Simply Stop Right Here
The way we’ve been contemplating to the point of giving rise to knowledge through genuine mindfulness and discernment makes us realize how this is a process of disbanding suffering and defilement. Whenever mindfulness lapses and we latch on to anything, our practice of reading ourselves step by step will enable us to realize the situation easily. This helps us keep the mind under control and does a world of good. Still, it’s not enough, for the affairs of suffering and defilement are paramount issues buried deep in the character. We thus we have to contemplate and examine things within ourselves.
Looking outside is something we’re already used to: Whenever we know things outside, the mind is in a turmoil instead of being empty and at peace. This is something we can all be aware of. And this is why we have to maintain the mind in its state of neutrality or mindful centeredness. We then notice from our experience in the practice: What state have we been able to maintain the mind in? Is our mindfulness continuous throughout all our activities? These are things we all have to notice, using our own powers of observation. When the mind deviates from its foundation because of mental fabrications, thinking up all sort of turmoil for itself as it’s used to doing, what can we do to make it settle down and grow still? If it doesn’t grow still, it gets involved in nothing but stress: wandering around thinking, imagining, taking on all sorts of things. That’s stress. You have to keep reading these things at all times, seeing clearly the ways in which they’re inconstant, changing, and stressful.
Now, if you understand the nature of arising and passing away by turning inward to watch the arising and passing away within yourself, you realize that it’s neither good nor bad nor anything of the sort. It’s simply a natural process of arising, persisting, and passing away. Try to see deeply into this, and you’ll be sweeping the mind clean, just as when you constantly sweep out your house: If anything then comes to make it dirty, you’ll be able to detect it. So with every moment, we have to sweep out whatever arises, persists, and then passes away. Let it all pass away, without latching on or clinging to anything. Try to make the mind aware of this state of unattachment within itself: If it doesn’t latch on to anything, doesn’t cling to anything, there’s no commotion in it. It’s empty and at peace.
This state of awareness is so worth knowing, for it doesn’t require that you know a lot of things at all. You simply have to contemplate so as to see the inconstancy of form, feelings, perceptions, thought-fabrications, and consciousness. Or you can contemplate whatever preoccupies the mind as it continually changes—arising and passing away—with every moment. This is something you have to contemplate until you really know it. Otherwise, you’ll fall for your preoccupations in line with the way you label sensory contacts. If you don’t fall for sensory contacts arising in the present, you fall for your memories or thought-fabrications. This is why you have to train the mind to stay firmly centered in neutrality without latching onto anything at all. If you can maintain this one stance continuously, you’ll be sweeping everything out of the mind, disbanding its suffering and stress in the immediate present with each and every moment.
Everything arises and then passes away, arises and then passes away—everything. Don’t grasp hold of anything, thinking that it’s good or bad or taking it as your self. Stop all your discursive thinking and mental fabrications. When you can maintain this state of awareness, the mind will calm down on its own, will naturally become empty and free. If any thoughts arise, see that they just come and go, so don’t latch onto them. When you can read the aspects of the mind that arise and pass away, there’s not much else to do: Just keep watching and letting go within yourself, and there will be no remaining long, drawn-out trains of thought about past or future. They all stop right at the arising and passing away.
When you really see the present with its arisings and passings away, there are no great issues. Whatever you think about will all pass away, but if you can’t notice its passing away, you’ll grasp at whatever comes up, and then everything will become a turmoil of ceaseless imaginings. So you have to cut off these connected thought-fabrications that keep flowing like a stream of water. Establish your mindfulness and, once it’s established, simply fix your whole attention on the mind. Then you’ll be able to still the flow of thought-fabrications that had you distracted. You can do this at any time, and the mind will always grow still to become empty, unentangled, unattached. Then keep watch over the normalcy of the mind again and again whenever it gets engrossed and starts spinning out long, drawn out thought-fabrications. As soon as you’re aware, let them stop. As soon as you’re aware, let them stop, and things will disband right there. Whatever the issue, disband it immediately. Practice like this until you become skilled at it, and the mind won’t get involved in distractions.
