Over-informed

When the Buddha started out teaching, he didn’t say that he was going to teach people Buddhism. He told the five brethren that he would teach them the Dhamma, and “Dhamma” basically meant doctrine. Which doctrine? The doctrine of putting an end to suffering and stress. His criticism of other paths was that they didn’t lead to the end of suffering, whereas the noble eightfold path did lead to the end of suffering. It led to awakening. It led to knowledge. Then he plunged right in to teach the path.

He didn’t tell them they could become stream-enterers, or once-returners, or non-returners, or arahants. He basically said, This is the path for putting an end to suffering. Focus on the suffering you’re doing right now. Notice that you’re doing it. You’re clinging to things. It’s not simply that you’re on the receiving end of the suffering. You’re doing it. And you want to see that, comprehend that. Then you can see what’s causing the suffering so that you can abandon it. And there’s a path to follow. In fact, the path was the first thing he mentioned. It’s a path of action. That’s all he taught.

So, in speaking about suffering, he was speaking to something that was very immediate to all his listeners, something that was happening right there in the present moment. The word dukkha: We translate it as suffering, but it also means stress, and everything between subtle stress to really out-and-out misery. It’s all the same word in Pali. But as he pointed out another time, this is something that’s been with us for a long time. Our problem is that we’re bewildered by it. We don’t know where it’s coming from, why it’s happening. We want a way out. So what he was offering was a way out to those five brethern, offering to end their bewilderment, giving them a way to understand their suffering so that they could put an end to it.

All very direct, very immediate.

It’s good as we practice that we try not to anticipate too much, and that we look instead at what we’re doing right now to create suffering. Ajaan Fuang said that, of the students he taught, the ones he liked best were the Chinese merchants from the market because they hadn’t read much of anything in the Dhamma. They didn’t have a lot of preconceived ideas. They just knew that they were suffering and they wanted a way to put an end to it.

So that’s what he offered. When he told them to look at their breaths, they looked at their breaths. When he told them to stay there, they would do their best to stay there. As for anticipating what was going to happen, he wouldn’t encourage that kind of anticipation.

There’s a similar story about Ajaan Sao. People would come and ask how to meditate, and he’d say, “Okay, repeat the word *buddho *in your mind.” If they asked, “What does buddho mean?” he’d say, “Don’t ask.” If they asked, “What’s going to happen when I repeat it?” he’d say, “Don’t ask. Just do it.” So they’d go back and do it.

Then they would come and report the results. Now, if the results were not right, he would let them know it was not right, that they were doing something wrong. But if the results were good, and they wanted to know if the results were right, he wouldn’t encourage that. He’d say, “Well, just keep on doing it.” After all, even when you’re right in the beginning of the practice, you’re not fully right. If you were fully right, you’d be an arahant. There’d be no more suffering. But you’re headed in the right direction, so you’re between right and wrong.

But the encouragement always was to look at what’s actually happening in your mind as a result of what you’re doing, in line with the Buddha’s teachings that the Dhamma is nourished by commitment. You really, really do it, and then you reflect. The reflection is this: Is there any stress? If so, where? What’s the nature of that stress? And what are you doing that’s contributing to it?

You can see this in the way the various levels of jhana develop. Again, people would get into these levels. The Buddha himself got into jhana for the first time when he was a child. He had no idea what was happening. He didn’t anticipate it, but that’s what it was.

So he tried that again later in life, and he was lucky he hadn’t been told by somebody that there were going to be four levels of jhana or you had to do this and do that. So what did he do? He got his mind into that state and he asked the question, “Is there still some stress here?” He realized it was in the directed thought and the evaluation. What happened if you drop that? In the beginning, the directed thought and evaluation were necessary parts of getting the mind to settle down, because otherwise, if you didn’t direct your thoughts to the breath, it would go someplace else. The mind has a tendency to talk to itself. So have it talk to itself about one thing: the breath.

But there does come a point where you don’t need to keep talking to yourself. In Ajaan Fuang’s image, it’s like calling your water buffalo. When it comes, you don’t have to keep calling it. It’s there. So when the mind is there, drop all that chatter and just stay with the perception of breath. Then you’ll notice, “Is there still some stress here?”

Don’t go too quickly through these levels. We’re not trying to jump through jhana hoops. We’re trying to observe our minds. Sometimes it takes a long time, sitting with one thing, to sense what’s going on. Well, give it that amount of time. Try to really settle in and get some nourishment out of the concentration, because that’s what keeps you going until you get more sensitive.

