The Ending of Things
By Ajahn Brahmavaṃso
Whatever
arises passes away. This is the last talk of the rains retreat. It
seems just a few days ago that I gave the first talk of this rains
retreat. Now it’s almost over. That is the nature of things: to rise and
fall. For some people, that creates a great deal of fear, as if they’ve
got no place to hold onto, as if even the ground beneath them is
moving, disintegrating, so there’s no place to sit. And that indeed is
the nature of our lives. At first we fear impermanence, anicca, but,
after a while, when we understand the Lord Buddha’s teaching,
impermanence becomes a great comfort to us, a tool we can use to
accommodate the moods of life. There are times when we’ll be confused.
There are times when we are healthy. There are times when we are sad.
And there are times when we are sick. This rise and fall is the very
nature of life.
Once a person understands
the rise and fall of all phenomena, then experiencing the worst that
human life can give does not make one tremble. You know that it’s
something passing just as the wind passes your face. You don’t know
where that wind comes from, and you can’t tell where that wind is going.
All you know is that a wind is blowing. You don’t know when that wind
is going to end, nor if it will get stronger or weaker. Like the
weather, the forecast for moods is “changeable."
All the feelings (vedanā)
that arise in the mind, and all the feelings that impinge upon the
body, arise and pass away. Even though you try as best as you can to
control these feelings in your life, though you try to get only the
pleasant feelings and to ward off the painful ones, you never know where
they are coming from or when they will go.
All Is On Fire
You’re
all old enough now, and you all have had sufficient experience to have
discovered that you cannot control these feelings. They’re beyond you.
They just come when they want to, and they disappear when they want to.
They’re subject to laws of nature rather than to our control. That’s the
message contained in the Adittapariyāya Sutta (“The Discourse on
Fire”—SN 35:42). Essentially all experience is on fire, like flames
raging higher and then receding to become small, going out and then
flaring up again. That is the nature of our experience. If you have any
sickness, you know the nature of sickness is to die down and then flare
up again.
It’s like that with the sickness
of the mind. There are times when your mind is healthy and everything
looks so wonderful, and there are times when it is depressed and fed up,
and you want to go somewhere else. This is just the nature of the mind,
that’s all - just the worldly winds blowing through it. All the Thai
meditation masters advise us not to follow those moods, but to stand our
ground and be just like an unshakeable rock, so the winds might blow as
hard as they can but we don’t even quiver at all. This is the sign of
someone who understands the Dhamma: one who understands the Dhamma
doesn’t tremble or get blown around. A person who hasn’t got a
foundation in the Dhamma gets blown all over the place. When you have
your roots stuck in the Dhamma, then you don’t get moved by the rising
and falling of different phenomena in the world.
To
be able to see those rising and falling phenomena is just seeing that
things come and go. We have to look at our experience, but not just at
experience, we have to look at the experiencer as well. Our experience
is like a program on a television set. Often human beings, Buddhists
included, want to observe only the content of the screen but not the
screen itself. All they want to look at is something out there rather
than at what is inside. This tendency is recognized by all philosophies
and religions that have a mystical introspective inclination. People
don’t seem to go inside deeply enough. They stop short of the goal. The
whole idea of this investigation is to go deeper, and to go to the very
core of that which we call the phenomena of “world,” “self,” “God,”
“existence,” or whatever.
Penetrating Beneath the Surface
IInstead
of going inside, human beings tend to stay outside. They stay outside
of “this” and pass on to something else in the future. They step ahead
of themselves rather than step inside of themselves, and this is why
human beings—even meditators—very often don’t get the pure wisdom of the
Dhamma. That Dhamma lies right in the very moment, in the heart, in the
center of all this.
As I’ve said, we
often just stop at the surface of things and think that’s all there is.