It’s like driving a car: When you want to stop, just slam on the brake and you stop immediately. The same principle works with the mind. You’ll notice that, no matter when, as soon as there’s mindfulness, it stops and grows still. In other words, when mindfulness is firmly centered, then no matter what happens, as soon as you’re mindfully aware of it, the mind stops, disengages, and is free. This is a really simple method: stopping as soon as you’re mindful. Any other approach is just too slow to cope. This method of examining yourself, knowing yourself, is very worth knowing because anyone can apply it at any time. Even right here while I’m speaking and you’re listening, just focus your attention right at the mind as it’s normal in the present. This is an excellent way of knowing your own mind.
Before we knew anything about all this, we let the mind go chasing after any thoughts that occurred to it, taking up a new thought as soon as it was finished with an old one, spinning its webs to trap us in all kinds of complications. Whatever meditation techniques we tried weren’t really able to stop our distraction. So don’t underestimate this method as being too simple. Train yourself to be on top of any objects that make contact or any opinions that intrude on your awareness. When pride and opinions come pouring out, cry, “Stop! Let me finish first!” This method of calling a halt can really still the defilements immediately, even when they’re like two people interrupting each other to speak, the conceit or sense of “self” on one side immediately raising objections before the other side has even finished. Or you might say it’s like suddenly running into a dangerous beast—a tiger or poisonous snake—with no means of escape. All you can do is simply stop, totally still, and spread thoughts of loving-kindness.
The same holds true here: You simply stop, and that cuts the strength of the defilement or any sense of self that’s made a sudden appearance. We have to stop the defilements in their tracks, for if we don’t, they’ll grow strong and keep intensifying. So we have to stop them right from the first. Resist them right from the first. This way your mindfulness will get used to dealing with them. As soon as you say, “Stop!” things stop immediately. The defilements will grow obedient and won’t dare push you around in any way.
If you’re going to sit for an hour, make sure that you’re mindful right at the mind the whole time. Don’t just aim at the pleasure of tranquility. Sit and watch the sensations within the mind to see how it’s centered. Don’t concern yourself with any cravings or feelings that arise. Even if pain arises, in whatever way, don’t pay it any attention. Keep being mindful of the centered normalcy of the mind at all times. The mind won’t stray off to any pleasures or pains, but will let go of them all, seeing the pains as an affair of the aggregates, because the aggregates are inconstant. Feelings are inconstant. The body’s inconstant. That’s the way they have to be.
When a pleasant feeling arises, the craving that wants pleasure is contented with it and wants to stay with that pleasure as long as possible. But when there’s pain, it acts in an entirely opposite way, because pain hurts. When pains arise as we sit for long periods of time, the mind gets agitated because craving pushes for a change. It wants us to adjust things in this way or that. We have to train ourselves to disband the craving instead. If pains grow strong in the body, we have to practice staying at equanimity by realizing that they’re the pains of the aggregates—and not our pain—until the mind is no longer agitated and can return to a normal state of equanimity.
Even if the equanimity isn’t complete, don’t worry about it. Simply make sure that the mind doesn’t struggle to change the situation. Keep disbanding the struggling, the craving. If the pain is so unbearable that you have to change positions, don’t make the change while the mind is really worked up. Keep sitting still, watch how far the pain goes, and change positions only when the right moment comes. Then as you stretch out your leg, make sure that the mind is still centered, still at equanimity. Stay that way for about five minutes, and the fierce pain will go away. But watch out: When a pleasant feeling replaces the pain, the mind will like it. So you have to use mindfulness to keep the mind neutral and at equanimity.
Practice this in all your activities, because the mind tends to get engrossed with pleasant feelings. It can even get engrossed with neutral feelings. So you have to keep your mindfulness firmly established, knowing feelings for what they really are: inconstant and stressful, with no real pleasure to them at all. Contemplate pleasant feelings to see them as nothing but stress. You have to keep doing this at all times. Don’t get infatuated with pleasant feelings, for if you do, you fall into more suffering and stress, because craving wants nothing but pleasure even though the aggregates have no pleasure to offer. The physical and mental aggregates are all stressful. If the mind can rise above pleasure, above pain, above feeling, right there is where it gains release. Please understand this: It’s release from feeling. If the mind hasn’t yet gained release from feeling, if it still wants pleasure, is still attached to pleasure and pain, then try to notice the state of mind at the moments when it’s neutral toward feeling. That will enable it to gain release from suffering and stress.
