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A Gradual Path

The essence of Buddhism is a gradual path, you take each step and get results. Some people say you shouldn't meditate to get results. That's just a way of saying it. Just meditate to get results! Meditate to have joy, to have peace, to get enlightenment little by little. But don't be in a hurry to get results. One of the problems that Westerners often have is that once they set a goal, they often get impatient. Then they feel disappointed, frustrated, angry. They don't spend enough time practicing, enough time to get to enlightenment. It takes a long time, sometimes several lifetimes, so be patient. With each step you take, you reap something. Let go a little, you gain a little freedom and peace. Let go a lot, and you feel joy. In our monastery, everyone practices like that. I encourage meditators to aim for the stages of letting go to achieve a state called Jhana.

States of Jhana

Everyone wants joy, and Jhana is the way to achieve joy, here true joy, or real happiness, deep happiness. However, these states usually do not last long, just a few hours, but that is precious enough. Joy comes through letting go, especially letting go of wanting, choosing or controlling. Only when one reaches this point can one understand why joy comes. Through such experience, you understand that the more you control, the more you crave, the more you cling, and the more you cling, the less peaceful you are. On the contrary, the more you let go, the more you renounce, the more you are liberated and the more joy increases. This is a very profound teaching, deeper than what you read in books or hear in talks and certainly more beneficial than the coffee-table discussions. You experience something. And that experience is close to the essence of Buddhist teachings, which people often call mystical. You have to experience it yourself. In particular, you see the need to let go of the “controller,” the “doer.” This is the main problem with human beings. We cannot help but interfere and complicate things, while what is necessary is to let go and we do not. We only complicate things. Why don't you relax and enjoy the bliss instead of doing something?

Actually, it's hard to stop while meditating, but when you stop, there is a reward, there is joy, when you let go of the will, let go of the control, stop talking to yourself, you achieve inner silence. How many of you are tired of the noise that is always ringing in your head? How many of you can't sleep at night without the noise from the neighbors but the noise coming from between your ears? In our head, we keep hearing chatter, then worry, then thinking. This is the problem of humanity. When we need to think, we don't think clearly. When we need to stop, we keep thinking. When we learn to meditate, we understand how to achieve this state of balance, we learn to let go. So now we know how to let go of all ideas. They are just comments, just stories. Now we know the difference between thought and reality, for example, reading a book about New York City and traveling to New York City. Which is real? When you are there, you breathe the air, you feel the smell, you perceive things that you cannot feel through books and cannot write down. The truth is always silent. Words cannot express the truth.

When the body disappears

Remember the “swindlers”. These people can sell you anything!

There is such a person living in your mind, and you believe everything he says! His name is Thinking. When you let go of that inner voice, you have peace and joy. When you let go of all thoughts and just pay attention to your breathing, you have much more happiness. When you let go of the body, the five senses disappear, you experience great happiness. This is the original teaching of Buddhism. Form, sound, smell, taste, touch completely disappear. It's like being in a soundproof room, but more enjoyable. But it's not just silence, you don't hear anything. It's not darkness, you don't see anything. It's not a feeling of peace in the body, it's no body at all.

When the body disappears, people feel very good. You know, there are people who have out-of-body experiences. When the body dies, everyone has that experience, they leave the body. And one of the things people will say about it is how quiet it is, how beautiful it is, how wonderful it is. The same thing happens in meditation when the body disappears. It is so peaceful, beautiful, and blissful to be free from the body. What remains? There is no sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch. This is the state of deep meditation that the Buddha called concentration. When the body disappears, what remains is the mind.

The other day I gave a simile to a monk. Imagine a king wearing a large robe, an outer robe, a turban around his neck, a hat, and shoes on his head. We cannot see the real king, we only see the clothes. The same is true of our mind. It is obscured by sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. So people do not know. They only know the obscurations. When people look at the king, they only see the clothes and the things he wears. They do not know who lives inside those clothes. No wonder people are confused about what life is, what the mind is, what is inside, where do we come from? Why? What is my mission in life? When the five senses disappear, it is like taking off all the clothes and stuff for a king and seeing what he really is, what is really manifesting, who hears the words, who sees, who feels, who is this. When the five senses disappear, you are very close to the answer to all these questions.

When you meditate deeply, what you see is what we call “mind” (in Pali, Citta). The Buddha used the following analogy. On a full moon night there is a cloud. You cannot see anything. But sometimes the cloud becomes thinner, you see a bright area. You know there is something there. In meditation, it is like when you begin to enter a state of concentration. You know there is something but you cannot see it clearly. There are still “clothes” covering it. You are still thinking, still acting, still feeling the body or hearing sounds. But sometimes, this is also the Buddha's analogy, the moon comes out of the clouds and in the clear night sky you can see the moon shining like a disk in the middle of the sky and you know it is the moon. The moon is there, it is real, it is not an image through the clouds. It is like when you meditate you see the mind. You know that it is really the mind, it is not an image in your mind. You see the mind, you know the mind. The Buddha said that the liberated mind is very beautiful, very bright and radiant. This is not only a joyful experience but also a very meaningful experience.

How many people have heard about rebirth and still do not believe? How does rebirth happen? Certainly the body cannot be reborn. This is why when people ask me where I see myself going when I die, I answer, “One of two places, Fremantle or Karrakatta (1)”, that’s where the body goes! But where does the mind go? Sometimes people are so stupid, they think there is only the body, there is no mind. So when the body is cremated or buried, people think that’s it, it’s over. The only way to argue with this view is to practice meditation as the Buddha did under the Bodhi tree. Then you will see the mind in a clear consciousness – not in a state of drowsiness or sleep – but in a state of clear awareness. This is knowing the mind.

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