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Anattā – Not Self

April 2021, Bangkok

One of the more controversial points in Buddhism is anattā or the quality of not-self, non-self, non-identification, or however one wants to translate it. Like most problems of ancient religions, doctrines, practices, or various other writings getting through to the modern age beyond all our axioms, the meaning of the original intention might be muddled, so much more so when the idea trying to be expressed was hard to understand in the time and in the language it was originally composed or spoken in. Pali especially has a vague quality to its vocabulary that it typically requires at least three english words at minimum to even come close to capturing the breadth of a single word. In ancient India, after the manifestation and partial gestation of the Upanishads and Puranas when ideas like atman became popularized with adherents, concepts which espoused the opposition to it, which is what anattā seemed to be, probably came across as regressive. I can’t be sure of the reception of the concept at the time, but in the Suttas Buddha seemed to come into confrontation with the various Brahmins that he debated over this issue a few times, leading me to believe that even then there was some controversy over the claim. But understanding it as a claim of there not being a ‘self’ also misses the mark. What the buddha is describing is not the lacking of an entity of self, but rather a meditative skill of non-identification with anything.

I wrote an earlier piece about the five aggregates, but because there is a lot to cover on just that one focus in practice, I didn’t go much into the noticing of qualities of non-self, impermanence, and stress (suffering) within those aggregates. This, however, is the most fundamental approach to tackling the five aggregates and understanding them better. There are differences in how to approach this practice. For instance, in the Goenka method he has people focus solely on the aggregate of feeling and noticing the quality of anicca (impermanence) within those feelings. Anyone who has ever done a Goenka retreat will certainly hear his voice saying this word in their heads right now, as the instructor will usually play an audio clip of Goenka thundering this word to startle you out of any state you may be in. It was actually in one of these retreats that I had an early glimpse into a more profound conscious state. I knew we weren’t meant to necessarily focus on the quality of non-self, but during one of the group sessions on about the 7th or 8th day, I had a lot of anxiety going into the room, and I went through the routine of body scanning I’d been doing for the previous days very quickly. When I finished and the hour long sitting session wasn’t up, I continued to sit there and watch my breath for a few seconds. The anxiety was still there, but I refused to move at all, and soon these issues of what non-self meant came to the forefront of my mind and wouldn’t leave. I couldn’t stop considering it and its implications. This, which was more than likely bubbling under the surface of my consciousness, was what was causing all the anxiety during that session, and now I had to deal with it consciously. I tried to confront it directly, taking the Buddha’s word that this ‘self’ isn’t all we might believe it to be. At some point the abstract understanding of non-self started to line up with the experience of its actual truth. The more I tried to find anywhere within me that I could pinpoint as ‘self,’ I inevitably came up short. Once the truth of it started to become clear I got this intense rush of a feeling, like I was getting shot up out of my body, and this freaked me out. I finally moved my arms to ground myself on the floor very quickly, ultimately breaking any change of conscious state that was taking place.

I stuck with Goenka’s method for a very long time, and if the retreats that I had signed up for wouldn’t have gotten cancelled due to covid lockdowns last year, I’d probably still be practicing this way of doing things (and more than likely be a monk at this point). But that’s not what wound up happening, so I started to experiment more on my own within the parameters of these five aggregates and three qualities to see if I could find the same early, but hopefully not interrupted, success that I had at that retreat. It seemed with more and more practice, for me personally, acknowledging and fully knowing the quality of non-self within these aggregates was a key point to getting into deeper states of consciousness. Again, the term anattā in Pali doesn’t mean that there is absolutely no self, and certainly doesn’t mean that there is a self. To latch onto one side or the other of this dichotomy would be to miss the point. As with nearly everything in Buddhist practice, finding the middle way between extremes is the path suggested for success. It’s rather that you inspect each of the five aggregates—form, feelings, perception, (volitional) formations, and consciousness—as not being ‘you,’ as having nothing to do with ‘you.’ You simply do not identify with these things while inspecting them, scrutinizing them, as these five things—given the broad definition specifically of (volitional) formations—compromise just about everything in our experience.

Once you identify with something, you’re not able to see it for what it fully is. When you wear a mask, you barely get to see any of the mask anymore. Even when looking into a mirror, the interior of the mask is still all out of sight. So, disassociating from it allows you to inspect the qualities of it, to see how it fully functions in relation with everything else. I’ve personally found more success in trying to notice all three characteristics within an aggregate simultaneously, as opposed to focusing in on one—either non-self, stress (suffering), or impermanence. When having all three at your disposal at once, it helps to dismantle any attempt of the aggregate to latch onto consciousness and expand and proliferate the worlds created in your mind to distract you away from your practice. Granted, the quality of impermanence is probably the easiest one to notice, which is why the Goenka method uses this one to start with, as statistically speaking for larger groups people probably have much more success with beginning their practice if they hone in on just this one aspect first. And I more than likely wouldn’t have had the results I’ve had in my own practice without having devoted specific focus to just this quality of impermanence for so long. Ultimately, though, I’ve had the most profound experiences when focusing on non-self, but it is essential to not misunderstand it, as it’s very easy to be led astray without proper guidance. The process of understanding and experiencing this lack of identification is very gradual over years of practice. I definitely wouldn’t suggest a forcing of the concept into your mind and trying to make yourself believe that there is no self, but rather closely inspect everything you can in your interior, in your mindset, in your bodily form, in your feelings, in your memories, in the way you identify things, in your thought processes, and try to see what it is that makes up your self, and if those things really have anything to do with ‘you.’ Come to your own conclusions with it, and don’t simply take it on faith. Let your faith in and respect for the Buddha lead you to discovering the truth for yourself.

The primary things to ask yourself in the practice of non-identification are questions like, ‘Is this under my volitional control? Am I doing this?’ More often than not, the answer to this is ‘no.’ That being the case, how can you justify something as being ‘yourself’ if it happens outside of your control? Do you actively think the thoughts that you think? Do you generate feelings volitionally, or do they happen without consulting you first? Do you conjure up memories whenever you feel like it, or does something outside or inside of you trigger them into your mind’s eye? If ‘you’ aren’t in control of these things, how could they be ‘you?’ Do you identify with an obstinate dog? Or with a grease fire on the stove? From here, once you fully understand and experience the reality of the situation, you can use the other two qualities of impermanence and stress (suffering) to bolster the legitimacy of non-identification. If these things under inspection are not stable, do not last, will eventually decay and disappear, how can they be a ‘self?’ If these things cause pain, suffering, stress, dissatisfaction, given these qualities, how could you identify with them, let alone want to? This in turn breaks down the desire to identify with the five aggregates, which is the root of the habitual pattern of doing so. This breakdown only continues to happen with a sustained and motivated practice to reaffirm these realities, otherwise the mind will continue to lazily ignore the issue and go about in the samsaric grooves its grown so used to flowing in. This is a passive mind, which, despite what you may have heard, is not what the Buddha prescribed. Success is only achieved through an active, focused, motivated, disciplined, and ardent mindset, honed in on the truths of reality day after day, minute after minute, and so on down the line.

Discipline

April 2021, Chiang Mai

Probably like most of my generation, with our aims programmed and centered toward pleasure, living a disciplined life is an ironically difficult practice to incorporate successfully. I say ironically because if one wanted to be somewhat cynical, the Buddhist path is one of hedonism, although that hedonism is substantially more refined than the baser understandings of the term. It is a path of seeking higher and higher pleasures at the sacrifice of lesser pleasures, and that’s where the discipline comes in. It’s a quality over quantity type of distinction. We’re not trying to get as many quick and dirty pleasures as we can under our belt, but instead are working up to experience the higher pleasures that only the few (and privileged, based on accumulated merit) get to experience. In order to achieve these higher pleasures, it requires ignoring lesser, easily accessible pleasures that most indulge in without being conscious of the resulting consequences. It’s an active understanding of the balance between pleasures and the less pleasurable baggage attached to them. You can pepper these little bouts of easy pleasures throughout your life, and experience the negativities attached to them at the same frequency, or, you can sacrifice, deprive yourself of all the minor pleasure so that in the future, or maybe more infrequently, you experience the larger, more profound pleasures that are not attached to negative kamma, but are instead attached to devoted discipline. For instance, when you go out for a huge night of drinking you’re getting a small amount of pleasure (time-wise) at the expense of the next day’s (or possibly the next few days’) nightmarish hangovers and their effects.

