Avoid the evil way
Take delight in heedfulness. Guard your mind well. Draw yourselves out of the evil ways as did the elephant sunk in the mire.
Naga Vagga - The Dhammapada

Inner peace, your real home

A talk by Luang Por Chah a Bhikkhu residing in Thailand addressed to an ageing lay disciple approaching her death, and to her family.

You should understand that even the Buddha himself with his great store of accumulated virtue could not avoid physical death. When he reached old age he gave up his body and let go of the heavy burden.

Now you too must learn to be satisfied with the years that you've depended on your body. You should feel that it's enough.

Like household utensils that you have had for a long time - cups, saucers, plates and so on - when you first got them they were clean and shiny; but now after using them for so long, some are broken, some have disappeared, and those that are left are worn out. They have had no enduring form. It was their nature to be that way. Your body is in the same condition.

This truth doesn't apply to you alone. All of us are in the same boat - even the Buddha and his enlightened disciples. They differed from us only in one respect: their acceptance of the way things are. They saw that it could be no other way. In fact there is nothing wrong with the way the body is.

Having been young your body has become old and is meandering towards death. Don't go wishing it were otherwise; it's not something that you have the power to remedy. Thinking you'd like to live longer will make you suffer. But thinking you'd like to die straight away isn't right either. It is suffering too, isn't it? Conditions don't belong to us. They follow their own natural laws. You can't do anything about the way the body is. Wanting it to be different is as foolish as wanting a duck to be a chicken.

Having come into this world you should contemplate the body's nature. It is preparing to disappear. Can you see how all the different parts of your body are trying to slip away? Take your hair: when you were young it was thick and black; now it's falling out.

Your eyes used to be good and strong but now they're weak. When you were a child your teeth were healthy and firm; now they're wobbly, or you've got false ones. This is nature, the way things are. When their time is up, conditions go their own way. In this world there is nothing to rely on. It's an endless round of disturbance and trouble, pleasure and pain. There's no peace.

You needn't worry about your body because this isn't your real home, it's only a temporary shelter; it's only nominally yours. Our real home is inner peace.

When we have not found our real home we're like aimless travellers out on the road, going here and there, stopping for a while and then setting off again. Until we find our real home we feel uneasy, just like a villager who has left his village. Only when he gets home can he relax and be at peace.

If we truly understand an impermanent condition, we'll see that there is in fact something permanent about it: its unchanging subjection to change. This is the permanence that living beings possess: continual transformation from childhood through to old age. Ongoing impermanence, propensity to change, is permanent and fixed.

When you realise that's the way of everything in the world, when you see that there is nothing real or substantial here, you'll see that the world is a wearisome place; you'll feel wearied and disenchanted.

But being disenchanted doesn't mean that you are averse to it; you simply see that there's nothing to be done to remedy this state of affairs. It's just the way the world is. Understanding this, you can let go of attachment, letting go with a mind that is neither happy nor sad, but at peace with conditions through seeing their changing nature with wisdom.

It is not just you who have to go through this, it's everyone. all people, all creatures, are preparing to leave. When beings have lived an appropriate length of time they go their way. Rich, poor, young and old all experience this change. If you own many possessions, you must leave a lot behind. If you own only few possessions, you leave behind only a little. Thus wealth is just wealth, long life is just long life.

They're nothing special. The Buddha taught us to let go our attachment to them. When we reach the end of our lives we will have no choice anyway. We'll take nothing with us. Wouldn't it be better to put things down before then? They're just a heavy burden to carry around. Why not throw off that load now? Why bother dragging it around? Let go. Relax. Let your family look after you.

Those nursing the sick must know how to let go too. Don't hold onto things; let the patient have her own way. When a young child is disobedient sometimes the parents let it have its own way just to keep the peace, just to make it happy. Now your mother is just like that child.

Her memories and perceptions are confused. Sometimes she muddles up your names or asks you to bring a cup when she wants a plate. It's normal, so don't be upset by it. Those who nurse the sick grow in goodness and virtue.

Therefore the patient gives others an opportunity, but should nonetheless try not to make things difficult for those looking after them. If there's pain or some problem or other, let your children know, but bear in mind the kindness of those who nurse, and patiently endure your painful feelings. Exert yourself mentally.

Don't let the mind become scattered and confused. Let the mind dwell with the breath and let that composed mind unite in a single point.

Let the breath be its sole object of knowledge until the mind becomes increasingly subtle, until feelings are insignificant and there is great inner clarity and wakefulness. Put effort into your contemplation. Don't worry about your family. At the moment they are as they are, in the future they will be like you - there's no one in the world who can escape this fate.

