Q & A

Q: I’ve heard it said that there’s a danger in practicing the jhānas, in that you would stay stuck there and you wouldn’t be able to gain awakening. Could you tell us more?

A: Of the different factors of the path, the two that the Buddha placed most emphasis on were right view and right concentration. Of course, right concentration is the four jhānas. This means that you need jhāna to gain awakening. So it’s the opposite of an obstacle. And although the Buddha points out that it is possible to get stuck on any level or stage of the practice—such as virtue or psychic knowledge—the problem is not with that particular part of the practice. The problem is that you just get satisfied with being there.

There is one passage in the Canon where the Buddha says it’s possible to be stuck on jhāna. The image he gives is of holding onto a branch, and the sap from the branch gets onto your hand. Then your hand gets stuck to the branch. But the stickiness of the sap doesn’t represent jhāna. It represents the fact that you’re simply satisfied with where you are. If you realize there’s more to be done, then there’s no problem.

Remember, it’s also possible to get attached to the insights that come with meditation, and sometimes that attachment can lead to very strong delusion. So it’s not the case that jhāna practice is dangerous and insight practice is not. With the practice of jhāna, you do have to get attached to it for a while so that you can get good at it. But if you’re observant, you begin to realize that there’s more to be done, there are better things to attain, and then the jhāna is not a problem.

Q: Dear Ajaan, I didn’t know that there were two kinds of non-conditioned consciousness. What are their characteristics and how to recognize them? Thank you so much. I thought that I was progressing, but it seems that I’m at a dead end.

A: There are not two types of unconditioned consciousness. There is one type of consciousness which genuinely is unconditioned, and there’s one that appears to be unconditioned. The one that appears to be unconditioned is your basic sense of awareness, which is aware of the six senses. It appears to be non-conditioned because when it’s trained in concentration, it doesn’t seem to be affected by anything in the six senses, and the level of fabrication that goes into maintaining it is very, very subtle—so subtle that you get the impression that it’s unconditioned.

The genuine unconditioned consciousness comes when there’s no intention in the present moment at all, and all connections with the six senses are stopped. There’s no time, no space, and there are no objects in that consciousness.

The peaceful conditioned consciousness is what the ajaans in Thailand refer to either as the “knower” or as “awareness itself”: phoo roo, in Thai. It’s a useful level of consciousness to be aware of as you’re practicing concentration. It helps to pull you away from your attachment to the objects of your concentration. It also helps when you’re experiencing pain, as you get a sense of the awareness and the pain itself are two separate things. In cases like that, it’s a useful skill to develop on the path. But it is a skill. It’s something you do, it’s something you maintain through the perception of awareness, so it’s not unconditioned. Compared to the Grand Canyon, it’s the ditch on the side of the road to the Grand Canyon.

Q: Can you get into jhāna while you’re walking?

A: It is possible to be in the first jhāna while you’re walking. It’s not easy, but it is possible. As you get more and more skilled at the jhānas, you find you can do more and more activities while you’re in this state of first jhāna. But as soon as you engage in the verbal fabrication needed to speak, you leave the jhānas.

Q: Dear Ajaan, could you comment a bit on harmonizing/connecting the energies in different parts of the body? For instance, when they flow in different directions, each independently pleasant, how best to connect them? If we settle on one spot after this process, should we keep in mind the different patterns of movement during the spreading phase? Or focus on the energy coming from that spot?

A: This is one of those areas where you can experiment on your own. You’ll find that sometimes you want to focus more on the energy that comes from the spot where you’re focused, and other times you want to say, “Let the body breathe freely as it wants to, whatever direction the energies may go.” Then see which one of those is more pleasant, more conducive to concentration during that particular session of meditation.

Q: During last night’s meditation, while I was spreading the pleasant breath sensations throughout the body and while there were pains in certain parts of the body, suddenly my perception of the body faded away, the pains disappeared, and a sensation—rather pleasant, but a little foggy—was enveloping me. I was always conscious of the breath, but I wasn’t feeling any breathing sensations in the body. I couldn’t really locate the breath, so I got scared, and I was afraid that it was a wrong type of concentration, so I tried to get out. Was I right to get out?

A: Yes, you were right to get out. When you’re not confident in a particular state of concentration, go back to step one and resume the practice of exploring the breath energies in the body, being very clear about where the different parts of your body are.

Q: I have read that mettā or contemplation of death could be used as a basis for jhāna. How does that work? For instance, how is pīti caused by contemplation of corpses?

A: Sometimes, as you contemplate death, the fact that this body is going to die becomes very, very prominent, and your sense of attachment to the body, especially attachment to the appearance of the body, fades away. When that fades away, a sense of rapture can arise. As you realize that your sensual desires are really a burden on the mind and you put them down for a while, rapture and pleasure can come from that.

