Q & A

Q: Dear Ajaan, I understood recently that the five khandhas are what constitutes our ego. Listening to Ajaan Sumedho, I discovered the existence of a consciousness that exists beyond the classical “me.” I’m trying as much as possible to find refuge in this unconditioned consciousness. It’s difficult. I have trouble understanding the goal of these exercises of working with the breath and the energies in the body. All this work to develop a consciousness of the body, when what I was looking for is to connect to the consciousness that’s not conditioned, universal, without self and without death. Forgive me, Ajaan, for this question that’s a little confused.

A: There are many levels of the aggregates. Some of them you see clearly, as in your ordinary, everyday consciousness. Others that are more subtle you’re not going to see until you get the mind into good concentration. To get beyond those aggregates, you first have to get the mind into concentration, and then you have to go beyond the level of consciousness in concentration, too, because that’s included in the consciousness aggregate as well. Only then will you encounter the consciousness that’s outside of the aggregates.

Now, the consciousness of awakening and the consciousness that Ajaan Sumedho is talking about are two different things. The consciousness that he says is unconditioned is actually part of the consciousness aggregate. It’s a very stable form of that consciousness, but it does still have conditions and it still has a lot of subtle fabrication, whereas awakened consciousness is apart from all that.

Ajaan Chah was once asked about this issue, “Is this state of consciousness that you call the ‘knower’ the same thing as awakened consciousness?” He replied, “No, of course not.” There’s an interesting passage in the book Still, Flowing Water, in a talk called “The Knower.” It’s a conversation between Ajaan Chah and one of his Western students, a French monk, who was trying to pin Ajaan Chah down: “What exactly do you mean by these terms?” It seems as if it was the first time anybody asked that question of Ajaan Chah. He needed a French monk to challenge him to be more precise.

The point is that the consciousness of awakening has nothing to do with your ordinary, everyday consciousness. It has no awareness of the aggregates, no awareness of the six senses. Remember the image I gave you last night of the ditch by the side of the road going to the Grand Canyon? The consciousness that surrounds your awareness right here, that seems to be unconditioned, is like the ditch on the side of the road. The genuine deathless is like the Grand Canyon. So it’s up to you: Do you want to content yourself with the ditch or do you want the Grand Canyon?

Q: Ajaan, thank you. Today you talked about the deathless. In this state of jhāna, you said that there was no more time and space. No more time, I can understand. But no more space is a little more troublesome for me. If there’s no more space, then where does this pure consciousness abide? Would you please be a little more specific and enlighten me?

A: To begin with, the deathless is not a state of jhāna. It’s something that can be attained by taking a state of jhāna apart. As for the fact that it has no sense of space: The Buddha said that our sense of space and locations depends on our craving. Wherever your craving is focused, that’s where your mind is located. When there’s no more desire, there’s no location. There’s no here or there. You remember, when you arrived at this state, that you had the choice between either staying in place or going someplace else. “Here” and “there” are concepts that define space. When there’s no here, no there, then there is no space. When there’s no space, consciousness doesn’t have to abide anywhere.

Now, thinking about this is not going to get you there. So, focus instead on the path that leads there. And especially pay attention to where your cravings are located. That insight will be part of the path that takes you there.

Q: Ajaan, do all meditations have to have an object?

A: Yes. Some states of stillness seem to have no object either because you’re not very well focused, or your perception of your focus itself may not be very clear. So try to be very clear about where your mind is located, keeping in mind that it may be on a perception of consciousness or a perception of nothingness. The only kind of consciousness that does not have an object is the consciousness of awakening.

The Buddha’s image is of a light beam. He asked the monks one day, “Suppose there’s a house with a window in the east wall, and a wall on the west. The sun rises. When the ray of sunlight goes through the eastern window, where does it land?” “It lands on the western wall.” “When there’s no western wall, where does it land?” “It lands on the ground.” “And if there’s no ground, where does it land?” “It lands on the water.” “If there’s no water, where does it land?” “It doesn’t land.” The ray of light that doesn’t land is the Buddha’s image for the awakened consciousness.

