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The
Threefold Guidance
Meditation
is a tough job. It is an inherently solitary activity.
One person battles against enormously powerful forces,
part of the very structure of the mind doing the meditating.
When you really get into it, you will eventually find
yourself confronted with a shocking realization. One
day you will look inside and realize the full enormity
of what you are actually up against. What you are struggling
to pierce looks like a solid wall so tightly knit that
not a single ray of light shines through. You find yourself
sitting there, staring at this edifice and you say to
yourself, "That? I am supposed to get past that? But
it's impossible! That is all there is. That is the whole
world. That is what everything means, and that is what
I use to define myself and to understand everything
around me, and if I take that away the whole world will
fall apart and I will die. I cannot get through that.
I just can't."
It
is a very scary feeling, a very lonely feeling. You
feel like, "Here I am, all alone, trying to punch away
something so huge it is beyond conception." To counteract
this feeling, it is useful to know that you are not
alone. Others have passed this way before. They have
confronted that same barrier, and they have pushed their
way through to the light. They have laid out the rules
by which the job can be done, and they have banded together
into a brotherhood for mutual encouragement and support.
The Buddha found his way through this very same
wall, and after him came many others. He left clear
instructions in the form of the Dhamma to guide
us along the same path. And he founded the Sangha,
the brotherhood of monks to preserve that path and to
keep each other on it. You are not alone, and the situation
is not hopeless.
Meditation
takes energy. You need courage to confront some pretty
difficult mental phenomena and the determination to
sit through various unpleasant mental states. Laziness
just will not serve. In order to pump up your energy
for the job, repeat the following statements to yourself.
Feel the intention you put into them. Mean what you
say.
"I
am about to tread the very path that has been walked
by the Buddha and by his great and holy disciples. An
indolent person cannot follow that path. May my energy
prevail. May I succeed."
Universal
Loving-Kindness
Vipassana
meditation is an exercise in mindfulness, egoless awareness.
It is a procedure in which the ego will be eradicated
by the penetrating gaze of mindfulness. The practitioner
begins this process with the ego in full command of
mind and body. Then, as mindfulness watches the ego
function, it penetrates to the roots of the mechanics
of ego and extinguishes ego piece by piece. There is
a full blown Catch-22 in all this, however. Mindfulness
is egoless awareness. If we start with ego in full control,
how do we put enough mindfulness there at the beginning
to get the job started? There is always some mindfulness
present in any moment. The real problem is to gather
enough of it to be effective. To do this we can use
a clever tactic. We can weaken those aspects of ego
which do the most harm, so that mindfulness will have
less resistance to overcome.
Greed
and hatred are the prime manifestations of the ego process.
To the extent that grasping and rejecting are present
in the mind, mindfulness will have a very rough time.
The results of this are easy to see. If you sit down
to meditate while you are in the grip of some strong
obsessive attachment, you will find that you will get
nowhere. If you are all hung up in your latest scheme
to make more money, you probably will spend most of
your meditation period doing nothing but thinking about
it. If you are in a black fury over some recent insult,
that will occupy your mind just as fully. There is only
so much time in one day, and your meditation minutes
are precious. It is best not to waste them. The Theravada
tradition has developed a useful tool which will allow
you to remove these barriers from your mind at least
temporarily, so that you can get on with the job of
removing their roots permanently.
You
can use one idea to cancel another. You can balance
a negative emotion by instilling a positive one. Giving
is the opposite of greed. Benevolence is the opposite
of hatred. Understand clearly now: This is not an attempt
to liberate yourself by autohypnosis. You cannot condition
Enlightenment. Nibbana is an unconditioned state. A
liberated person will indeed be generous and benevolent,
but not because he has been conditioned to be so. He
will be so purely as a manifestation of his own basic
nature, which is no longer inhibited by ego. So this
is not conditioning. This is rather psychological medicine.
If you take this medicine according to directions, it
will bring temporary relief from the symptoms of the
malady from which you are currently suffering. Then
you can get to work in earnest on the illness itself.
You
start out by banishing thoughts of self-hatred and self-
condemnation. You allow good feelings and good wishes
first to flow to yourself, which is relatively easy.
Then you do the same for those people closest to you.
Gradually, you work outward from your own circle of
intimates until you can direct a flow of those same
emotions to your enemies and to all living beings everywhere.
Correctly done, this can be a powerful and transformative
exercise in itself.
At
the beginning of each meditation session, say the following
sentences to yourself. Really feel the intention:
1.
May I be well, happy and peaceful. May no harm come
to me. May no difficulties come to me. May no problems
come to me. May I always meet with success.
May
I also have patience, courage, understanding, and
determination to meet and overcome inevitable difficulties,
problems, and failures in life.
2.
May my parents be well, happy and peaceful. May no
harm come to them. May no difficulties come to them.
May no problems come to them. May they always meet
with success.
May they also have patience, courage, understanding,
and determination to meet and overcome inevitable
difficulties, problems, and failures in life.
3.
May my teachers be well, happy and peaceful. May no
harm come to them. May no difficulties come to them.
May no problems come to them. May they always meet
with success.
May they also have patience, courage, understanding,
and determination to meet and overcome inevitable
difficulties, problems, and failures in life.
4.
May my relatives be well, happy and peaceful. May
no harm come to them. May no difficulties come to
them. May no problems come to them. May they always
meet with success.
May they also have patience, courage, understanding,
and determination to meet and overcome inevitable
difficulties, problems, and failures in life.
5.
May my friends be well, happy and peaceful. May no
harm come to them. May no difficulties come to them.
