Ajahn Sumedho

Being Nobody

Gill Washington Ajahn Sumedho, Buddhist Writings, God, Mindfulness, Practice , , , 0 Comment

By Ajahn Sumedho

Now how many of you feel you have a mission in life to perform? It’s
something you’ve got to do and some kind of important task that’s been
assigned to you by God or fate or something. People frequently get
caught up in that view of being somebody who has a mission. Who can be
just with the way things are, so that it is just the body that grows
up, gets old and dies, breathes and is conscious? We can practice,
live within the moral precepts, do good, respond to the needs and
experiences of life with mindfulness and wisdom – but there’s nobody
that has to do anything. There’s nobody with a mission, nobody
special, we’re not making a person or a saint or an avatar or a tulku
or a messiah or Maitreya. Even if you think: ‘I’m just a nobody,’ even
being a nobody is somebody in this life, isn’t it? You can be just as
proud of being nobody as of being somebody, and just as deluded
attached to being nobody. But whatever you happen to believe, that
you’re a nobody or a somebody or you have a mission or you’re a
nuisance and a burden to the world or however you might view yourself,
then the knowing is there to see the cessation of such a view.

Views arise and cease, don’t they? ‘I’m somebody, an important person
who has a mission in life’: that arises and ceases in the mind. Notice
the ending of being somebody important or being nobody or whatever –
it all ceases, doesn’t it? Everything that arises, ceases, so there’s
a non-grasping of the view of being somebody with a mission or of
being nobody. There’s the end of that whole mass of suffering – of
having to develop something, become somebody, change something, set
everything right, get rid of all your defilements or save the world.
Even the best ideals, the best thoughts can be seen as dhammas that
arise and cease in the mind.

Now, you might think that this is a barren philosophy of life because
there’s a lot more heart and feeling in being somebody who’s going to
save all sentient beings. People with self-sacrifice who have missions
and help others and have something important to do are an inspiration.
But when you notice that as dhamma, you are looking at the limitations
of inspirations and the cessation of it. Then there is the dhamma of
those aspirations and actions rather than somebody who has to become
something or has to do something. The whole illusion is relinquished
and what remains is purity of mind. Then the response to experience
comes from wisdom and purity rather than from personal conviction and
mission with its sense of self and other, and all the complications
that come from that whole pattern of delusion.

Can you trust that? Can you trust in just letting everything go and
cease and not being anybody and not having any mission, not having to
become anything? Can you really trust in that or do you find it
frightening, barren or depressing? Maybe you really want inspiration.
‘Tell me everything is all right; tell me you really love me; what I’m
doing is right and Buddhism is not just a selfish religion where you
get enlightened for your own sake; tell me that Buddhism is here to
save all sentient beings. Is that what you’re going to do, Venerable
Sumedho? Are you really Mahayana or Hinayana?’

What I’m pointing to is what inspiration is as an experience.
Idealism: not trying to dismiss it or to judge it in any way but to
reflect on it, to know what that is in the mind and how easily we can
be deluded by our own ideas and high-minded views. And to see how
insensitive, cruel and unkind we can be by the attachment we have to
views about being kind and sensitive. This is where it is a real
investigation into Dhamma.

I remember in my own experience, I always had the view that I was
somebody special in some way; I used to think, ‘Well I must be a
special person.’ Way back when I was a child I was fascinated by Asia
and as soon as I could, I studied Chinese at the university, so surely
I must have been a reincarnation of somebody who was connected to the
Orient.

But consider this as a reflection: no matter how many signs of being
special or previous lives you can remember or voices from God or
messages from the Cosmos, whatever – not to deny that or say that
those things aren’t real – but they’re impermanent. They’re anicca,
dukkha, anatta. We’re reflecting on them as they really are – what
arises ceases: a message from God is something that comes and ceases
in your mind, doesn’t it? God isn’t always talking to you continuously
unless you want to consider the silence the voice of God. Then it
doesn’t really say anything does it? We can call it anything – we can
call it the voice of God or the divine or the ringing of the cosmos or
blood in your eardrums. But whatever it is, it can be used for
mindfulness and reflection – that’s what I’m pointing to, how to use
these things without making them into something.

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Reflecting Whatever

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Excerpted from  Intuitive Awareness

By Ajahn Sumedho

Consciousness is like a mirror; it reflects. A mirror reflects – it doesn’t just reflect the beautiful or the ugly. If you really look into a mirror, it’s reflecting whatever: the space, the neutrality, everything that is in front of it. Usually you can only notice the outstanding ones, the extremes of beauty or ugliness. But to awaken to the way it is, you’re not looking at the obvious, but recognising the subtlety behind the extremes of beauty and ugliness. The sound of silence is like a subtlety behind everything that you awaken to, because you don’t notice it usually if you’re seeking the extremes.

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Encouragement to Meditation

Gill Washington Ajahn Sumedho, Buddhist Writings, Meditation, Spirituality , , , , 0 Comment

Excerpted from  Intuitive Awareness

By Ajahn Sumedho

Then there is this encouragement to what we call ‘meditation’. This word ‘meditation’ can mean all kinds of things. It’s a word that includes any kind of mental practices, good or bad. But when I use this word, what I’m mainly using it for is that sense of centring, that sense of establishing, resting in the centre. The only way that one can really do that is not to try and think about it and analyse it; you have to trust in just a simple act of attention, of awareness. It’s so simple and so direct that our complicated minds get very confused.