We don’t go deeper into the very core and see … that there’s nothing
there! It’s so important to be able to liberate oneself from the
illusion of something permanent knowing the passing and fading away of
phenomena, from the illusion of a permanent solid screen, from the
illusion that “you” are always there watching all these things come and
go, but “you” don’t come and go, “you” are always there. That is the
illusion which creates suffering in your life. This is why I’ve been
teaching you throughout this rains retreat to develop the mind in
Samadhi to such powerful states of sustained attention that you can let
the mind rest on one thing courageously, firmly, without shaking,
without wavering, to sustain the attention long enough to penetrate its
empty nature.
What you want to see is the
real nature of experience itself, and to be able to get deep into that
you do need the ability to sustain your attention on something very,
very subtle. The ordinary experience of life goes so fast that we cannot
really discern its nature. It’s like going through life in a fast car.
We look out of the window and all we can see are just flashes of scenery
as we go past. We may go through a town, but we cannot really read the
sign posts or the names of the shops because we are going too fast. If
we slow down we can get more information. If we travel on a bicycle we
can see much more. If we walk we can see even greater detail. If we
stand still as we watch the scenery around us, then we find that we see
the most.
The Thousand Petal Lotus
If
you can sustain your attention on any part of nature long enough,
nature opens up to you and reveals its secrets, whether you are watching
a leaf on a tree or the moon in the sky or even the finger of your
hand. Whatever it is, if you can sustain your attention unmoving and
without comment, silent and still, you’ll find the object in front of
the mind will open its secrets up to you. And you’ll see much more in
there than you’ve ever seen before.
It’s
like a thousand-petal lotus. A thousand-petal lotus closes up at
night-time. When the sun’s rays hit that lotus at dawn it starts to
open, one petal at a time. As long as the sun is heating that petal it
will start to open up. Can you imagine how long the sun has to sustain
its heat on the lotus to start the inner petals opening up? The sun
stands for Samadhi. The lotus can stand for whatever phenomenon we are
placing our attention on. If we sustain our attention on this lotus,
this phenomenon, the outermost petals open up, revealing the inner
petals.
You’ll notice as you contemplate
in this way, silently holding your attention without moving, that all
the old labels disappear. All the old ideas which you had about that
thing in front of you are the “outermost petals.” They start to
disappear when you get to the petals underneath. You start to see things
you’ve never seen before, to undergo experiences for which you don’t
have labels and which are beyond your learned perception.
Most
of our perception just repeats what we already know from when we were
told it at school. “Cow,” “dog,” “policeman,” “money,” “car": all these
are just labels which we are taught to apply to the objects in the
world. There are also labels which we are taught to apply to the objects
of the mind: “thought,” “feeling,” “consciousness,” and “self.” All
these are just that much -learned perceptions.
As
we sustain our attention on the mind, we see that all those labels are
the outer petals of the lotus. When they open, we know that there is
more to this, that there’s a deeper reality which is certainly beyond
words. If we can keep on sustaining our attention on this thing which we
call “the mind,” “experience,” at the moment,” or whatever we wish to
call it, without moving, the innermost petals start to manifest. And
then finally the last, the thousandth petal, the
innermost-of-the-innermost, opens up and reveals what is called “the
jewel in the heart of the lotus.” The beautiful jewel of Dhamma which is
… emptiness—nothing there! This will not be what you expect in the
heart of a lotus, but that’s what’s there—the emptiness of all
phenomena. Once you see that, it gives you a great shock, a shock that
wakes you from the deep slumber of illusion.
Emptiness to the Core
In the centre of all things is a great space of nothingness, of emptiness. All around are these fabrications (saṇkhāras),
and it’s only these fabrications which surround this empty core of
nothingness. It’s these fabrications that we take to be real, which we
take to be “me,” which we take to be “mine,” and which we take to be a
“self.” All of these things are what delude us. It’s hard to go that
deep inside the mind. There comes a time when we almost get to the
innermost petal—but not the very innermost—and we think that’s good
enough. As we go deeper into that lotus, the petals are more and more
golden, beautiful and brilliant. They are delightful, those innermost
petals. Sometimes we come to the most beautiful petal, and we think,
“That’s it. This must be it! It’s so beautiful, so wonderful, so
inspiring. This must be the Dhamma!”