So we have to practice a lot with feelings of physical pain and, at the same time, we have to try to comprehend pleasant feelings as well, for the pleasant feelings connected with the subtle defilements of passion and craving are things we don’t really understand. We think that they’re true pleasure, which makes us want them. This wanting is craving—and the Buddha tells us to abandon craving and passion for name and form. “Passion” here means wanting to get nothing but pleasure and then becoming entangled in liking or disliking what results. It means that we’re entangled in the delicious flavors of feelings, regardless of whether they’re physical feelings or mental ones.
We should come to realize that when a feeling of physical pain gets very strong, we can handle it by using mindfulness to keep the mind from struggling. Then, even if there’s a great deal of physical pain, we can let go. Even though the body may be in agitation, the mind isn’t agitated along with it. But to do this, you first have to practice separating feelings from the mind while you’re still strong and healthy.
As for the feelings that come with desire, if we accumulate them, they lead to even greater suffering. So don’t think of them as being easeful or comfortable, because that’s delusion. You have to keep track of how feelings—no matter what the sort—are all inconstant, stressful and not-self. If you can let go of feeling, you’ll become disenchanted with form, feelings, perceptions, thought-fabrications, and consciousness that carry feelings of pleasure. But if you don’t contemplate these things, you’ll stay infatuated with them.
So try noticing when the mind is in this infatuated state. Is it empty and at peace? If it’s attached, you’ll see that it’s dirty and defiled because it’s deluded into clinging. As soon as there’s pain, it grows all agitated. If the mind is addicted to the three kinds of feeling—pleasant, painful, and neither pleasant nor painful—it has to endure suffering and stress. We have to see the inconstancy, stressfulness, and not-selfness of the body and mind so that we won’t cling. We won’t cling whether we look outside or in. We’ll be empty—empty because of our lack of attachment. We’ll know that the mind isn’t suffering from stress. The more deeply we look inside, the more we’ll see that the mind is empty of attachment.
This is how we gain release from suffering and stress. It’s the simplest way to gain release, but if we don’t really understand, it’s the hardest. Thus it’s extremely essential that you practice letting go. The moment the mind latches onto anything, you can really make it let go. And then notice to see that when you tell the mind to let go, it lets go. When you tell it to stop, it stops. When you tell it to be empty, it’s really empty.
This method of watching the mind is extremely useful, but we’re rarely interested in contemplating to the point of becoming skillful and resourceful at disbanding our own sufferings. We practice in a leisurely, casual way, and don’t know which points we should correct, where we should disband things, what we should let go of. And so we keep circling around with suffering and attachment.
We have to figure out how to find our opportunity to disband suffering with every moment. We can’t just live, sleep, and eat at our ease. We need to find ways to examine and contemplate all things, using our mindfulness and discernment to see their emptiness of “self.” Only then will we be able to loosen our attachments. If we don’t know with real mindfulness and discernment, our practice won’t be able to lead us out of suffering and stress at all.
Every defilement—each one in the list of sixteen—is hard to abandon. Still, they don’t arise all sixteen at once, but only one at a time. If you know the features of their arising, you can let them go. The first step is to recognize their faces clearly, because you have to realize that they’re burning hot every time they arise. If they have you sad or upset, it’s easy to know them. If they have you happy, they’re harder to detect. So you first have to learn to recognize the mind at normalcy, keeping your words and deeds at normalcy, too. “Normalcy” here means being free of liking and disliking. It’s a question of purity in virtue—just as when we practice restraint of the senses. Normalcy is the basic foundation. If the mind isn’t at normalcy—if it likes this or dislikes that—that means that your restraint of the senses isn’t pure. For instance, when you see a sight with the eye or hear a sound with the ear, you don’t get upset as long as no real pains arise, but if you get distracted and absentminded as the pains get more and more earnest, your precepts will suffer, and you’ll end up all agitated.
So don’t underestimate even the smallest things. Use your mindfulness and discernment to disband things, to destroy them, and to keep working at your investigation. Then, even if serious events happen, you’ll be able to let go of them. If your attachments are heavy, you’ll be able to let go of them. If they’re many, you’ll be able to thin them out.
The same holds true with intermediate defilements: the five Hindrances. Any liking for sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations is the Hindrance of sensual desire. If you don’t like what you see, hear, etc., that’s the Hindrance of ill will. These Hindrances of liking and disliking defile the mind, making it agitated and scattered, unable to grow calm. Try observing the mind when it’s dominated by the five Hindrances to see whether or not it’s in a state of suffering. Do you recognize these intermediate defilements when they enshroud your mind?
