Yogi: Awareness is not good when I’m sitting; it’s better when I’m walking.
Sayadaw: It’s good that you can be mindful when walking. It’s an advantage because you can be mindful when moving around, doing your work at home and so on.
Yogi: I felt a bundle of emotions and pain in the chest and heart, like an injury. It kept coming and was extremely difficult yesterday. I took a break and went out for a run – and then I was completely out of this depressed mode.
Sayadaw: It’s good for you to change object – don’t stay with this object.
There is no need to deal with the object – it’s there, but you don’t have to pay attention to it.
It’s a very simple rule of thumb – if you watch an unpleasant object and it starts to get less unpleasant for you, then you can continue watching it.
If it is getting worse for you, don’t watch that unpleasant object because the mind is not having the right attitude; it doesn’t feel neutral about it.
Go for a simple object – go for a walk and be aware of walking, seeing or hearing. If you’re sitting, you can just be aware of your breath. Ignore the emotional bundle.
Right now, right attitude of the mind is not very strong. So, when it has an unpleasant object, you’re not also watching the disliking mind, but the thing that the mind doesn’t like. The disliking keeps growing and it feels more and more unpleasant.
It’s a useless exercise – don’t do it.
Yogi: I would always think about sitting in the perfect posture; I watched a lot of videos and would often compare with the way others sit. It would get rather tense.
Sayadaw: You want to be learning the nature of these thoughts – are they helpful to the mind and body or not? That’s what you want to learn.
When these thoughts come up, what is the effect? When these thoughts come up, what is the effect? Learning.
Yogi: When everything was okay, I felt like I didn’t need mindfulness. I didn’t want to spoil it because everything was okay.
Yesterday, when I had stomach ache, I didn’t want to look at it because I didn’t want to feel it. I was just making up that I could control it, but I couldn’t anyways.
Today, it was easier to reach mindfulness.
Sayadaw: Peacefulness, happiness, that everything goes fine, that’s not the goal of meditation; it’s a side effect.
The goal is wisdom; the goal is to understand things and the nature of things as they are.
We should persist in being mindful even when things are going well because if we don’t keep mindfulness with us, they will backslide.
When happenings are clear and we know that they are clear, they stay clear.
If we don’t know they are clear, they will become unclear; and if we don’t know they are unclear, they become more unclear.
But when we know it’s unclear, it’ll become clear again.
Yogi: If we know that it is clear or unclear, it’ll stay clear or become clear?
Sayadaw: Yes, correct.
Yogi: I was doing walking meditation and it was absolutely boring just to be aware and not letting any stories come up.
I looked at this boring mind and asked myself: where would I want to be? I wouldn’t want to be at home and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else on vacation. It just felt right; it was okay to be bored.
It was a nice experience.
Sayadaw: Good – it’s an insight. Wisdom came and found what is as it is and it was perfect; otherwise we could get overwhelmed by our concepts and beliefs about it.
You used a little bit of wisdom; you decided to question the truth of what the mind was feeling and then more was seen.
It’s a clever question because if the mind is bored now, it suggests that it wants something else.
Yogi: There was continuous thinking when I sat. I tried to go back to breathing and sitting repeatedly. At some point, I decided to investigate why the thoughts kept coming.
When there is some wisdom, do we have the freedom to choose which thought to think and which thought not to?
Sayadaw: Now, we’re at the state where we just observe so we can learn. But, yes, when there is enough wisdom, at least for the thoughts we think intentionally, we start to have a choice whether we should allow it to continue or not.
Some thoughts get triggered by events, we just know it; there is no need to prevent them from coming.
The thoughts that give us the most grief are the ones that we think intentionally, especially when there is an unwholesome mind, like we keep thinking of a person we don’t like.
The more unwholesome volition, the stronger that motivation, the more we think about that greed or aversion.
When there is plenty of wisdom, yes, the mind has a choice to decide if this is useful and necessary or otherwise.
Take for example, a yogi comes to practice and is depressed. I give him all these different information to help him understand how meditation might be helpful so that he’s willing to try and practice.
Different kinds of information that we get help to settle the mind in different ways and they adjust the attitude of the mind so that it is willing to be mindful.
Although in the end it’s when the attitude is right that the most effective meditation happens, but we all start by practicing with wrong attitude.
And there’s nothing wrong with that – it’s still practice – and we learn from it.
When I was depressed at home and trying to be mindful, I couldn’t directly watch the feeling of depression because it was too overwhelming.
I was always running around in my mind, avoiding that object – so, I would be watching my breath or finding some strong object to anchor the mind.
Every now and again, when I felt a bit more stable in the mind, I would look at the depression to see how much I could watch it. When I couldn’t, I would go back to always using other objects to stabilize the mind, just keeping the mindfulness going and not dealing with the depression.
