ONLY ONE BREATH - A Must Read

January 24, 2009

ONLY ONE BREATH

By Unknown Author

This morning I was talking to Venerable Subbato and he was saying he

never has developed Anapanasati - mindfulness of the breath. So I said ,

' Can you be mindful of one inhalation ? ' And he said , ' Oh yes.' '

And of one exhalation ? ' And he said, ' Yes.' And I said, ' Got it ! '

There's nothing more to it than that. However, one tends to expect to

develop some special kind of ability to go into some special state. And

because we don't do that, then we think we can't do it.

But the way of the spiritual life is through renunciation ,

relinquishment , letting go not through attaining or acquiring. Even the

jhanas* are relinquishments rather than attainments. If we relinquish

more and more , letting go more and more , then the jhanic states are

natural.

The attitude is most important. To practise anapanasati , one brings the

attention onto one inhalation, being mindful from the beginning to the

end. One inhalation, that's it ; and then the same goes for the

exhalation. That's the perfect attainment of anapanasati. The awareness

of just that much is the result of concentration of the mind through

sustained attention on the breath - from the beginning to the end of the

inhalation , from the beginning to the end of the exhalation. The

attitude is always one of letting go , not attaching to any ideas or

feelings that arise from that , so that you're always fresh with the

next inhalation , the next exhalation , completely as it is . You're not

carrying over anything. So it's a way of relinquishment, of letting go,

rather than of attaining and achieving.

The dangers in meditation practice is the habit of grasping at things ,

grasping at states ; so the concept that's most useful is the concept of

letting go , rather than of attaining and achieving. If you say today

that yesterday you had a really super meditation , absolutely fantastic

, just what you've always dreamed of , and then today you try to get the

same wonderful experience as yesterday, but you get more restless and

more agitated than ever before - now why is that ? Why can't we get what

we want ? It's because we're trying to attain something that we remember

rather than really working with the way things are , as they happen to

be now. So the correct way is one of mindfulness , of looking at the way

it is now rather than remembering yesterday and trying to get to that

state again.

The first year I meditated I didn't have a teacher. I was in this little

kuti* in Nong Khai for about ten months , and I had all kinds of blazing

insights. Being alone for ten months , not having to talk , not having

to go anywhere , everything calmed down after several months, and then I

thought I was a fully enlightened person, an arahant. I was sure of it.

I found out later that I wasn't.

I remember we went through a famine in Nong Khai that year and we didn't

get very much to eat. I had malnutrition, so I thought, ' Maybe

malnutrition's the answer. If I just starve myself...' I remember being

so weak with malnutrition at Nong Khai that my earlobes started cracking

open. On waking up , I'd have to pry my eyelids open ; they'd be stuck

shut with the stuff that comes out of your eyelids when you're not

feeling very well.

Then one day this Canadian monk brought me three cans of tinned milk. In

Asia they have tinned sweetened milk and it's very very delicious. And

he also brought me some instant coffee, and a flask of hot water. So I

made a cup of this : put in a bit of coffee , poured in some of this

milk , poured hot water and started drinking it. And I just went crazy.

It was so utterly delicious, the first time I had anything sweet in

weeks, or anything stimulating. And being malnourished and being in a

very dull tired apathetic state, this was like high-octane petrol -

whoomph ! Immediately I gulped that down - I couldn't stop myself - and

I managed to consume all three tins of milk and a good portion of that

coffee. And my mind went flying into outer space, or it seemed like it,

and I thought, ' Maybe that's the secret. If I can just get somebody to

buy me tinned milk.'

When I went to Wat Pah Pong the following year I kept thinking, ' Oh , I

had all those wonderful experiences in Nong Khai. I had all those

beautiful visions, and all those fantastic floating experiences and

blazing insights , and it seemed like I understood everything. And you

even thought you were an arahant.' At Wat Pah Pong, that first year

there, I didn't have much of anything. I just kept trying to do all the

things I'd done in Nong Khai to get these things. But after a while ,

even using strong cups of coffee didn't work any more. I didn't seem to

get those exhilarations , those fantastic highs and blazing insights ,

that I had the first year. So after the first Vassa* at Wat Pah Pong , I

thought , 'This place is not for me. I think I'll go and try to repeat

what happened in Nong Khai.' And I left Ajahn Chah and went to live on

Pupek mountain in Sakorn Nakorn province.

There , at last , I was in an idyllic spot. Howeve r, for the almsround

there you had to leave before dawn and go down the mountain , which was

quite a climb , and wait for the villagers to come. They'd bring you

food , and then you had to climb all the way back up and eat this food

before twelve noon. That was quite a problem.

