Q&A

Q: In the Mahasatipaṭṭhāna Sutta, there’s the expression, “Thus he remains contemplating the body in the body, internally, externally, and both internally and externally.” How do we understand this phrase, “both internally and externally”?

A: You have to remember mindfulness doesn’t mean being directly aware of something. It means keeping something in mind. In this case, you keep in mind the fact that whatever you experience in your body is also what other people experience in their bodies. So, if you feel pain in your body, reflect on the fact that other people feel pain, too. If your mind is changeable, other people’s minds are changeable, too. This is one of the reflections that help you make up your mind that “Maybe I don’t want to be reborn as something else, because I’ll be subject to all the same sorts of sufferings over things that are inconstant, stressful, and not-self.”

Q: Beginner’s question again. My heart beats strongly, loudly, and this can make it difficult to concentrate on the breath. What can I do? The heart beating loudly means agitation, doesn’t it?

A: The fact that the heart is beating loudly doesn’t necessarily mean agitation. Sometimes it means a lack of oxygen in the blood. So you might want to breathe more strongly in order to get more oxygen into your lungs and into your bloodstream. If the heart doesn’t stop beating strongly even then, and you find it distracting, try to focus your attention on areas in the body that are as far away from the heart as possible, such as your feet and your hands.

Q: Thank you for the instructions on the bone meditation. I can see that it gives results within my mind, but I have difficulty visualizing different bones in my body. Do you recommend studying pictures of skeletons to help me?

A: Yes, it’s a good idea to learn about the bones you have. You’re carrying them around all the time, so it’s good to get to know them. This is one of the reasons why, in the meditation monasteries in Thailand, they have a real skeleton hanging in one corner of the hall. They had one at Wat Asokaram, where I was ordained, and before the group meditation, I would sit and look at the skeleton and say to myself, “Okay, it has that bone. Where is that bone in my body?” It helped to concentrate the mind.

Q: What are the differences between the contemplations of the 32 parts of the body and the meditation on the bones?

A: The meditation on the bones is one aspect of meditating on the 32 parts of the body. You have the list of the 32 parts here in the chanting book, right? You can just go down the list and visualize each of those parts in your own body. One of the teachings that Ajaan Mun left behind was that if you find that one part of the body seems to transfix your attention, focus on that one.

Q: What are the differences between practicing this or that other meditation?

A: Each meditation topic has its advantages, but you have to figure out which ones work for you. You can try out different techniques to see what impact they have on your mind, with the realization that you may want to master several forms of meditation, to deal with different problems in the mind, but Ajaan Lee recommends that you keep breath meditation as your home base. The Buddha himself says that if you’re doing a particular technique and you find that it’s giving rise to unskillful qualities in your mind—such as doing body contemplation and developing a sense of unhealthy disgust for the body—then you should go back to breath meditation. He also notes that when you focus on feelings and mind states, it’s useful to view these aspects of your experience in connection with the breath, as we’ve been discussing in the morning talks.

Q: I find there are certain repetitive stages in my meditation: 1) quite unpleasant paralysis of the body, 2) the breath regularly turns into a pleasant, even a beautiful breath, 3) at the same time, in the forehead and around the heart is a light that changes texture, intensity, and tone: sometimes bright white with tones of gold, blue or pink. Then at the end of the meditation, the whole is fine, joyful—but it becomes boring, even though it’s refreshing. What to do? Sometimes there’s a fourth stage: The light turns off and there’s great peace and calm. The impression of time for these first four steps is 5 to 10 minutes.

A: The problem here is when you get bored. Remind yourself that you’re not meditating to be entertained. You want to learn a skill, and the skill is “How long can I keep my mind in a comfortable and still state?” In the case of maintaining that state, you’ll find other defilements coming up, and as you learn to maintain concentration in the face of those defilements, you begin to get some insight into what your defilements are and the tricks they play on the mind. And of course, the first defilement that comes up is usually the one that says, “This is boring.” Learn how not to identify with that voice. Once you can get past that, then you gain some really interesting skills.

Q: When you say to ask questions of yourself, do you pose the question mentally once or twice in the mind, or do you repeat the question repeatedly throughout the meditation?

A: You pose the question just once or twice, and then drop the question and bring the mind to the breath, observing to see how the mind and the breath behave in light of that question.

Q: When we’re in a creative process, artistic or not, and the mind is focused on what we’re doing, can you consider that as a training in concentration and meditation?

A: Well, it is training in concentration, but it’s not necessarily right concentration. I once had a student who was a professional dancer, and when she was on stage you could see that she was very, very focused. But she said she couldn’t transfer that focus into meditation. The awareness that she was being watched by an audience was what gave her focus its power. Without an audience, she couldn’t focus her mind.

