"Intuitive Awareness
Ajahn Sumedho
e
DHANET ' UD
BO
B
O K LIB R A R
E-mail: bdea@buddhanet.net Web site: www.buddhanet.net
Buddha Dharma Education Association Inc.
S
Y
Intuitive Awareness
Ajahn Sumedho
1
Intuitive Awareness
Dedications
Dedicated to Ajahn Sumedho on his seventieth birthday with love and respect.
In loving memory of my parents, David and Sheila Miles. And my son Riccardo Cattabiani, with gratitude for everything they have taught me.
With gratitude for the life of Sritorn Hagyard. May she know the peace of Nirvana.
Intuitive Awareness
Ajahn Sumedho
Amaravati Buddhist Monastery
A war eness is your r efuge: wareness refuge: wareness A war eness of the changingness of feelings, of attitudes, of moods, of material change and emotional change: it’s refuge Stay with that, because it’s a r efuge that is indestr uctible. indestructible. It’s not something that changes. It’s refuge trust It’s a r efuge you can tr ust in. refuge create. This r efuge is not something that you cr eate. It’s creation. It’s It’s not a cr eation. It’s not an ideal. It’s ver y practical and ver y simple, but It’s very very easily overlooked or not noticed. you’re When you’r e mindful, you’re you’r e beginning to notice, it’s this. it’s like this
For Free Distrubution
Publications from Amaravati are for free distribution. In most cases, this is made possible by individuals or groups making donations specifically for the publication of Buddhist teachings, to be made freely available to the public.
Amaravati Publications Amaravati Buddhist Monastery Great Gaddesden Hemel Hempstead Hertfordshire HP1 3BZ England
ISBN 1 870205 17 0 © Amaravati Publications 2004 www.amaravati.org www.forestsangha.org www.dhammatalks.org
Contents
Editor’s Preface Introduction Intuitive Awareness Identity When You’re an Emotional Wreck Suffering Should be Welcomed Sound of Silence The End of Suffering is Now Don’t Take it Personally Consciousness Trusting in Simplicity Observing Attachment Not Looking for Answers, Not asking Favours Glossary Biography 1 3 19 37 51 65 85 97 111 133 147 161
169 175 181
Editor’s Preface
This book is compiled from talks given mostly in 2001 by Ajahn Sumedho; they convey an intuitive understanding of the Buddha’s teaching which has arisen from over 35 years of practice as a Buddhist monk. This approach starts with accepting ourselves as we are, not as some ideal of whom we think we should be. By doing this a relaxation can take place that creates space for insight to arise. For some people this space arises as the sound of silence, or simply a quiet or empty mind. However it manifests, this points to the unconditioned; beyond body and mind objects. From this place of spaciousness, social and personal conditioning can be investigated or reflected upon, thus freeing the heart from the delusion of identifying with the personality. This is not a process of rejecting ourselves or of considering certain thoughts and feelings as wrong, but of learning to be a silent witness to all that arises without attaching to that experience or rejecting it. In essence it’s about trust, accepting what arises in experience as “the way it is” or, as Ajahn Sumedho
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likes to say a lot, “welcoming the suffering”. It is about listening, being receptive to and fully including everything. It may seem confusing that the reflections in this volume sometimes contradict each other, one talk suggesting that “suffering should be understood” and then the next cautioning against using the word “should”. But what can be noticed is the allencompassing point behind the confusion and contradictions. This is the point to trust: mindfulness. So the refuge is not in a teacher or scriptures but in the heart’s own purity, the point that never changes, which has no views and opinions and is not affected by anything and yet is fully alive, responsive, spontaneous and compassionate – fully here and now. This book has been transcribed, edited and designed by various Sangha members and lay people. The editor would like to thank them very much for the hours of work put into this. Whilst the talks have been edited to aid clarity, they may not be grammatically flawless. This is to keep the text as close as possible to Ajahn Sumedho’s manner of speaking. Any misunderstandings or errors arising from this rest with the editor. This book is offered as a sharing from the various people who have benefited from Ajahn Sumedho’s teachings, his great devotion to dhamma and his encouragement. May whatever merit that arises from this book be dedicated to the benefit of all sentient beings.
