Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Samma Sambuddhasa
Homage to Him, the Blessed One, The Worthy One, The Perfectly Self-Enlightened One 

Acknowledgements

My special gratitude goes to my teacher, the late Venerable Shwe Oo Min Sayadaw Bhaddanta Kosalla Mahāthera, who taught me the Dhamma and right attitude for my spiritual development and meditation practice.

I want to express my appreciation to all yogis. Their questions and difficulties have once again inspired many of the explanations in this book. I really hope that this book will help yogis better understand mindfulness meditation and deepen their practice.

Finally, I would like to thank everyone who has contributed to the completion of this book.

Sayadaw U Tejaniya

Dear Reader

It doesn’t take long for a yogi (meditator) new to Sayadaw U Tejaniya to notice humor permeating his teachings. Whether it is making an observation on his surroundings or commenting on the environment of the mind, Sayadaw, or “the Teacher” as his disciples fondly call him, delivers his teachings with a good dose of wit.

While the delivery may come with a bit of levity, Sayadaw is quite serious about the subject of Dhamma. Using his own experiences as guide and gradually honing his presentation, Sayadaw encourages meditators to always be persistent, experiment, and dig deeper into the Dhamma. He relates to his lay students through pithy business metaphors and regularly describes his own experiences in learning to meditate in the midst of managing the family business and before ordaining permanently in 1996.

Sayadaw is a strong proponent of applying the Buddha’s teachings to daily activities in a monastery, at home, and at work. When his long-time disciples make the migration to the Shwe Oo Min Dhamma Sukha Tawya Meditation Center in Yangon, Myanmar, one of his first questions is typically about their practice. Some may reply in detail while others sheepishly answer that they have returned to jumpstart their flagging practice.

Sayadaw often encourages yogis to continue cultivating their own energy and wisdom after a retreat. To help post-retreat, some of Sayadaw’s retreats even have participants going mindfully about their business during the day in their own homes or workplaces and discussing their experiences and discoveries in evening and weekend Q&A sessions. Other retreats have incorporated mindful talking periods during the day.

Meditating in daily life means building up these skills with diligence and right inquiry. It means asking the right questions at the right time to spur on an internal curiosity to investigate further. The answers will reveal themselves to appropriate questions so long as we apply right view and perseverance to our meditation, Sayadaw reassures us. When meditation gathers momentum, awareness becomes more natural. There is less doing and more recognizing.

This book was compiled as a continuing thread to the question of what next? We each have our own versions of the first few days of retreat excitement calming down to a steady mind, building momentum over a week or two, only to see it crumble in the anticipation of reentering daily life. Forgetfulness sets in as we leave Sayadaw’s presence and the supportive environment of the center. Even in the occasional outing to the village or city while at the Shwe Oo Min Meditation Center, yogis often report to Sayadaw that there are just so many objects out there! To which Sayadaw often replies that there are only six sense doors and knowing is of only the six senses at the six sense doors inside and out of retreat. Sayadaw noted in a recent retreat in California that most of us meet a limited set of people in our daily lives and go about our lives with a limited set of people, pointing out that if we observed our reactions to others with right view, we could learn to resolve these challenges ourselves. Mostly we don’t watch and often not with right view.

It is our hope that Sayadaw’s words will inspire all of us to continue wholeheartedly, being as sincere and serious as Sayadaw is about being aware and cultivating awareness at home. In compiling these pages, we asked ourselves: What are the most salient issues to practicing in daily life? What might arise more off the cushion that we may not experience as much on retreat? What stories from Sayadaw’s own experiences can address the challenges of daily life practice? To get at some of these answers, we have tracked down and edited transcriptions from the more recent retreats abroad. While Sayadaw teaches through guided meditations and Q&As led by yogi questions, we have compiled this book thematically so that a reader can use it in daily life.

