Awareness Alone is Not Enough
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
The following points are a mixture of short reflections, ideas, and suggestions from Ashin Tejaniya. Since they are taken out of context, they might not always be very meaningful to yogis who are not very familiar with his teachings or to those who are relatively new to meditation and to Dhamma study.
We therefore suggest that you take inspiration from the ones that immediately make sense to you and that you skip the ones that do not speak to you. Mulling over points you cannot connect with is likely to confuse or frustrate you.
If there is even a little expectation, the mind gets confused. Watch your attitude, don’t expect results!
When you use wisdom, effort is already present.
Being mindful is being aware of what is right here already.
When the mind is idle, it will think.
Whenever you are upset, look within. There is nothing and nobody out there you can blame for your state of mind.
Having assumptions is delusion at work.
It is important to learn to see clearly the difference between the object and the mind. Which is the object? Which is the mind?
Whenever people get depressed it is a sure sign that they wanted something and that they did not get it.
Thoughts can lie to you but your feelings (vedanā) cannot — feelings are real.
Wanting to talk and not wanting to talk are the same problem.
Whether or not you want to do something is not important. Just ask yourself whether you need to do it.
Don’t pay attention to the sound, just recognize you are hearing. Hearing includes knowing the sound. The same goes for seeing, etc.
The small defilements will grow. Ultimately we need to become able to see even the tiniest manifestations of greed and hatred.
Why are you doing this? Because you want it? Because you need to do it? Because it is the appropriate thing to do under the present circumstances?
When there is no greed or aversion in the mind, you are able to make the right decisions.
Just ask the question, don’t look for the answer. The answer will come as soon as the mind has gathered enough data.
Don’t tell yourself to be patient, watch the impatience!
Wisdom can control the mind; you cannot control the mind!
Don’t try to maintain equanimity, only try to keep awareness.
If you have problems in your family you have to solve them at home. You cannot solve them at the meditation centre.
Appreciate the knowledge and understanding you have. Do as much as you can and be content with whatever result you get.
What are you going to pay attention to? Seeing? Hearing? Smelling? Touching? Tasting? Thinking? Or are you going to get involved in looking, listening, smelling, touching, or tasting? Will you get lost in thought? Don’t get carried away by old habits; retrain the mind!
As long as you have a wrong attitude, the mind cannot be strong. When the mind is strong, it can see whatever it is able to. This is Dhamma at work; there is no personal involvement at all. Never try hard to see anything. Eagerness to see is greed.
Never try to locate the mind, place is a concept. You recognize the mind by the fact that it is doing work.
What we call the planning mind is just thinking. You may be planning something but you are not doing anything because the intention is not strong enough. Real intention is not thinking. It is just impulses, just energy of the mind.
Knowing why the mind is doing something is wisdom.
Sometimes a thought is so subtle that you cannot know whether it is driven by a defilement, but you can feel it.
A true understanding of dukkha is free of suffering, it will free the mind.
At the beginning of your practice, thinking will stop as soon as you become aware of it; you cannot be aware and think. Only when mindfulness is strong can you observe thinking.
When you really understand the principle of something, you will never forget it.
We must realize just how harmful the defilements are. It takes a long time until the mind gets really weary of the defilements; just knowing intellectually that lobha, dosa, and moha are not good is not enough. Most people actually want to live with greed, anger, and delusion. We all must go through many difficult periods of constantly looking at the defilements, there is no shortcut. Only when the mind becomes really fed up with the defilements will it be able to free itself.
Don’t hurry, just keep learning.
Why are the defilements stronger at home? Because it is MY home, MY wife, MY car, etc.
If you are really continually aware, thoughts of fear will not arise. If a sound is just a sound, etc., imagination will not go wild. Whatever you think you see and whatever you think you hear are just concepts.
Applied awareness cannot be used in daily life, only natural awareness, awareness that does its own work. Then wisdom will see kusala and akusala, and will drop akusala for kusala. The longer you practise the more you will understand this process.
Inside and outside are concepts.
Always examine the mind, why is it doing this, how does it feel?
Why is the mind getting agitated? What did you do before this happened? Remember!!
When you are agitated you really need to practise.
The mind does not calm down because of an object but because of interest, right attitude, and continuity of mindfulness.
If you do not practise talking meditation in the meditation centre you won’t be able to do it outside.
If you think you have something very important to think about, stop and ask yourself if it is really important. Why are you so eager to think about it?
In a work situation, the momentum of stress can be slowed down or even stopped if you practise mindfulness of breathing for a minute or so every hour — or whenever you have time.
When people start practising meditation, they will have no — or not enough — faith to keep them going and therefore they need a lot of motivation. Faith needs time to develop.