Think about that. At night, you look up in the sky. It seems dark, but it’s full of light beams. The only reason we don’t see those light beams is because there’s nothing to reflect them. That doesn’t mean the beams are not there. It’s simply that they have no place to land.

Q: My mind has a tendency to spend time working through blockages more so than it does spreading pleasant sensations through the parts that are not blocked. Is that okay? How does one find the right balance and when do I know that it’s okay to leave a blockage blocked?

A: You have to remember that when you’re working through blockages, you have to have something positive to work through them. In some cases, simply changing the perception will change the blockage. Try to see it as more permeable, and hold in mind the perception that the breath precedes the blockage. But more frequently, you’ll need to have good energy to send through the blockage. So try to stay in touch with that positive energy, even as you’re working through blockages. If, after about five minutes the blockage doesn’t dissolve away, move on. You’ll find sometimes that there are certain blockages that just do not respond at all. In a case like that, don’t try to work through them. Just allow good energy to go around them. It’s as if that part of the body doesn’t trust you. So you show that you’re trustworthy by treating it gently. At some point, it just may dissolve.

Q: Good morning, Than Ajaan. When you said that your feet have been falling asleep for 55 years, and that when you’re young, it’s good to learn to teach your body to sit cross-legged, this motivated me to try, and I’m happy about it. However, at times, this really, really hurts in my legs and knees. Now they’re not asleep anymore. It’s pure pain. Is this a pain you know? Should I sit through it? Will it go away? Or is it good to learn how to deal with this during meditation “to prepare for other pains that will come later”? In any case, when I have this, I am in no way relaxed. Thank you very much.

A: If you find it very hard to keep your mind concentrated in the face of the pain, very gradually change position. You can work through the pain best when the mind is well concentrated. Don’t move right away. Give yourself five or ten minutes with the pain. If you find that your concentration still cannot settle down, then shift your posture. Also keep in mind the fact that pain in the knee often has to do with the fact that other muscles in the body are not properly relaxed. Oftentimes the muscles in the thighs, the hips, or the back are also involved. So, learn some yoga to stretch your legs and get them limber, because you want to make sure that you don’t damage your knees.

Q: After experimenting a bit, it seems like the only way I’m able to breathe through certain tension in my face and throat is to zoom in and deal in smaller areas. What’s interesting is that I’m noticing lots and lots of knots that will seemingly twitch involuntarily if I put energy there. What is happening? Should I allow it? Also, do I need to overcome this tension to reach jhāna?

A: I’ll answer the second question first, which is, you do not have to overcome the tension in order to reach jhāna. You can think of the breath energy working around the tension as you don’t go into it. Another technique is to imagine taking out a big knife and slicing through all the bands of tension, cutting them into little pieces.

As for the twitching, that’s perfectly natural. Don’t try to stop it, but don’t encourage it. After a while, it’ll go away on its own.

Q: Than Ajaan, in certain cases, I noticed that you were using the words desire and thought as if they were almost interchangeable. Are thoughts considered a form of verbal fabrication or mental fabrication?

A: They’re considered both. And, yes, there is an element of desire and fabrication in all thoughts. Some thoughts come into the mind unbidden, in which case they’re actually the result of old desires. What you’re going to do with them now is based on current desires.

Q: So, citta, the Pāli word, means the mind but also the heart. Does it encompass the whole of the meditation practice? Is the citta that which contains everything?

Q: The citta contains all your thoughts and all your volitions. All your thoughts have desires within them and all your desires have their thoughts. So from the point of view of the Canon, there’s no difference between the mind and heart. In meditation, you’re training both.

Q: If there’s a complex thought arising that seems “mixed” during jhāna two or three, and it takes you further into concentration, can you deduce that it would also be skillful outside of that context? Likewise, if a thought takes you further away from concentration, that it’s unskillful?

