iMEDITATION

Method of Supression: first jhana based on bodily foulness.

Is your relationship between the citta and what you are experiencing ( object, past memories) ' I want , ' I don't want', craving ? That's where the attachments are.  It's the link, the way you relate with the objects of your mind from moment to moment that causes delusion to grow and grow ( through the agregates of perception, feelings/ sensation, and conditioned response) . The hindrances ( ie. desire, craving, etc..)  are the food for delusion.  So it's not what is going on this moment.  It's not what you are experiencing ( person,activity,  things, mental objects, etc.) .  But don't misunderstand this to mean that you can be mindful of sex.  This is missing the point. If you are mindful of what's between you and the act, you will see that there is craving there, there is fear, there's a lot of wanting ( hindrance of desire). If there wasn't that wanting and that desire, you wouldn't be able to do anything like that. If there is peace, tranquility, letting go, stillness, kindness, loving kindness, there would be no possibility of that sexuality ever rising in your mind.  In this case, your mindfulness is focused on the wrong thing.

Whatever certainly leads to Nibbida, to the turning away from the world of the senses, to the fading way of the world of the six senses, that is the Dhamma.  These are words that guide me in my monastic life; words that tell me what I should be doing and what I shouldn't be doing.  They tell me what's Dhamma and what isn't Dhamma.  It's Dhamma if it leads to upasama, the settling down of the mind, to peace, quiet and silence.  Sambodhi is Enlightenment wisdom.  Nibbana is the complete going out of the flame of doing, the end of being concerned and interested in playing around in that world.  If what you are doing leads to those things, if it's pointing in those directions, then you can know that this is the Dhamma, this is Vinyana. and this is the teaching of the Buddha. 

I heard of a nun who went on a very long retreat, and then when she came off the retreat she started listening to music.  I thought, ' hang on, what are you doing?' That's just looking for delight in the five senses.  That's not something  that leads to Nibbida, to turning away, to fading away.  It doesn't lead to cessation, it doesn't lead to the quieter states of mind, and it doesn't lead to Nibbana, to Enlightenment.  It goes in the wrong direction. Once you have the idea of following the Buddha's teachings to overcome the coarser part of delusion, it becomes much harder for you to justify acts of greed and anger.  Often you see people in the world who have these defilements of hatred, ill will, and sensory desire, and they keep justifying them all the time.  They say " They need to be told" and " It's good to have fun now and to enjoy this and enjoy that" . It gets to the point that people claim that you don't need to be a monk or a nun; you can just be in the world, enjoy your family and your job and become enlightened. The defilements stop you from enjoying peace of mind, and they stop you enjoying the liberation of the mind.  They prevent wisdom from arising and you just get stuck in samsara for many , many more lifetimes. So we've got to do something about these defilements and not just allow them to be.  Don't justify them.  Know very clearly that the Buddha said that sensory desire is defilement .  Sensory desire is pursuing enjoyment in the  realm of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.  That is not part of the middle way.  If any of you are Pali experts, you will know that lobha is a synonym for avija or ignorance, a synonym fo kamacchanda, the deisre for sensual pleasure.  It's the foremost hindrance that weakens wisdom and blocks samadhi.  And, because it blocks samadhi, it means you are just putting yourself behind a large obstacle. It's hard enough as it is to get the peaceful states of mind that lead into samadhi. ( Desire creates too much stirring in the mind, and samadhi is the stillness of mind.)

We've just finished the rains retreat and many of you have been trying very hard, putting a lot of time into developing and creating peaceful states of mind.  If you throw away all that good work now you'll just have to start from scratch again.  So often we can see those defilements of the mind and yet we justify them by saying ' It's okay, we can do this,it's alright', but we know we really shouldn't .  So when you do see defilements like lobha coming up, at least don't act on them.  Don't do anything.  Don't turn it into an action of body and speech.  If you confine it to the world of the mind so that it just stays as a thought, as a mood, you are weakening its fuel, its source.  As soon as you act on it, it becomes much stronger psychologically and it's more liable to come back again in the future.  Also, if you can just keep it in the mind you've got more of a chance to understand it, especialy to understand its pain if you have anger in the mind you know what it feels like.  But if you take it  out on someone else you forget what you feel like because you've only focused on that other person.  It's just the same with sensory desire.  If you keep it inside you can feel what it's like, you can know what it's like.  But if you externalize it by trying to gain that object of the sensory desire, you've lost all the mindfulness of what's happening inside.  You've just gone out into the world and you're not quite sure what is happening in your mind, you can't see the danger in these things; you can't see the negative result of following the defilements.  Instead of externalizing it into that being or that thing or that person, spend some time just being inside and knowing what it feels like when you've got desire for sensory enjoyment.  Do the same when you're getting angry and upset. This way you will see the danger in sensory pleasures and ill will.  Because we don't see the danger in these things, when we experience suffering, we don't understand why we are suffering.  Why am I upset? Why am I not happy? Whey am I doing this? Why is meditation not doing well? Why can't I get into jhanas?  You know why! It is because you have no sense restraint and you indulge yourself too much.  You allow the defilements to run riot in the mind.  Once the kilesas have got hold of you they are not going to just let you go. You can't say ' It's my two weeks retreat. Okay? So kilesas, just leave me alone' That's why the Buddha encouraged people to keep the precepts perfectly.  See danger in the slightest fault.  Practice sense restraint, and be content with little.  Be content with your hut, your robes. This is a way of overcoming the defilement of laziness, the defilement of just taking things easy in a beautiful hut.  The defilement of just sitting around having a big breakfast, having a big lunch, having a big cup of tea, coffee, or whatever else you think you want.  All these things can be used, but used them well.  Use them to make progress in your meditaiton and to develop your wisdom. Otherwise, you'll just be like a lay-person in robes, with the same sort of desires, the same sort of hatreds, and the same sorts of movements of the mind.  If you develop a lay-person's mind you won't want to stay in the robes, you will want to leave because you haven't been developing the monks mind, the mind of a samana, a recluse.  Eventually that will get the better of you.  Those are some of the dangers of the defilements.  That's why a Kruba Ajahn would stop those dangers developing. They would tell you what happens if you develop lust, if you fantasize, sleep too much, eat too much, or if you don't spend enough time sitting, or practicing sense restraint.  