What do we do when the retreat is over? “Mindfulness is a Lifestyle Change” begins the book while an abbreviated “Mindfulness in Brief” caps the book in Appendix. The beginning chapters address the triumvirate of greed, aversion, and delusion while latter chapters delve into more specific topics for daily life, which is anytime, anywhere off the cushion although we could also be practicing on the cushion in our daily lives as well! While it may seem at odds to have sections on cultivating wholesome minds, inquiry, and non-doing all in the same book, each of these pieces answers different needs at different times in our meditation practice, whether within a span of minutes or months.

It feels like we have been editing for quite some time, and we have, over some years, having worked on this manuscript in the midst of daily life, and understand fully when life just takes over. We have tried to stick to our own page limits for this daily-life book, lest we continue to edit forever! If this is the first book you are picking up with Sayadaw U Tejaniya’s teachings, may we suggest the illustrated Don’t Look Down on the Defilements for a funny and quick primer on the right attitude for meditation, Dhamma Everywhere: Welcoming Each Moment with Awareness + Wisdom for a more in-depth look, and Awareness Alone is Not Enough with Q&A’s from different retreats? These are all given out freely and can be accessed online at www.ashintejaniya.org or through Wisdom Streams, www.wisdomstreams.org in North America. For more auditory learners, please check for Sayadaw’s retreat audio on www.dharmaseed.org. When Awareness Becomes Natural: A Guide to Cultivating Mindfulness in Everyday Life is a commercial publication that can be accessed through Shambhala and other sources. We appreciate greatly your very vital contributions towards future free publications globally; please reach out to any of us at info@wisdomstreams.org.

When we welcome the Dhamma into our daily lives we reap the benefits of the Buddha’s teachings. Our deepest gratitude goes to Sayadaw for patiently lighting this path of awareness + wisdom, and teaching us the right attitude for meditation. May all living beings benefit from the dedication of those who have contributed to this process: Ma Thet (Moushumi Ghosh) for her tireless and dedicated retreat translations which are in this book, and for her careful telling of Sayadaw’s story in “A Note from the Teacher,” to all the folks who sent in transcriptions and those who did not shy away from our drafts in their roughest states. A big thank you to Sheng Bin Chiu, Sajama Sajama, TJ, Jim Noyes, Tom Aust, Ashin Sunanda, Steve Armstrong, Douglas McGill, Martin Kaminer, Nancy Zan, Margaret Smith, Heidi Che, Chan Lai Fun, Tiffany Taalman, and Jie Zeng for joining us at different stages with your patient and close reading of the material. We have immense gratitude to folks globally who will be bringing this book to life with dana, layout, printing, and distribution including Chan Lai Fun and Hor Tuck Loon.

May the reader benefit from this project as much as we have collaborating on it. We assume responsibility for any errors in the transcription or editing and will do our best to rectify any issues for future editions. Do email comments to info@wisdomstreams.org attention Laura.

Finally, this book is by no means comprehensive, and not meant to replace Sayadaw’s personal guidance or your own further exploration of the Dhamma. Good luck in your endeavors!

This book is dedicated to all the beings in the universe.

With much mettā,
Tony Reardon
Laura Zan

On Language

We work within the limits of language to describe the process of clear seeing that is at times difficult to pin down with words. As such, some rules of grammar may be bent a teeny bit. A construct like “the mind is knowing” instead of “the mind knows” is used in instances where it seems more appropriate to describe something in process. The following words are used interchangeably: watching, being aware, observing, being mindful, recognizing, noticing, and paying attention. You may also see the word “yogi” used often, which is Sayadaw’s reference to a meditator. “Dhamma” with a big “D” refers to the teachings of the Buddha and the practice of meditation while “dhamma” with a little “d” refers to natural phenomena, natural law, or object.

We have tried to maintain Sayadaw’s voice as much as possible throughout. The combination word “awareness + wisdom,” first coined by Sayadaw, but used freely before the book Dhamma Everywhere came out, underscores the need for more than mere awareness in vipassanā (insight) meditation. Sayadaw always maintained that his teacher, the late Shwe Oo Min Sayadaw, referred to awareness with the assumption of inherent wisdom.

We have also used the singular “they” as a gender-neutral pronoun where possible.

Pāḷi and English words have been used throughout the book although we have limited Pāḷi usage to make this daily life book as accessible as possible.

Contents