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Introduction
TWENTY YEARS AGO, in 1984, the germinal monastic community of the newly opened Amaravati Buddhist Centre settled into a cluster of barrack-like buildings on a windy hilltop in Hertfordshire. The name of the new monastery (meaning “The Deathless Realm”) had been chosen both as a resonance of the ancient Buddhist city in Andhra Pradesh, in southern India, and as a counteractive force to the “Mutually Assured Destruction” of the nuclear arms race, then gleefully being pursued by Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and the Soviet Union. The meditation space that we used at that time was the former school gymnasium and assembly hall. The windows were cracked, patched with plastic and sellotape, drafty or missing completely; gym markings criss-crossed the cold wooden floor; the large golden Buddha image sat up on the old school stage, spotlit and surrounded by filmy blue curtains that we had introduced in an attempt to beautify the shrine and suggest the quality of infinite space. Since 1981, when the community was largely based at Cittaviveka Monastery, in Chithurst, West Sussex, it had been our custom to set aside the mid-winter
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months, after the New Year, to be a time of communal retreat. At that time of year the English weather does not allow much in the way of building work to go on, visitors are few and the days are short and dark – it is thus a perfect situation to use for turning the attention inward and taking time to cultivate formal meditation practice in a very thorough way. Amaravati was opened in 1984 in order to provide living space for the burgeoning monastic community (group photos of the time show more than 20 EightPrecept postulants and 40 nuns and monks), and to be a place where we could hold retreats for the public. So when this move was made it provided an even more expansive situation for the winter retreats and for Ajahn Sumedho to continue to guide the community in his inimitably comprehensive and inspiring way. The winters of 1984, ’85, and ‘86 were spectacularly icy; winds howled down from Siberia, seemingly uninterrupted by any solid object until they bit into our bones. It was not uncommon to be wearing six or seven layers of clothing through the day and then to climb into our sleeping bags at night with most of it still on. We sat bundled up in thick robes and blankets for meditation and to listen to instructional talks. The air was icy but vibrant as there was a powerful and pervasive sense of community spirit among us. Sometimes, in those days, it seemed that the main source of energy in the whole system, and certainly what our hearts were warmed and guided by, was
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Ajahn Sumedho’s apparently limitless capacity to expound on the Dhamma, especially during the winter retreats. Naturally enough in that situation a lot of guidance was needed – the majority of us were fairly new to meditation and monastic training and needed all the help we could get, particularly within a routine of noble silence and walking and sitting meditation all day – thus Ajahn Sumedho gave extensive instruction, often two or three times a day. There would be “morning reflections” during the first sitting of the day before dawn, often more reflections after the breakfast of gruel and tea, sometimes “questions & answers” at afternoon tea-time, and finally a formal Dhamma talk in the evening. From those early icy times up until the present, in 2004, Ajahn Sumedho has continued to guide the monastic community at Amaravati. Every winter he has explored and expounded on the Dhamma and frequently there have been recordings made of his teachings. The book you hold is a small sample of the talks that he offered during the winter retreat of 2001.
Even though those days now seem a long way off in some respects, and much has changed, there are some elements that have remained stable to the present day, like a constantly returning phrase or rhythm in a musical piece or, more accurately, like the defining style of a master painter that instantly tells you: this is a Monet, that is a Van Gogh.
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Now at Amaravati the site of the old Dhamma Hall/ gymnasium is occupied by the Temple, the new meditation hall constructed in stages through the 90’s. The orientation is slightly different – the building now faces the east rather than the north – and it is a soaring pyramidal structure, rather than a utilitarian rectangular box. The great light open space within is punctuated with a broad ring of solid oak pillars; it is so silent and still it seems to stop the minds of those who visit; the floor is a blanket of warm white rock, and a barn-like lattice of thick trusses and beams laces the high ceiling and the walls. However, the trees across the courtyard are still the same, just a little taller and fuller, and the brown weather-boarding on the remaining older buildings is edged by frost in the winter morning light just as it was before. In the same way that some elements of the buildings, and the members of the community, have changed and some have continued, the winter retreat teachings Ajahn Sumedho has given in recent years have similarly matured and transformed. They are still built upon a foundation of many classic elements – the Four Noble Truths, reflections on the arising and ceasing of the Five Khandhas, teachings on contemplation of mind (cittànupassanà) – but the manner of exposition of these and other key elements, as well as his development of particular skilfull means (upàya) has evolved and expanded during these last 20 years. Thus, even though the talks gathered in this book can, in some respects, happily stand on their own it might also be helpful to bear in mind that they exist within a context.
