If ever you find the mind getting worn down by what it is observing, you can stop observing that; go to something neutral, something that will relieve the mind.
All that matters is that the awareness carries on.
In the beginning, we start by being aware of an obvious object – one object, two objects – that’s enough. You can use anapana or rising and falling; any object, not all six objects.
When the mind is sharp and fast, then it can naturally know several objects. In the beginning, one by one is enough.
You start by being aware of some object; and slowly when the mind becomes stronger – awareness becomes better and better – it can naturally receive more objects: you can be aware of breathing and thinking at the same time. It comes naturally.
If you know you’re aware, or paying attention, or knowing, you know the mind.
If you know your feeling is happening, then you know the mind.
If you know your thoughts, it means you know the mind.
If you know you have intention, the intention is the mind.
Then you can watch them happening; just know, just be aware that the process is happening.
You need a lot of practice and experience to understand how to observe your mind.
Yogi: Most beginners start with anapanasati. At which point should we let go of anapanasati and explore other objects?
Sayadaw: We start with anapana and touching sensation. If you continue and the mind settles down, naturally the mind knows the anapana and also other objects. We allow the mind to know the other objects.
Some yogis try to focus on only one object and not allow other objects to arise; we’re not trying to focus on only one object.
We use anapana; and slowly when the mind becomes more calm and peaceful, we allow the mind to receive or recognize more objects.
Yogi: Is it good for beginners to start with awareness of the breath?
Sayadaw: Not for all yogis. Some yogis cannot observe the natural breath. Meditation object must be natural process.
If you’re creating the object, it is not a good meditation object. Some people cannot know their natural breath because awareness is not strong yet; they try to make the breath more obvious by breathing hard; creating an artificial object is not a good meditation object.
If you can be aware of your natural breath, then it’s okay to watch your breath. I notice that many yogis cannot because they focus and use too much effort; then they cannot breathe naturally. Then, they cannot use anapana.
Whenever you can, be with your awareness if you remember that you’re being aware. When you can’t, go back to being aware of your 6 senses. Whenever you notice that you’re being aware, appreciate and acknowledge that awareness is the one that is doing the work that is helping you to be in touch with your 6 senses.
When you’re not able to tune into that, it’s fine because it’s still working; it has become like our glasses which we can’t see – usually we see what we see through the glasses. So, when we’re seeing through the glasses, that’s fine; and once in a while we notice the glasses, that’s good too.
When we are able to see the glasses, when we know the awareness, it means that we have the full picture – we know what we’re in touch with; we know whether we’re seeing, hearing or touching or feeling or thinking, and we also know that we’re aware of it.
We should not stay with the object/experience. We should stay with the awareness; we know the knowing mind or awareness mind through the object [Yogi's note: that's the function of the object].
The only amount of effort you need is the effort required to ask yourself the question ‘What is being noticed in this moment?’
Having asked the question, there is no compulsion to actually see the moment as new, or fresh, or just this moment because that doesn’t readily come to us. But if you’re trying to see that every moment as new, yes, that takes a lot of energy.
Although I always give the ideal situation like ‘every moment is actually new’, that doesn’t have to be so; just see whatever is happening as it is.
Sometimes we might come across situations where we feel like they are fresh, new and so on, that’s when the mind is in a state of realization of the presentness of the moment. There’s some kind of wisdom that helps the mind to see the freshness of each moment; but that may not always be available to us.
So, what is always available to us is just awareness; whether that’s good awareness or not so good awareness but it is still awareness. And that’s what we can rely on – the rest of it is changing; sometimes we can see it as being fresh and sometimes not. All we have to do is be relaxed about it.
I give you information not for you to try to be that information or experience that information; it’s just for us to know that if we do come across such an experience that we have some reference, ‘Alright, this is possible’ and not ‘I’m doing something weird!’
Sometimes somebody’s mind is on the brink of it and it helps them to see that more clearly or have the words to understand what they’re experiencing. But if that’s not how we experience it, we should stay with our experience as it is.
If we are grateful for the practice, for the Dhamma in our lives, grateful for the Buddha’s teachings and my sharing, please continue to make the Dhamma your life.
When you look after the Dhamma, the Dhamma will look after you. Dhamma is the good qualities of your life. If you cultivate, nurture, look after the good qualities in our mind, the good qualities will give good results for this mind.
Our life is a reflection of our state of mind. Our level of being is a reflection of the state of our mind.
When we fall asleep while sitting meditation, we can be sure that the mind wasn’t very interested in what it was watching, right?
The purpose of awareness is to discover. And when we discover something, it becomes more interesting; so then we want to keep observing.