What you think of as sukha is dukkha.
Is it important for the attachment to go or to understand why the attachment is there? Wanting to get rid of anything is dosa!
Mindfulness and wisdom will automatically eradicate the defilements; we can only create the right conditions. We need to recognize and accept the defilements.
Feeling confident that you have understood a kilesa is moha at work!
We need to learn our lessons over and over again until we really understand.
What you know is never enough! Wisdom understands what is happening and what needs to be done. Wisdom keeps growing in many ways.
The more you resist what is happening and the more you want to change it, the worse it feels.
Think about how to be mindful, don’t think about the experience.
Even if you are afraid, just go for it!
When you are depressed everything is a problem.
We have to take action. If we do not do anything, the thoughts will keep doing their stuff. The defilements are very strong, they can run very fast and so wisdom needs to be fast to catch up.
If we want to have real understanding we must practice in real situations.
Investigating is using wisdom energy.
Wisdom never believes. Wisdom always investigates.
We use thinking, but the quality we try to harness is wisdom. It is not the thought itself that is the point; it is what lies behind the thought, the meaning, the right ideas, the understanding.
Understanding how to do something is wisdom.
We need to use concepts to talk about wisdom and reality. Concepts and reality co-exist.
People who are attached to samādhi need to be encouraged to investigate.
People who are naturally curious and intelligent will automatically look closer or deeper into whatever they are aware of.
Wisdom never takes it easy; wisdom understands that it can always go further.
If you think you can take it easy, you will suffer.
Those who are wise work harder.
Wanting a peaceful life is laziness.
Be careful when you make a resolution! People often make resolutions without even considering what they are actually capable of.
We cannot stop the defilements; we have to learn to work with them. People who play games understand this very well. You have to solve problems or overcome difficulties before you can proceed to a higher level.
We cannot get rid of a defilement by using a defilement. Every time we deal with a defilement, we need to be aware — without any interference. We first need to recognize, observe, and understand what is going on. Whenever we label something as bad we bring in aversion. Keep checking your attitude!
The sense of ‘I’ arises continuously, but to the mind it is just like any other object. You can learn to be aware of its presence or absence.
Whenever you let the mind run idle, the kilesas will strike.
There are always at least two main causes which affect your present experience: The momentum of your good and bad habits and what you are doing right now.
Every time you understand something, you will experience a sense of freedom.
People don’t want to live with things as they are; they always want to live with things as they want them to be.
If you don’t even have common sense, how can you hope to get vipassanā insights?
This is the nature of Dhamma: if you get it, you don’t feel happy; if you don’t get it, you don’t feel unhappy. Many yogis become very happy when they have a certain experience and very upset if they don’t. This is not practising Dhamma. Practising Dhamma is not having an experience, practising Dhamma is understanding.
There are three kinds of seeing: i) seeing something with your eyes, ii) seeing something with your mind, iii) seeing through something — that’s insight.
The real objective is to understand things. Happiness will then follow naturally.
In vipassanā we want to know what is happening, why it is happening, and what we should do about it.
The moment you want to be happy or peaceful, you have a problem. Wanting is a problem. It is essential to practise with the right information, the right thinking, and the right attitude.
Every time you are in a hurry or eager to do or know something, the mind will start to concentrate, to focus, and to want results.
Real understanding can only happen in the moment.
Sīla is doing what you should do and not doing what you should not do.
Vedanā is a verb.
It is wrong to expect others to respect us.
Directing the mind towards the right object is sammā-saṅkappa.
You cannot pretend to know Dhamma; the level of your understanding will always show in your words and actions.
When there is no paññā, there is moha.
When you understand paññā better, you understand moha better.
Saññā and paññā work simultaneously.
Sati sees what is going on, paññā knows what to do.
The whole world is unfair. People do bad things because they don’t know better, because of moha.
Wanting others to be like you is a stupid expectation.
The process of understanding is often very painful.
Trying to keep your attention on the object is wrong effort.
Whatever you perceive are just objects. All objects are natural phenomena. Let things happen.
Every time you judge something as good or bad, moha has got a hold on you.
No matter how many unskilful deeds you have done, wisdom can liberate you in this life.
Have you ever had a peaceful moment with absolutely no expectation, no worry, and no anxiety?
When the mind feels joy in understanding, it will be motivated to look deeper.
Investigation is observing what is happening in order to understand the whole picture.
Meditation is cultivating wholesome states of mind.
Having natural awareness is like driving a car; you know what to do, how to do it, and what to pay attention to.
What is happening right now?
Why do we like things? Because we don’t see them as they really are.
Reality has no direction, reality does not go anywhere.
Things don’t happen because you want them to happen but because conditions are right.