However,
it’s only in the emptiness, in the nothingness, that there can be an
end. Ajahn Chah, my teacher, always liked to find the end of things, not
things which create more problems and more things to do, but that which
stops everything, which finishes the work, and which ends the burden.
This is when a person becomes enlightened. Birth is destroyed (khīṇā jāti). The Holy Life has been lived (vusitaṃ brahmacariyaṃ). There’s no more of all this (naparam itthattaya ti).
Haven’t
you had enough of all this yet? Those of you who have had lots of
suffering in the rains retreat, join the club. This is suffering. All we
are trying to do is to find out that which ends all that suffering and
finishes this Holy Life business. We want to end it and to see that the
core of nothingness is where it is ended. Imagine what that might be
like when you know, because you’ve seen to the very depth of all things,
that there’s nothing there. That which you’ve taken to be
consciousness, that which knows, you find to be completely empty.
The
Buddha called the appearance of something solid a magician’s trick. The
“magician” makes you think that there is something solid in this
consciousness (SN 22:95). But it is just things arising and passing
away. That’s all there is! That which knows is an empty process. Because
it is empty it can stop. If there were something there, knowing would
be endless. There is a basic law in physics called the “law of the
conservation of energy.” Energy can mutate from one type to another as
it passes through the whole of saṃsāra. But if there is nothing there,
if consciousness is empty of substance, only then can it stop.
To
see that core of consciousness to be empty is liberating. It means
whether you know happiness or you know suffering, whether you know
confusion or you know clarity, you realize that this is just empty
consciousness playing a game with you, making you think that this is
real. When you’ve actually seen the emptiness of consciousness, it’s
like finally seeing the television set disappear on which all this drama
of life is carried out.
Imagine six
television sets in line. One is called “sight,” one is called “hearing,”
one is called “smell,” one is called “taste,” one is called “touch,”
and the last is called “mind.” Only one of these televisions is on at a
time - just one, then another and another, flicking into existence and
then out. It’s easy to see the content on the screens and see the
content rise and fall, but the way to become enlightened is not only to
see the content on the screen rise and fall, but to see the whole
television set come into existence and then completely disappear.
One
of the great advantages of attaining Jhanas is that as soon as you’ve
got into a Jhana five “television sets” have completely vanished - not
just popped out of existence for a moment, but popped out of existence
for many hours. It’s not as if there’s nothing on the screen; there’s no
screen any more! There’s no sight. There’s no sound. There’s not even
any hearing. There’s no smell, no taste, no touch. This is because
there’s no body when you’re in Jhana. It is pure mental consciousness.
That’s why you can sit for long periods of time. The knees don’t ache;
the back doesn’t ache; the nose doesn’t itch. You’ve completely left the
world.
Five “television sets” disappear,
and you’ve just got this mind left. Be aware though that you can get
stuck there. Some people with weak wisdom will think, “That’s it. The
mind is the ultimate television set that doesn’t disappear.” However,
you can either use inference, or you can take those Jhanas deeper, and
you can see parts of that last “television set” get hacked away. From
First Jhana to Second Jhana you hack away at half the “television set,”
initial and sustained application of mind (vitakka and vicāra).
From Second to Third to Fourth Jhana you hack away a heap more of that
“television set.” You hack away at more of the “television set” and you
get into the Immaterial Absorptions (arūpadhanas). You keep hacking away until you get to Attainment of Cessation (nirodha-samāpatti),
when the whole of that last “television set” is gone. Consciousness has
disappeared. That which knows has vanished. You come out of that
experience, and there is no way that you can miss the meaning. That
which we thought to be real, pervasive, and stable, that which knows, is
a mirage!
Sometimes people get afraid
when I talk like this, and that’s to be expected because I’m challenging
the very heart of who they think they are. Challenging it to its very
roots. But imagine for a while what it would be like to have no self. To
have no self means that all of this happiness and suffering, this pain
and pleasure, this delight and frustration which arise in the mind will
not worry you any more. Why would it concern us when there is no one
there who owns this pain in the body or pleasure in the body? All the
frustration, the success or the failure, why would we worry about it?