The Hindrance of sensual desire is like a dye that clouds clear water, making it murky—and when the mind is murky, it’s suffering. Ill will as a Hindrance is irritability and dissatisfaction, and the Hindrance of sloth and torpor is a state of drowsiness and lethargy—a condition of refusing to deal with anything at all, burying yourself in sleep and lazy forgetfulness. All the Hindrances, including the final pair—restlessness & anxiety and uncertainty—cloak the mind in darkness. This is why you need to be resilient in fighting them off at every moment and in investigating them so that you can weaken and eliminate every form of defilement—from the gross to the middling and on to the subtle—from the mind.
The practice of the Dhamma is a very delicate work, requiring that you use all your mindfulness and discernment in probing and comprehending the body and mind. When you look into the body, try to see the truth of how it’s inconstant, stressful, and nothing more than physical elements. If you don’t contemplate in this way, your practice will simply grope around and won’t be able to release you from suffering and stress—for the sufferings caused by the defilements concocting things in the mind are more than many. The mind is full of all kinds of tricks. Sometimes you may gain some insight through mindfulness and discernment—becoming bright, empty, and at peace—only to find the defilements slipping in to spoil things, cloaking the mind in total darkness once more, so that you get distracted and can’t know anything clearly.
We each have to find special strategies in reading ourselves so that we don’t get lost in distractions. Desire is a big troublemaker here, and so is distraction. Torpor and lethargy—all the Hindrances—are enemies blocking your way. The fact that you haven’t seen anything all the way through is because these characters are blocking your way and have you surrounded. You have to find a way to destroy them using apt attention—in other words, a skillful way of making use of the mind. You have to dig down and explore, contemplating to see how these things arise, how they pass away, and what exactly is inconstant, stressful, and not-self. These are questions you have to keep asking yourself so that the mind will really come to know. When you really know inconstancy, you’re sure to let go of defilement, craving, and attachment, or at least be able to weaken and thin them out. It’s like having a broom in your hand. Whenever attachment arises, you sweep it away until the mind can no longer grow attached to anything, for there’s nothing left for it to be attached to. You’ve seen that everything is inconstant, so what’s there to latch onto?
When you’re persistent in contemplating to see your inconstancy, stress and not-selfness, the mind feels ease because you’ve loosened your attachments. This is the marvel of the Dhamma: an ease of body and mind completely free from entanglement in the defilements. It’s truly special. Before, the ignorance obscuring the mind caused you wander about spellbound by sights, sounds, and so forth, so that defilement, craving, and attachment had you under their power. But now, mindfulness and discernment break the spell by seeing that there there’s no self to these things, nothing real to them at all. They simply arise and pass away with every moment. There’s not the least little bit of “me” or “mine” to them at all. Once we really know with mindfulness and discernment, we sweep everything clean, leaving nothing but pure Dhamma with no sense of self at all. We see nothing but inconstancy, stress, and not-selfness, with no pleasure or pain.
The Lord Buddha taught, “Sabbe dhammā anattā—All phenomena are not-self.” Both the compounded and the uncompounded—which is nibbāna, the transcendent—are not-self. There’s just Dhamma. This is very important. There’s no sense of self there, but what is there, is Dhamma. This isn’t the extinction taught by the wrong view of annihilationism; it’s the extinction of all attachment to “me” and “mine.” All that remains is Deathlessness—the undying Dhamma, the undying property—free from birth, aging, illness, and death. Everything still remains as it was, it hasn’t been annihilated anywhere; the only things annihilated are the defilements together with all suffering and stress. It’s called “suñño”—empty—because it’s empty of the label of self. This Deathlessness is the true marvel the Buddha discovered and taught to awaken us.
This is why it’s so worth looking in to penetrate clear through the inconstancy, stress, and not-selfness of the five aggregates, for what then remains is the natural Dhamma free from birth, aging, illness and death. It’s called Unbinding, Emptiness, the Unconditioned: These names all mean the same thing. They’re simply conventional designations that also have to be let go so that you can dwell in the aspect of mind devoid of any sense of self.
