Yogi: There are drugs that are consumed not for pleasure but for spiritual growth. Can I use them?
Sayadaw: I’m not in favor of that.
I haven’t done those things and don’t know the effects. I can’t give you advice about that.
I would say that the strength that comes from within the mind is sufficient – the mind has limitless potential in itself and we can bring it out without external help.
Yogi: I have a good education and a good job. I don’t have to work too much and have more time for retreats. But now a career opportunity is available.
I’m happy as I am, but friends encourage me to take the new job and use the extra money for charity. I don’t want to – is this selfish?
Sayadaw: When you make the choices that make your mind happy, that is a gift you give to others because when this mind is happy it, it gives happiness all around.
Choosing happiness not at the cost of harming others is not a selfish choice.
Because you’re in a positive state of mind, you can spread that where you go.
If you take a job that you’re unhappy, that you don’t want, you’ll also make the people working with you unhappy.
If you look at the world now, people are unhappy and they go around hurting other people – all sorts of things happen when the mind is unhappy.
It is a good choice to keep the mind in the best possible state.
Yogi: There are drugs that are consumed not for pleasure but for spiritual growth. Can I use them?
Sayadaw: I’m not in favor of that.
I haven’t done those things and don’t know the effects. I can’t give you advice about that.
I would say that the strength that comes from within the mind is sufficient – the mind has limitless potential in itself and we can bring it out without external help.
Yogi: Can mild stimulants like tea and coffee support our practice?
Sayadaw: If we just drink coffee or tea as a routine is one thing. But if you drink it to support the practice, then you have to be careful because the mind can become dependent. If it finds that it cannot have it, it becomes very difficult, the mind struggles and it has aversion, and other reactions will come up.
As far as practicing is concerned, it is best that we don’t feel like some external condition is necessary for the mind to just be mindful.
It’s not that you can’t drink it, but why you drink it. Don’t let it be a belief that you need the coffee or tea to support the practice.
Yogi: Can it be a skillful means to support the practice?
Sayadaw: Be careful how you use it as a skillful means because you can become dependent on it. Watch yourself that it doesn’t become a crutch.
Sometimes we start using something as a skillful means and later it becomes unskillful. Only we can watch out for that.
Yogi: When the mind panics and is struggling, in that state of mind, I can’t settle down to say something at this interview.
Sayadaw: If the mind is that agitated, then take a neutral object in the body. Just calm the mind – don’t investigate first until the mind feels steadier and more stable.
Yogi: It has changed already by changing my awareness to the body, just focusing on my hands touching each other. That allows me to breathe again.
Being able to breathe again, the constriction in my stomach gets less strong. It has changed.
Yogi: It is easy to lose the awareness, sometimes for a long time, as I sit longer.
Sayadaw: If you’re sitting for a long time, you need to start checking if you’re aware after 20-30 minutes. Remind yourself frequently if you’re still aware.
The problem is that, if the yogi is more aware of the object than the awareness, they don’t know when the effort decreases and then it is easy for awareness to be lost. That is why the yogi needs to check if the mind is aware or not and keep reminding oneself.
Reminding guides the mind to see the awareness. You can ask: Are you aware? Can you see clearly? How many objects do you know?
Throughout the day, you need to check frequently if you’re aware. Slowly, the mind notices if awareness is working or not.
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.