May no problems come to them. May they always meet
with success.
May they also have patience, courage, understanding,
and determination to meet and overcome inevitable
difficulties, problems, and failures in life.
6.
May all indifferent persons be well, happy and peaceful.
May no harm come to them. May no difficulties come
to them. May no problems come to them. May they always
meet with success.
May they also have patience, courage, understanding,
and determination to meet and overcome inevitable
difficulties, problems, and failures in life.
7.
May my enemies be well, happy and peaceful. May no
harm come to them. May no difficulties come to them.
May no problems come to them. May they always meet
with success.
May they also have patience, courage, understanding,
and determination to meet and overcome inevitable
difficulties, problems, and failures in life.
8.
May all living beings be well, happy and peaceful.
May no harm come to them. May no difficulties come
to them. May no problems come to them. May they always
meet with success.
May they also have patience, courage, understanding,
and determination to meet and overcome inevitable
difficulties, problems, and failures in life.
Once
you have completed these recitations, lay aside all
your troubles and conflicts for the period of practice.
Just drop the whole bundle. If they come back into your
meditation later, just treat them as what they are,
distractions.
The
practice of Universal Loving-Kindness is also recommended
for bedtime and just after arising. It is said to help
you sleep well and to prevent nightmares. It also makes
it easier to get up in the morning. And it makes you
more friendly and open toward everybody, friend or foe,
human or otherwise.
The
most damaging psychic irritant arising in the mind particularly
at the time when the mind is quiet, is resentment. You
may experience indignation remembering some incident
that caused you psychological and physical pain. This
experience can cause you uneasiness, tension, agitation
and worry. You might not be able to go on sitting and
experiencing this state of mind. Therefore, we strongly
recommend that you should start your meditation with
generating Universal Loving-Kindness.
You
sometimes may wonder how can we wish: "May my enemies
be well, happy and peaceful. May no harm come to them;
may no difficulty come to them; may no problems come
to them; may they always meet with success. May they
also have patience, courage, understanding and determination
to meet and overcome inevitable difficulties, problems
and failures in life"?
You
must remember that you practice loving-kindness for
the purification of your own mind, just as you practice
meditation for your own attainment of peace and liberation
from pain and suffering. As you practice loving-kindness
within yourself, you can behave in a most friendly manner
without biases, prejudices, discrimination or hate.
Your noble behavior helps you to help others in a most
practical manner to reduce their pain and suffering.
It is compassionate people who can help others. Compassion
is a manifestation of loving-kindness in action, for
one who does not have loving-kindness cannot help others.
Noble behavior means behaving in a most friendly and
most cordial manner. Behavior includes your thought
speech and action. If this triple mode of expression
of your behavior is contradictory, your behavior cannot
be noble behavior. On the other hand, pragmatically
speaking, it is much better to cultivate the noble thought,
"May all beings be happy minded" than the thought, "I
hate him". Our noble thought will one day express itself
in noble behavior and our spiteful thought in evil behavior.
Remember
that your thoughts are transformed into speech and action
in order to bring the expected result. Thought translated
into action is capable of producing tangible result.
You should always speak and do things with mindfulness
of loving-kindness. While speaking of loving-kindness,
if you act or speak in a diametrically opposite way
you will be reproached by the wise. As mindfulness of
loving-kindness develops, your thoughts, words and deeds
should be gently, pleasant, meaningful, truthful and
beneficial to you as well as to others. If your thoughts,
words or deeds cause harm to you, to others or to both,
then you must ask yourself whether you are really mindful
of loving-kindness.
For
all practical purposes, if all of your enemies are well,
happy and peaceful, they would not be your enemies.
If they are free from problems, pain, suffering, affliction,
neurosis, psychosis, paranoia, fear, tension, anxiety,
etc., they would not be your enemies. Your practical
solution to your enemies is to help them to overcome
their problems, so you can live in peace and happiness.
In fact, if you can, you should fill the minds of all
your enemies with loving-kindness and make all of them
realize the true meaning of peace, so you can live in
peace and happiness. The more they are in neurosis,
psychosis, fear, tension, anxiety, etc., the more trouble,
pain and suffering they can bring to the world. If you
could convert a vicious and wicked person into a holy
and saintly individual, you would perform a miracle.
Let us cultivate adequate wisdom and loving- kindness
within ourselves to convert evil minds to saintly minds.
When
you hate somebody you think, "Let him be ugly. Let him
lie in pain. Let him have no prosperity. Let him not
be right. Let him not be famous. Let him have no friends
Let him, after death, reappear in an unhappy state of
depravation in a bad destination in perdition." However,
what actually happens is that your own body generates
such harmful chemistry that you experience pain, increased
heart beat, tension, change of facial expression, loss
of appetite for food, deprivation of sleep and appear
very unpleasant to others. You go through the same things
you wish for your enemy. Also you cannot see the truth
as it is. Your mind is like boiling water. Or you are
like a patient suffering from jaundice to whom any delicious
food tastes bland. Similarly, you cannot appreciate
somebody's appearance, achievement, success, etc. As
long as this condition exists, you cannot meditate well.
Therefore
we recommend very strongly that you practice loving-
kindness before you start your serious practice of meditation.
Repeat the proceeding passages very mindfully and meaningfully.
As you recite these passages, feel true loving-kindness
within yourself first and then share it with others,
for you cannot share with others what you do not have
within yourself.
Remember,
though, these are not magic formulas. They don't work
by themselves. If you use them as such, you will simply
waste time and energy. But if you truly participate
in these statements and invest them with your own energy,
they will serve you will. Give them a try. See for yourself.
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