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First of all, these talks were given to experienced monastics and a few well-seasoned lay-people. Many who were listening knew Ajahn Sumedho’s favourite themes very well, and he knew that they knew them well, therefore often explanatory material is left unsaid and much knowledge is assumed. Just as a musician might play a few notes to evoke a familiar piece and know of their audience: They can fill in the rest, they know that old theme! Or a painter might use a trademark motif thinking: Pop in that bowler hat again, they know all the other places it appeared… Similarly here, Ajahn Sumedho is often exploring, describing and extemporising on very familiar themes so that, if the reader occasionally feels a lack of explanation, if the meaning escapes one, the encouragement is to let the music, the balance of tones and colours tide you over. Secondly, the aim of the editors in compiling this book has been explicitly to maintain the style and spirit of the spoken word. Dhamma talks have strong nonverbal element – the mood in the room, the energetic exchanges between the speaker and the listeners, the season, the hour of the day or night, all that has gone before within the group – so it is wiser to treat a collection of talks such as this as if exploring an art gallery, or listening to a musical piece, rather than as a systematic explanation of a fixed subject. As Ajahn Sumedho himself commented, “The book is meant to be suggestions of ways to investigate conscious experience. It’s not meant to be a didactic treatise on Pali Buddhism.”
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So, as you make your way through these pages, and you encounter Intuitive Awareness, The End of Suffering is Now, The Sound of Silence, and all the others, the suggestion is to let them be received into the heart, to allow them to resonate, and to let the intuitions and guidance that they spark ripen as they will. Just as, when we progress through an art gallery we don’t think, “What’s the exact information that this painting is imparting to me?” Thirdly, ever since the time of the Buddha, his disciples have evinced a wide range of teaching styles and favourite themes when expounding the Dhamma. And this same variety is a striking characteristic of what is known today as the Thai Forest Tradition – the largely non-academic, meditation-centred, rural monastic communities that model their way of practice on the discipline and lifestyle of the Buddha and his earliest monastic disciples. Over time an individual teacher will tend to take a particular Dhamma theme, or meditation technique, and spend years, sometimes decades exploring and expanding on that topic. For example Luang Por Sim was noted for his emphasis on death contemplations; Ajahn Buddhadasa spent several years discoursing on idapaccayatà – the law of conditionality; Ajahn Toon Khippapa¤¤o vigorously insists the Path should be represented as Pa¤¤a, Sãla Samàdhi, NOT as Sãla, Samàdhi, Pa¤¤a; Ajahn Fun was known for his infinite extrapolations on the word “Buddho” – as a concentration technique, and investigation of awareness or as a devotional practice; Luang Pu Dun
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was known for his teachings on “Citta (the heart) is Buddha;” and Ajahn Chah was fond of putting conundrums to people, such as “If you can’t go forward, you can’t go back and you can’t stand still – where can you go?” Or “Have you ever seen still, flowing water?” Over time it is quite usual for such experienced teachers to develop not only their favourite themes but also to cultivate their own, often idiosyncratic usage of scriptural terms. For example, Ajahn Maha-Boowa’s usage of the term “eternal citta,” Ajahn Toon’s insistence on the radical dif ference between dassana¤àõa and ¤àõadassana, which can be translated as “vision and knowledge” and “knowledge and vision;” or the word “sikkhibhuto” which Ajahn Chah employed to mean “a witness to the truth,” yet Pali scholars continue to wonder exactly where the term came from. In this light it might be useful to take a look at some of the terms that Ajahn Sumedho uses frequently in this collection – particularly “the sound of silence,” “intuitive awareness” and “consciousness” – that have taken on such distinctive meanings over the years. The first of these, “the sound of silence,” is described in the opening Dhamma talk of the same name in quite some detail. However, as it is not a meditation method found in classical Theravàda handbooks, it might be helpful to provide a little background to the way in which Ajahn Sumedho came to develop it, and to refer to some of the other spiritual traditions that use it as part of a meditation practice.