Q: We’ve talked a lot about the breath, so I have two questions. One is, do you make a distinction between the in-and-out breath and then the breath from a more conceptual point of view? Two, what about sensations outside of those that are directly related to the breath? For example, when I was taught how to meditate, my teacher said to meditate on the sensation that I was feeling when my two thumbs touch one another. Every time that I would lose track, to come back to that sensation. What could you say on this topic?

A: Conceptually, the Buddha talks about what he calls the wind element in the body, and one of the aspects of that element is the in-and out-breath. Other aspects of that element would be the movement of energy running along the limbs of the body. Ajaan Lee connects the two and says you can use both together as part of breath meditation.

As for having your thumbs touch, that’s one way of making sure you’re giving yourself a sensation to come back to when the mind wanders. But it’s a sign that you’re trying to do one-pointed meditation. When you’re doing one-pointed meditation, it’s very easy to wander away. When you develop a full-body awareness, you don’t need that touch of the thumbs.

Q: Ajaan Lee advises to have a theme when you meditate. Could you elaborate on that? If I wanted, for example, to meditate on anger, how would I go about it?

A: What he means is that you have to have a very clear object for your meditation. If you want to meditate on anger, try to be aware of the times in the day when anger arises. But you still try to stay with the breath as you go through the day. Simply pose that question in mind, “When anger arises, I want to be aware of it.” Then remind yourself of the five steps that the Buddha taught. What sparked the anger? How does it pass away? What’s the allure? What are its drawbacks? And how can you develop dispassion for it?

Q: Than Ajaan, you and Ajaan Lee have spoken about the back of the neck as an important area for those with heart problems. Do you have suggestions for the kidneys as well, specifically the left one? My right one has stopped working.

A: Ajaan Fuang used to have kidney disease, and one of his ways of dealing with the pain was to think of the energy in his back going down the spine through the tailbone, and then out of the tailbone, down into the ground. Think of it extending roots down into the ground. See if that helps.

I had some kidney problems for a while after I had malaria. I found that focusing on the tension of my knees and relaxing that tension helped a lot.

Q: What is the difference between perception and fabrication?

A: The word fabrication has many levels of meaning. It can cover all intentional activities, in which case, perception would be one kind of intentional activity, as are all the aggregates. When we speak in terms of the three fabrications, perception is one of them. In this case, it would be mental fabrication. Basically, in this case, directed thought and evaluation—verbal fabrications—would be like full sentences, perceptions would be like single words. They could also be individual images that would occur in the mind.

Q: May I ask, what is identity, truly? When one releases attachment to worldly possessions, does this also include releasing interests, hobbies, and skills, since these do not carry over into future lives? Would that also mean that the sense of personality is gradually stripped away as well? What then remains? More specifically, what remains that we can still feel, know, and observe in this life? And how can we ensure that we are observing it within ourselves now? In other words, the part of ourselves that we are developing through meditation and daily practice, which continues into future lives: How can we clearly recognize and feel the presence of that now?

A: Anyone who’s had more than one child will observe that they come differently into the world—with different habits, different interests, different personalities. This is what carries over from one lifetime to the next. This is why you have some children who are especially talented in some areas. It’s also why some babies are more prone to anger than others. The Buddha talks about qualities that you develop in the meditation and the practice in general as things that will pass over to the next lifetime: things like conviction, a sense of shame and compunction, a moral sense, and discernment. Of course, your bad habits will also carry over. So you want to work on your good habits as much as you can.

There’s a belief in Thailand that Ajaan Lee was King Asoka reborn. When I found out about this, I got a biography of Asoka, and at the back it had his edicts translated. One of them, addressed to his government workers, said, “If you want to work to my satisfaction, you have to know what I want before I know.” I translated that into Thai and read it to Ajaan Fuang. His comment was, “2,000 years. He didn’t change.”

Q: Dear Ajaan, thank you for your teaching. The other day, you mentioned not to try and break from a state of becoming while it’s happening, but rather to wait until it fades and then try to conjure more skillful becomings. Can you please give me an example of this?

A: I can think of two examples. One would be that if you have an unskillful emotion, instead of trying to destroy that emotion, you try to give rise to a more skillful emotion in its place. The unskillful one will gradually fade away and then disappear. In other words, you’re focusing on the creation of what is skillful more than trying to destroy what is unskillful. Another example would be at the end of your life you have a bad health illness. Some people would like to go to Belgium or Switzerland to have an assisted suicide. But there’s a lot of regret that comes with suicide. I know of a psychic who deals with spirits of people who have died, and she told me once what she has to deal often with people who have committed suicide. Excuse the language, she says that they all go through an “oh, shit” moment of shock and regret, when they realize what they have thrown away. So it’s better to stay in this lifetime and do whatever you can that would create good kamma for the next lifetime. If you’re a meditator, work on your relationship with pain. That way, you can make good use of what’s remaining of this lifetime.