You know these are just things which rise and fall. They’re not yours.
There’s no one to blame, and there’s no one to praise. Praise and blame
are worldly phenomena (dhammas). The Buddha said they don’t belong to anybody. They just belong to nature.
It
is great to contemplate praise and blame. When I was young I always
tried to avoid blame like the plague, and I’d only seek praise. If I got
blamed I would think there was something wrong with me, and I was quite
skilful in trying to please others. But even though I tried my very
best, I still got blamed for things which I didn’t do. I also noticed
that I got praised for things I didn’t do as well, but I never
complained about that. I would get fed up if someone blamed me unfairly.
I really noticed how much of my early life was spent trying to please
somebody. I was trying to please my parents, please my teachers at
school, please my friends, or please my girlfriend. Later on I spent so
much time trying to please Ajahn Chah, please Ajahn Sumedho, please the
Buddhist Society of Western Australia’s management committee, or please
the monks who were staying with me.
Now I
don’t care if I please anyone or not. If you’ve had a rotten rains
retreat, I don’t care. Ha! Ha! It’s just worldly dhammas; it’s got
nothing to do with me. I take no responsibility if you got it right
either. It’s praise and blame, that’s all. Isn’t it wonderful when you
see this is not Ajahn Brahm giving the talk? You don’t have to worry
about what is said, and you don’t have to worry about trying to inspire
people. It’s just the play of dhammas, that’s all it is.
Freedom from Suffering
What I’m trying to say is that when one realizes non-self or anattā,
there’s a great freedom which comes from letting go of all the concern
that caused you suffering. Lord Buddha said that when there’s a self
there are things that belong to it (MN 22). There’s my reputation and
what people think of me. There’s my possessions; there’s my body;
there’s my thoughts, my ideas, my views; there’s my meditation. All of
these things that begin with “my” happen when we have a self.
Imagine
that there is no self. When there’s no self, there’s no core; there is
no “me,” and there is no “mine.” Imagine what it’s like to have no
possessions. I don’t mean just physical possessions. I don’t mean just
that you’ve got no hut, that you’ve got no robes, that you’ve got no
money, that you’ve got no honey or sugar. I mean that you’ve got no
body, no arms, no head, no teeth; and you have no thoughts! Thoughts are
there but they are not yours. You have no happiness, and you have no
suffering. Happiness and suffering come and go, but they have nothing to
do with you. There is no one in here. Imagine what it’s like to have
nothing, truly to be without possessions and to have followed the path
of renunciation far deeper than you first thought was possible. You
don’t just renounce worldly things, you renounce unworldly things too -
all things, anything! Throw everything away until there’s literally
nothing left.
Imagine when you have
absolutely nothing: no body, no mind, no consciousness. It all just
belongs to nature. You give back the deeds of your life to its rightful
owner. Nature owns all this, not you. If you could do that, imagine how
free you would be. You would have absolutely no worries and no concerns.
Whatever happens in the world, nature looks after it. Happiness,
suffering, clarity, confusion, whatever occurs is just the play of
nature. That’s why the Lord Buddha said that when there is no self then
there is nothing belonging to a self. If there is no “mine,” there is no
craving anymore.
Why do you want to grab
onto things? To grab onto happiness is to grab onto suffering as well.
People are crazy. They grab onto both praise and blame. When someone
tells you off and tells you how stupid you are, you grab onto that, “I’m
stupid! Why do they call me stupid? I’m not really stupid.” You’re just
holding onto that. When there is pain in the body you think, Y hurt.
This is painful.” Why are you holding onto that? You’re just making
yourself suffer.
Craving is not just for
pleasant things. Stupid people will crave for suffering! They just crave
for anything because they’re into craving. It’s like someone going into
a shop; they decide they are going to buy something whether they like
it or not. They’ll even buy rubbish. That’s what craving is like. You’ll
eat anything when you’re hungry, and attach to anything when you’re
stupid and full of craving - even suffering. This is all because deep
inside of us we still think we are there. Therefore we want to do
something; we want to get something, and we want to own something. The
whole function of having a self, of having an ego, is to do, to possess,
and to have power over our possessions. Big egos in the world like to
be prime ministers, presidents, kings and queens. They like to own so
much and to have so much power over everything. The extent of your ego
is your desire for power over others. Someone who has got no ego doesn’t
exert power over others.
