RELAXATION ENABLES AWARENESS TO EXPAND

| USA Maui Retreat 2016 11/16 Opening Instructions (10:46-11:59)

Sayadaw: I want you to relax, really relax and be aware. One of the wonderful things that happened when you’re relaxed is that you not only notice the things that you’re observing, you notice the fact that you’re observing. We notice the awareness itself that’s working to help us be aware.

You need to be aware of yourselves all day long; and if you’re not relaxed, you’ll be really tired.

It’s okay to relax because the nature of it is that if you keep doing something continuously, it’s going to get stronger; it’s like if you work your muscles continuously, it’s going to get stronger. It’s the same with the mind and its qualities. So you can relax and just keep being aware, awareness will get stronger.

TO MAINTAIN AWARENESS, KNOW THE MIND ACTIVITY

| China 2014 Concluding Talk

A good meditator, in any situation, the mind is safe. When you can maintain the peacefulness, awareness and equanimity are present.

In daily life, we need to pay more attention to the outside world because we cannot pay attention to ourselves all the time. It is not easy; but if you know your mind, even when it pays attention to the outside, you know it is the mind working. Then, it can maintain the awareness because looking is also mind, listening is also mind.

So, if you know the mind activity, you can be aware and look at the same time.

HOW NOT TO FORGET BEING AWARE

| China Retreat 2014 Concluding Talk

 Sayadaw: The important thing is not to forget because the problem is forgetting – the mind totally pays attention to outside things.

Remind yourself all the time: How do you feel? What is the mind doing?

You need to think about yourself – where is the mind? What is the mind doing? This is not difficult.

If you can think this way, awareness comes back.

THINGS MADE DIFFICULT BY TRYING

|Bangkok Retreat 2016 Instructions and Q&A (55:50-1:04:20)

When you try to do something, it always makes things more difficult.

If the mind labels naturally and you recognize that the mind is labeling, that is also knowing an activity of the mind – that is the nature of the mind that is happening now; that’s fine.

[Yogis note: It is easier to recognize what is happening than to try and drop it, emotions and feelings included. When sati is present, sampajanna/wisdom follows.]

CHECKING DONE CORRECTLY FEELS EFFORTLESS

| USA Maui Retreat 2016 2016-11/23 Q&A (01:18-4:40)

Yogi: Checking effort is similar to checking awareness of an experience; and sometimes it feels so easy like the practice is happening by itself.

Sayadaw: You’re doing it right when you feel that way. Whether we check on our effort or awareness, since they work as a team, when you check any of those, you’re checking the meditating mind.

If we were not in a hurry to get somewhere in the Dhamma; not trying to put in effort, not trying to work hard to get something – if we weren’t in that frame of mind, and we just work steadily in a relaxed way but just kept doing it, the practice will happen by itself.

Greed wreaks the most havoc in the yogi’s practice in all my years of teaching. Despite having the information that if a quality of the mind is allowed to arise again and again, it will just get stronger, we still think that we might be able to get more if we try harder right away.

The longer we practice, the more we need to let nature do its work. If we keep interfering with the process of nature, we keep jamming the brakes in a way.

THE ROLE OF RIGHT EFFORT

USA Maui Retreat 2016 11/16 Opening Instructions (12:43-13:16)

The role of right effort is merely to keep the awareness going. It’s not to fix any problems; it’s not to get your attention on the ‘right’ object, or do the 'right' thing. The only right thing is just to be aware.

The right effort is just to maintain continuity; just to keep being aware of what is happening.

HAVING FAITH TO CARRY ON

| USA Maui Retreat 2016-11/19 Q&A (15:45-16:33)

The faith that is important for the practice is just the faith to carry on.

If we truly thought that it’s useless to be watching all this stuff going on in this body and mind, we’d just drop the whole thing and stop.

But it’s because we have experienced the value of having awareness, we have experienced some benefit from it, we have some faith in all that, that’s what makes us keep doing it.

DAILY LIFE PRACTICE IS MINDFULNESS MEDITATION

| China 2014 Concluding Talk

I want to tell you something very important – you can practice mindfulness meditation in daily life; possible, that’s it. But many yogis cannot apply the practice in daily life. Buddha has already given his guarantee; but still many yogis cannot do it. That’s all I want to say.

Generosity

| USA Maui Retreat 2016 Q&A 2016-11/16 (3:13-5:15)

Dana is essentially the practice of non-grasping, non-greed or letting go. The problem comes in the practice of generosity when we have expectations.

In the practice of giving, it is just to give; our part is just to give; and if we have expectations of where it will go, how it will be used or how it would be received, the expectation is another form of greed. It interferes with the spirit of non-greed; and that’s why it starts to feel difficult.

Generosity is a great practice for watching our minds, for seeing what is in our minds because we look in our minds and see the wish to give and it has to be given freely. If you start noticing thoughts that wander what’s happening to what we give, then we can see why it is getting difficult to practice generosity.

Generosity is only about the side of giving, but we’re starting to think about expectations.

