Yogi: Today, there is stronger feeling of aversion and I want to look at it, but there is a barrier. There is something which hides it and I cannot look at it.
Sayadaw: Just recognize its presence without wanting to see it more clearly. You are probably trying too hard to see it in a certain way and that is not necessary – you already know it. That’s enough.
You already see it; so, don’t try to look at it.
Yogi: The difficulty is not that there is no structure in this retreat, but that it includes other activities – walking outside, talking, reading or drinking tea. These daily activities are often excluded in an intensive retreat.
Sayadaw: When our activities are limited externally in a retreat, it feels more peaceful and when we have more activities, when there are more choices, it feels like there is more busy-ness in life. But that is what life is like.
With the purpose of training the mind to be mindful at home, we practice that here at the retreat – not training to be peaceful but to be mindful.
Yogi: With my family and at the workplace, there are often situations that are not wholesome or when I don’t feel good with – at what point should I stop looking at the aversion and go into action and do something about it and not just look at the aversion?
Sayadaw: At first, you try to avoid the object and watch your mental pain and see when there is no mental pain if you can deal with that object and whether it changes the way you deal with the object and see if it is effective. It is a learning process, always taking yourself away to deal with your own mental pain first so that you can better deal with your family and workplace issues.
The sooner we can deal with mental pain like if we notice it initially and start working on it immediately, it can relieve it faster. If we deal with it later, it takes much longer.
Yogi: When I was in a good state – feeling very peaceful, still and happy – I realized that the mind was thinking it was very good and that greed was digging in, but I just didn’t care.
Sayadaw: At that time, you have to watch the liking. There will be some agitation that comes with the liking and you must watch that.
We will keep facing these tests until we figure out how not to get caught, how to remain steady about just practicing and not get caught up in the magic of the experience and rely on the awareness and keep doing the awareness rather than get hypnotized by the experience.
Yogi: My mindfulness is okay during the day, but after I wake up, the built-up mindfulness during the day is gone; I feel like I have been out in the city all night and I need to start from the beginning every morning. What can I do about it?
Sayadaw: Try to stay mindful when you get into bed and let yourself fall asleep mindfully and see if it makes a difference.
When you wake up, don’t think of how you wake up as a problem. Take it as this is how it is now and take it from there. Don’t think that you’re starting from zero.
Yogi: When the mind turns calm, nothing happens. I just check my breathing and the body.
Sayadaw: When the mind becomes quiet, check which is the object and which is the awareness. Can you see?
They are different – when you watch the breath, you know the breath as the object, but do you know the awareness? When you watch the other sensations, you know the sensations are the objects, do you know the awareness? So, check all these.
And also when there are thoughts, do you know the thoughts and do you know the awareness?
We observe the objects, we observe the awareness and we still feel like ‘I know all these, I know my awareness’. The sense of ‘I’m aware’ is the hardest thing to lose.
You have to realize something to know that there’s only the awareness.
Yogi: Mindfulness hinders me from doing what I have to do.
Sayadaw: Yes, it feels like that in the beginning when we’re trying to be mindful – there is a lot of personal me trying to be aware.
We’re waiting for spontaneous awareness to come in where we try so much to be mindful at other times, not when you’re in a hurry, when you have time and you try so much to be mindful, eventually that translates by itself and it comes back to you. That is what will come.
There is a limitation to the mindfulness that we practice – when you’re in a hurry, you can’t use that when you try to be mindful because you almost can’t do your job. So, then it is not helpful.
It is only limited if we don’t do it enough when we’re free. When we’re free and we do enough mindfulness, it’s a doorway to a spontaneous mindfulness that works by itself when we’re not trying.
When we’re very busy, there’s an awareness of yourself that you don’t have to try to put in and that’s what you’re waiting to come.
But that only comes when you do the applied awareness at the other times when you’re not busy.
We can ask ourselves what difference it makes to be mindful. It doesn’t take a long time – you can even find out what difference it makes to the mind in a minute.
If you tell yourself you’ll be mindful for a minute – just watch yourself before you start to be mindful and then just fully be mindful for a minute – and then stop and check what is the mind like now, you can see the difference.
