Meditation and Contemplation Nuggets from Ajaan Fuang Jotiko

MEDITATION  

§ Many were the times when people would tell Ajaan Fuang that ― with all the work and responsibilities in their lives ― they had no time to meditate. And many were the times he'd respond, "And you think you'll have time after you're dead?"

§ "When the mind's not quiet ― that's when its poor and burdened with difficulties. It takes molehills and turns them into mountains. But when the mind is quiet, there's no suffering, because there's nothing at all. No mountains at all. When there's a lot to the mind, it's simply a lot of defilement, making it suffer."

§ One meditator noticed that his practice under Ajaan Fuang was making quick progress, and so he asked what the next step would be. "I'm not going to tell you," Ajaan Fuang said. "Otherwise you'll become the sort of amazing marvel who knows everything before he meets with it, and masters everything before he's tried his hand. Just keep practicing and you'll find out on your own."

§ Another student disappeared for several months, and on her return told Ajaan Fuang, "The reason I didn't show up is that my boss sent me to night school for a semester, so I didn't have any time to meditate at all. But now that the course is over, I don't want to do anything but meditate ― no work, no study, just let the mind be still."

She thought he'd be pleased to hear how intent she still was on meditating, but he disappointed her. "So you don't want to work ― that's a defilement, isn't it? Whoever said that people can't work and meditate at the same time?"

§ "Meditating isn't a matter of making the mind empty, you know. The mind has to have work to do. If you make it empty, then anything ― good or bad ― can pop into it. It's like leaving the front door to your home open. Anything at all can come strolling right in.

§ "When the meditation goes well, don't get excited. When it doesn't go well, don't get depressed. Simply be observant to see why it's good, why it's bad. If you can be observant like this, it won't be long before your meditation becomes a skill."

CONTEMPLATION

§ A meditator in Singapore once wrote a letter to Ajaan Fuang, describing how he applied the Buddha's teachings to everyday life: Whatever his mind focused on, he would try to see it as inconstant, stressful, and not self. Ajaan Fuang had me write a letter in response, saying, "Do things ever say that they're inconstant, stressful, and not self? They never say it, so don't go faulting them that way. Focus on what labels them, for that's where the fault lies."

§ "Even though your views may be right, if you cling to them you're wrong."

§ One of Ajaan Fuang's students told him that she had reached the point in her meditation where she felt indifferent to everything she encountered. He warned her, "Sure, you can be indifferent as long as you don't run into anything that goes straight to the heart."

§ "Whatever dies, let it die, but don't let the heart die."

Excerpts from: Awareness Itself
Ajaan Fuang Jotiko
Compiled and Translated by
Thanissaro Bhikkhu (Geoffrey DeGraff)
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Source: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/fuang/itself.html#top

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For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

On Bringing Loving-Kindness Practice to Daily Life

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Here is a great teaching on metta—loving-kindness practice—by the skillful and great-hearted Bhante Vimalaramsi.

This excerpt from a talk called "Metta in Daily Life" gives many helpful ideas on how to take metta "off the cushion" and into one's daily life.
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Metta in Daily Life
by Bhante Vimalaramsi

"...With your daily activities, the other times, you can send Loving-Kindness to anybody. You can send it to individual people, you can send it to groups of people, you can send it to all beings, it's up to you.

But the thing that you want to try to do is start making "keys" for yourself. A key like: when you're brushing your teeth, that that's your time to send Loving-Kindness. When you're walking from your house to your car, try to use that as a key, for that's the time to open up your heart and send Loving-Kindness. Now you're going to forget sometimes, just like you do here, and that's OK. There's no problem with that. But when you see your mind is wandering, then you want to begin again. And that should be the name of this practice: "Do It Again", or "Play It Again", is that the...? [laughter]

When you're walking from your car to wherever you have to go, what are you doing with your mind? Your mind is just kind of ho-humming around, getting caught in all kinds of unwholesome mental states, or it's just kind of flying around thinking about this or that. So you use that, getting out of your car, or getting into your car, as your key to practice your Loving-Kindness. Open up your heart and, and if there's someone that you know that is suffering, send them some kind thoughts. Put them in your heart, radiate that Loving-Kindness to them.

The more times you focus on having an open heart, the more easily the practice progresses. And this is because, when you have an open heart, and you're radiating that Loving-Kindness, you'll notice it very quickly when it closes, when you get caught by thoughts and feelings and all kinds of whatever the circus is that's running in town at that day. So gently let go of those thoughts, let go of those feelings, relax. Wish somebody happiness.