How to disentangle from negative thoughts?

| USA Maui Retreat 2016 Q&A 2016-11/16 (1:11:27-1:12:17)

Just keep recognizing it; don’t judge it – it is just a thought. Just keep stepping away from it – ‘Oh, this is happening now; this thought is happening now’. Don’t feed it.

Vipassana practitioners remember this formula: whatever arises, step back and recognize it - ‘Oh, I know you now’. And when the next thing comes up, recognize it and step back from it. 

And, appreciate the awareness.

Thoughts don’t disturb you

| USA Maui Retreat 2016 Q&A 2016-11/17 (49:34-52:16)

You’re associating the inner babble with not calm; but inner babble has nothing to do with not calm or calm. You could be very calm and knowing inner babble. And the key is a shift in attitude, but the real breakthrough is when you see that the mind is just the mind.

Because now the inner babble has a lot of content. But when you see that all this is mind happening - when you see that thoughts are just thoughts; when the mind finally realizes that - then all is just a flow in that.

Now the mind’s attention is quickly recognizing the content of the thought because that’s its habit. It’s caught up with the content and so it feels pulled by the content.

If you would use a word to tell yourself like ‘this is happening’; what is important is the happening, the content is happening. This is happening and that’s all it is.

Listen carefully to this definition: that nature that thinks, that is the mind; so, if something is thinking, that is the mind. But we don’t see the thinking mind; we see the thoughts.

But if you see this as mind, then it’s not a problem; it is just an object.

Without right view, vipassana cannot be developed

| USA Retreat Introduction Talk 2014 (14:58-19:40)

When I’m aware of objects, is that enough? Am I meditating? That’s not enough because we have to know what we’re knowing; what is it?

We need to know how to regard the objects; how to have the right view of the objects and know how to think about them in the right way.

We can do either one of these. We can remember that the objects are just nature; or that the objects are just that – they are things that are being known by us. The experiences, the phenomena, anything that is being known because of its position as that which is being known, it becomes an object.

Whenever we experience something, we have to remind ourselves that this is an object; I’m knowing this; it’s not ‘This is a bad experience, or this is a good experience’. This experience is being known, this experience is an object.

You hear a sound, is that good or bad? Hearing is just hearing. So, we want to see things as they are; we want to regard things as they are.

So, what is being known is just to be known, not to be loved or hated; not to be desired or pushed away.

It is only when we remind ourselves that what is happening - what we’re experiencing, the things that we’re observing, the objects - are nature that we’re meditating. They are their nature; they’re doing what they’re doing, they’re being experienced. We have to remind ourselves because if we don’t do that, then the mind goes into desiring and resisting; and then that lens of desiring and resisting distorts the view.

The difference between one who is meditating and one who is not, the one who is not meditating, every experience is then accompanied by desiring or resisting, or delusion; whereas for a meditator, the effort is being made to regard all this with the right view so that in every moment it is not greed, anger and delusion that are growing but awareness and wisdom are growing.

If you just look around ordinarily, don’t you notice that everybody is constantly pulling and pushing, loving and hating, desiring and resisting.

But if we recognize that there is hearing, we have heard something, and hearing is hearing; then, there is all there is; there is not the push or pull; liking and disliking - then, it is just an experience.

Why old yogis are often stuck in their practice

| USA Maui Retreat 2016 Q&A 2016-11/17 (10:40-12:11)

I have seen many yogis who have practiced a long time, but they have not changed very much because they don’t use their wisdom - they have dichotomized their practice between what’s on the cushion and what’s life. They have not expanded their awareness and understanding of things into their whole life – they have not made the connection.

And most often, they are looking for meditation experiences – they read about special meditation experiences and they think that that’s what they need to get. They have not heard of the concept that meditation is about growing our wisdom or understanding truths. They are looking for these experiences and sometimes unconsciously they try to create these experiences in their practice.

And that’s why they are stuck.

How to practice for death?

| USA Maui Retreat 2016 Q&A 2016-11/17 (1:10:00-1:12:48)

The practice is our preparation for death. And if you want to check how prepared you are, check what your practice is like now.

Every day, how emotional do you get? Do little things bother you? Do bigger things bother you? How big a thing bothers you?

If quite a big thing bothers you, is death that bigger thing or bigger? This is how you check.

If something falls and breaks, how do you feel? Depending on how attached you are to the thing, right?

If you can’t stand something small breaking, then when our life is breaking – this life we have to let it go – how will we face that? Can we put that in perspective?

Day after day, how much are we able to maintain our composure, our steadiness of mind?

Appreciating the awareness makes it grow

| USA Maui Retreat 2016 Q&A 2016-11/16 (47:58-48:36)

It doesn’t matter what boring thing we are aware of, it’s like the awareness is there and that’s great. If we keep appreciating that, it grows and grows.

This knowing, knowing – when we know, and know, and know, and it seems like everything is quite boring - what it is doing is actually gathering information for the mind and when all this information completes itself and we don’t even realize that it is completing itself, BANG, something gets realized.