I remember some
of the great monks that I have known, Enlightened Ones (Arahats) of the
Forest Tradition. Sometimes people thought they were fearsome because
they would always tell you what to do. But according to my memory they
were just so soft and kind. They were freeing you, not controlling you.
They gave to you; they never tried to take possession of you. One can
even say that the whole purpose of a teacher is to get rid of disciples,
not to get more. That’s why I try to get rid of each one of you, to
make you enlightened and free. That’s the purpose of a teacher, not to
possess you but to liberate you. The purpose of the Dhamma is to
liberate.
The Driverless Bus
Often
when you start to delve into non-self, there comes a time when you
don’t want to go any further because you’re afraid. I’m not talking
about ordinary fear; I’m talking about fear that goes to what you take
to be your very “core.” You’re challenging all you ever thought about
yourself, and you’re undermining your whole essence of existence. Your
whole reason to be is being challenged by imagining what it would be
like if there were nothing there. If you have the courage and faith to
go through that fear and find that what you were afraid of was nothing,
you will receive the most beautiful gift - the gift of freedom. The gift
of the ending of things. The gift of the work being finished.
As
you go through life it’s like you are riding in a bus, and you get
pleasant experiences and unpleasant experiences. You think it’s your
fault; or you think it’s the driver’s fault. “Why doesn’t the driver
drive into pleasant country and stay there for a long time? Why does he
always drive into unpleasant territory and stay there a longtime?” You
want to find out who is controlling this journey called “my life.” Why
is it that you experience so much pain and suffering? You want to find
out where the driver is, the driver of these five aggregates (khandhās):
body, feeling, perception, mentality, consciousness - the driver of
you. After doing a lot of meditation and listening to the Dhamma, you
finally go up to the driver’s seat, and you find it’s empty. You’ve been
riding in a driverless bus!
It shocks you
at first, but it gives you so much relief to know there’s no one to
blame. How many people blame somebody for their suffering? They blame
God, or they blame their parents, or they blame the government, or they
blame the weather, or they blame some sickness they have, and in the
last resort if they can’t find anyone else to blame, they blame
themselves. It’s stupidity. There is no one to blame! Look inside and
see it’s empty, aa driverless bus.” When you see non-self, you see there
is no one to blame; it’s anattā. The result is that you go back
into your seat and just enjoy the journey. If it’s a driverless bus,
what else can you do? You sit there when you go through pleasant
experiences, “Just pleasant experiences, that’s all.” You go through
painful experiences, “Just painful experiences, that’s all.” It’s just a
driverless bus.
You think that you have
driven a course through these three months of the rains retreat, that
your success or failure, your happiness or suffering, is due to you.
It’s not, it’s just nature. You’ve got no one to blame, and you’ve got
no one to praise. Whatever has happened is just that; so stop shouting
at the driver. Stop cursing the driver. There’s no one there; you’re
wasting your breath. Just sit in your seat and “cop it sweet.” When
there are nice times, have fun. When there are unpleasant times, have
fun. When you’ve got no one to blame, you might as well enjoy the
journey.
“The Answer is ’There Is Nothing’”
I
remember one of the teachings Ajahn Chah gave me personally. He used to
come to our monastery at Wat Nanachat every week because we had built a
sauna for him there. He found the sauna beneficial as his health was
failing at this stage. When he came it was great because he would give
us a talk as well. That day he’d come to give a talk. We had fired up
the sauna, and as soon as it was ready a few monks went to help him. I
would help; him sometimes; other times I let other people help.
This
time, after giving a very inspiring talk to all the Western monks, he
went off to the sauna, and I let some other monks look after him. I went
to the back of the hall, sat outside, and had a deep, peaceful
meditation. After coming out of my meditation I thought I would check
out how Ajahn Chah was to see if I could help him. Walking from the hall
to the sauna, I saw he had already finished and was walking in the
opposite direction with some Thai lay people.