So the paths, fruitions, and nibbāna are not something to hope for in a future life by developing a vast heap of perfections. Some people like to point out that the Lord Buddha had to accumulate so many, many virtues—but what about you? You don’t consider how many lives have passed while you still have yet to attain the goal, all because of your stupidity in continually finding excuses for yourself.
The basic principles that the Lord Buddha taught—such as the four establishings of mindfulness, the four Noble Truths, the three characteristics of inconstancy, stress, and not-selfness—are right here inside you, so probe on in to contemplate them until you know them. Defilement, craving, and attachment are right here inside you, too, so contemplate them until you gain true insight. Then you’ll be able to let them go, no longer latching onto them as really being “me” or “mine.” This way you’ll gain release from suffering and stress within yourself.
Don’t keep excusing yourself by relying, for instance, on the miraculous powers of some object or waiting to build up the perfections. Don’t think in those terms. Think instead of what the defilements are like right here and now: Is it better to disband them or to fall in with them? If you fall in with them, is there suffering and stress? You have to find out the truth within yourself so as to get rid of your stupidity and delusion in thinking that this bodily frame of suffering is really happiness.
We’re all stuck in this delusion because we don’t open our eyes. This is why we have to keep discussing these issues, giving advice and digging out the truth so that you’ll give rise to the mindfulness and discernment that will enable you to know yourself. The fact that you’ve begun to see things, to acknowledge the defilements and stress within yourself to at least some extent, is very beneficial. It’s better that we talk about these things than about anything else, so that we’ll gain knowledge about suffering and its cause, about how to contemplate body, feelings, mind, and mental qualities so as to disband our suffering and stress. This way we can reduce our sufferings because we’ll be letting go of the defilements that scorch the mind and get it agitated. Our mindfulness and discernment will gradually be able to eliminate the defilements and cravings from the heart.
This practice of ours, if we really do it and really come to know, will really reduce our sufferings. This will attract others to follow our example. We won’t have to advertise, for they’ll have to notice. We don’t have to brag about what level we’ve attained or what degrees we’ve earned. We don’t have any of that here, for all we talk about is suffering, stress, the defilements, not-self. If we know with real mindfulness and discernment, we can scrape away our defilements, cravings, and attachments, and the good results will be right there inside us.
So now that we have this opportunity, we should make a concerted effort for the sake of our own progress. Don’t let your life pass under the influence of defilement, craving, and attachment. Make an effort to correct yourself in this area every day, every moment, and you’re sure to progress in your practice of destroying your defilements and disbanding your suffering and stress at all times. This business of sacrificing defilements or sacrificing your sense of self is very important because it gives rewards—peace, normalcy, freedom with every moment—right here in the heart. The practice is thus something really worthy of interest. If you’re not interested in the practice of searching out and destroying the diseases of defilement, of your own suffering and stress, you’ll have to stay stuck there in repeated suffering along with every other ignorant person in the world.
When Mara—temptation—tried to stop the Buddha’s efforts by telling him that within seven days he would become a Universal Emperor, the Buddha answered, “I know already! Don’t try to deceive me or tempt me.” Because the Buddha had the ability to know such things instantly for himself, Mara was continually defeated. But what about you? Are you a disciple of the Lord Buddha or of Mara? Whenever temptation appears—there you go, following him hook, line, and sinker, with no sense of weariness or dispassion at all. If we’re really disciples of the Buddha we have to go against the flow of defilement, craving, and attachment, establishing ourselves in good qualities—beginning with morality, which forms the ideal principle for protecting ourselves. Then we can gain release from suffering by working from the level of the precepts on to mental calm and then using discernment to see inconstancy, stress, and not-self. This is a high level of discernment, you know: the discernment that penetrates not-self.
At any rate, the important point is that you not believe your defilements. Even though you may still have the effluents of ignorance or craving in your mind, always keep making use of mindfulness and discernment as your means of knowing, letting go, scrubbing things clean. When these effluents come to tempt you, simply stop. Let go. Refuse to go along with them. If you believe them when they tell you to latch onto things, you’ll simply continue being burned and agitated by desire. But if you don’t go along with them, the desires in the mind will gradually loosen, subside, and eventually cease.
