Ven. Ananda’s Awakening

There’s a story of how Venerable Ananda gained full awakening.

Very early on in his career as a monk, he had gained stream entry, which is the first glimpse of the deathless. Then he took on the job of being the Buddha’s attendant, which meant that he didn’t have much time for his own practice.

But he did ask of the Buddha a favor: that when the Buddha gave a Dhamma talk anywhere, he would come back and repeat it to Ananda. This meant that Ananda knew more about the Buddha’s teachings than anyone else.

So after the Buddha passed away, the monks got together and decided to create a standardized version of the Buddha’s teachings that could be remembered by all the monks. They realized that even though Ananda was not an arahant—they wanted to have arahants making this collection—still, he couldn’t be left out.

So he felt compelled to practice extra hard in preparation for the Council. The night before the Council, he meditated very late into the night, practicing mindfulness immersed in the body. It got very late, and he hadn’t gotten anywhere, so he decided to lie down. As he was in the process lying down—he wasn’t sitting, he wasn’t lying down, he was halfway between—he gained full awakening.

The next day he levitated into the meeting to show that he’d gained full awakening and that he was fully qualified to join the rest.

The story of how he gained awakening is sometimes interpreted as meaning that he’d been trying too hard, he had too much desire—and when he gave up his desire, gave up his effort, that’s when he gained awakening.

The irony, though, is the Canon’s two most explicit descriptions of how important it is to want to practice and to want to gain awakening are by Ananda himself.

In one case he’s talking to a nun, telling her that the end of conceit is one of the goals of the practice, but the conceit that goes with the thought, “There are others who have gained awakening—they’re human beings, I’m a human being. If they can gain awakening, why can’t I?"—that’s to be encouraged. It’s part of the path.

The same with the craving to gain total awakening. We practice to put an end to craving, but that particular craving is an important part of the path. It’s to be developed and not to be abandoned. You abandon it only after you’ve gained what you want.

That’s the message of the other passage, where Ananda’s talking to a brahman. He’s staying in a park. The brahman has come to see him and asks him, “This holy life you’re practicing, what’s the goal?” Ananda says, “One of the goals is to put an end to desire.” “Is there a path to putting an end to desire?” the brahman asks. And Ananda replies, “Yes.” He describes the four bases for success, one of which is concentration based on desire, accompanied by right effort. The brahman says, “In that case, it’s an endless path, because you can’t put an end to desire by using desire.”

So Ananda asks him questions in return. “Before you came to this park, did you have a desire to come to the park?” “Yes.” “And did you make an effort to act on that desire?” “Yes.” “Now that you’re here, what happened to that desire? What happened to that effort?” “Well it’s gone, because it’s already been fulfilled.”

Ananda says, “In the same way, whatever desire there is to put an end to suffering, to attain the goal—when that’s satisfied, then the desire ends."

So this is not a path of not wanting. There are lot of things you have to learn not to want, but you do have as your overriding goal, your overriding determination, that you do want to attain awakening. You do want to put an end to suffering. You do want to make that change in your heart. It’s simply a matter of learning how to use that desire and use that effort so that the desire and the effort don’t get in the way. In other words, you focus your desires on the causes—what will take you there.

So here we are: Sitting in meditation, but not thinking about awakening. We’re thinking about our breath, because thinking about the breath gets the mind to settle down with a sense of ease in the present moment, which is where the work is to be done.

Wanting to be balanced, at ease, happy to be in the present moment: That’s an important part of the path. The breath can help you because, of the different elements in the body, it’s the most responsive to what the mind tells it to do.

It’s hard to tell your heart to beat at a certain rate or to tell your blood pressure to go down. But you can tell yourself, “Breathe more slowly,” and the body will respond. “Breathe faster, breathe more deeply, breathe more shallow, heavier, lighter, in long, out short, in short, out long”—the body responds.

That way, you can create a sense of ease, asking yourself what kind of breathing would feel good right now and where can you think of the breath energy coming into the body. Or you can think of it originating in the body itself—one spot, two spots, many spots.

Simply by holding an image in mind, you’ll see that the breath responds. The mind will begin to settle down with a sense of ease with that perception—whatever the perception is that allows you to stay with the breath and that allows the breath to spread comfortably through the body.

So we’re here with the desire for awakening, but we learn how to channel that desire into our efforts to stay with the breath, to stay here in the present moment, to be fully aware of the breath bathing the whole body.

This is a full-body experience. We’re not just aware of the breath at the nose or at the pores. It’s not a tactile sensation that we’re focusing on. We’re focusing on what the Buddha calls “form.” When he classifies the in-and-out breath, he doesn’t classify it as a tactile sensation, he classifies it as an aspect of the wind element in the body, which is one of the elements that make up your inner sensation of the body, what’s called proprioception. And that wind element can be felt anywhere in the body. In fact, the more conscious you are of the breath in the whole body, the easier it is to get the breath to feel really good inside.

You come to the practice ideally with a sense of joy, which may be a mental joy based on generosity and virtue, but it also can translate into a sense of physical ease—and that’s what you can spread through the body. The Buddha talks about spreading a sense of rapture, a sense of ease through the body. It’s not just a mental ease, it’s physical. In that way, you have a good grounding for watching your thoughts—not only as you’re sitting here, but as you go through the day.

That’s the real lesson of that story of Ananda’s awakening: You want to be able to watch your mind all the time—not only when you’re formally meditating, but continually, throughout the day, regardless of your posture, regardless of what you’re doing.

The story about Ananda’s awakening doesn’t say that he stopped focusing on the body as he was lying down. If he had stopped focusing, he wouldn’t have seen anything. Some people note that he was changing his position, and all too often, when we change position, we drop the breath and we start thinking about other things. Like at the end of a meditation session: If our object of meditation were made out of glass, you’d hear the sound of glass shattering at the end of every session as people get up, forget about the meditation for a little bit, and go do whatever chores they have to do to until they think about meditating again.

Ideally, you want to stay with the breath as you get up, as you move around—even as you talk with other people. You want to be grounded all the time. That’s what heedfulness is all about, because the breath will show itself, the mind will show itself, in those unexpected moments.

It’s as if it behaves itself during the meditation, like a child in a classroom when the teacher is present, but then when the teacher is out of the room, the children run around as they like. If the teacher really wants to know what’s going on, she’ll need to have a sense of what the kids are doing while she’s in the room and also when she’s outside of the room. And you can do that as you monitor the breath all the time.

So that’s the lesson of Ananda’s awakening—that it can happen in unexpected moments if you’re continually aware.

There’s a similar story about Paṭācārā, one of the nuns. She comes back to her hut and she notices farmers working far off in the fields. “If they can do their job,” she says, “why can’t I do mine?” So she concentrates her mind as she’s washing her feet and then goes into the hut. There’s a lamp lit in the hut, so she pulls out the wick. And at the moment that she pulls out the wick and the flame goes out, that’s when she gains awakening.

So insights can happen at any time, which means you want to be there—so that you can be aware of what’s going on. You have to want to be there all the time. That’s the lesson of the story.