Those who nurse their parents should fill their minds with warmth and kindness and not get caught up in aversion. This is the one time you can repay your debt to them. From birth through childhood, as you've grown up you've been dependent on them.

That you are here today is because they have helped you in many ways. You owe them an incredible debt of gratitude. Try and fill your minds with virtue and kindness. Don't be averse to the unattractive side of the job, cleaning up mucous and phlegm, urine and excrement. Try your best. Everyone in the family should give a hand.

So today, all you children and relatives gathered here, observe how before, you were your mother's children, but now your mother has become your child. She has become older and older until she has become a child again. Her memory is going, her eyes don't see well and her ears aren't so good.

Sometimes she garbles her words. Don't let it upset you.

Remember, she is the only mother you have. She gave you life. She has been your teacher, your doctor and your nurse - she's been everything to you. That she has brought you up, shared her wealth with you and made you her heir, is the great goodness of parents.

That is why the Buddha taught the virtues of katannu katavedi, knowing our debt of gratitude and trying to repay it. These two dhammas are complimentary. If our parents are in need, unwell or in difficulty, then we should do our best to help them. This is katannu - katavedi, the virtue that sustains the world. It prevents families from breaking up and makes them stable and harmonious.

Courtesy: Forest Sangha
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The island that you cannot go beyond

Ajahn Sumedho

Nibbana: A difficulty with the word Nibbana is that its meaning is beyond the power of words to describe. It is, essentially, undefinable.

Another difficulty is that many Buddhists see Nibbana as something unobtainable - as so high and so remote that we're not worthy enough to try for it. Or we see Nibbana as a goal, as an unknown, undefined something that we should somehow try to attain.

Most of us are conditioned in this way. We want to achieve or attain something that we don't have now. So Nibbana is looked at as something that, if you work hard, keep the sila, meditate diligently, become a monastic, devote your life to practise, then your reward might be that eventually you attain Nibbana - even though you're not sure what it is.

Ajahn Chah would use the words "the reality of nongrasping" as the definition for Nibbana: realizing the reality of nongrasping. That helps to put it in a context because the emphasis is on awakening to how we grasp and hold on even to words like Nibbana or Buddhism or practice or sila or whatever.

It's often said that the Buddhist way is not to grasp. But that can become just another statement that we grasp and hold on to. It's a Catch 22: No matter how hard you try to make sense out of it, you end up in total confusion because of the limitation of language and perception.

You have to go beyond language and perception. And the only way to go beyond thinking and emotional habit is through awareness of them, through awareness of thought, through awareness of emotion. "The Island that you cannot go beyond" is the metaphor for this state of being awake and aware, as opposed to the concept of becoming awake and aware.

In meditation classes, people often start with a basic delusion that they never challenge: the idea that "I'm someone who grasps and has a lot of desires, and I have to practise in order to get rid of these desires and to stop grasping and clinging to things. I shouldn't cling to anything." That's often the position we start from.

So we start our practice from this basis and, many times, the result is disillusionment and disappointment, because our practice is based on the grasping of an idea.

Eventually, we realize that no matter how much we try to get rid of desire and not grasp anything, no matter what we do - become a monk, an ascetic, sit for hours and hours, attend retreats over and over again, do all the things we believe will get rid of these grasping tendencies - we end up feeling disappointed because the basic delusion has never been recognized.

This is why the metaphor of "The Island that you cannot go beyond" is so very powerful, because it points to the principle of an awareness that you can't get beyond. It's very simple, very direct, and you can't conceive it.

You have to trust it. You have to trust this simple ability that we all have to be fully present and fully awake, and begin to recognize the grasping and the ideas we have taken on about ourselves, about the world around us, about our thoughts and perceptions and feelings.

The way of mindfulness is the way of recognizing conditions just as they are. We simply recognize and acknowledge their presence, without blaming them or judging them or criticizing them or praising them. We allow them to be, the positive and the negative both. And, as we trust in this way of mindfulness more and more, we begin to realize the reality of "The Island that you cannot go beyond."

When I started practising meditation I felt I was somebody who was very confused, and I wanted to get out of this confusion and get rid of my problems and become someone who was not confused, someone who was a clear thinker, someone who would maybe one day become enlightened. That was the impetus that got me going in the direction of Buddhist meditation and monastic life.

But then, by reflecting on this position that "I am somebody who needs to do something," I began to see it as a created condition. It was an assumption that I had crated. And if I operated from that assumption, then I might develop all kinds of skills and live a life that was praiseworthy and good and beneficial to myself and to others but, at the end of the day, I might feel quite disappointed that I did not attain the goal of Nibbana.