“What’s he talking about? I’ve never seen any still point. I’ve never found a still point in me. When I sit and meditate, there’s nothing still about it.” But there’s an awareness of that. Even if you think you’ve never had a still point or you’re a confused, messed-up character that really can’t meditate, trust in the awareness of that very perception. That’s why I encourage, whatever you think you are, to think it deliberately; really explore the kind of perceptions you have of yourself, so that they’re not just habitually going through your mind and you’re either believing them or trying to get rid of them. The more we try to get rid of personalities, the more confused we get. If you assume that you’ve got to get rid of your personality in some way because it’s an illusion, then you’re caught in another illusion, that “I’m someone that has a personality that I’ve got to get rid of; I’m the personality that’s got to get rid of my personality.” It doesn’t get anywhere – ridiculous. It’s not a matter of getting rid of, but of knowing.

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Taking Personal Responsibility

Gill Washington Ajahn Sumedho, Buddhist Writings, Joy, Life, Mindfulness, Spirituality , , , , 0 Comment

Excerpted from The Mind and the Way

By Ajahn Sumedho

With mindfulness, we can be independent of the positions other people are taking. We can stand on our own two feet and take responsibility for acting in a virtuous way, regardless of what the rest of sociery is doing.I can be kind, generous, and loving toward you, and that is a joy to me.But if I make my happiness dependent upon your being kind to me, then it will always be threatened, because if you aren’t doing what I like-behaving the way I want you to-then I’m going to be unhappy. So then, my happiness is always under threat because the world might not behave as I want it to.

It’s clear that I would spend the rest of my life being terribly disappointed if I expected everything to change-if I expected everybody to become virtuous, wars to stop, money not to be wasted, governments to be compassionate, sharing, and giving-everything to be just exactly the way I want it! Actually, I don’t expect to see very much of that in my lifetime, but there is no point in being miserable about it ; happiness based on what I want is not all that important.

Joy isn’t dependent on getting things, or on the world going the way you want, or on people behaving the way they should, or on their giving you all the things you like and want. Joyfulness isn’t dependent upon anything but your own willingness to be generous, kind, and loving. It’s that mature experience of giving, sharing, and developing the science of goodness. Virtuousness is the joy we can experience in this human realm. So, although what society is doing or what everyone else is doing is beyond my control-I can’t go around making everything how I want it- still, I can be kind, generous, and patient,and do good, and develop virtue. That I can do, and that’s worth doing, and not something anyone can stop me from doing. However rotten or corrupted society is doesn’t make any difference to our ability to be virtuous and to do good.

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What Attachment Is

Gill Washington Ajahn Sumedho, Attachment, Buddhist Writings, Love, Spirituality, Suffering , , , 0 Comment

Excerpted from The Mind and the Way

By Ajahn Sumedho

First, you must recognize what attachment is, and then you let go. That’s when you realize non-attachment. However, if you’re coming from the view that you shouldn’t be attached, then that’s still not it. The point is not to take a position against attachment, as if there were a commandment against it; the point is to observe. We ask the questions, “What is attachment?” “Does being attached to things bring happiness or suffering?” Then we begin to have insight. We begin to see what attachment is, and then we can let go.

If you’re coming from a high-minded position in which you think you shouldn’t be attached to anything, then you come up with ideas like, “Well, I can’t be a Buddhist because I love my wife, because I’m attached to my wife. I love her, and I just can’t let her go. I can’t send her away.” Those kinds of thoughts come from the view that you shouldn’t be attached.

The recognition of attachment doesn’t mean that you get rid of your wife. It means you free yourself from wrong views about yourself and your wife. Then you find that there’s love there, but it’s not attached. It’s not distorting, clinging, and grasping. The empty mind is quite capable of caring about others and loving in the pure sense of love. But any attachment will always distort that.

If you love someone and then start grasping, things get complicated; then, what you love causes you pain. For example, you love your children, but if you become attached to them, then you don’t really love them any more because you’re not with them as they are. You have all kinds of ideas about what they should be and what you want them to be. You want them to obey you, and you want them to be good, and you want them to pass their exams. With this attitude, you’re not really loving them, because if they don’t fulfill your wishes, you feel angry and frustrated and averse to them. So attachment to children prevents us from loving them. But as we let go of attachment, we find that our natural way of relating is to love. We find that we are able to allow our children to be as they are, rather than having fixed ideas of what we want them to be. When I talk to parents, they say how much suffering there is in having children, because there’s a lot of wanting. When we’re wanting them to be a certain way and not wanting them to be another way, we create this anguish and suffering in our minds. But the more we let go of that, the more we discover an amazing ability to be sensitive to, and aware of, children as they are. Then, of course, that openness allows them to respond rather than just react to our attachment. You know, a lot of children are just reacting to our saying, “I want you to be like this.

The empty mind-the pure mind-is not a blank where you’re not feeling or caring about anything. It’s an effulgence of the mind. It’s a brightness that is truly sensitive and accepting. It’s an ability to accept life as it is. When we accept life as it is, we can respond appropriately to the way we’re experiencing it, rather than just reacting out of fear and aversion.

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