A: This is one of those questions where I’d like to question the person who asked it. What kind of mixed thought are we talking about? If, in the course of meditating, you find that a thought helps you get more concentrated, it is skillful in that context, but it may not be skillful in other contexts. In the same way, sometimes there are some thoughts that take you away from concentration, but they’re actually skillful, depending on the purpose you have in thinking them—as when you’re running a business and you’ve got some issues you’ve got to think through.

Q: Thank you for this presentation on jhāna. I still have a couple of questions. One, can we enter into jhāna very briefly and then go out and then do that again several times? Or is this not yet the first jhāna? And two, is the rapture something stable or can it be fleeting? It happens to me sometimes that there’s a chill that runs through my body like a wave. Is that pīti or is this just an energy?

A: In the first case, the object of jhāna is something that we’ve focused on many times in the past. What makes it jhāna is when you’re there steadily with it. Think of the image of the steady flame. In other words, when you get a flickering flame to become steady, it’s not the case that you’ve taken the flame to some place you’ve never been before. You just realize that you’re now there steadily. As for the feelings of rapture, sometimes they are fleeting, whether you’re in jhāna or not. The important thing is that you find that your focus is really steadily with the object. That’s what makes it jhāna.

Q: When working with the breath and body, my mind is accustomed to using yoga concepts such as chakras and prāna. Are these useful perceptions to use in meditation? Or are there drawbacks to using yogic concepts in the practice?

A: The Pāli word pāna in ānāpānasati is actually related to the Sanskrit, prāna. So basically we have the same concept. It means breath. As for the chakras, you’ll notice that when Ajaan Lee talks about the resting spots of the breath, many of them correspond to the chakras. So they can be useful concepts. One concept we don’t use, though, is kundalini. We’re not trying to get the energy in the base of the spine to go running up the spine. For some people it gets disorienting. So simply open up the energy channels in your spine and let the energy flow smoothly and naturally.

Q: “May I be happy.” Isn’t that conditioned? It sounds like modern positive thinking.

A: Yes, of course it’s conditioned. You’re trying to condition your will here to aim at a harmless happiness. Many of the Asian ajaans have found it very difficult to understand why Westerners have such problems wishing themselves well, the conclusion being that Westerners feel they’re not worthy of happiness. But we’ve found that as TV and the Internet have gone to Asia, people are having the same problem with the younger generation there as well, because advertisers are telling them, “You’re not good enough, you’re not good enough, but if you buy our stuff, you’ll get better.” This has a bad effect on people’s attitude toward themselves. So to counteract that impact, you do have to think consciously, “May I be happy.”

Then think within the Buddhist context and the teaching on kamma: How are you going to be happy? By being generous, by being virtuous, and by meditating. So you’re not just doing positive thinking, you’re also following it up with positive action.

Q: Is it the case that in the jhānas, first or higher, we still hear sounds and still feel pain? Second question, does pain constitute an obstacle to entering the first jhāna? Third question, some people say they can get out of their body while meditating. Is that possible? And how does that relate to the jhānas?

A: One, it is possible to hear sounds and also to feel pains while you’re in jhāna, but they don’t affect the mind. You know there’s pain in the knee, but it doesn’t really affect your mind. This does become an obstacle to the jhāna if you’re focused on pain, which is why I recommend that you start out by focusing on the comfortable parts of the body.

As for leaving your body, don’t. It’s pretty dangerous. One, you may not be able to get back in. Two, when you’re out of your body, somebody else may come in. Neither of which you want.

I have a student who found that he had left his body one evening while meditating after working all day. He lay down to meditate and suddenly he was out of his body, up at the ceiling, looking down at his body. His first thought was, “Cool.” So he said to himself, “Let’s go outside.” He was sleeping in the ordination hall at the monastery, but all the windows were closed. And in his incorporeal state, he couldn’t push the windows open. So he found himself back in his body.

The next day, he tried it again, but before lying down, he opened the windows. He left his body and just as he was about to go out the window, he had a vision of Ajaan Lee, who said, “Get the hell back in there. It’s dangerous out here.”