So in training the mind, you have to take desire as your battlefield in the same way you would in treating an addiction: If you aren’t intent on defeating it, there’s no way you can escape being a slave to it repeatedly. We have to use mindfulness as a protective shield and discernment as our weapon to cut through and destroy our desires. That way our practice will result in steady progress, enabling us to keep abreast of defilement, craving and attachment with more and more precision.
If, in your practice, you can read and decipher the mind, you’ll find your escape route, following the footsteps of the Noble Ones. But as long as you don’t see it, you’ll think that there are no paths, no fruitions, no nibbāna. Only when you can disband the defilements will you know. You really have to be able to disband them in order to know for yourself that the paths, fruitions, and nibbāna really exist and really can disband suffering and stress. This is something you have to know for yourself. It’s timeless: No matter what the time or season, whenever you have the mindfulness to stop and let go, there’s no suffering. As you learn to do this over and over, more and more frequently, the defilements grow weaker and weaker. This is why it’s ehipassiko—something you can invite other people to come and see, for all people who do this can disband defilement and suffering. If they contemplate until they see inconstancy, stress and not-self, they’ll no longer have any attachments, and their minds will become Dhamma, will become free.
There’s no need to get all excited about anyone outside—spirit entities or whatever—because success in the practice lies right here in the heart. Look into it until you penetrate clearly all the way through yourself, sweep away all your attachments, and then you’ll have this “ehipassiko” within you. “Come and see! Come and see!” But if there’s still any defilement, then it’s, “Come and see! Come and see the defilements burning me!” It can work both ways, you know. If you disband the defilements, let go, and come to a stop, then it’s, “Come and see how the defilements are gone, how the mind is empty right here and now!” This is something anyone can know, something you can know thoroughly for yourself with no great difficulty.
Turning to look into the mind isn’t all that difficult, you know. You don’t have to travel far to do it. You can watch it at any time, in any posture. True things and false are all there within you, but if you don’t study yourself within, you won’t know them—for you spend all your time studying outside, the things of the world that worldly people study. If you want to study the Dhamma, you have to turn around and come inside, watching right at the body, at feelings, at the mind, at mental qualities until you know the truth that the body isn’t you or yours; it’s inconstant, stressful, and not-self. Feelings are inconstant, stressful, and not-self. The mind is inconstant, stressful, and not-self as well. Then look at the Dhamma of mental qualities: They’re inconstant and stressful. They arise, persist, and pass away. If you don’t latch on and can become free from any sense of self right here at mental qualities, the mind becomes free.
If you understand correctly, the mind is really easy to deal with. If you don’t, it’s the exact opposite. Like pushing a light switch: If you hit the “on” button, the light is immediately bright. With the “off” button, it’s immediately dark. The same holds true with the mind. If your knowledge is wrong, it’s dark. If your knowledge is right, it’s bright. Then look to see if there’s anything worth clinging to. If you really look, you’ll see that there isn’t, for all the things you can cling to are suffering and stress—affairs of ignorance, speculation, day-dreaming, taking issue with things, self, people, useless chatter, endless news reports. But if you focus on probing into the mind, there’s nothing—nothing but letting go to be empty and free. This is where the Dhamma arises easily—as easily as defilements arise on the other side, simply that you’re now looking from a different angle and have the choice: Do you want the dark angle or the bright? Should you stop or keep running? Should you be empty or entangled? It’s yours to decide within you.
The Dhamma is something marvelous and amazing. If you start out with right understanding, you can understand all the way through. If you get snagged at any point, you can examine and contemplate things to see where you’re still attached. Keep cross-examining back and forth, and then all will become clear.
We’re already good at following the knowledge of defilement and craving, so now we have to follow the knowledge of mindfulness and discernment instead. Keep cross-examining the defilements. Don’t submit to them easily. You have to resist their power and refuse to fall in with them. That’s when you’ll really come to know. When you really know, everything stops. Craving stops, your wanderings stop, likes, hatreds—this knowledge sweeps everything away. But if you don’t know, you keep gathering things up until you’re thoroughly embroiled: arranging this, adjusting that, wanting this and that, letting your sense of self rear its ugly head.
Think of it like this: You’re a huge playhouse showing a true-to-life drama whose hero, heroine and villains—which are conventional suppositions—are entirely within you. If you strip away all conventional suppositions and designations, what you have left is nothing but Dhamma: freedom, emptiness. And simply being free and empty of any sense of self is enough to bring the whole show to an end.