When I was in Malaysia, I used to tell people to keep a little diary: how long were they able to practice Loving-Kindness during the day. And a lady came to me and she said, "You know, I wrote down every time I practiced Loving-Kindness. Sometimes it was only fifteen seconds and sometimes it was a little bit longer, sometimes it was less. And I only practiced Loving-Kindness for eight minutes during the day, that's all I could remember." And she thought she was being a failure. And I said, "Gee, that's great! That's just not regular good, that's real good! That's good practice. And, as you become familiar with doing it, it will become easier."

Now when you have your Loving-Kindness with you during the day, and then you go and sit and do your Loving-Kindness practice in the evening or in the morning, whenever you happen to do it -- I recommend the morning -- your sitting is easier, because you've been mindful during the day. You've seen that your mind has been, wandering around doing this and that, getting caught by this thought and that thought, this feeling and that feeling, and, you start working with it right then. Letting it go, relax, come back to that open heart and giving that love away.

One of the keys that I use, is, every time I see a little baby, makes me smile. So I send Loving-Kindness to that baby. It was funny, I went into a restaurant with some people, and as I was walking out there was a little, oh, must have been two or three year old baby, sitting in a high chair, and he started looking at me. And I started smiling, just because he looked so great. I mean he was just, really, really soft-faced, and he started smiling back. And then he started bobbing his head up and down. He knew what I was doing. [laughter] And by the time I'd reached the door I started chuckling. Now this was right after the Twin Towers thing, and I walked out the door laughing, and some people were walking right by the door and they heard me laughing, and they had a look of shock on their face. And then they started smiling. So that was a real successful trip. How do you affect the world around you?

So you use as many different keys as you can remember, to, let go of whatever you're thinking about -- it's not that important anyway -- relax, come back to your heart-space and feel that open up, and then send that Loving-Kindness. You're standing in line at the grocery; what are you doing with your mind? " Awh, this lady's got a lot of stuff, it's going to take a long time, aww man." And you know, everybody else in line is doing the same thing. "I can't wait to get out of here, I've got other things to do, I don't want to be here." So you can have compassion for those people.

Now, what's the definition of compassion? Compassion is seeing another person's pain, allowing them to have that pain and loving them anyway. When I would go into the hospitals, when I was doing that quite a bit, I'd walk into somebody's room, smiling. And, ok, they have a lot of pain, they're really in serious trouble, they're getting close to death. OK. That's a sad situation. That's right. And I can love them anyway. Now it was real amazing because, people would tell me that when I walked in the room, it felt like some fresh air came into the room.

Now, if you know somebody that's depressed and you walk into the room where they are, how does that feel? Not very nice. Your have a choice at that time: you can either take their depression and become depressed right along with them, or you can allow them the space to have those kind of feelings, and love them. They can go through whatever they want to, that's their karma; they want to get caught by these things, that's fine. But, ultimately, I'm responsible for me. So what I wind up doing is just radiating Loving-Kindness and wishing, quite often it's all beings. And after a little while the energy in the room starts to change.

Now, when you have strong Loving-Kindness, when you're able to focus on it very deeply, there can be some heat arising in your body. And this heat is a healing energy. And when you focus very strongly with Loving-Kindness, when you practice enough, your mind becomes very calm. And because your mind becomes calm, their mind becomes calm. And when their mind becomes calm, then they start letting go and that depression starts to raise up a little bit. It starts to dissipate a little bit in them.

So you can't take another person's pain away, no matter how hard you try or how much you indulge in their pain; you only make yourself suffer. The more you practice focusing on Loving-Kindness and having an open heart, that's where the healing is. The more you can radiate that feeling of happiness and love, the more you can smile -- and laugh once in while, the more you effect the world around you in a positive way by your example. . ."

You can read the full talk by Venerable Bhante Vimalaramsi here:

"Metta in Daily Life" 

and you can learn more about this wonderful teacher here:

Dhamma Sukha Meditation Center

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For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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The Middle Way of Balance Between Concentration and Discernment

THE BALANCED WAY

In practicing the Dhamma, if you don't foster a balance between concentration and discernment, you'll end up going wild in your thinking. If there's too much work at discernment, you'll go wild in your thinking. If there's too much concentration, it just stays still and undisturbed without coming to any knowledge either. So you have to keep them in balance.

Stillness has to be paired with discernment. Don't let there be too much of one or the other. Try to get them just right. That's when you'll be able to see things clearly all the way through. Otherwise, you'll stay as deluded as ever. You may want to gain discernment into too many things—and as a result, your thinking goes wild. The mind goes out of control. Some people keep wondering why discernment never arises in their practice, but when it does arise they really go off on a tangent. Their thinking goes wild, all out of bounds.