Q: How to tell the difference between saṁvega and vibhava-taṇhā?

A: Vibhava-taṇhā, or the desire for non-becoming, is focused on a particular state of becoming that you have already attained and you want to have that state destroyed. Saṁvega is more global. It’s a sense of terror when you think about all the future possibilities for suffering that could happen in the course of saṁsāra, along with the dismaying sense that you can’t blame anyone else for how you’ve trapped yourself in saṁsāra. Along with that comes a strong sense of, “I’ve got to do something to get out of the entire system.”

Q: Would you explain more specifically this notion of heedfulness? Specifically with regards to human relationships, personal relationships. Does that mean that we need to sort out who we can associate with, who we should be friends or have a romantic involvement with?

A: You do that already anyhow, right? You have to be selective in who you associate with. Heedfulness simply means that you make your selection based on the long-term consequences of pursuing a particular relationship. If you find that you’re in a relationship that’s making you do unskillful things, it’d be good to pull out of that relationship. This doesn’t mean you can’t be friends with unskillful people, but that friendship with them has to have boundaries so that they don’t pull you into their unskillful habits and attitudes.

Q: Yesterday you talked about the desire for becoming and for non-becoming, and about difficulties related to marriage and divorce. If a marriage is broken or has ended for a number of years, but is maintained legally to preserve familial unity, to keep the family together with both sides being very respectful of the other and choosing to live a chaste life without engaging in a divorce procedure, would that be considered a skillful way of dealing with the situation? On the contrary, if the divorce is chosen to prevent future complications, would that be seen as an act, as an example of acting on a desire for non-becoming, and therefore, would that be an unskillful course of action?

A: The divorce would not necessarily be unskillful. When the Buddha’s talking about not going for becoming or not going for non-becoming, this basically means there’s going to be suffering either way, but it’s not necessarily unskillful. There’s no quick or easy answer to this question. But bear in mind that divorce is not necessarily unskillful.

Q: I’m not sure I understood your answer to the question about these big catastrophes that take many victims. Is it their bad luck that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that would be what causes these little seeds of bad kamma to sprout?

A: The Buddha says if you ask questions like this, you’re going to go crazy. Generally, though, he says if you have no bad kamma, it’s like having a hand with no wounds. You can pick up poison and it doesn’t kill you. But if you have bad kamma, it’s like a wound in your hand. If you pick up poison, it’ll kill you. To be a human being means you have some wounds in your hands. But the nature of the wounds will be different, and the times when they appear and disappear will be different as well. It just happens that sometimes the sprouting time and the opportunities come together, and that’s when some bad kamma can be manifested like this. It can happen to a lot of people at the same time. But remember: Don’t look down on people whose bad kamma is appearing, because you don’t know what seeds of bad kamma you might potentially have in your own field.

Q: What would the Buddhist approach be to trying to overcome mild OCD?

A: OCD is basically attachment to habits and practices, which is one of the four types of suffering. The typical way of dealing with that attachment is, one, observe yourself. See: What is it that sparks this? Then see if you can disassociate that trigger with the behavior, replacing it with better things to be OCD about. For example, be a little OCD about the breath.

Q: The citta, when it’s no longer under karmic influences and when it has reached the highest degree of purification, does it settle with the characteristic of upekkhā, or equanimity, and would that be a state that is exclusive to the arahant?

A: Those who have gained full awakening no longer create any unskillful kamma, but they are still subject to the influences of their past kamma. This is why awakened people can still have diseases, meet with accidents, etc. Their state of mind has no particular feeling at all. Upekkhā is their attitude toward the world because they’re no longer feeding on the world, but it doesn’t define their state of mind. Their mind is in touch with unbinding, which is the ultimate happiness, but they’re not attached to the happiness. It’s not a feeling, but it’s just there.

Q: Does the Buddha say that awakening is in each of us or what is his vision?

A: Awakening is something you do. We have the potential do it, to awaken, but the awakening is not already there. As to whether we will develop that potential to its fullest point, the Buddha refused to say, because each of us has the choice to follow the path that realizes that potential or not.

As for the unconditioned consciousness of awakening, it’s outside of time. You can’t really say that it’s already there or not already there, because it’s outside of time. As for your nature, you hear a lot about Buddha nature, and you’d think the person most qualified to talk about Buddha nature would be the Buddha, but he never mentions it.