we have in the afternoon, which is a 30-minute session, to sit on the floor. Otherwise, I would say, sit in a chair. You can use the retreat as an opportunity to work on your concentration because working with pain is best done when you have some powers of concentration. So you can make that a long-term goal. For example, one day you sit for 30 minutes, the next day you sit for 35, then 40, then 45, and so on.

Q: When in the third jhāna, I find that thinking about how I prefer equanimity to pleasure—and pain, for that matter—can get me deeper into concentration. Can this also be a way of letting go of pleasure to get into the fourth jhāna, or is it rather that the pleasure has to saturate the mind before it can let go of it, hence, one just has to have patience?

A: This will depend on the situation. If you decide that you prefer equanimity to the pleasure, things begin to calm down, and the mind stays in that deeper state, then that’s fine. However, if it requires a lot of effort to make it stay in that deeper state, then it’s a sign the mind is not ready for it yet. Go back to enjoy the pleasure of the state you just left.

They have stories in the forest tradition of how even Ajaan Mun found that on some days when he really wanted to get the mind really deep into concentration, it wouldn’t go as deep as he wanted it to. There are times when you have to feed the mind and feed the body with pleasure before it’s willing to settle down deeper. You don’t have to jump through jhāna hoops.

Q: I found very useful your advice about the question of internal security, so thank you for that. But still, I’ll ask about what to do when the people on whom you are very dependent approach you. Suppose one appears at work, how do you assert your desires or needs without the other one feeling aggressed against or menaced? This is the case in a professional context where there’s a lot of intellectual competition.

A: You have to learn how to express your needs and desires in a non-aggressive way. There was a woman in Thailand who became Miss Thailand, and then Miss Universe. She had a reputation for saying everything with a smile. People just went along with the smile, without noticing that she was sometimes saying some pretty aggressive things. So it’s a question of learning how to assert yourself without the other person feeling that you’re attacking them. Look for examples.

I’ll give you an example. When I first went to Thailand to stay at the monastery, there was an old monk who had ordained after retiring from government service. He liked to brag about the fact that he was totally past sexual desire, but he also liked to tell stories about his old days with prostitutes.

One day it got to me. He started telling another one of these stories, and I said, “How can you say that you’re past sexual desire? This is all you talk about.” Well, he blew up. Word of this got to Ajaan Fuang, and Ajaan Fuang told me, “That wasn’t the most skillful way of presenting this issue. The way to say this is, ‘These stories may not affect you, but I still have sexual desire, and it affects me, so could you please not tell these stories?’”

Years later, after Ajaan Fuang died and I was in charge of the monastery, we had a young monk whose mother would bring the newspaper every day. This newspaper was a tabloid called the Daily News. Every day, on the front page of section two, there was always a picture of a woman wearing very few clothes. And it seemed as if that page was always the one left open when the paper was left around. So I called the monks together and I said, “This may not be affecting you, but it’s affecting me, okay?” That was the end of that. So, learn to be diplomatic.

Q: To desire what’s beautiful or to be attracted by beauty, aesthetics: Is it unskillful? Does it necessarily lead to sensuality even when the mind thinks it recognizes the absolute?

A: What kind of absolute are we talking about here?

The Buddha said he doesn’t condemn all beauty, all sensual pleasures. You have to judge these things by the effect that they have on your mind. If you find that a particular pleasure gives rise to more unskillful qualities in the mind, then you have to renounce that pleasure. But if it doesn’t have that effect, then it’s okay. But this is an area where you have to be very honest with yourself.

The Canon gives examples of innocent pleasures, like the beauty of nature, and the pleasure that comes from living in a harmonious community or in seclusion. These pleasures are usually okay across the board. Other pleasures, as long as they don’t involve breaking the precepts, are an individual matter. You have to observe yourself in all honesty.

Q: When I listen to a podcast, read fiction, or watch a film, I don’t feel suffering. What are the downsides of these strategies, given that, on the path, one continues to feel suffering unless one reaches the very end of the path?

A: Test yourself: Can you watch that film repeatedly for 24 hours? Can you listen to that podcast again and again and again for 24 hours? After a while, it really isn’t pleasurable anymore. In other words, these are ways of making you insensitive to whether suffering really is occurring in your mind. It’s better to be really clear to yourself about what’s actually going on in the mind and what levels of stress are there, even in those experiences. Also, try to cultivate the pleasures that are part of the path because those pleasures actually make you more sensitive to what’s really going on inside your body and inside your mind.