One of the features of right concentration is that you’re not engaged in anything that has anything to do with sensuality. So if you can translate your concentration from one activity to another, then it’s fine, but remember, it’s a different skill.

Q: Can you develop the concept of citta?

A: Citta basically corresponds to what, in Western languages, we call heart and mind. It’s what’s aware, what thinks, and what has emotions. All of those things together are citta.

Q: Can we assume a universal, transcendent consciousness that actualizes itself in each living being and gives human beings this feeling of imminence?

A: The Buddha never talks about a universal consciousness. He basically talks about being very careful to observe the consciousness that you’re experiencing right here, right now, and to see how you’re fabricating it.

Q: Among the clingings are views about the world. Would you go over concretely what counts as views about the world? Would they include prejudice against other persons? Would they include judgments about political things? Other things?

A: Basically, any view you have about the nature of the reality would count as a view of the world. This would include political activities and prejudice against other people, but also any view you have about reality out there in the world, such as the nature and origin of the cosmos, how your actions are shaped by the world, or how the world is shaped by your actions. You’ll notice that the Buddha teaches what he calls right views—about how your actions shape the world you experience—and those are the views you hold on to as part of the path, much like holding on to a raft going across the river. Once you get to the other side, you can leave all views aside.

Q: Are all rites clingings? If not, what are those that one can continue to follow?

A: Not all rites in themselves are clinging. It’s our attitude toward them that’s the clinging.

Q: Continuation of the same question: For example, celebrating a birthday, Christmas with one’s relatives: Is it a tradition to be abandoned?

A: No, as long as it helps you get along with your friends and family in a skillful way, you can continue to celebrate birthdays and Christmas.

Q: Continuation of the same question: Can one continue celebrating national holidays?

A: Of course, if you want to—although the best thing to do with a national holiday is to take advantage of the time to meditate.

Q: What you said about the similarities between falling asleep and entering a dream, on the one hand, and dying and being reborn on the other worries me. I regularly suffer from nightmares or even night terrors. They sometimes get so intense that I wake up with a bruised feeling or a pain in my lower back. They worsen during times when I practice meditation more frequently. Does this mean that my mind, upon death, will be more prone to enter a lower state? What to make of the increasing nightmares when meditating more often? Is it just tension relief or should I persevere? Thank you.

A: In cases like this, the first thing you should do every time you go to bed is to spread thoughts of goodwill to all beings. If, while you’re asleep, you become conscious of the fact that you’re having a nightmare, start spreading thoughts of goodwill even in the dream. If you wake up, again: thoughts of goodwill for everyone in the dream. Develop that as a habit so that when something scary comes along, your first thought is mettā. The fact that this happens more frequently the more you meditate is normal because there’s less going on in your daily experience, which means that things inside the mind have more opportunity to come bubbling up to the surface. In any event, if you know that the mind has this habit, learn how to counteract it with thoughts of goodwill as much as you can.

We had another question about someone who had a near-death experience, and the scariest part of it was the person finding him or herself in a huge, dark void, with the impression that either they were going to stay there or would have to be reborn.

Actually that void is one possibility for being reborn.

Then in the course of this person’s experience, they realized they didn’t want to stay there in that void, so they thought of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, and eventually that helped get them out of the void. Then they went to other various levels, quite a few of which were unpleasant.

Holding on to that sense of faith in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha will get you through. You hold on to the intention, “I want to come back in a situation where I can practice the true Dhamma.” Now, this may take a lot of mental strength and concentration, but it’s worth it. As for the dark void, it’s important to realize that it’s not nibbāna. It’s basically a state of non-perception. It’s not what you want.

Q: In the West, there’s a commonly shared view that at the moment of death or near death, one sees moments of one’s life running in front of the eyes like a movie. What is the meaning of this from the Buddhist point of view?

A: It happens quite a lot, and what it means is basically that, as your dying, you’re entering unfamiliar territory, and your mind casts around in its memory bank to try to understand what’s happening. You start remembering either your own past actions or the things that other people did to you. This is where it’s important to extend lots of goodwill to yourself for your own misdeeds, and to others for theirs. It’s also why we said not to fall for thoughts of nostalgia. But in particular, learn not to focus on the bad things you’ve done, because that can have an influence on where you’re going to go.

Q: Does stream-entry happen only at the time of death?

A: No. In fact if you can do it during this retreat, all the better. We’ve got three more days. Of course, if anybody reports stream entry, I’ll have to question them very seriously first.