I was with one other monk, a Thai monk , and I thought , ' He's really

very good ', and I was quite impressed with him. But when we were on

this mountain, he wanted me to teach him English ; so I got really angry

with him !

It was in an area where there was a lot of terrorists and communists, in

North-East Thailand. There were helicopters flying overhead sometimes

checking us out. Once they came and took me down to the provincial town,

wondering whether I was a communist spy.

Then I got violently ill , so ill that they had to carry me down the

mountain. I was stuck in a wretched place by a reservoir under a tin

roof in the hot season with insects buzzing in and out of my ears and

orifices. With horrible food I nearly died , come to think of it . I

almost didn't make it.

But it was during that time in that tin-roof lean-to that a real change

took place. I was really despairing and sick and weak and totally

depressed , and my mind would fall into these hellish realms , with the

terrible heat and discomfort. I felt like I was being cooked ; it was

like torture.

Then a change came. Suddenly, I just stopped my mind ; I refused to get

caught in that negativity and I started to practise anapanasati. I used

the breath to concentrate my mind and things changed very quickly. After

that , I recovered my health and it was time to enter the next Vassa ,

so I went back - I'd promised Ajahn Chah I'd go back to Wat Pah Pong for

the Vassa - and my robes were all tattered and torn and patched. I

looked terrible. When Ajahn Chah saw me, he just burst out laughing. And

I was so glad to get back after all that !

I had been trying to practice and what I had wanted were the memories of

these insights. I'd forgotten what the insights really were. I was so

attached to the idea of working in some kind of ascetic way, like I did

the first year, when asceticism really worked. At that time being

malnourished and being along had seemed to provide me with insight, so

that for the following several years I kept trying to create the

conditions where I would be able to have these fantastic insights.

But the following two or three years seemed to be years of just getting

by. Nothing much seemed to happen. I was six months on this mountain

before I returned to Wat Pah Pong, just deciding to stay on and follow

the insights I had. One of the insights the first year was that I should

find a teacher, and that I should learn how to live under a discipline

imposed on me by that teacher. So I did that. I realised Ajahn Chah was

a good teacher and had a good standard of monastic discipline , so I

stayed with him. Those insights that I had were right, but I'd become

attached to the memory.

Actually, insight is more and more a matter of living insightfully. It's

not just that you have insight sometimes, but more and more as you

reflect on Dhamma, then everything is insightful. You see insightfully

into life as it's happening to you . As soon as you think you have to

have special conditions for it, and you're not aware of that , then

you're going to create all sorts of complexities about your practice.

So I developed letting go : to not concern myself with attaining or

achieving anything. I decided to make little achievements possible by

learning to be a little more patient , a little more humble , and a

little more generous. I decided to develop this rather than go out of my

way to control and manipulate the environment with the intention of

setting myself up in the hope of getting high. It became apparent ,

through reflection , that the attachment to the insights was the

problem. The insights were valid insights, but there was attachment to

the memory.

Then the insight came that you let go of all your insights. You don't

attach to them. You just keep letting go of all the insights you have

because otherwise they become memories, and then memories are conditions

of the mind and , if you attach to them , they can only take you to

despair.

In each moment it's as it is. With Ana-Pana-Sati , one inhalation , at

this moment , is this way. It's not like yesterday's inhalation was.

You're not thinking of yesterday's inhalation and yesterday's exhalation

while you're doing the one now. You're with it completely, as it is ; so

you establish that. The reflective ability is based on establishing your

awareness in the way it is now rather than having some idea of what

you'd like to get, and then trying to get it in the here and now. Trying

to get yesterday's blissful feeling in the here and now means you're not

aware of the way it is now. You're not with it. Even with anapanasati,

if you're doing it with the hope of getting the result that you had

yesterday, that will make it impossible for that result to ever happen.

Last winter, Venerable Vipassi was meditating in the shrine room and

someone was making quite distracting noises. Talking to Venerable

Vipassi about it , I was quite impressed , because he said first he felt

annoyed and then he decided the noises would be part of the practice.

So, he opened his mind to the meditation hall with everything in it -

the noises, the silence, the whole thing. That's wisdom, isn't it ? If

the noise is something you can stop - like a door banging in the wind -

go close the door. If there's something you have control over, you can

do that.

But much of life you have no control over. You have no right to ask

everything to be silent for ' my ' meditation. When there is

reflectiveness , instead of having a little mind that has to have total

silence and special conditions , you have a big mind that can contain

the whole of it : the noises, the disruptions, the silence, the bliss,

the restlessness, the pain. The mind is all-embracing rather than

specialising on a certain refinement in consciousness. Then you develop

flexibility because you can concentrate your mind.