Fortunately, the whole direction of monastic life is one where everything is directed at the present. You're always learning to challenge and to see through your assumptions about yourself. One of the major challenges is the assumption that "I am somebody who needs to do something in order to become enlightened in the future."

Just by recognizing this as an assumption I had created, that which is aware knows it is something created out of ignorance, out of not understanding. When we see and recognize this fully, then we stop creating the assumptions.

Awareness is not about making value judgments about our thoughts or emotions or actions or speech. Awareness is about knowing these things fully - that they are what they are, at this moment. So what I found very helpful was learning to be aware of conditions without judging them.

In this way, the resultant karma of past actions and speech as it arises in the present is fully recognized without compounding it, without making it into a problem. It is what it is. What arises ceases. As we recognize that and allow things to cease according to their nature, the realization of cessation gives us an increasing amount of faith in the practice of nonattachment and letting go.

The attachments that we have, even to good things like Buddhism, can also be seen as attachments that blind us.

That doesn't mean we need to get rid of Buddhism. We merely recognize attachment as attachment and that we create it ourselves out of ignorance. As we keep reflecting on this, the tendency toward attachment falls away, and the reality of nonattachment, of non-grasping, reveals itself in what we can say is Nibbana.

If we look at it in this way, Nibbana is here and now. It's not an attainment in the future. The reality is here and now. It is so very simple, but beyond description. It can't be bestowed or even conveyed, it can only be known by each person for themselves.

As one begins to realize or to recognize nongrasping as the Way, then emotionally one can feel quite frightened by it. It can seem like a kind of annihilation is taking place - all that I think I am in the world, all that I regard as stable and real, starts falling apart - and it can be frightening.

But if we have the faith to continue bearing with these emotional reactions and allow things that arise to cease, to appear and disappear according to their nature, then we find our stability not in achievement or attaining, but in being - being awake, being aware.

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Renowned meditation teacher visits Sri Lanka

Samantha Wettimuny

Ajahn: Venerable Ajahn Brahmavanso who will be visiting Sri Lanka shortly is known as Ajahn ("teacher" in Thai) Brahm to his lay followers and monks. He is the Abbot of Bodhinayana Monastery which follows the Thai Forest Sangha tradition , the Spiritual Director of the Buddhist Society of Western Australia (BSWA) and the Singapore Buddhist Fellowship.

Bodhinayana Monastery is known for its strict adherence to the 'vinaya', or monk's rules for living, and their emphasis on meditation.

British by birth, Ven. Ajahn Brahm began teaching himself Buddhism and meditation at the age of 17 while he was studying Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University, England. After taking a wrong turn at the library of, he found himself in the Religion section and picked up a book on meditation.

He continued to study and practise meditation throughout his school years, and after receiving his degree and working as a teacher for a year, he decided to move to Thailand to become a monk. He was ordained at the age of 23. Ven. Ajahn Brahm spent 9 years, training with Ven. Ajahn Chah in Thailand.

In 1983, Ven. Ajahn Chah asked Ven. Ajahn Brahm to help establish a forest monastery near Perth, Australia, which is the current site of the Bodhinayana Monastery.

Ven. Ajahn Brahm has been invited to speak on meditation and Buddhism throughout Australia, Asia, the United Kingdom and USA. He is known for his wit and charismatic style of communicating important aspects of the Buddha's teachings, making him a popular speaker on the Dhamma.

His weekly talks at the Dhammaloka Buddhist Centre in Perth are punctuated with laughter, thoughtful learning and questions and answers by lay followers, who gather by the hundreds every week. A selection of his stories, Buddhist parables and Dhamma talks are part of his book: Who Ordered this Truckload of Dung: Inspiring Stories for Welcoming Life's Difficulties (Wisdom Publications).

While Ven. Ajahn Brahm appeals to the wider masses of Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike, he also attracts the serious meditator, and offers meditation retreats at the BSWA and throughout the world. In his recently published book,' Mindfulness, Bliss and Beyond: A Meditator's Handbook' (Wisdom Publications), Ven. Ajahn Brahm offers instructions on how to develop and intensify one's meditation experience.

The royalties from Ven. Ajahn Brahm's two books are going towards the construction of a meditation center in Perth, Australia, which will be open to lay Buddhists who wish to partake in overnight meditation retreats.

For more information about Ajahn Brahm, the Bodhinayana Monastery or the BSWA, visit http://www.bswa.org