Then you begin to see, “Well, there’s this thing that I do that I don’t have to do, and I can get the mind even more still, more solid when I stop doing it.” In this way, you just keep following through with this question. That’s how the Buddha went through all the different levels of jhana, how he was able to navigate them.

Then when he gained the different knowledges on the night of his awakening, the question was, “What has this knowledge have to do with the ending of suffering?” With the knowledge of his previous lives, the question was, “Why? Why do we keep going up and down? Why do we keep coming back to suffering again and again?” Everything is so ephemeral, and yet we have so much craving for it.

Then he saw the larger picture. He saw that rebirth was determined by people’s actions, their intentions based on their views. The question again was, “What’s the best use of this knowledge for putting an end to suffering?” He realized that it was in the lessons he had learned having to do with the power of karma in the present moment. So he focused back on the present moment. “What am I doing right now?” “How do I understand what I’m doing right now?” and “What’s the best way to understand it so that I can stop causing suffering?”

That was how he gained awakening. He kept looking at what he was doing, what was happening as a result, and being very honest about the fact that, yeah, there was some stress here. Then he would cast around to see what he could do to stop contributing to that stress until he finally discovered that the stress and suffering was totally dependent on what he was doing. That was why he was able to put an end to it.

So he learned by feeling his way, and being very clear about what he was doing, very clear about the results, and very demanding in his judgment: Could it be possible that there would be something with no stress at all?

So he found his way without anticipation. There was a desire, but he was also exploring.

As we practice, it’s good that we try to adopt that mind-set as well. There are lots of books out there. I’m guilty of writing a fair number of them myself. But you’re not here just to fit your mind into a mould, or to say, “Yes, I see the truth of that. I see the truth of this,” and think that you’re done.

In the forest tradition, they actually ask you to prove the Buddha wrong. This is how you get past this fact that we have the maps with us now. We sometimes like to think that the forest ajaans went out into the forest without any scholarly learning. Actually, they all were trained in the basic concepts. And they had heard about the different levels of noble attainments. They’d heard about the different levels of jhana. This was all part of their background. So how did they not just try to fit into the background, fit into the concepts? Ajaan Mun, Ajaan MahaBoowa, and all the other ajaans would encourage their students to try to prove the Buddha wrong. And one of the questions, of course, is that, when the Buddha talks about things being inconstant, is there something constant, something that doesn’t change? Find that in your mind. Look for it.

Ajaan Lee talks about finding things that are constant, easefu,l and under your control. You discover this with the practice of meditation. The concentration comes and you get some really solid states of mind. They’re useful, one, because when you start questioning everything else, you’re coming from a position of strength, a position of well-being, a position of confidence. You’re not threatened by the inconstancy of other things, because you’ve found something good. But how good is it? You keep on questioning. You keep on observing. And there will come a point when you’ll see, “Well this, too, has its inconstancy.”

But don’t be too quick. Don’t be in a hurry to come to that judgment. You’ve really got to test it. How far does the constancy go? It’s only then that you can say that you’ve really discovered something and not just tried to fit yourself into a mould. After all, you’re here to solve the problem of your own suffering. That’s what matters. You’re not here to gain brownie points.

So be honest as you look at what you’re doing. And be observant to see what the results are. This is why honesty and being observant were the qualities the Buddha would look for in his students. It’s also why Ajaan Fuang would use the sentence, “Be observant,” more than anything else in his meditation instructions—that and, “Use your ingenuity.” Part of being ingenious in the practice is realizing that there is this danger of just saying, “I can recreate what’s described in the texts. Yes, I can see that everything arises and passes away.”

But why does it arise? After all, stream entry is not about arising, it’s about origination. Where do these things come from? When the Buddha uses the word origination, it means causes that come from within the mind. Okay, what in your mind is giving rise to things? You’re not just here watching a passing show. You’re creating the show. You have a hand in it. And you want to detect that.

So always bring a questioning attitude, an exploring attitude. One way of escaping this tendency we have of putting ourselves into the mould is to see if we can break the mould. We learn a lot of good lessons that way, unexpected lessons, because a lot of discernment is unexpected. We can read the books, we can think about them. If we get good books, and our thinking is right, it can point us in the right direction, but it can’t answer all the questions. And no matter how right your right views may have been to begin with, there will be surprises on the path.

So remember: Right anticipation is not one of the factors of the path. We’re here to explore and to learn. If you have that attitude, you can keep yourself safe.