Ajahn Chah took one look at me, saw that I’d been in a deep meditation, and he said, “Brahmavamso, why?"
I was completely surprised and confused, and replied, “I don’t know."
Afterwards he said, “If anyone ever asks you that question again, the correct answer is, ’There is nothing.’ Do you understand?"
"Yes,” I said.
"No you don’t,” he replied.
So
if you’ve been asking that question, “Why? Why? Why?” I’ve given you
the answer now. It’s straight from a great meditation master, Ajahn
Chah. The answer to the question “Why?” is, “There is nothing."
He
was really great, Ajahn Chah, and he was correct. That will always
remain with me, “There is nothing.” This is emptiness. There is no doer.
There is no knower, it’s completely empty! To be able to get to that
emptiness, encourage yourself by knowing that if you do find that
emptiness, it’s wonderful! All the Enlightened Ones that I have known
have always been happy; they haven’t regretted finding out that there’s
nothing there. No one has said to me, “I wish I hadn’t found this out.”
It’s liberating when you see there is nothing there. There is nothing to
hold onto, and when you don’t hold onto anything there’s no suffering
anymore.
All of the craving, all of the
attachment, and all of the pain that arises because of those cravings
and attachments, all have their origin in the illusion of self. That
illusion of self creates a sense of “me” and a sense of amine,” all that
I want, all the praise and blame, the “I am” conceit (asmimāna):
I am as good as the next person”; “I am better”; “I am worse.” How many
of you are still suffering because of comparing yourselves to someone
else? You don’t have to compare yourself to anybody. You’re not there!
There
is no more comparison anymore once you can give the “self” away. You
don’t even need to worry about what people think about you: because
there is no one there to think about. How much suffering comes from
worrying about what you think other people think about you, especially
what I think about you because I’m the teacher here! What do I think
about you? I don’t think anything about you; because you are just not
there!
Letting Go of Everything!
As
long as there is a hand you will go on picking up things. That’s what a
hand does. If you’ve got a hand and a nose, you’ll pick your nose from
time to time when no one is looking. When there is no hand, when you
have cut the hand off, then you won’t pick up things which create
suffering for you and which create the burden of ownership.
Those
of you who have started renouncing can understand that the more you
give up, the freer you feel. You give up your house; you give up your
car; you give up your possessions; you give up sex; you give up
entertainment; you give up all these things, and you find the more you
give up, the more liberated you are. It’s like a person with a big
rucksack on their back, carrying heavy rocks, who has come to realize
that they don’t have to carry all these things. So on the journey up the
mountain to Nibbāna they keep throwing things out: throwing out all
their possessions, throwing out their body, throwing out their thoughts,
throwing out their worries, and throwing out their illusion of self. On
the last few steps up the mountain, they throw out the “doer,” next
they throw away the “knower.” Then there is nothing left. When there is
nothing left, then they are free. When we say this is the path of
renunciation, we really mean renouncing. When we say it’s the path of
letting go, it’s really letting go of everything. Don’t keep even a
small thing with you.
The End
Have
you the courage to do it? It’s really worthwhile becoming enlightened.
It’s to be recommended. Don’t you want to become enlightened? Don’t you
want to be free of all this? Haven’t you had enough of saṃsāra? Haven’t
you had enough of going to work? Haven’t you had enough of this body,
and pain, and going to the doctors, and having kids, and worrying about
whether you’re happy or sad, and all these thoughts which run through
your mind and create problems and difficulties? One minute happy, the
next minute sad. Haven’t you had enough of all that?
Meditate!
Make the mind still! Look at this thing we call the mind, let the lotus
open up and see the most beautiful jewel there could ever be -
nothingness. There’s nothing better than nothingness, and there’s no
jewel greater than the Dhamma.
Source: BPS, Sri Lanka, Bodhi Leaves 153 (excerpt). For free distribution only.