If you do find that you’ve left your body, the first thing to do is to get back in. The way to do that is to think of the different elements in the body. You’ve got the breath. You’ve got the warmth, which is symbolized by fire. You’ve got the coolness in the body, which is symbolized by water. You’ve got the solidity in the body, which is symbolized by earth. So think of these properties of the body in that order—breath, fire, water, earth—and that will get you back in.

Q: Two questions. One, at which stage do we get out of time and space? Two, which jhāna allows us to enter into the stream?

A: The answer to both questions is basically the same. You first step outside of time and space when you gain the first stage of awakening, entering the stream. This can come about through contemplating any of the states of jhāna. Apparently, the people who gained awakening while listening to the Buddha give a Dhamma talk were in first jhāna. It takes a lot of discernment in order to do that. It’s more likely that you’ll gain awakening from a deeper state of concentration.

Q: Friday, right before we talked about the jhānas, I had an experience of a very strange and particular meditation with a global and very pleasant feeling. I was not feeling the boundaries of my body, kind of blurry with spaces in there, like a cloud that is not very dense. I was not feeling my breath anymore. I couldn’t find any in-breath or out-breath. Can that correspond to one of the jhānas? And if yes, what should I have done? Since I was so surprised, I got out of that state.

A: This could be any number of things. When you find yourself in a state that you’re not really sure about, go back to the breath and the body scan. And try to be very alert to what you’re doing, because it’s the alertness that allows you to gain insight from the jhānas.

Q: Can one experience several glimpses of nibbāna and remain at the same stage of awakening?

A: If you don’t get any more discernment, then you just keep going through the same stage of awakening. So you can’t say, “One, two, three, four: I must be an arahant.” You really do have to develop your discernment more.

Q: After doing this practice of scanning the body, I establish myself in the practice of ānāpānasati, where I can stay for two hours and get to a really good state of samādhi. I would like to know how or what to do at that stage to progress in my meditation to the level of the five aggregates. It’s been several months that, after having obtained a necessary amount of calm, I direct my introspection to the five aggregates. You said that you have to be anchored in the body through the practice. After being anchored in the body, being in a good state of samadhi, what does one do with the aggregates?

A: You try to observe the state of concentration around the breath and see if you can see which of the aggregates are participating in that state of concentration. All five should be there. The breath is form. The feeling of pleasure is feeling. The perceptions you have of the breath and the body and the mind are perceptions. Your intention to stay there would be fabrication. And then you’ve got the consciousness, which is aware of all these things. Can you see these as individual actions? If you can’t, then just go back to concentration. If you can, try to develop that ability even further.

Q: How to teach children meditation? When to begin?

A: You can start with a child around four or five. First teach thoughts of mettā. Every evening before the child goes to bed, have him spread thoughts of goodwill to himself, parents, brothers and sisters, grandparents, the dog and the cat, and his friends.

When the child is about seven, then you can teach him breath meditation. Basically have him follow the feelings of breath wherever he feels them in the body. If he has the sensation of light, have him focus on it. Make sure that it’s white, even as he maintains his attention to the breath, and then allow that light to come into the body. Children tend to experience light more often than adults do.

Q: The second question had to do with teaching music to a child. The person asking the question seemed to be afraid that she was getting the child attached to sensuality.

A: Whether you teach them or don’t teach them, children are going to get attached to sensuality. What you want to do is teach the child a skill, because learning a manual or artistic skill teaches many of the character traits needed to master the skills of meditation. And, in fact, music is one of the best skills to develop. It’s not necessarily the case that a child who learns how to master a musical instrument will be attached to sensuality for the rest of his or her life. Quite a few of the monks at our monastery were musicians, including the two sitting in front of you. We also have two former graphic artists. Oftentimes, mastering a skill like that gets them more interested in other, more interesting skills. One of the monks who was a musician realized that, if he stayed a musician, he was going to be spending the rest of his life playing music, but not necessarily the music he wanted to play. That gave rise to a strong sense of disillusionment. And now he’s a monk.