Continued from last week
It’s like the time when Por Sang was still a postulant. One night he’d been walking cankama and then began to sit. His mind became lucid and sharp. He wanted to expound the Dhamma. He couldn’t stop. I heard the sound of someone teaching over in that bamboo grove, really belting it out. I thought, ‘’Is that someone giving a Dhamma talk, or is it the sound of someone complaining about something?’’ It didn’t stop. So I got my flashlight and went over to have a look. I was right. There in the bamboo grove, sitting cross-legged in the light of a lantern, was Por Sang, talking so fast I couldn’t keep up.’’
So I called out to him, ‘’Por Sang, have you gone crazy?’’
He said, ‘’I don’t know what it is, I just want to talk the Dhamma. I sit down and I’ve got to talk, I walk and I’ve got to talk. I’ve just got to expound the Dhamma all the time. I don’t know where it’s going to end.’’
I thought to myself, ‘’When people practise the Dhamma there’s no limit to the things that can happen.’’
So keep doing it, don’t stop. Don’t follow your moods. Go against the grain. Practise when you feel lazy and practise when you feel diligent. Practise when you’re sitting and practise when you’re walking. When you lay down, focus on your breathing and tell yourself, ‘’I will not indulge in the pleasure of laying down.’’ Teach your heart in this way. Get up as soon as you awaken, and carry on putting forth effort.
Eating, tell yourself, ‘’I eat this food, not with craving, but as medicine, to sustain my body for a day and a night, only in order that I may continue my practice.’’
When you lay down then teach your mind. When you eat then teach your mind. Maintain that attitude constantly. If you’re going to stand up, then be aware of that. If you’re going to lie down, then be aware of that. Whatever you do, then be aware. When you lie down, lie on your right side and focus on the breath, using the mantra ‘Buddho’ until you fall asleep.
Then when you wake up it’s as if Buddho has been there all the time, it’s not been interrupted. For peace to arise, there needs to be mindfulness there all the time. Don’t go looking at other people. Don’t be interested in other people’s affairs; just be interested in your own affairs.
When you do sitting meditation, sit straight; don’t lean your head too far back or too far forwards. Keep a balanced ‘just-right’ posture like a Buddha image. Then your mind will be bright and clear.
Endure for as long as you can before changing your posture. If it hurts, let it hurt. Don’t be in a hurry to change your position. Don’t think to yourself, ‘’Oh! It’s too much. Take a rest.’’ Patiently endure until the pain has reached a peak, then endure some more.
Endure, endure until you can’t keep up the mantra Buddho. Then take the point where it hurts as your object. ‘’Oh! Pain. Pain. Real pain.’’ You can make the pain your meditation object rather than Buddho. Focus on it continuously. Keep sitting. When the pain has reached it’s limit, see what happens.
The Buddha said that pain arises by itself and disappears by itself. Let it die; don’t give up. Sometimes you may break out in a sweat. Big beads, as large as corn kernels rolling down your chest. But when you’ve passed through painful feeling once, then you will know all about it. Keep doing it. Don’t push yourself too much. Just keep steadily practising.
Be aware while you’re eating. You chew and swallow. Where does the food go to? Know what foods agree with you and what foods disagree. Try gauging the amount of food. As you eat keep looking and when you think that after another five mouthfuls you’ll be full, then stop and drink some water and you will have eaten just the right amount.
Try it. See whether or not you can do it. But that’s not the way we usually do it. When we feel full we take another five mouthfuls. That’s what the mind tells us. It doesn’t know how to teach itself.
The Buddha told us to keep watching as we eat. Stop five mouthfuls before you’re full and drink some water and it will be just right. If you sit or walk afterwards, then you don’t feel heavy. Your meditation will improve. But we don’t want to do it.
We’re full up and we take another five mouthfuls. That’s the way that craving and defilement is, it goes a different way from the teachings of the Buddha.
Someone who lacks a genuine wish to train their minds will be unable to do it. Keep watching your mind.
Be vigilant with sleep. Your success will depend on being aware of the skilful means. Sometimes the time you go to sleep may vary some nights you have an early night and other times a late night. But try practising like this: whatever time you go to sleep, just sleep at one stretch. As soon as you wake up, then get up immediately. Don’t go back to sleep. Whether you sleep a lot or a little, just sleep at one stretch. Make a resolution that as soon as you wake up, even if you haven’t had enough sleep, you will get up, wash your face, and then start to walk cankama or sit meditation.
Know how to train yourself in this way. It’s not something you can know through listening to someone else. You will know through training yourself, through practice, through doing it. And so I tell you to practice.
This practice of the heart is difficult. When you are doing sitting meditation, then let your mind have only one object. Let it stay with the in-breath and the out-breath and your mind will gradually become calm. If your mind is in turmoil, then it will have many objects. For instance, as soon as you sit, do you think of your home? Some people think of eating Chinese noodles. When you’re first ordained you feel hungry, don’t you? You want to eat and drink. You think about all kinds of food. Your mind is going crazy. If that’s what’s going to happen, then let it. But as soon as you overcome it, then it will disappear.
Do it! Have you ever walked cankama? What was it like as you walked? Did your mind wander? If it did, then stop and let it come back. If it wanders off a lot, then don’t breathe. Hold your breath until your lungs are about to burst. It will come back by itself. No matter how bad it is, if it’s racing around all over the place, then hold your breath. As your lungs are about to burst, your mind will return. You must energise the mind. Training the mind isn’t like training animals. The mind is truly hard to train. Don’t be easily discouraged. If you hold your breath, you will be unable to think of anything and the mind will run back to you of its own accord.
It’s like the water in this bottle. When we tip it out slowly then the water drips out...drip...drip...drip. But when we tip the bottle up farther the water runs out in a continuous stream, not in separate drops as before. Our mindfulness is similar. If we accelerate our efforts, practise in an even, continuous way, the mindfulness will be uninterrupted like a stream of water. No matter whether we are standing, walking, sitting or lying down, that knowledge is uninterrupted, flowing like a stream of water.
Our practice of the heart is like this. After a moment, it’s thinking of this and thinking of that. It is agitated and mindfulness is not continuous. But whatever it thinks about, never mind, just keep putting forth effort. It will be like the drops of water that become more frequent until they join up and become a stream. Then our knowledge will be encompassing. Standing, sitting, walking or laying down, whatever you are doing, this knowing will look after you.
Start right now. Give it a try. But don’t hurry. If you just sit there watching to see what will happen, then you’ll be wasting your time. So be careful. If you try too hard then you won’t be successful, but if you don’t try at all then you won’t be successful either.
Reproduced above are excerpts from a dhamma talk delivered by Venerable Ajahn Chah Maha Thera