So when you practice, you have to observe in your meditation how you can make the mind still. Once it does grow still, it tends to get stuck there. Or it may grow empty, without any knowledge of anything—quiet, disengaged, at ease for a while, but without any discernment to accompany it. But if you can get discernment to accompany your concentration, that's when you'll really benefit. You'll see things all the way through and be able to let them go. If you're too heavy on the side of either discernment or stillness, you can't let go. The mind may come to know this or that, but it latches onto its knowledge. Then it know still other things and latches onto them too. Or else it simply stays perfectly quiet and latches onto that.

It's not easy to keep your practice on the Middle Way. If you don't use your powers of observation, it's especially hard. The mind will keep falling for things, sometimes right, sometimes wrong, because it doesn't observe what's going on. This isn't the path to letting go. It's a path that's stuck, caught up on things. If you don't know what it's stuck and caught up on, you'll remain foolish and deluded. So you have to make an effort at focused contemplation until you see clearly into inconstancy, stress, and not-self. This without a doubt is what will stop every moment of suffering and stress....

From READING THE MIND — Advice for Meditators

from the Talks of K. Khao-suan-luang (Upasika Kee Nanayon)
Translated from the Thai by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Other Teachings by Upasika Kee Nanayon and highly recommended:

Pure and Simple: The Extraordinary Teachings of a Thai Buddhist Laywoman

An Unentangled Knowing

For more in-depth dharma articles and instruction, visit: METTA REFUGE

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Simple, Skillful Instruction for Doing Loving-kindness (Metta) for Yourself

"When you practice loving kindness meditation, you first start by sending loving and kind thoughts to yourself. You remember times when you were happy. When that happy feeling arises, it's a warm glowing feeling in the center of your chest. And a radiating feeling. As soon as that feeling arises, then, you make a wish for your own happiness:  'May I be happy. May my mind be peaceful and calm. May I be filled with joy. May I be cheerful.'

Whatever wish you make for yourself, feel that wish. You know what it feels like to be peaceful and calm. Bring that feeling of peace and calm, put it into your heart, radiate that feeling to yourself. You know what it feels like to be happy. Bring that feeling into your heart, and radiate that feeling to yourself. Whatever wish you make for yourself, you want to feel that wish.

You can make the same wish over and over again, as long as it has meaning for you, or you can change the wish occasionally. But you don't make a wish like this, you don't say: 'May I be happy. May I be happy. May I be happy. May I be happy. May I be happy.' When you do a wish like that, it turns into, like trying to memorize something, and you start thinking about other things. You want to feel the wish. Make the wish, feel the peace and calm, if that's what your wish is, keep that feeling in your heart, when that feeling starts to fade, then you make another wish.

While you're sitting like this, your mind is going to wander. You're going to think about other things. As soon as you notice that your mind is thinking about other things, you simply let go of those thoughts. Don't continue thinking, even if you're in mid sentence let it go. Relax the tension and tightness caused by those thoughts in your head, in your mind, in your body. And gently come back to the feeling of loving kindness and making a wish for your own happiness.

It doesn't matter if your mind wanders fifty times during the sitting, and fifty times you see that, you let it go, you relax, you come back to your meditation object. That is a good sitting. A bad sitting would be, noticing that you're thinking about something, and to continue thinking, not letting it go.

When you're sitting, you want to sit with your back reasonably straight. Please don't move your body at all. Don't wiggle your toes, don't wiggle your fingers, don't scratch, don't rub, don't change your posture. Don't rock back and forth. Sit very still.

While you're sitting like this, there can be some sensations that arise in your body. You want to cough, and itch, heat, vibration, a painful feeling. As soon as that arises your mind will be drawn to it, and then you start thinking about that sensation: 'I wish it would stop. I really don't like this feeling when it happens. I wish it would just go away.' Every thought like that makes the feeling become bigger and more intense. So, the first thing you do is to let go of the thought about the sensation. And then, relax the tension or tightness in your head, in your mind.

Next you will notice that there is a tight mental fist wrapped around that sensation, you really don't like that sensation there, you really want it to go away. The truth is when a sensation arises, it's there. That's the truth. And it's OK for that sensation to be there. It has to be OK, because it's there. Anytime you try to fight with the truth, anytime you try to control the truth, anytime you try to make the truth be anything other than it is, that's the cause of suffering. Allow that sensation to be there. Make it OK for it to be there. Relax. Gently come back to the feeling of being happy and making a wish for your own happiness.

While you're doing this meditation, this is a smiling meditation. You want to put a smile in your mind. A little smile in your eyes, even though your eyes are closed. A smile on your lips, a little one, and a smile in your heart. Whenever you notice that you're not smiling, then start again. . ."

Bhante Vimalaramsi

For many more inspiring, skillful teachings from Bhante Vimalaramsi be sure to visit: Dhamma Sukha Meditation Center

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