Speaking of drinking, my own personal experience with discipline actually started with drinking, or rather, with quitting it. Most of my friends probably wouldn’t have said that I was an out of control drunk. From what I could tell, they never looked at me as an angry or aggressive drunk, just a fun one. But to my own self-reflection I felt like I was a mess, and drinking had long lasting impacts on my personal life. My body and mind just couldn’t take it, and the anxiety that went along with it was one of the most difficult ordeals of my life. Even though I told myself that I loved drinking, and identified with the patterns involved with it, I had to get it out of my life in order to make any meaningful development, so I parted with it for good a little over a decade ago. I didn’t stop going to bars, and didn’t stop hanging out with my drinking friends, and didn’t need to go to any sort of program to get off of it, but I made a strong resolve to just stop doing something that I ‘loved’ doing, and this was all before I had any real encounter with Buddhism.

One of the things that initially impressed me about Buddhism—Theravada Buddhism, anyway—was that not drinking was one of the core tenets for lay followers. I was a little confused by this as some ninety-something percent of Thai people claim to be Buddhist, yet everywhere around me in that small Issan village I was living in, all I could see were some of the most ridiculous drunks I’d ever encountered. In those small towns it’s pretty common to see elderly ladies, but elderly men were a little harder to come by as they mostly drank themselves to death. I’d often walk to the school I was working at early in the morning and pass farmers getting blitzed with their friends before heading to the fields on nearly 200 proof rice whiskey. Like most other ‘religions,’ the majority is more interested in the superficial pomp and ritual virtue signaling than the actual practice. Whether all those ‘Buddhists’ actually followed Buddhism is kind of beside the point. The important thing was that I found a doctrine that was pretty clear about the rules that it had for its adherents, and since I’d found it at a time when I was getting comfortable and confident in my own non-alcohol discipline, it seemed like a perfect time to upgrade a bit and see what further benefits could be attained from it.

As I’ve mentioned before, one of the reasons I love living in Thailand is because vice is ever present around you, just waiting for you to slip up. It keeps you in check. I’ve actually never had a drop of alcohol while living here, and this has stopped me from getting mixed up in other unskillful activities. Like the Buddha says, the precept of not drinking is the most important to follow because drinking will lead you to mindlessly break the other precepts. Thailand has a reputation of being a sex tourist destination and a place to indulge in prostitution, which it definitely lives up to. But one of the ways that I managed to never interact with this large section of the local economy was my refusal to drink. It may seem strange, but from what I’ve observed and what I understand is that the easiest way to getting access to prostitutes is via drinking at bars. The way that the bars are set up, they want to get as much money out of you as possible, so they have this modus operandi of getting you to buy drinks for yourself, getting you to buy drinks for the girls at the bar, and then paying her ‘bar fine’ for taking her away to a room (because you’re taking her away from all the other people who could be buying her drinks). I’ve never heard of someone just going to a bar and taking a girl away without first buying drinks. They want you inebriated so they can swindle as much money out of you as possible. So, because I haven’t drank here, I’ve found it easier to stick to my principles and not fall prey to the money-for-sex industry that’s intermingled with the bar culture directly aimed at exploiting and expanding people’s vices.

It’s very strange when you give up a vice, because the normal tendency is just to fill it in with another one. I tend to do this a lot, even today. But after doing it enough times, you start to notice the pattern and from there hopefully think of ways to mitigate it or break the cycle completely. The most difficult part for me is just maintaining a good new habit, as the tendency to backslide is strong. Part of me thinks that ‘backsliding’ is itself just a part of the process, and that this ‘protestant work ethic’ vocabulary doesn’t really help the situation. I try not to see personal ‘progress’ in discipline as a ‘big line go up’ line graph, but instead more like a descending spiral where you’re stripping away accumulated identities, habits, patterns, etc. More often than not you’re bound to circle back around to your old bad habits, but hopefully with a different point of view, a more matured vantage that notices the negativities that inevitably spawn from such behavior. From that conscious awareness, that ability to truthfully classify your behavior, see it for what it is, you continue to get deeper on the spiral until the essence of the issue morphs before the intense focus of your mind’s eye from one about a specific behavior, to the specific impulse or intention generating it. At this point, you’re in the roots of the issue and are better equipped and in a better position to deal with the habits you’ve found yourself in. The mechanics of the process probably differ for everyone, so it isn’t necessary to go into. The important part is knowing that an increased and frequently practiced focus and reflection regimen generates the abilities for success in higher discipline.

I had a lot of success in this, temporarily, during my three months isolated in the forest temple last year. Of course, naturally, when I left I reverted back to some bad habits again, knowing full well they were bad habits, and knowing that indulging in them wouldn’t serve any betterment. It’s taken probably the past three months to pull myself out of them and get to a good baseline again, but that experienced knowledge of just how difficult it is to circle back to a respectable point of conducting myself is invaluable knowledge. Because of it I’m less likely to lapse back into those unskilled behaviors because I know full well just how short those pleasures last, how much time they waste, and how ultimately useless indulging in them is. The self respect you get from proclaiming you’re going to do something, from proclaiming you’re going to conduct yourself in a certain way and actually seeing it through is infinitely more valuable than continuing to slip up over and over again in the same pointless ways.

Friends

March 2021, Bangkok

In the Suttas (you’ll have to forgive me for not giving an exact citation this time), one of the Buddha’s disciples says something to the Buddha to the effect of, “Friends are a big part of the path.” The Buddha responds by correcting him, ‘They are the entirety of the path.’ The deeper I get into practice and the more I find others who are as interested in the same or similar things that I am, the more I understand what the Buddha meant by this.

In my own beginnings with Buddhist reading and practice, I was very much an outsider, a loner, which wasn’t all bad, as it helped me find and judge these teachings appropriately. Everyone has their own journey with Dhamma, but I can see value in both solitary practice as well as congregation with others. Finding the perfect balance between these two aspects is something that everyone has to find for themselves, but in general I think it is universally true that the longer and more earnestly you practice, the sooner you will find likeminded people who are on the same wavelength and have similar goals in mind. As a result, as fighters who train together say, ‘iron sharpens iron,’ your practice will inevitably strengthen and become more effective with continued contact with likeminded friends on the path.

The word metta, which commonly gets (mis)translated as ‘loving kindness’ derives from the Pali word mitta meaning ‘friend.’ One of the common endings in many of the Pali Suttas says something to the effect of ‘liberating your heart/mind through ‘loving kindness.’’ Now, as I’ve mentioned earlier, I wouldn’t necessarily use ‘loving kindness’ as a translation for metta because of all the misunderstanding that could take place. (The heart/mind distinction or lack thereof will have to wait for another writing as well). Something more like ‘friendliness’ or ‘having a benevolent heart’ is a more appropriate translation of metta, as it aligns more with the respect and trust that you feel for close friends that are engaged in a similar endeavor to you, and not so much a merely emotional compulsion that’s associated with ‘love.’ If you’ve ever gone on long mountain treks for weeks on end with close friends, you’ll know exactly the feeling I have in mind when I think of metta.

Once you know this feeling and know what thoughts or interactions generate it in you, try to study and observe its coming, staying, and going. In your meditation try to bring it up willfully as well, and study it in this setting—how it operates, what makes it last longer, what makes it go away, etc. What are its qualities? Learn as much as you can about it and try to learn to utilize it toward beneficial effects, internal and external. If you’re like most Westerners (myself very much included) it’s necessary to apply this feeling to yourself. Personally, I have a tendency of being a perfectionist and being very critical and hard on myself, which in some cases is a good quality to have, but occasionally it goes too far and can interrupt any valuable meditative development. Try to apply this ‘benevolent heart,’ these metta feelings to your own mental processes, as well as places in your body that may be stressed, aching, or generally uncomfortable, and see the difference it makes over an extended period of time. The effect will be much more pronounced if your abilities in concentration are ‘built to last,’ but it’s also not a bad idea to try and develop both abilities in tandem with one another if you’re a beginner. They will aid and complement one another in enduring for long stretches.