No, stream entry can happen any time in life. As I said earlier, both Ajaan Fuang and Ajaan Suwat reported that what I understand to be their stream-entry experiences happened during an illness.

Q: Could you detail the notion of debt and its consequences? Should one avoid asking for a service from someone even if they accept it happily and voluntarily, and if you’re offering them an occasion to be generous?

A: No, you don’t entirely avoid debts of that sort. If people are willing to help you in various ways and are happy to help you, accepting their help is a sign of your own generosity of spirit.

Q: Continuation of the same question: For example, asking the aid of your parents in order to look after your children.

A: If the parents are happy to do it, of course.

Q: Continuation of the same question: However, more pragmatically, should one avoid taking on a mortgage?

A: That kind of debt I would recommend staying away from, especially given the way the world is right now.

I’ll tell you a short story from my time in Asia. There was a policeman in Singapore who was part of the group that would invite me down to Singapore to teach. He had retired from the police force because he wanted to look after his ailing mother, even though it meant that he took a big cut in his pension.

There was one time when the group had prepared a meal for me, and one of the women fixed extra food, with the intention that she would offer the left-over food to this policeman at the end of the event, and he could accept the food without losing face. However, he refused the food. I have never in my life seen anyone so angry as that woman. In fact, she literally said to the policeman, “I curse you! I curse you! I curse you!” So if someone is happy to offer help, one of your ways of being generous is to be happy to accept it.

Q: Can you explain how we can give our lives some meaning, as we are born and reborn until we reach higher and higher, so, in fact, the meaning is to disappear at the end into nirvāṇa?

A: Nibbāna is not just disappearing. A necessary part of the path of practice is that you develop a noble mind by looking for an undying happiness while learning at the same time how to behave in a way that causes no harm to anyone, yourself or anyone else. This is why we titled the book from the last retreat, Bonté et Bonheur: goodness in the sense of not harming anybody, and happiness, of course, in the happiness of total freedom. That’s a pretty good meaning for life.

Q: As far as the fear of death, it doesn’t worry me too much, especially when viewed in the light of the Dhamma. But I do have a fear of dying, and it poses more questions: where, when, and how. And especially, I feel something of a bit of a modest embarrassment and shame about letting those near me be involved with what to do with my corpse. What to do with my meditation so that I am more calm about this and can get beyond this obsession?

A: As part of your meditation you have to keep reminding yourself that the body is not really you or yours. This is why it’s good to do body contemplation in terms of the 32 parts, so that when you leave the body, you leave it totally, with no sense of attachment. As long as there’s a sense that “This body is mine,” there will be an embarrassment about leaving behind a corpse. So try to dis-identify with the body as much as you can while you’re still here. And as far as when, where, and how you’re going to die, the more you train the mind, the more you see it doesn’t really matter. You keep focusing on the state of your mind, and the details of how the body dies will become less and less important.

Q: Does following the way of the Buddha mean not eating meat or dead animals at all?

A: The answer is No. The precept against killing means basically that you don’t kill the animal yourself and you don’t give the order to kill, which means staying away from fresh seafood. Do they have those Chinese restaurants here in France where there are tanks of live fish from which you can choose the fish you want to eat? Stay away from those. And if you want to go further than the precept and avoid eating meat of any kind, that’s your choice.

Q: Is it that an arahant at the moment of death is automatically in nibbāna? Do they not have the choice of getting reborn to continue to diffuse and teach the Dhamma? If so, it’s a shame.

A: When someone has entered nibbāna, it comes together with a sense of enough. So, the idea of wanting them to continue on is asking a little bit too much of them. They’ve helped people as much as they can, and they owe no debts to anyone. Think about what’s involved in coming back, and you realize all the pain it gives to your new parents: carrying a kid around in your womb for nine months, then having to nourish and raise the child, and then having your child take your car keys and run the car into somebody. So, by the time you get around to teaching the Dhamma again, you’ve built up lots of kammic debts.

Q: Since we’re here sitting in meditation and listening to Dhamma talks, couldn’t we reasonably think that we did quite well at the time of our previous death? Can this give us confidence in our ability to do well again for the next one? Thanks for your answer.

A: You never know: Maybe you just got lucky the last time. The real question is having the right mixture of confidence and heedfulness: in other words, being confident because you did handle it well the last time, but at the same time being heedful because you might have some bad kamma that you didn’t take care of last time that might come roaring through at any moment.

In other words, you approach death in the same way as you would approach meditation. If you had a good meditation last time, you should have the confidence, “I may be able to do that again.” But you also have to be heedful and remember, “Well, maybe it won’t happen well this time.” So, stay heedful.