Once, when I first went back to America, I was on a plane with Ajaan Suwat. We were in a row of three seats, and the man sitting in the window seat must have noticed, “Oh, these are Buddhist monks.” Without saying hello or anything, he turned to us and said, “I’m not suffering.” Then he proceeded to tell us about his life. He lived in Blythe, California, which is right in the middle of the hottest part of the American desert. He ran a car dealership, he had a son who was in jail and a daughter who had given birth to a cocaine baby that he and his wife had to raise because the daughter was on drugs. He kept saying, “But I’m not suffering,” yet you could tell that he was in denial.

So it’s very easy to deny your suffering. It’s better to get sensitive to what suffering there is, even in some pleasures.

Q: I have a doubt about my comprehension of your teaching about the process that leads to fabrications. From what I understand, one, the mind and craving are the origin of suffering. Two, the mind and desire give the impulse that sets this process of fabrication in motion. Three, fabrications then produce the material for desire. And four, desire is at the start of all our experiences and of becoming. Is this correct, or is it so that, on the contrary, desire and the need for becoming are giving rise to desire?

A: This is not a strictly linear process, in which A causes B, and B causes C. There are actually many feedback loops in which B or C can turn around and influence A, and C can influence B. In other words, there are the desires that will give the impulse to fabrication, and the fabrications that produce the materials from which you excite more desires. Sometimes you have the fabrications giving rise to becoming. Then you can develop some desires around your sense of self or the world in that state of becoming, that will give rise to more fabrications.

Now, these feedback loops are not a deterministic circle. They can be cut with awareness, alertness, ardency, mindfulness, wisdom, and discernment. But there is one caveat, which is that if a state of becoming has already arisen, don’t try to destroy that state of becoming, because that becomes a desire for non-becoming, which is also a cause of suffering. What you have to do is go back and find the process that leads to the next state of becoming, and then abort that process through dispassion. That’s how you get free from becoming.

Q: What about saṅkhāras? I have physical pains. Are they related to my past actions?

A: Saṅkhāras are basically intentional actions. The action itself, and then what is produced by the action, are both called saṅkhāras. What’s important about saṅkhāras is that they contain an intentional element.

As for your physical pains, they come from a combination of past actions and present actions. The present actions are those three kinds of saṅkhāras, or fabrications, that we talked about earlier: bodily, which is the breath; verbal, which is directed thought and evaluation, the way you talk to yourself; and then mental, which is feelings and perceptions. As we practice, we focus on getting more skillful at doing these types of fabrications in the present moment.

Q: Yesterday’s talk about dependent co-arising raised the question of free will versus determinism. Please comment.

A: The Buddha’s teaching on causality is a combination of two principles.

The first principle is diachronic, causation over time. In other words, an action happens now, and then the effect will come along sometime later. The second principle, though, is synchronic, in which the action happens now, and the consequence happens right at the same time. When the cause disappears, the effect disappears immediately. Our life is a combination of these two principles, and it turns out that without our present-moment contribution, we wouldn’t even experience the results of past actions. So both are required for the experience of the present moment. But it’s important to note that your present-moment decisions are not necessarily determined by the past.

So there is an element of conditionality coming from the past, but there’s also an element of freedom in your present choices. It’s because of this freedom that we focus on the present moment as we meditate, because what you do in the present moment is going to make a difference between whether you suffer from past actions or not.

In short, there is some determinism, but it’s not total determinism, and there is some room for free will.

Q: The desire of the bodhisattva is an admirable one: to help in the liberation of beings from saṁsāra. If the choice of becoming a bodhisattva is determined in previous lives, may one by power of free will change it and walk the path of arahantship? How to know it?

A: There’s the story of Ajaan Mun and Ajaan Sao. It’s a well-known story in the forest tradition that after Ajaan Mun became a non-returner, he wondered why his teacher, Ajaan Sao, had not yet attained any of the noble attainments. He saw in his meditation that Ajaan Sao in a previous lifetime had made a vow to become a Private Buddha. So Ajaan Mun told him about this. Ajaan Sao felt daunted by the amount of time it would take to become a Private Buddha, so he renounced the vow and soon later he became an arahant.

So, the short answer to that question is, Yes, you can renounce vows like that because there is that element of free will for everybody.