I take the phrase ‘liberate your heart through metta’ pretty literally, as it has real world implications for me at the moment. The most stressed or dense, clouded, difficult part of my body is around my heart area, and I think there are many reasons for this. The first might just be simply physical, because I tend to lean to my left side, and instinctually (or conditionally) lean on my left elbow whenever I’m at a table or desk. Although I try to be more conscious of this bad habit, over the long amount of time that I’ve done it, it has built up some stress over my heart area. On top of that, I used to have a strange anxiety disorder of some sort that I’ve since resolved (through Dhamma), and for whatever reason the tension from that seemed to reside in my chest area around my heart as well. Once my teacher told me to start focusing on my heart area during my meditation practice, I noticed a huge difference in my experience, and a lot of what was stored up in there began to ‘release,’ which is a very profound and overwhelming experience (in a good way). I’m still working on this area during most meditation sessions, and I see this as part of ‘liberating my heart.’ There is a link between the physical and the emotional experiences, and the better you understand how they work on each other, the better. The way I do this is to bring in this feeling of metta, this friendliness feeling onto my body, my heart, my mind, let it pervade and encompass me so that its power can work in undoing all the damage from the previous bouts of fear and anxiety that still reside in my body in an almost crystalized form. Although I don’t continue to generate those negative feelings as much, the lingering effects from the past still exist within the body and need to be dealt with in the proper way.

That is one of the reasons why it is advised to keep good company, and to be around people who you can fully respect, people you feel kinship with, whether is biological or metaphysical, as this metta feeling will generate naturally. You’ll start to know it when you feel it, and you’ll have an easier time generating it on command when you find it useful, which more than likely will eventually be all the time. It will be easier to liberate yourself with the use of this feeling in your practice if you are more prone to feel it frequently.

In addition, as far as friends on the path go, I’ve found that I’ve had a lot of meditative success in group settings. Having more people around harnessing the energy of their own meditation helps you get into the same groove or wavelength as all the others around you. There’s a different feeling and intensity to meditating in large groups, like those in a typical ‘retreat.’ Having all these other people around you with a long silence has an enforcing, pressurized effect that lets your mind resign more easily into the meditative mode, which, for me at least, is harder to do solo.

All that being said, I look forward to meeting more people on the same journey, no matter where they are along the path, and I look forward the conversations and inspirations that will be shared.

Sīla

March 2021, Bangkok

One of the hardest concepts to break through upon my first encounter with Buddhism were the aspects of morality and discipline and where those two intersect. Coming from a Christian background affected this, as I think the two respective religions treat the issues differently, at least as far as my personal upbringing is concerned. I’m not really interested in going through and comparing the two, but simply want to point out that it may take a while to meet Buddhism on its own terms, especially if your ideas have been formed from different cultural or familial practices. I still have a Christian friend who I talk to regularly and no matter how hard I try, I can’t convey to him just how my and his ideas of morality differ, stemming from our specific religious practices.

The Pali word Sīla usually gets translated as morals, rules, virtues, precepts etc., but the most accurate translation would be something simple like ‘acting appropriately.’ This I think takes away much of the baggage that comes with terms like ‘morality.’ When you see these listed ‘rules’ for how to act as ways to just ‘act appropriately’ for achieving a goal, venturing to follow them doesn’t come with as much pressure, as all you’re really doing is taking advice from a reliable source (the Buddha) who already had the experience of getting to where you want to go. It’s really as simple as ‘If you want to achieve this state, then act like this. This is how to get there. If you find that acting against these suggestions is more important to you, then don’t take this advice.”

One of the basic tenets in the idea of kamma (karma) is that our actions have consequences. Even the smallest actions have subtle influences that many disregard or are unaware of. The best way of observing this is to try to enforce a few restrictions on yourself and see what the results are, see how your daily life changes from not doing something you’re used to doing daily. If you decide to follow the basic five ‘precepts’ in Buddhism of not harming any living being, not stealing, not speaking falsely, not engaging in sexual misconduct, and not drinking alcohol it’s guaranteed that you will notice a huge difference in your life. Personally, I would say just an honest attempt at living under the five precepts would be enough to be considered a Buddhist, but others may disagree. It would involve a lot of reflection on times when you may have slipped up, as well as a genuine attempt to reform any outlying habits. It also requires a lot of personal research and interpretation, as the original explanation of the rules in the Vinaya leave some wiggle room. Some would say that sexual misconduct encompasses things like not getting consent from a girl’s father prior to ‘knowing her’ (in the Biblical sense), while my own personal interpretation would require not doing anything without someone’s personal consent, nor getting involved with someone who already has a spouse or is in a relationship, nor patronizing sex workers of any kind. Others would extend the ‘no alcohol’ to other drugs that might not necessarily fall under the original rule. What the Buddha didn’t like about alcohol was that it made one lazy towards discipline and made practitioners disrespectful towards people who should be respected. So any drug that makes you do those things should fall under this category.

Ultimately the goal of following these basic ‘precepts’ is meant to help you form good patterns of activity while abandoning negative patterns of activity, ones that result in negative consequences, negative kamma. On top of this, the fruits gained from living under these guidelines, developing useful habits, clears your mind tremendously and allows for extremely advanced states of concentration during meditation. If you don’t believe me, just try going to a ten day retreat where you follow these rules, plus a few more, and see just how much clearer you see the operations and impulses in your own mind. This discipline of developing healthy habits, I believe, is the primary seed for all actual Buddhist practice, and it all starts from being able to live within the boundaries of the five precepts. This is a massive part of the path, if not the entire path. In Thailand, when lay people (normal village people) go to big temple festivals, the monks provide the service of ‘giving’ people the five precepts. If people repeat the Pali formulas of these five precepts after the monks and actually ‘live’ them for as long as they can, a ton of merit is made (merit is a ‘positive kamma’ kind of concept). Not only is this merit made by the people who stay within the boundaries of these precepts, but also for the monks who pointed them in the right direction, and this in turn helps numerous other people because monks typically direct or dedicate any merit they receive to others. Living a lifestyle within the boundaries of the five precepts does immeasurable good for yourself and others in a kind of ripple effect. It is an act of focus and will that generates beneficial kamma, and I believe it is the best way to begin making any meaningful change in the world.

One of the benefits, at least from the Thai Forest Tradition perspective, is that following precepts has a protective element about it. Ajahn Mun, the head figure from this tradition ardently believed that he was able to survive so well in the forest while plenty of other monks died in the same locations where he stayed because he actually stuck to the precepts he was supposed to follow, whereas the others didn’t. In one location where he stayed, a previous monk who stayed there died because, as Ajahn Mun would claim, he cut down a tree to make himself some shelter. Cutting down a tree goes against the Vinaya, and the belief is that Devas (sort of celestial spirits that can interact with mankind) live in trees, and can either protect people living in the woods, cause them trouble, or simply look the other way. They allegedly tend to respond positively to Buddhist practitioners that follow the precepts arduously and genuinely, and negatively to ones who don’t and tend to carry a shitty attitude around with them. In a way, when you follow these precepts to the best of your ability, you can enter into the chaos that is nature and fit into it in a way that protects you from the dangers it may present. From my own experience, I can attest to this. The last time I went to stay in a hut in the woods, on the first night I got no sleep simply because it was a new environment and my mind wouldn’t stop spinning on this venture I was embarking on that could last an indeterminate amount of time. So the next day I was tending toward being exceptionally lazy and I wanted to skip my evening meditation. I went to bed very early and didn’t adhere to my own standards of what I thought was correct Buddhist practice. That night, in the middle of the night, I woke up because I heard something crawling on the wooden floor (I’m a light sleeper). I got my flashlight and saw that there was a giant centipede trying to crawl into my mosquito net. When I told my teacher about this the next day, the first thing he asked was, “What did you do after we finished the evening chanting?” and I was honest and said I went to sleep right away. He smiled and said, “It’s the devas trying to cheer you on. You didn’t do meditation before sleeping and they are sending you a sign, telling you stay true to your principles, to do the work you came here to do.” I never missed another night of meditation after that, and I made sure to follow the precepts that I aimed to follow (in this case, I was under 8 precepts, which included sleeping on the floor, no makeup, jewelry, powder, etc., and no music, mindless entertainment, etc., plus a harsher enforcement of other various rules, ie one meal a day, no physical contact with women, sitting when eating or drinking, etc.) I would still encounter various dangerous animals on a daily basis, but never felt threatened in the entire three months. If you feel like you’re being watched in the woods, or anywhere else, it’s best to just assume you are and act accordingly. It could help you.