This is where wisdom is needed for real development. It's through wisdom

that we develop it, not through will-power or controlling or

manipulating environmental conditions ; getting rid of the things we

don't want and trying to set ourselves up so that we can follow this

desire to achieve and attain.

Desire is insidious. When we are aware that our intention is to attain

some state, that's a desire , isn't it ? So we let it go. If we are

sitting here, even with a desire to attain the first jhana , we

recognise that that desire is going to be the very thing that's going to

prevent the fulfilment. So we let go of the desire , which doesn't mean

not to do anapanasati , but to change the attitude to it.

So what can we do now ? Develop mindfulness of one inhalation. Most of

us can do that ; most human beings have enough concentration to be

concentrated from the beginning of an inhalation to the end of it. But

even if your concentration span is so weak you can't even make it to the

end, that's all right. At least you can get to the middle, maybe. That's

better than if you gave up totally or never tried at all, isn't it ?

Because at least you're composing the mind for one second, and that's

the beginning : to learn to compose and collect the mind around one

thing, like the breath , and sustain it just for the length of one

inhalation ; if not, then half an inhalation , or a quarter , or

whatever. At least you have started, and you must try to develop a mind

that's glad at just being able to do that much, rather than being

critical because you haven't attained the first jhana, or the fourth.

If meditation becomes another thing you have to do, and you feel guilty

if you don't live up to your resolutions , then you start pushing

yourself without an awareness of what you're doing. Then life does get

quite dreary and depressing. But if you are putting that skilful kind of

attention into your daily life, you'll find so much of daily life very

pleasant - which you may not notice if you are caught in your

compulsions and obsessions. If we act with compulsiveness it becomes a

burden , a grind. Then we drag ourselves around doing what we have to do

in a heedless and negative way. But being able to be in the countryside

- the tress, the fields, we have this time for a retreat - we can sit

and walk ; we don't have a lot to do. The morning chanting, the evening

chanting can be extremely pleasant for us, when we're open to it. People

are offering the food. The meal is quite a lovely thing. People are

eating mindfully and quietly. When we're doing it out of habit and

compulsion ! ! ! , then it gets to be a drag. And a lot of things that

are quite pleasant in themselves are no longer pleasant. We can't enjoy

them when we're coming from compulsiveness, heedlessness, and ambition.

Those are the kinds of driving forces that destroy the joy and the

wonder of our lives.

Sustaining your attention on the breathing really develops awareness but

when you get lost in thought or restlessness, that's all right too.

Don't drive yourself. Don't be a slave driver or beat yourself with a

whip and drive yourself in a nasty way. Lead, guide and train yourself ;

leading onward, guide yourself rather than driving and forcing yourself.

Nibbana is a subtle realisation of non-grasping. You can't drive

yourself to Nibbana. That's the sure way of never realising it. It's

here and now, so if you're driving yourself to Nibbana, you're always

going far away from it, driving right over it.

It's pretty heavy, sometimes, to burn up attachments in our mind. The

Holy Life is a holocaust , a total burning, a burning up of self, of

ignorance. The purity that comes from the holocaust is like a diamond ;

something that went through such fires that all that was left was

purity. And so in our life here there has to be this willingness to burn

away the self-views , the opinions , the desires , the restlessness ,

the greed ; all of it , the whole of it , so that there's nothing but

purity remaining. Then when there is purity, there is nobody, no thing ,

there's that , the 'suchness '.

And let go of that. More and more the path is just the simple being here

and now, being with the way things are. There's nowhere to go, nothing

to do, nothing to become, nothing to get rid of. Because of the

holocaust, there is no ignorance remaining ; there is purity, clarity

and intelligence.

January 27, 2009

Jai Ganesh,

It was a beautiful discourse, based upon your experience. That is realy one

way to get out of the nature and make up of glamourous maya which surrouds us as

soon as we are born submerging us into ignorance and impurities,the unwanted

force acting on our mind, leading us to desire,despair and depressions

Any one who wants to come out of such a state of mind, will have to

think,hear,read and und do his own search and research,either himself or under

Guru to undertake the path to perfection which bestows on him the boons of

love,peace,happiness,humility and quietitude of mind. He has to become

'Mindocrat' to enjoy the life and the world.

According to me (at least for myself), do Pranayam(deep breathing) and daily

regularly keep chanting the mantra with faith,love devotion, surrender and

humility. By surrender, I mean,accept what it is and dedicate all karmas to Him

Om Shanti Shanti Shanti

" S.Ganesh " <behappy.metta wrote: