Lobha naturally occupies every sense door – the yogi’s responsibility is to watch and acknowledge lobha whenever you notice lobha in any sense door.
The mind is safe when it stays with the awareness. When the mind stays with the object, liking and disliking arise.
When understanding comes, continue to be aware – don’t lose your awareness. When you’re happy and don’t continue to watch, then defilement can come.
For example, when some understanding arises, the idea of ‘I’ (‘I know, I know!’) or wrong view also arises because of habit.
So, you need to be smarter than the defilement – you need to know how it works.
In daily life, you need to think more about how to practice.
What you’re doing in daily activities, you already know – there is no need to force to think because the mind already knows how to do them.
You need to think more about how to maintain the awareness, how to practice. Only then, awareness can work strongly; otherwise, you think more about what you’re doing and awareness becomes weak and disappears.
If you watch intention mind and the resulting action again and again, very obviously you can understand anatta because anatta is cause and effect process.
There is nobody there – intention mind and physical action, intention mind and physical action. There is nobody there.
The mind can become more neutral to the object only when understanding grows. When the mind does not judge that the experience is good or bad, the mind is neutral; otherwise liking and disliking arises all the time.
First, you need to see the mind as it is – that liking and disliking are happening all the time. Vipassana meditation object must be nature. If you try to control nature, you cannot understand nature as it is.
Slowly, after a long time, you see how the mind changes, i.e., liking and disliking become less and less because of awareness, understanding.
However much the mind reacts to the experience depends on your understanding level.
When the mind pays attention with defilement, it feels the defilement. Paying attention with wisdom, that is the meditating mind or awareness.
When we pay attention without right view or wisdom, the defilement is already there. If we are watching or paying attention with defilement, the defilement increases.
New yogis, when they try to be aware of unpleasant feelings, the mind resists more and more – when they watch pain, the mind becomes more and more angry. When they watch anger, the mind becomes angrier.
The mind is paying attention, but there is no wisdom.
Awareness means that you must have right view, right thought, right understanding, and right knowledge. If you have right idea and pay attention, that’s awareness. Then, the defilement comes down.
This applies to pleasant experiences too. Many yogis enjoy the calm when the mind becomes peaceful. Already there is lobha, greed.
Because there is no wisdom, the mind feels the object. In Burmese, we say ‘knowing or feeling?’ We need to check if the mind is knowing or feeling the object because the mind can pay attention in 2 ways.
If the mind cannot watch a difficult situation with equanimity, it means that the mind doesn’t really understand meditation yet.
Yogis when faced with a pleasant situation, they like, like, like, and resist when an unpleasant situation arises. It happens all the time.
When the meditator is skillful, he doesn’t react much when faced with pleasant or unpleasant situations. That is truly the middle way.
Sayadaw prescribes a mantra: This is nature and there is awareness of this nature now.
When there is defilement and we inject this mantra, the mind realizes that whatever is experienced is also a nature of the mind.
Then, the mind stops paying attention to the storyline or the concept and pays attention to reality instead – i.e. greed, aversion or delusion. The mind will be keen to find out more about the nature of that defilement.
Don’t think that the experience must be like this. Let it be – don’t try to control the experience. If we want to understand nature, let nature happen.
That is the vipassana idea, but yogis try to control the experience – ‘this is no good, should not be like this’.
Vipassana idea is different – we want to understand nature as it is. Let nature happen and try to watch and learn about the process. We don’t try to be involved, to participate and control nature. Let liking and disliking happen; so what?
When there is liking, we try to learn from liking; when there is disliking we also try to learn from disliking.
How does neutral feeling come? It comes from understanding; without understanding, the mind cannot become neutral and equanimous. Without understanding, liking and disliking are already there.
You try to be neutral and equanimous, but the reality is that liking and disliking are present all the time. That is right view. Because you’re aware, that is why you can see liking and disliking.
Always remember – that when there are sensations in the body, keep an eye on how the mind is feeling towards them. Because as we get older, the body is not going to get better; it will decay, but we can keep the mind in good shape.
So, we want to prepare the mind to face this decaying body with the right attitude and prepare for death.
If we see even our bodily pains, aches and all that as nature as well, it is freeing for the mind; we will feel ready to die, to face death peacefully. Otherwise, when the mind is not prepared, we will resist death and be in turmoil.
So, it is important to learn to view that everything that happens in the mind and body in a wise perspective – to see it as a process and phenomenon and not that it is bad; it’s just a natural process.
Check your state of mind – is there any expectation? Just simply stay in the present moment. We are not going anywhere.
We’re not trying to get anything – just recognizing what is happening.
When you’re on retreat, defilement doesn’t come to disturb you. But when you’re nearing the end, then it’s their turn.
This is nature – that’s why you should never stop meditating. You don’t meditate only in the center; meditation is for life.
If you want to maintain this quality of mind, you should meditate like in the center. You cannot avoid this.
In the center, you’re observing body and mind; at home, you’re also observing body and mind. What’s the difference?
The way you think is different. If you’re also thinking like this in your life, you can meditate at home. But in your daily life, meditation is not important. Other things are more important – business and family are more important. Then, you lose your awareness, and later and later, the habit disappears.
Only 2 or 3 days out of the center, you start to lose awareness. So, meditation nature is such that you should not stop meditating because meditation is a long-term practice.
You cannot let the mind be free – no way; awareness and wisdom must be present all the time.
If you let loose the mind, then defilements will overwhelm the mind.
Defilement wants to know what is outside; wisdom wants to know what is inside. So, you need to be curious about what’s happening inside, in the mind.
(Yogi: How to cut off from the outside world to stay inside the mind because we have to go to work and meet people?)
You need to be more interested in the mind process – what the mind is thinking and doing. We face the world outside together with the mind, and we’re knowing the mind as we interact with the outside world.
So, you need to be more skillful in how to watch the mind; and practice all the time, asking what the mind is doing. What is the mind knowing? What is the mind practicing?
Always check the mind all the time because the mind is also happening all the time in daily life.
We try to know what is happening in the mind.
When there is craving or aversion and you recognize that there is craving or aversion, this is right view, this is meditation.
What are you trying to do when you sit? We are trying to know, to be aware. What is happening in the body and mind let it be. This is not your responsibility. It is the effect of past kamma.
Your responsibility is right thinking, awareness and interest, and maintaining the awareness.
If we don’t notice, defilements continue to grow and grow.
If awareness is not present, defilements can grow slowly and exaggerate the intensity of defilements.
If you’re aware and wisdom is present, defilements cannot overwhelm you, they cannot grow. It is a lot of relief.
When there is wisdom, the quality of awareness (the meditating mind) becomes better and better.
Wisdom must be working behind the awareness.