It should go without saying that if you want to make any progress in Buddhism, or in many other ventures, you need a strong sense of discipline to be at all successful. If you feel drawn to the Buddhist path, I wouldn’t even know where else to start except the five precepts. These five precepts are for lay people—people who consider themselves Buddhists, but just aren’t capable enough, for whatever reason, to fully become monks. But as this is a path, this is a good starting point, even if you aren’t planning on being a monk in this lifetime. It’s still a very beneficial way to live and it will generate good habits and good patterns of living that will legitimately protect you, give you good kamma in the future, and in turn benefit all those around you and those you believe deserving of respect and merit. Following the lifestyle patterns of those you find to be noble puts you in league with them. The same holds true for the opposite end of the spectrum at the level of degenerates. Your actions determine who you are grouped with, and who you will have access to in the future: valuable, beneficial people, or negative, destructive people.

I’ll finish with one anecdote from my teacher. One morning I asked him what would happen in a doomsday scenario for monks, seeing as they aren’t allowed to get their own food, even from nature. They can’t pick fruit from trees or bushes and can’t dig into the ground or farm, or anything like that. He told me that if a monk follows the precepts absolutely, he will be provided for. He cited numerous examples from the Pali Cannon about devas in the guise of a person donating food to monks even in the deepest, most remote reaches of the woods or any other uninhabited environment. Your kamma and your sīla protect you, especially when, like my teacher, you’ve experienced the benefits of holding true to them so much that it’s not even faith in them at that point. It’s common sense; it’s a law of nature; it’s dhamma.

The Five Aggregates

February 2021, Bangkok

One of the Suttas I keep thinking about since my most recent stay at the temple was one called Hāliddakāni (SN.III.I.I.(3)). In this Sutta the householder, Hāliddakāni is asking one of the Buddha’s chief disciples, the Venerable Mahākaccāna, about a very small quote from one of the oldest still existent Buddhist texts, the Athhavagga. Venerable Mahākaccāna’s speciality just happens to be giving detailed descriptions of the Buddha’s passages in order to elucidate the meaning for people on the path. The exact quote that the householder brings up is as follows:

“‘Having left home to roam without abode, In the village the sage is intimate with none, Rid of sensual pleasure, without expectations, He would not engage people in dispute.’”

First of all, going into the full extent of Mahākaccāna’s explanation would be too much for this small piece, so I’m just going to stick to his response to the first line as a starting point for considering The Five Aggregates. You may be asking yourself what this quote has to do with the Five Aggregates. I felt the exact same way when I first read it, although this Sutta being placed in an entire section devoted to the Five Aggregates gave me some forewarning. Before going into the description that Mahākaccāna gives on this, it might be good to just give some basic information about what the Five Aggregates are. They are composed of Form, Feeling, Perception, Sankhara, and Consciousness. The general meaning for Form is anything that you see as a distinct entity or collection—for example the conglomeration and shape of your body or another’s body, or the shape of a chair or any other object. If you’re particularly advanced, perhaps you could also see Form in more internal aspects, like your thoughts or breathing patterns, the mental images of patterns. Feeling regards any physical sensation you experience or any corresponding internal emotion, but the priority, as I understand it is (at least at first) on physical sensations. If you ever go to a Goenka 10 day retreat, there is high emphasis on just this Aggregate, as it’s one of the easiest to maintain focus on, and a really good starting point for doing work. Perception I used to think was more about the vantage from which you viewed something, or the perspective you had, almost like an opinion. There’s the old Buddhist adage about blind men grasping different parts of an elephant and having different ideas, based on what part they’re holding, about what the elephant might look like. This idea might still fall under the idea of perception. My teacher told me, however, that it has more to do with memories. So from that, my new understanding prioritizes perception as the images that exist within that shape the stories you tell yourself, or the memories that influence your thought. Sankhara I left intentionally untranslated because any translation I’ve ever read tends to be very misleading. It often gets translated as ‘volitional formations’ or something similar. The way my teacher described it was that these are just ‘everything else,’ both internally and externally. They are thought patterns, lingering ideas, they are trees, pencils, they are internal organs, as well as the external pianoesque organs. Sankhara as far as I understand currently are simply ‘things’ that have one way or another formed and still ‘exist.’ And finally Consciousness is, in general, the vehicle by which we see and receive various forms of impressions and information. In simple terms, it is the seer or watcher.

The idea behind these Five Aggregates is that they are all things that we often take as ‘Self.’ We latch onto them as a stable identity, but in ultimate reality they are not our ‘Self.’ They continually vie for attention in the mind, swirling amongst each other to anchor the mind into believing this is (temporarily) the ‘Self.’ Breaking down these considerations in themselves, deconstructing their logic, can be used as a meditative exercise. Personally I use the Five Aggregates as a way to keep me on track in my meditation. Whenever I notice that I’ve gone astray from focusing on the breath, I try to categorize whatever it is that I’m thinking about into one of the Five Aggregates before going back to my breath. It could be a memory from the past, infatuation with someone else’s bodily form, wondering what I’ll eat next, etc. The more you do this, the more you’ll see recurring patterns during meditation that tend to distract you. The more you notice that the same things are distracting you, once you identify them and see them for what they are, the less they will have the power to continue distracting you under that same guise. Once you see them as aggregates, as tendencies, and don’t identify them as self, they cease to be as interesting. There’s no thrill to them anymore once you see they have nothing to do with ‘you,’ and they actively work to your detriment.

So, to get back to the teaching from this Sutta, which totally changed how I viewed the Five Aggregates, let’s see what Mahākaccāna said about the previously quoted passage. Previous to this passage I used to think that the Five Aggregates were on a sort of separate but equal footing with each other. As it turns out, though, their relationship to each other is a bit different. Consciousness is the more unique of the Aggregates, as it is the means by which to realize the other aggregates. Mahākaccāna replies with this initial interpretation:

“‘The form element, householder, is the home of consciousness; one whose consciousness is shackled by lust for the form element is called one who roams about in a home.”

And in typical Buddhist Sutta fashion, he applies the same repetitive text to the remaining three aggregates of Feeling, Perception, and Sankhara, being a dwelling for Consciousness to ‘roam’ in. In this regard, Consciousness is almost like a vehicle that travels between the other four aggregates to realize them, interact with them. This interaction typically turns into a sort of ‘lust’ or infatuation with the particular aggregate. You could almost view it sexually, as the consciousness is penetrating the aggregate and giving birth to a new thought world with various distracting entities. Whenever one is getting distracted in meditation it is a result of getting mislead and entertained by the resultant interaction between Consciousness and one of the other aggregates. It’s almost like Consciousness and another aggregate start a fire and the sooner you extinguish it, the easier it is to return to meditation. The longer you let the fire created by the two develop and spread, the harder it is to manage and ultimately let it go—you’re wrapped up in it, you’re clinging to it, or it’s clinging to you. Either way, not good. The more you practice getting out of these thought worlds where your consciousness is surrounded by these ‘vessels,’ these aggregates, the easier it will be to notice when this interaction between Consciousness and Feeling, Form, Perception, or Sankhara is happening, and you can interrupt it before the fire spreads, before the thought world proliferates, or however else you want to look at it. What should be happening during meditation isn’t just some passive viewing of the world that’s being created by these interactions between two aggregates, but a more determined and focused inspection of what’s really going on internally, what is causing manifestations like this to spark in your mind and lead you astray from your intention to focus solely on the breath. It’s better to get a clear idea of what elements, or aggregates, are really at work and how we can particularize and identify them for what they really are. In this way we can get a better glimpse of the reality of our internal situation and the mechanisms by which it works. Of course, this is just a preliminary step to getting a grasp on the situation, as these are only signifiers that allow us to make some sense of the internal world. As you advance more, this outlook may change.

“‘And how, householder, does one roam about homeless? The desire, lust, delight, and craving, the engagement and clinging, the mental standpoints, adherences, and underlying tendencies regarding the form element: these have been abandoned by the Tathāgata [Buddha], cut off at the root, made like a palm stump, obliterated so that they are no more subject to future arising. Therefore the Tathāgata is called one who roams about homeless.’”

You can view these aggregates like very very fast growing weeds. You can cut them, but they’ll keep growing back until you find a way to fully extinguish them (which could take lifetimes of practice—good to start somewhere, though). The metaphor for the Buddha going into homelessness isn’t just a real thing he did in the physical world, it also, with respect to The Five Aggregates, is something he did mentally. He doesn’t dwell in the ‘homes’ of Form, Feeling, Perception, Sankhara, (and Consciousness). He doesn’t identify with his body. He doesn’t identify with feelings and emotions. He doesn’t identify with the past, with memories. He doesn’t identify with his ideas, or with any-thing else. He is homeless in the highest meaning of the term. He is truly liberated, truly free. Eventually there will come a time when you get a better idea of what this ‘seer’ or ‘watcher’ that is Consciousness is comprised of, and you can also uproot that Aggregate as well. But from this Sutta—and this is all just my own interpretation—I get the idea that we should focus on the other four Aggregates as a first step, use Consciousness to investigate them before doing the investigation on Consciousness itself. This is knowledge that will accumulate over many hours of practice done with right effort.