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It was in the winter retreat of January ’81, at Chithurst Monastery, that Ajahn Sumedho first started to teach this method to the monastic community. He said that he had begun to notice the high-pitched, ringing tone when he left Thailand in 1977 and spent his first winter in England, in the Hampstead Buddhist Vihara. He pointed out that, as Thailand was such a noisy country, particularly amidst the crickets and cicadas in the forest at night (when one does most formal meditation practice), that he had not noticed this inner sound before. However, when he came to London, despite being a large metropolis, he found that it became very quiet late at night, especially when the air was muffled by the presence of a blanket of snow. In the silence of those nights he began to perceive the ever-present inner sound, seemingly beginningless and endless, and he soon found that he was able to discern it throughout the day, and in many circumstances, whether quiet or busy. He also realised that he had indeed noticed it once before in his life, when he had been on shore leave from the US Navy in the late ‘50s and when, during a walk in the hills, his mind had opened into a state of extreme clarity. He remembered that as a wonderfully pure and peaceful state, and he recalled that the sound had been very loud then, so those positive associations encouraged him to experiment and see if it might be a useful meditation object. It also seemed to be an ideal symbol, in the conditioned world of the senses, of those qualities of mind that transcend the sense realm: not subject to personal will; ever-present but only noticed if attended to; apparently beginningless
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and endless; formless, to some degree; and spatially unlocated. When he first taught it to the Sangha at Chithurst that winter, he referred to it as “the sound of silence” and the name stuck. Later, as he began to teach the method on retreats for the lay community, he began to hear about its use from people experienced in Hindu and Sikh meditation practices. He found out that this form of concentration on the inner sound was known as “nada yoga” or “the yoga of inner light and sound” in these traditions. It also turned out that books had been written on the subject, commentaries in English as well as ancient scriptural treatises, notable among these being “The Way of Inner Vigilance” by Salim Michael (published by Signet). In 1991, when he taught it as a method on a retreat at a Chinese monastery in the USA, one of the participants was moved to comment that, “I think you have stumbled on the Shurangama samàdhi; there is a meditation on hearing that is described in that Sutra and the practice you have been teaching us seems to match it perfectly.” Seeing that it was a practice that was very accessible to a number of people, and as his own explorations of it deepened over the years, Ajahn Sumedho has continued to develop it as a central method of meditation, ranking alongside such classical forms of practice as mindfulness of breathing and investigation of the body. The Buddha’s encouragement for his students was to use skilful means that are effective in freeing the heart. Since this form of meditation seems to be very supportive for that, despite not being
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included in lists of meditation practices in the Pali Canon or anthologies such as the Visuddhimagga, it seems wholly appropriate to give it its due. For surely it is the freedom of the heart that is the purpose of all the practices that are done – and that freedom is the final arbiter of what is useful, and therefore good. The second of the terms that Ajahn Sumedho has given par ticular meaning to here is “intuitive awareness.” As with the sound of silence there are many places in the talks contained here, particularly in the talk “Intuitive Awareness” itself, where he elucidates the ways in which he is using this term. However, it might be helpful here to reflect a little on its usage, just to clarify that in relation to other ways of employing the same words. There are numerous places throughout the book where, when the phrase “intuitive awareness” is used, the words “sati-sampaja¤¤a” are put in parentheses after, meaning that the former is a translation of the latter. The quality of sati-sampaja¤¤a/intuitive awareness is used to refer to part of a continuum which begins with “sati”, the raw mindful cognisance of an object; the second element being “satisampaja¤¤a”, referring to the mindful, intuitive awareness of an object within its context; the f..."
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