Yogi: I would sense different pain and it would disappear, but there was one that didn’t and I decided to change to sitting on a chair. How much should I watch pain before I change?
Sayadaw: We must understand why we observe, not just pain, but our reaction to pain. This is important to remember.
The reason why pain is an important experience is because it allows us to observe our reaction to the pain.
We’re not observing this experience to make the pain go away. We watch so that we can watch the reaction to the pain and understand how the mind experiences pain depending on its reaction to it. This is what we want to learn.
We want to understand the true nature of pain as it is. What is pain? Who is in pain? That, we can only tell when there is no more reaction in the mind to the experience.
Because you have experience in watching certain pain and they can disappear, the mind hasn’t actually challenged itself to understand pain.
Imagine people who can’t move or have chronic pain, how do they live with it - how can we use meditation so the mind learns enough about it to have a better response towards pain rather than just suffering.
When we have pain, success will mean that there is no more reaction in the mind towards the pain. That would be success.
When there is that physical pain, what is the reaction in the mind? That is what you want to watch.
We watch the reaction so that the mind can see when it is reacting, how does the pain feel? When the reaction increases, how does the pain feel? When the reaction decreases, how does the mind feel? When the reaction is gone, how does the pain feel?
As the state of the reaction changes, you will find that your view of the pain changes. That is important to see.
That is your homework.
Yogi: What is very helpful in this retreat is discovering that posture is not so important. I find that the mind is peaceful and blissful when I’m sitting in a comfortable chair or walking or lying down; not in a formal sitting.
Sayadaw: There was a yogi who was so tense that I asked her to do lying down meditation every day for one to two months before she was relaxed enough to do sitting meditation. She never fell asleep – for her, lying down meditation was perfect because then she could be aware without feeling tension.
Yogi: I need a comfortable chair at home.
Sayadaw: Yes, we absolutely have to find what works for us, what works for this mind.
You can find a comfortable chair in a sitting meditation; but what about the rest of the day? We have to also find out what helps the mind to be mindful throughout the day.
Yogi: I’m very aware that I will die. Do you have suggestions how to practice for death?
Sayadaw: You have to practice mindfulness in a steady, non-forceful way so that it becomes a part of your life – and mindfulness has gained momentum where you have more moments when mindfulness carries you.
We have to make mindfulness the habit so that when we’re dying, that’s the habit that comes to the fore.
When we’re dying, the body has no more strength and the mind has very little strength, and it is not the time to start then.
Yogi: I was angry because all the showers were taken; subsequently, I was angry with each person I met. It was awful; all for nothing.
I tried to look at the anger, not at the person. Soon, the anger subsided.
It was a bit magical – how I perceived the person I saw and was angry with an hour ago and how I felt was now totally different. I had a calm and warm feeling.
Sayadaw: We have to have the experience of aversion in order to be able to watch it and then experience the magic of mindfulness – and learn something about aversion, not only aversion, but any object.
If we don’t have those experiences, we cannot learn.
In Vipassana practice, we use the experience as the object in order to learn and gain wisdom.
Yogi: I was hearing lots of pleasant sounds and I enjoy it; it was just like in a concert.
I asked myself if I could be lost in listening like being lost in thought, and I didn’t know.
Sayadaw: You know that you enjoy it but do you know that you’re aware? That’s what you have to ask yourself.
You can enjoy, but you need to ask yourself if you’re still aware.
You can be aware of enjoying and hearing the sounds; so long as you check, you won’t be lost.
Yogi: If I were sitting in a concert hall and listening to music, is this a concept?
Sayadaw: It’s not that we can’t enjoy the concert and listen to music, and yes, the mind will have concepts about the music – it will like it because it is similar to something or it evokes some memory.
There will be concepts involved; you just have to know that something is happening in the mind, like how you feel, the hearing and the memories that come up, and which is the concept and which is the reality. That’s fine.
Yogi: There’s something in my mind that says if I enjoy something, I’m lost.
Sayadaw: You can still be aware.
Yogi: I’m learning a lot. I’m very happy and grateful about that.
Because I’m not trying too hard, I’m less tired.
Sayadaw: Yes, meditation is not tiring when you’re practicing right.
When it’s tiring, it gets boring, tedious and challenging.
Don’t watch the pain.
Have you noticed how the pain changes in relation to your aversion to it?
You need to watch the aversion so that you can see the connection because it’s only when you watch the aversion continuously that you’ll see when the aversion gets less or more.
Don’t look at the pain because even if you don’t look at it, your mind already knows it’s there.
You don’t need to look at it – you already know what is happening to the pain – watch the aversion to see how the aversion affects your experience of pain.
So, when the aversion increases, what happens to the pain? When the aversion decreases, what happens to the pain?