This one Sutta is dense with information, and with implications for further practice. I’d highly suggest reading it for yourself and coming to your own conclusions with the valuable information provided (It’s the third Sutta in the third Section of the third book of the Sutta Pitaka—easy way to remember it). A lot of the work done on the path is very personal. It’s always good to get suggestions and advice on what worked for other people, but deep down you will uncover the best ideas for yourself. My own suggestion would be to incorporate some focus on The Five Aggregates after you have some preliminary success focusing on the breath. Once you’ve developed the ability to focus for even a small amount of time on something as seemingly boring as the breath, it means you have some semblance of control over this focus and can direct it to other objects, such as the Aggregates. From there you can learn to deconstruct them and disassociate them from your concept of ‘Self.’ This will take you to the next level in meditative achievements while simultaneously sharpening your focus.

Orthodoxy

February 2021, Bangkok

With most things in life, I’m a purist. I don’t like chocolate bananas, but I like chocolate and bananas separately. With regard to Buddhism, I’ve approached the study and practice of it with this point of view for the past five years or so. When I first got interested in it, long before that, I’d try to vary my reading from Mahayana, Zen, Tibetan, Theravada styles to see which one stuck, or to see if I could personalize some sort of mixture of all of them. Eventually, though, I came to see the value of honing in on one form and trying to adapt myself to the requirements of that chosen strain of Buddhism. Theravada was the one I wound up going with, mostly out of convenience, or karma, however you want to look at it.

The value of sticking to one school, I think, is simply a disciplinary issue. Putting limits on yourself, and following a program to the best of your abilities is an artistic exercise in restraint and expression. You can think of each school of Buddhism as a different form, almost like there are different forms of a poem that one can write. There are sonnets, haikus, limericks, blank verse, Dream Songs, and many more, all with their own restraints, and all result in a different type of expression. The parameters within which an artist can work for their expression gets shaped by the form, and that form also plays a part in the creation process. In the same way, a school of Buddhism that one responds to will aid in a certain type of meditation, point of view, and lifestyle. Some people might not see it this way, but I view meditation as (at least in part) an artistic enterprise; I see it as a form of expression. It just so happens that this expression results in no external movement (aside from some minor breathing movements), no speaking, or really any output whatsoever, which carries with it its own implications of not wanting to contribute to the samsaric enterprise during the allotted meditation time.

There are some who take this orthodoxy as far as they can, sticking to it all throughout life. Part of me thinks that is the most commendable and respectable thing that one can do. Especially if one is still in a developmental phase (say, before their 30s), I think it’s very important to place priority on the Dhamma, Vinaya, Abhidhamma, or whatever scriptures or rules your specific sect values the most, over your own personal inclinations. The thoughts and impulses that come across the undisciplined mind, impelling decisions and resultant actions can come from nefarious origins, especially in the constant decay of honorable culture. It’s for that reason that I would value a time-tested program that has produced results for other practitioners much more than following your own personal whims, no matter how much you may have considered them. The mind is willing to go to great lengths to deceive itself in order to stay in the pleasure seeking and comfortable state it has grown to crave.

More recently though, and I realize this completely contradicts what I’ve just said in the previous paragraph, I’ve come to consider some value in a branching out of sorts. This may be a result of some of the extracurricular reading I’ve been doing more recently that really struck a chord with me (possibly more on this later when I sort my thoughts out on it). Even though I’ve identified as a Theravada practitioner for a long time, I’ve still read Buddhist books from other sects this whole time, but always with the frame of mind that I would stick to the Theravada view on a specific rule or outlook if another school of Buddhism had ideas that clashed with it. Even when I’d read Hindu texts, I’d always prioritize what I’d learned in Buddhism over it, and if anything, would use Hindu cosmology as maybe a more abstract background that would fill in the mythological gaps that I’d find in Buddhism. For instance, in the Pali scriptures, the Buddha always hearkens back to the Noble Elders. There’s no description for who these Noble Elders are, so I’d read the Rig Veda or other mythologies of a similar lineage from which Buddhism may have sprung out of.

What I really think is happening, though, with this desire to branch out, is a mix of my own personal experience, practice, and circumstances. First of all, regarding circumstances, some of you may know that I tried becoming a monk recently (twice in the past year, actually). I had been building up to this for a couple of years, with a grand plan for how to go into it. These plans got compromised by a combination of Thai visa restrictions and the increased protocols for the COVID lockdown. Basically it became impossible for me to either financially and realistically get a visa to live as a monk in Thailand long term. It basically wiped me out in more ways than one trying to continue with my plan despite the obstacles in my way. In the end, I got some good quality time at the temple, living the monk lifestyle, but it’s pretty clear that at this time, it isn’t meant to be. So, although I don’t feel completely defeated, my mindset of going into that enterprise with the intention to hone in on strictly Theravada orthodoxy has relaxed a bit.

While I was at the temple, my teacher recommended that while focusing on my breath, I move the focus of where I feel the sensation to my heart area. Doing this consistently every day completely changed the nature of my meditation. I learned a lot about what I consider to be my self, the stories that I tell myself, and all the quirks that go into being ‘me.’ It was an extremely emotional experience, which was a shock to me as I typically haven’t paid much attention to this side of things. I learned about my own faults as a friend, family member, and person in general, and I resolved to make these things right in the best way I can. Without going into specifics, doing this means that I cannot be an ascetic living in the forest right now, which I guess works well with the circumstances I’ve been presented with.

Given all of these factors, and that I view meditation as an artistic expression, it seems worth entertaining to at least attempt integrating some unorthodox meditation practices into my older, more set routine, or even expanding the Buddhist mythology that lies in the background as motivation for practice. To keep something like a meditation routine vital, which can too easily become boring or even dangerous, it does require some experimentation. The more traditional and orthodox practitioners would suggest to experiment within the parameters of the school. At the same time, the history of Buddhism, as it’s traveled and stuck in different cultures across the earth has been an adaptation from both Buddhism and the culture in order maintain it. Perhaps this also works on a personal level, as there’s bound to be some personal input on some level. In the end I find tremendous value in the experience of even just a little bit of orthodox discipline as a solid base for my practice, but I’m noticing a tendency to modify this practice a bit with elements outside a strictly Theravada form. It may be risky, but given that I know to some degree what works will help me judge the results of an integration of outside elements.

Chanting

February 2021, Bangkok

A long time ago when I first met my teacher and visited him often, he would always ask me if I was meditating regularly. Back then I wasn’t doing it every day, not even every week. I’d be honest with him and say that I did a little bit here and there. He would pause for a bit and say, “You should chant every morning and every evening.” At the time, I would just nod and say ok, completely uninterested in doing that. About a year after having met him I’d do a short stint as a monk, which required memorizing chants just to get ordained. On top of that there would be morning and evening chants every day that I’d have to participate in. Back then I had a lot of problems reconciling my ideas of what I thought Buddhism was and the actual lifestyle. Luckily I craved unique experiences, or was simply drawn toward Buddhism almost despite my shitty attitude. After this initial stint as a monk I fell off with Buddhist practice for a couple of years. The experience of actually being a monk was a shock that I wasn’t prepared for at the time, and at the time I only wanted to use Buddhism in an abstract way, simply for intellectual speculation.

One of the major supports for the resurgence of my Buddhist practice since then has been incorporating a daily chanting habit. My teacher had good advice all those years ago. I just couldn’t see the purpose of chanting at the time. And of course he wasn’t going to explain to me the function of it, because that’s not how Buddhist practice is instructed in general, especially in Asia; the onus is on you to raise yourself up, to put in effort to figure these things out. When I started getting back into a normal meditation routine, I had just gotten back from Nepal where I saw Tibetan monks chanting for long stretches in the morning. I can’t fully explain the effect it had on me because I’m sure there’s some sort of karmic linking, a spark of recognition from the distant past that awakened. What I can say is that I had a strong feeling that this is a good way to spend the morning, and a good way to show, in an objective way, right upon awakening what is most important to you. So when I got back to Thailand, I decided to finally start reciting chants every morning. I would find the audio of Thai forest monks doing the Pali chants, different versions just to make it more interesting, and recite along with the anglicized Pali words until at some point I didn’t need the script anymore. This eventually expanded to incorporating evening chants, and a few other chants after I’d memorized the previous ones.