When we’re being aware, if behind our awareness there is a healthy interest in understanding the mind and the body then that will feed the motivation to be mindful quite naturally.
You can still be mindful when you’re doing metta, and it is similar to watching pain. I call it strategy. When you can’t really face it, you make yourself more comfortable to face it another day.
When we find ourselves overwhelmed by a difficult emotion that we can’t handle, for some people, they can make that a metta practice. You could also do reflections of the Buddha or any of the other Brahmaviharas. I had relied on a neutral object – my breath, music and so on.
The goal in mind should be that this practice is to strengthen the mind so that it can come back and face the real problem another day. Keeping that in mind then we won’t just be spiritual bypassing but using it as a tool, a stepping stone, to come back to the problem so that we can really deal with it more effectively.
In Satipattana Sutta, they explain about the 4 objects – kaya, vedana, citta and dhamma. If you watch the body sensations only, we call kayanupassana. If you only watch the feeling – pleasant, unpleasant and neutral – we call vedananupassana. If you watch the mind only, good mind, bad mind, any mind, we try to watch all the time to learn about the mind, we call cittanupassana. If you understand that these 3 kinds of objects are impersonal (there is nobody there), nature; and we watch the relationship of this nature, we call dhammanupassana.
When it comes to watching any unwholesome mental state or activity, any defilement, there are 2 ways you can deal with it.
One is that you know what is happening in the thoughts and the feelings; and you’re just watching them. This works when the state of the 5 aggregates is strong and balanced; then even just watching what’s happening in the thoughts and the feelings, the mind can still learn lessons because it knows the content but is uninvolved enough to be able to learn lessons.
The other way is when you’re not strong enough to do that and learn lessons; and in that stage, you zoom into just the feeling and watch the feeling continuously. There comes a time when the thinking stops and you are just watching the feeling and the feelings are totally gone, the state of mind changes from that slight negative uncomfortable feeling to being really comfortable. No sign of the distress anymore.
When the feelings change completely, the thinking is different – not because you have understood anything, but simply because you did not let the mind dwell on the unwholesome. Thinking feeds emotions. Because you have kept the thinking at bay and have fed that time with awareness of the feeling, and when the feeling is completely gone, you’ll notice that the thinking is different.
When the negativity is totally absent, the way the mind thinks about the same thing is different. And building from that, we do it over and over again for everything that we couldn’t handle. That was the way of working with it.
[Yogi's note: When there's not enough understanding to watch both the thoughts and feelings, then zero in on watching just the feelings continuously and learn.]
From the Buddha’s teachings if you do kusala, you get the results of the kusala now. Where is it? And how do you show the result of kusala? It is in the quality of the mind; when we do kusala, the reflection of whether it is kusala is in the quality of the mind.
Now we are peaceful or we have insights because we develop sati, we develop samadhi, and it makes the mind feel well. There is a sense of wellness in the mind; there is growing confidence in the mind, so you know that kusala is received, is there.
Kusala or akusala refers to the quality of the mind – is it wholesome or unwholesome; that’s our measure.
Stay for a long time with that suffering because that’s how the mind will learn. The reason the habit is so strong is because when we had been able to engage in it, indulge in it, we have practiced it wholeheartedly and we have thrown ourselves in it.
When we engage in the activity or thoughts of it, we abandon ourselves to it so totally. Even with anger, we allow the energy of anger to completely overcome us, just as when we are joyful about something we sort of let go. And the same with this sort of energy and so it is not going to be easy to just de-condition it because of how it has been conditioned so wholeheartedly. So, stay with the suffering – there is not enough suffering for the mind to realize that it is not worth this amount of suffering.
The wisdom and the unwholesome are not matched in power – wisdom is little and the unwholesome is still strong.
The more we allow the wholesome or unwholesome to take place in our mind, the stronger it will get.
Even simple types of greed like food, it’s hard to resist the temptation of things we feed our craving for, over and over. Every time we eat, we feed the craving – and how much do we feed it.
So, we stay with the suffering and we also remind ourselves that feeling is just feeling and thoughts are just thoughts; and the mind is caught in the content, the concepts of this energy. The content is attractive and it feeds the feelings – so, we have to observe all of these.
The beauty of pañña – insight or realization or understanding – is that when it sees what is wrong, in that moment it sees what is right.
Any kind of insight is wonderful because it frees you from the suffering that you cause yourself. All our insights free us from the suffering we cause ourselves to the degree that the insight understands. (1:25:13-1:25:31)
The good news is that when you see the mad mind, it is the sane mind which sees the mad mind.
When wisdom is stronger, you will always notice that whatever the wisdom understands, it will also see what it was blind to before and understands now.