Tasting that difference, you really see for yourselves that there is something to be mindful even if it is for a while. When we can experience for ourselves the benefit this work that we’re doing makes to the mind, then this mind becomes more interested even when we feel like nothing is happening in the moment.
We have to experience it ourselves by doing it.
Yogi: I have been struggling to be mindful because I keep forgetting; how can I remember more?
Sayadaw: When we do work, we need to put our attention on what we’re doing, that is also the mind paying attention. If you can see that it’s the mind doing that, you can still remain mindful. That is why we do need to know the mind as well as the body.
If we know only the body, it is not enough to practice at home. We need to know both.
Yogi: I was experimenting with sitting longer to see what happened. After an hour and a half, there was a lot of pain, but it seemed like fake pain because my hands felt like they were bruised and I thought I was sitting on a rock.
The pain got really intense suddenly, and I had to move. After that, I sat for a while longer.
Sayadaw: You need to come back to the real sensation. When you have the real sensation, you can see if the sensation is solid or not.
Now, the mind has a picture of sitting on a rock, but you know it’s not a rock or you felt your hands were bruised but they weren’t bruised. So, you need to come back to feel the real sensation.
If there was a feeling of pain and the mind was that steady, if you gently put your attention on it, you will see the reality of the sensation, which is just all movement.
You won’t see it as solid; you will see the changing nature of the sensation.
It won’t feel solid anymore.
Yogi: I was touched by Sayadaw saying that everything was Dhamma – both the positive and negative – and I was in a state of deep quiet. I couldn’t even walk; I had to stand.
I could notice all these changes in the mind – being aware and being not aware.
This morning, I was practicing seeing when I heard a loud noise in the sky. I noticed then that the looking and listening grew stronger.
Sayadaw: It is important to understand everything is the Dhamma, whether we judge it as good or bad, but essentially it is just the Dhamma.
If we can remember that what is pleasant or unpleasant for us, they’re both equally the mind, it is just equally the mind – if it is just the mind, then it is just the Dhamma.
Then we won’t have another reaction to it.
Mental pain is harder to overcome because there is a lot of ‘me’ involved – there’s not enough wisdom. There is a lot of delusion around what we’re feeling and we don’t understand it clearly enough.
It takes more wisdom to free the mind.
We really suffer from mental pain because we don’t know how to stop the mind from generating the mental pain, we don’t know how to stop the mind from thinking about the things that causes pain.
The thoughts are causing us pain, but we don’t know how to stop the thoughts. Sometimes, we don’t even want to stop thinking those thoughts that are causing us pain.
We’re really twisted in our own pain, but we have to learn to stop hurting ourselves.
When we do concentration exercises, there’s so much the idea that ‘I’m doing this’, it is very hard at that time to separate and see effort as nature – that the mind is simply putting its attention on something again and again.
And there’s so much investment in me getting a concentration or stillness and that can really mess yogis up – and half the retreat can be spent on ‘Oh, I can’t do it, I can’t do it’.
My message, whereas, is that you don’t have to have stillness if you have the right attitude – it’s fine, you can still be aware.
Yogi: Sayadaw says to watch like in a distant contact – it is somewhat cold. For me, when dealing with strong physical or emotional pain, it needs loving contact. More than just being watched, it needs to be touched.
Sayadaw: If we have right view, we become willing to observe something, but many teachers teach to have some metta for ourselves when approaching a difficult emotion to observe in a softer way.
The effect is to take the edge off the aversion to the object so that the mind is not resistant to it and the hope is for the yogi to find a way to approach the object that is not painful.
It could be viewing the object as not mine but something universal and interesting, coming from the place of interest, or for some of us, it could be coming from kindness to bring positivity into the observing.
My motivation has always been, first it was just surrender because I was depressed, then it was interest. That’s my experience; it was never to view something kindly in that way.
If we can bring up kindness and view our difficult experience with kindness, it serves the same purpose. The point is to become willing to accept and observe, it doesn’t matter whether interest or kindness brings in that willingness and acceptance.
Do what is suitable so that you can observe so long as observation happens eventually, whether it is with kindness or interest.
Whichever way we approach it, the awareness should keep working happily.