The justification wasn’t completely clear initially as to why I should be doing this everyday. At first I just knew that it was part of the discipline, and that was good enough for me. Back then I was coming out of a really bad funk and couldn’t feel inspired by anyone for the longest time. I finally came to understand that the monks who live up to the standards of the Vinaya without cutting corners deserved respect, and it just so happened that the teacher I had come into contact with years previous was one of those. I decided to aim for what they aimed at, which eventually came to a conscious intention to become a monk again. The more I chanted on a daily basis, the more I saw the benefits of doing so, and the more I understood how doing this put you in good company and protected you.

First of all, when you chant, you are engaging in Right Speech, one of the factors in the Noble Eightfold Path, which comes with its own accrual of merit. These are words attributed to the Buddha, or words that have sustained the Buddhist Tradition through time. They work as guideposts along the path. The more you recite them, the more they become set in your mind. While chanting them, they also keep you focused, as the form of them is often repetitive in many parts, but also switch up words here and there. If you’re just lazily reciting and not paying attention, you will mess up. Even the best of monks do this on occasion, so it’s good practice with instant feedback on how focused you are at the moment. Of course the chants, for Theravada at least, are all in Pali, so you’d need to find translations to get to their meaning. Chants, to my interpretation, fall under the same rules as mantras. The ancient Vedic culture put a huge emphasis on the power of speech, of speaking only Truth. This is the only way that speech should be used ideally. In our current age, that may be harder to accomplish, but the percentage of Truthful speech to other, more unnecessary, or even harmful or unskillful speech should increase as much as possible. When you spend time chanting, it does just that. There’s a belief in some strains of Hinduism that the Kali Yuga is the era that corresponds with the mouth. It’s easy in this era to misuse your mouth—overindulging in eating, sexual activities, speaking falsehoods, swearing etc. For this reason, more merit is gained through the proper, more Traditional use of the mouth, through chanting Traditional truths. So when you do this, it’s not only doing the right thing, which should be a reward in itself, but also leads to further benefits.

These chants aren’t known by a great majority of people. The only people who know them, for the most part, are people devoted to the holy life, people who have extremely high aims for themselves, people who are devoted, maybe exclusively, to this path. When you memorize these chants, you are connected into this network of people who have this knowledge, you become a part of that living tradition just by having this chant inside you, ready for its expression whenever you see fit. You are a living embodiment of that knowledge, part of the living Buddha body that spans the globe. Even if you’re not the most ardent practitioner, or stray from the path from time to time, you’re still in a part of this noble supraorganism. The more you come into accord with the living Buddhist Tradition the more you receive the benefits of the company you’re keeping. The more connections you can make into this Dhamma by living it, by using your body as a means for its expression on the material plane, by being its instrument, the deeper into this network you become and the more you understand about it. Chanting on a daily basis, while it may seem less important when compared to meditation, is a simple ritual that will make sure you have the right mindset going into meditation, and will ensure that you stay connected with the tradition in more ways than one. It’s a good brace to support your continued development, as it will remind you of the principles you’re looking to continue embodying.

Before every meditation session, I chant, and before and after every chant, I bow three times to the Buddha image I have as a sign of respect for the Buddha as a living embodiment of the Dhamma he taught, and the Sangha he created to transmit that Dhamma through time. In my latest three month stint at the temple, my teacher told me that you’ll never learn anything on this path without first having the proper respect. We’re lucky to have at least some semblance of the original Dhamma of the Buddha, as it’s one of the only teachings still existing that hearkens back to our noble heritage deep in the past. If your aim is to realize it, prove you want it and deserve it through your conduct, character, and practice in an objective way. Simple beliefs without subsequent expression are useless.

Stillness/Conditions

February 2021, Bangkok

One of the persistent problems in my own meditation is remaining still for the entire duration of a session. This is a matter of degree, a sort of sliding scale of ability, an intensity of achievement, so scrutiny on your own success in this realm really works as a motivation to get deeper into the practice. Once you feel accomplished in almost anything, it’s a symptom of resignation, an abandonment of development. I take it as a good sign when there’s always work to be done on something in meditation, as it means I’m at the very least thinking about things in the right way.

It always surprises me that even some of my closest friends—people who have known me for years and what I’m all about, know what I spend a lot of time doing—still have this lazy, probably implanted, stereotype that meditation is some relaxing stress free pursuit, as if being still is literally just doing nothing. Staying completely physically still takes effort, which should be obvious with just the smallest amount of consideration. Almost everyone has nervous ticks or some sort of unconscious movements that go through their body when they’re either in the midst of conversation or just relaxing, zoning out, watching or reading stuff. The only time when one would actually be still and not physically move in a situation like this is if that person was already physically exhausted. This is because like most things through the Buddhist perspective extremes exist on a spectrum, and the goal is to go the middle way between both extremes. In this case, the extreme of intense exercise on the one side must balance out, through time, with exhausted rest in order to get back to an equilibrium. Getting to this equilibrium in meditating takes the middle road between relaxation and strict intensity/self-torture with regards to physical form and mental compliance.

For a lot of people, myself included sometimes, keeping the back straight during a session is difficult. For some reason, though, for me it’s less difficult than when I’m sitting in a chair and fighting the temptation to slunk back into some lazy bad postured position. This may be because of the hours put into focusing on this area and making sure that when my mind and body knows that this is a meditation session, the question of relaxing just simply isn’t an option. No matter how irritated the physical sensation, or how many internal thought complaints bombard me, there simply isn’t going to be any compromise. If there ever is a compromise then the mind knows it has the ability to convince you, and will continue to do so, citing historical evidence, to relax a bit. Although me and my back are currently on good terms, other areas of the body begin to flare up and cause problems in its stead. This is really why it baffles me just how much people’s conceptions of what meditation is could be so off. It’s way more akin to balancing multiple spinning plates than chilling out and clearing your head.

My own personal struggle at the moment is investigating a strange link between my leg muscle flexing and staying tight whenever my mind starts latching onto and getting distracted by thoughts. In a way, it’s beneficial because now I have two things I could be looking out for whenever my attention wanders away from the intended area of focus. At the same time, it is something that has to be resolved, as it’s an unconscious tick that happens without my awareness. Part of the balance of stillness requires a strict control of the body during a session. I usually let some fidgeting and moving around happen in the first couple of minutes of a session just to make sure I’m not going to get a dead leg or something. After a certain point, I decide that I’m not going to let anything move as much as I can help it. Inevitably, some impulse sneaks past as a result of me getting too wrapped up in thoughts. These ‘failures’ just need to be remembered and turned into motivation for doing a better job next time. It’s all a learning experience that will eventually reap rewards with the right kind of effort and motivation. Once some success starts to accumulate in this area, the benefits get applied to outside interactions. You’ll notice yourself clearly being more composed, calm, in control. I can attest to this personally, because I’ve gone from a nervous wreck perpetually on the verge of a panic attack or nervous breakdown to being for the most part levelheaded and at ease while talking to others. Meditation may not be the only factor in this development, but it’s a huge part.

Really, the main point in developing this skill is to get more accustomed than before in this balanced position between relaxation and effort. You need to have good form, and you need to feel at ease in that good form so that the focus you’re maintaining feels pleasant and not too strained. At the same time, you need to be able to handle any strain when it comes, and also be able to not get too wrapped up and comfortable in the pleasantness. Sway back and forth between the extremes until you’ve managed to find the right spot via your focus on the breath. It’s only in this way that the intense, penetrative focus required for deeper meditative states can cultivate. The stillness practice is a disciplinary regimen for the body and mind that gets them to basically stop messing with each other and causing unnecessary waves. How this interplay between the two works (if there even is any distinction) really depends on your own observation and interpretation of internal phenomena. For this reason, I don’t want to get too far into the weeds with my own personal interpretation of my own view on this. Everyone has to find out what works for them, but the result should be that your body remains still to the best of your ability. If you’re able to go from worrying about if you’re going to mindlessly scratch your head to noticing your little toe budging a little, that’s tremendous improvement. The cultivation of this skill, like many practices in Buddhism, is at first an end you’re working toward. Eventually though, once developed to a good degree, it becomes a means to developing a better skill, or, in other words, it becomes a condition upon which you fabricate some new beneficial ability. At the same time, this development isn’t ever completely abandoned just because it went from being an end to a means. If neglected too long it will no longer be a proper condition from which the other skills dependent on it can maintain themselves.

Building this grand network of skills takes a lot of effort early on, but as with anything, with enough dedicated practice, the hard parts begin to get easier. What is considered to be difficult moves to another area of development. The difficulty remains, but that quality doesn’t linger on one specific part of the practice. The ‘results’ in this practice only happen with the proper conditions. The reason why misery plagues people is because the conditions for it to manifest are there. If you get rid of these conditions, the manifestations dependent on them can’t occur. This applies to both what we consider positive qualities and negative qualities. If your normal mode of operation is on the lazy side of the spectrum, then you will certainly have the qualities that go along with that. Same thing applies for the other extreme of being too active. And, of course, the same thing applies to the middle way between both extremes, which, as the Buddha claims, and as I can partially confirm through my own practice at these beginning stages of the path, the middle is the most fruitful area for cultivation.

“Retreats”

January 2021, Bangkok

The title of this piece is in scare quotes because, as in a lot of Buddhist terminology, there are double meanings. That’s not just for ancient Pali, but also for the vocab used to describe modern Buddhist phenomena. Usually these meanings are split in a vertical way—the higher meaning and the conventional meaning. One example that I tend to focus on a lot (also in more ways that one) is the use of ‘I,’ or ‘the self.’ The conventional meaning has a whole lot of baggage that doesn’t exist in the higher meaning. In fact the higher you get, the more baggage falls away, as, in general, the entire point of the Buddhist path is to distance ‘yourself’ from everything you consider to be ‘yourself,’ one thing at a time, individually. The conventional use of ‘I’ is used in Buddhism for teaching purposes, as from the learner’s point of view, things can typically only be communicated in a subject/object dichotomy.

In much the same way, probably because of nefarious connotations that constantly barnacle themselves onto language’s journey through time, a ‘Meditation Retreat’ has (at least) two different meanings, and with it just as many realities. I don’t want to name names, because part of me still likes this monk to some degree, even though more and more I’m finding the overlap of where we agree diminishing, but I know of one monk who travels globally, providing what I would call ‘posh meditation retreats.’ From what I hear, just based on the instruction he gives on the available audio of these retreats, the attendees are allowed to wake up whenever they want, if they so choose, they are encouraged to lay down if the meditation is becoming too strenuous, and, this might sound weird, but they’re allowed to talk. Before I became aware of this information, I was interested in attending one of these retreats when I saw that this famous monk was coming to Bangkok. I was very excited, because to this day I still haven’t met a ‘famous’ western monk, and the usual in-person instruction I get is from someone who isn’t a native English speaker. Much to my surprise, this retreat was taking place in a luxury hotel right in the middle of the city, and had what I would consider a pretty pricey entrance fee (especially for Thailand). It was pretty clear the kind of people the organizers wanted to attend this ‘get together.’

Luckily, I haven’t found myself in one of these types of ‘retreats.’ I only say luckily because I have a tendency to go into a lot of things blindly (even winding up in Thailand happened by purely blind chance). Since there are a lot of meditation centers and temples that people can go to for long term meditation stays all around the country, I tend to just find out the location, book a spot if necessary, and go there without reading any reviews beforehand. A lot of them are just recommendations in passing by Thai acquaintances, which, with experience, I’ve learned not to trust anymore, in much the same way that I don’t trust directions from a Thai person (they’d rather lie and make something up than say they don’t know). Most of the time, it’s a good, or at least memorable experience, and hasn’t been a feel-good hippy hugfest. The type I’ve experienced I wouldn’t even want to call ‘retreats’ because a ‘retreat’ implies getting away from something, or cowering away. In tourist oriented Thailand, a ‘meditation retreat’ should be reserved for the first type that I mentioned, where it’s more about scenery than actual practice. These other retreats, which I’ll describe hereafter, are more like ‘programs,’ without the conspiratorial baggage that may accompany that term (hopefully).

One of the first ones that I attended was almost a combination of the ‘retreat’ and ‘program’ types because it was located on a very scenic mountain top on a very popular tourist island. But it was donation based, the living conditions were very barebones, and it had a pretty rigorous and intense schedule. Male and female were split up, as it should be if any meaningful work is to be done, meditatively speaking. I can’t be too sure about the female ‘barracks’ (the most accurate word for them), but the male ones were rough. Everyone had a mosquito net, a blanket, a wooden ‘pillow’, and wooden plank that was connected in what seemed like an unorderly series of other planks, meaning that all hundred or so of us male attendees were bunched together pretty closely. Unfortunately for me I’m a very light sleeper, but even if I weren’t, the ridiculous level of snoring that I heard from one of the other attendees would still have barely let me sleep the first night. The only reason that I did get an hour or so was because I MacGyvered a noise muffler, which consisted of using the band aids I brought with me to tape the toilet paper I brought with me into my ears and wrapping the blanket around my head in a knot. The next morning, along with every following morning, everyone is awoken with a very loud bell at 4 am, along with the lights being turned on in the barracks. This also makes it very apparent just how many bats are sleeping with us because they start flying around the same slim mazelike spaces between the sleeping planks that everyone needs to use to get out to go brush our teeth in the same trough before the first morning meditation.

For me, though, the hardest part was the women. Because, as I said, this took place on a popular tourist island, model-esque women from all over the world were making up a fraction of the attendees. Even though there was no talking allowed, any sight of them throughout the day sent my mind swirling around in unhelpful mires. Despite what a lot of people probably think about meditation, fantasizing isn’t part of the equation, and in fact is counterintuitive. Either way, this was still a very good ‘program’ or ‘retreat’ because it was challenging in a number of ways, which is what it should be. It isn’t supposed to be a vacation, a place to go to distract yourself, or even relax. It should be a place where you need to go to confront directly what it is you consider to be ‘yourself,’ to see what it is that makes you tick, what it is that you consider difficult, and to see what your capabilities and strategies are in overcoming that difficulty and how effective they are.

Eventually, I stumbled into what are popularly called ‘Goenka retreats.’ They are more like the ‘programs’ by my terminology, but I’m getting tired of being so pedantic, so I’m just going to let the terminology go at this point. They’re called this because they were popularized by S.N. Goenka, an Indian-Burmese man who previously attended similar sessions created by his teacher, U Ba Khin, which apparently transformed Goenka’s life from a successful business man into the modest meditation teacher he became. Goenka is heralded as the popularizer of the 10 day retreat, and basically the same structure that existed in the 1970s exists today. The main difference is that Goenka is no longer alive, and a video of him teaching is shown in the evenings instead of a teacher speaking. This is actually fine by me, as the talks recorded on the videos are a masterclass in basic Buddhist teaching, as far as I’m concerned. Simple, captivating, and earnest instruction that really motivates you to meditate for that ninth hour of the day no matter how tired you are. The rules at the Goenka retreat are basically the same as any other silent vipassana retreat, only more intensely adhered to. In addition to no talking, no writing, no reading, no entertainment, there is also no eye contact or interaction (as much as you can help it) with others. Of course, if an emergency comes up, there are helpers you can talk to. One of the bonuses was that everyone here has private rooms, so the barracks situation is avoided. However, on my very first Goenka retreat, which was in a heavily wooded area of Thailand, I opened the curtains of my window, which was next to an inclining hill, and saw a gigantic black Burmese python making it’s way upwards. A bit nonplussed, I just closed the curtain and continued to sit there. In the next few days, though, it was obvious to me and probably a few of my neighbors that this thing was living under my abode. Eventually, I went to tell the helper that it was under my room and a few guys came to catch it and take it somewhere deeper into the woods. With these kinds of situations I can’t help but make a personal, internal and esoteric, sort of synchronistic metaphor for that situation, but I don’t want to get too tangential in this piece.

In all of the retreats that I’ve gone to, there is always someone I see crying eventually. These are very personally intense situations you put yourself into, and there are stories I’m sure you can find on the internet about mishaps happening specifically in Goenka retreats that led to suicide or outright madness. Even the teacher at that first retreat I mentioned talked about a good friend of his that had been on the meditation retreat circuit for years and years killing himself. That’s why I originally made a distinction between the first type (posh retreat) and this type (program). No one really has the same danger of losing their minds (in any more volatility than they already have) in a luxury hotel in the middle of a city as they do being quiet with a group of strangers for days on end in the middle of the woods. Any real development in the meditative realm has to, from time to time, be done in environments that are ‘primal.’ From my perspective, the woods is the best place for this because to our minds, it is chaos. The order that exists in society—trains and busses arriving and departing on time, coffee shops with the same worker you see every day, etc. etc.—doesn’t exist in nature. You never know what will happen from one second to the next, and you need to learn how to adapt accordingly in every situation that presents itself. Sometimes it will appear boring, but letting your awareness drop can be dangerous. There’s a different frame of mind you enter into that simply isn’t accessible while comforted by day to day city or small town life. Part of what aids that existence amidst natural chaos is following the precepts, but, again, I don’t want to get into the mechanics of that in this piece. A later writing, for sure.

Goenka retreats come highly recommended from me, but then again, I’m not too deep into them. There is a graduating scale that allows different types and intensities of retreats the more you’ve attended them, almost like unlocked achievements. If it wasn’t for the lockdown, I’d already maybe be much higher up, as all the ones that I had planned on attending got cancelled because of Covid. Maybe then I’d either be an even bigger proponent and advertiser for them, or I’d see the cult like shenanigans which other people have reported on. Regardless, the entry level retreats seem to be sound to me. Because of their intensity, though (you literally meditate for around 8 hours a day, eat once or twice, and watch an hour long Dhamma talk at night), I would highly recommend building up a practice of doing at least an hour of meditation a day for at least two months before trying your first retreat of this kind. I had a friend who went with me to one who did maybe thirty minutes every day beforehand, and he got through it, but struggled a lot, and spent a lot of time not meditating (which I would think is even more dangerous). The parting plan that Goenka suggests is doing two hours a day to maintain any semblance of benefit from an intense retreat like that until the next one. I would agree with that amount of time as well. Although I’m not perfect at keeping times like these on a daily basis, the brutal truth is that settling on only 30 minutes a day as your practice isn’t really going to get you anywhere. There really (eventually) needs to be a dedicated effort to get to a substantial amount of time daily in order to see any real progress, and on top of this, there needs to be continued stints at ‘retreats’ or ‘programs’ like this to take you to new levels within meditation. Of course, if you’re just beginning, getting accustomed to any kind of success in any amount of meditation is the priority, not duration. This isn’t to discourage anyone who is only doing 10 or 15 minute meditation sessions a day, or skipping days, or anything like that. It’s just to say, don’t get lazy; comfort isn’t the priority. You’re not bringing Buddhist Dhamma down to meet your desires; you’re leaving your desires to be in line with Buddhist Dhamma. There are always ways to make more time for this practice if you truly want to see its benefits. If you really care about it, you’ll invest more effort into constantly improving, and a good, quality ‘retreat’ can accelerate success.

Dhamma Practice #1

January 2021, Bangkok

For Westerners, Americans especially, finding someone capable of teaching Dhamma clearly and in good faith is an extremely difficult task. Remembering back to when I first attempted meditation, I would say it took nearly eight years of constant searching, constant attempts at routine building, constantly trying again again after despairing and confusing failures to finally get some semblance of grounding to actually build a healthy practice off of. That may just be me though, as I’m a slow learner, but luckily also very stubborn. At the same time, I had the right people in my life, but my own ignorance and lack of awareness didn’t allow me to choose the more valuable paths. So, what the rest of this piece will describe is some simple framing of basic mindsets, perspectives, and initial practices for the absolute beginner. It’s an attempt to make the kind of brief essay that would have helped me best all those years ago.

First of all—just to be clear—I’m not an expert in meditation. Not even close. This is just how I see things with my years of attempting practice, with my personal experiences, and with straight from the written source Theravada instruction. My point of view would differ from other Buddhist practitioners, even within the sect that I chose (or chose me). That’s an important thing to understand about Buddhism—that it’s a giant world of different understandings and practices, but with some core overlapping principles. Some people respond well to certain forms of Buddhism or certain meditative practices, and this is how they find what works for them. In my own experience, I read a lot of Mahayana and Zen literature early on, but wound up in Thailand—a Theravada country—and I tended to value the abstract reading more than the first hand experience I had with the monks I’d met. What I would suggest now, though, would be to value real life experiences with Buddhism, with practitioners, living examples of the teaching, more so than anything you’ve read about it. While the reading can be helpful for understanding the goals and ideals you want to work toward, the people you meet or listen to are going to be the most inspirational for building a practice that sticks. They are the ones who have integrated what they’ve learned into a living reality.

One of the issues that arises with that, though, is that finding quality practitioners and teachers in real life is rare. Luckily, one of the benefits of the internet is that a lot of Buddhist monks have channels or podcasts that give the world access to their Dhamma talks. One of the main factors that got me onto a healthy practice that has stood the test of time so far was finding Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s Dhamma Talks Youtube channel. Every week or so he uploads the daily Dhamma Talks he gives to the monks at his temple, or to the audience at the temple he is visiting, and a majority of the time they are exactly what I need to hear before meditating. Upon first encountering them, I was in a particularly bad way, both meditatively speaking and just with life in general. So initially I would just sit in a meditation posture while listening to him talk, not even really meditating. Sometimes I’d even listen to them as I was falling asleep (his calm monotone often aids in helping that process). He often emphasizes the very common initial instruction of focusing on the breath. Even though that initial instruction may come across as trite or overdone to some, I would suggest it as the first meditation practice to attempt, if for nothing else because the instruction is easy, but the actual practice is difficult to do correctly. The thing to understand about it is that there will never be a point where you get so good at it that you can feel accomplished. You can grow with focusing on the breath endlessly; there are always ways to improve your focus. The combination of your conscious attention onto the breath as the object of meditation is the vehicle you’ll use to delve deeper into the awareness that you’re meant to cultivate in Buddhist practice. The more you do it, the stronger your penetrative abilities with consciousness will become.

From those first ten minute-or-so sitting sessions while listening to the Dhamma talks, eventually the messages from them began to inspire further sitting after they’d finished. Personally, even after having a pretty good routine established, every meditation app I’ve tried hasn’t meshed well with me. There’s something too robotic and inorganic about them. While I think it’s important to eventually try to increase the duration of a meditation session, time is not the thing to prioritize early on. I personally focused too much on how long my sitting sessions were early on, and it only led to frustration, impatience, and unhealthy self-criticism. Try to, instead, bring your focus back to basic observations about what feelings are manifesting in your physical body, what leads to them, what they lead to, or what thoughts are coming into your head, what leads to them, and what they lead to. If you find yourself too wrapped up in thoughts, always come back to anchor yourself in the breath. This continued returning to the breath is the mental muscle you’re ultimately developing. You may get frustrated with your inability to maintain attention. This is an inevitability; it’s completely natural given our cultural conditioning to continually shift the focus of our attention. But if you simply practice focusing in and coming back to one specific object—ideally the breath—your mind will eventually develop the capabilities of focusing that lead to the numerous benefits of meditation.

The breath is an important object of meditation for a number of reasons. It keeps you in the present moment, for one thing. The mind likes to get lazy by living in the abstract past and the abstract future. It actually has to work to stay in the present—to analyze phenomena as they arise, to see things as they are before cataloging and organizing them into manageable forms. Real focus happens here in this difficult area of the present, and any meaningful development will need to be built off getting comfortable and stable in the present. Another reason the breath is important is because it’s boring. People make boredom out the be the most horrible thing they could possibly experience, and I’m not being hyperbolic when I say that. Any boredom that anyone experiences is simply laziness or restlessness in disguise. Our minds have been conditioned for continued stimulation and when it doesn’t get it, it revolts in something akin to an immature temper tantrum. What we consider ‘boredom’ is actually the gateway to calm, if you can become accustomed to living in that space with the right intentions. When you’re truly calm, you’re able to react more appropriately. In this case, you’ll be able to develop stillness in the face of anything that arises in the mind or in the body. This stillness becomes unwavering, fully conscious stability, and with that achievement the practice only continues to grow in ways you never thought possible.

One more thing about duration. Even though I’d suggest not focusing on timing so much early on in the establishment of a daily routine, there should be a conscious goal of increasing the duration in the long term. If you do 5 minutes a day for a month, try increasing it in a meaningful way the next month, say, up to 15 or twenty minutes. Once you start getting comfortable in your meditative space, it’s time to make it more difficult. Otherwise, it’s very easy to just get sucked into abstract thought about the past, the future, what you want to eat later, etc. Try to stay firm and balanced in an environment of constant adaptability.