If you start to resist these kilesas, the defilements of the mind, you get more and more happiness. Have you got the blameless happiness of anazajja sukha yet? Or are there still parts of your ethical conduct that still need to be tightened up a bit?  If so, you're just depriving yourself of happiness.  So, one of the benefits of keeping the precepts and following the rules of the monastery is that you get this beautiful sense of happiness , freedom from remorse, one of the five hindrances.  With that freedom from remorse your meditation gets deeper and you get even more happiness from the practice of sense restraint.  If you practice sense restraint you get to the next level of happiness in the gradual training.  So by indulging in sitting around or standing around chatting about this, about that, or just reading too many trashy books, you're stopping yourself from getting the happiness of sense restraint.  The happiness of sense restraint means that the mind starts to calm down and you get this beautiful peacefulness inside you and around you.  You've all experienced that peacefulness from time to time.  Sometimes you only experience it when you are on retreat and then when you come off the retreat you throw it away again.  Wouldn't it be wonderful to just keep that peacefulness and joy from sense restraint all the time?

You're lucky to have so much freedom, so don't waste that time.  Use it not to indulge but to really get into seclusion.  By developing seclusion from all these material and physical possessions, simplifying the mind instead of filling it with more stuff, we get happiness of the mind, freedom of the mind, and the joy of the mind.  You're actually getting close to the jhanas, seclusion from the five senses.  Secluded from unwholesome things you can enter into the first jhana with piti-sukha, the bliss of such seclusion. The jhanas are states of bliss.  Don't throw away the opportunity to get that bliss.  By having insight into the Dhamma you'll turn your whole monastic life around. Remember, just before he sat down under the Bodhi tree the Buddha reflected on the time when he first experienced a jhana under the rose apple tree.  He thought, could  the jhanas be the way to Enlightenment and then insight came up.  Yes, jhanas are the way to Enlightenment.  It's a powerful statement. Afterwards he knew the middle way, the middle way is the jhana way.  When you let go of sensory pleasures of sensory pleasures, get rid of the pursuit of the happiness of sensual pleasures, have no kama sukha.  That's straight down the line jhana practice.  So don't throw away the opportunity and the chance to do this.  This is what leads to Enlightenment.  This is the path that the Buddha followed.  So use this wonderful opportunity in this lifetime, this rare lifetime. The benefit of resisting those defilements is that they get less and less.  Keep them confined to the mind and it's just like putting a tiger in a cage. It might roar and rush against the cage bars at the very beginning but after a while it will stop doing that .  It will settle down in the cage and then it will be safe.  You'll be safe from being terrorized and eaten by the tigers of the defilements.  Eventualy, when they're in a cage you starve them ( defilements) to death, starve the defilements so that they get weaker and weaker and the bliss gets stronger and stronger.  When the mind is blissed out and has that sort of strength, it can kick the defilements and the defilements are too weak to do anything.  You've got hold of the defilements and you can wring their necks.  No more indulging in defilements you're just wasting precious time.  I'm talking about wasting this precious lifetime.  When you know the dangers of these things you will be encouraged to make  a bit more effort to resist , to have a bit more hiri ottappa and more determination to overcome them.

In the simile of the two fire sticks (MN 36), even if we take the sticks out of the river, they are still wet so we can't start a fire with them.  Even if those fire sticks have been lying next to the river, still they're not dry enough, they are too wet inside.  They have to be taken from the river for a long time before they dry out, before they can be used to light a fire.  The Lord Buddha used that simile for indulding in sensory pleasure in the world of the senses. If you have just left the world and come to the monastery, it takes a while before you dry out.  The sensory world makes you damp and meditation can't really take hold.  You can't really fired up with the meditation.  The longer you are outside of the world, away from things, staying in a monastery or in a hermitage, the more you dry out.  Sometimes it takes years to dry out. Especially when you are drying out and then you put your stick in the water and make it wet again.  So after a couple of years of drying out , if you make it all wet again you have to do another two years, four years, or however long it takes to dry out.  You're just holding yourself back, not allowing yourself the opportunity to get into deep meditation.  If you really understand that wisdom, it means that you can let go.  You can just sit down and let go of the body, let go of all the thoughts, let go of the asavas, the out-flowings of the mind.  Let go of this mind that seeks its happpiness outside.  You can let go of the asavas, which take you outside of yourself into the past and the future, into the five sense world, to this, that and the other. Go in the opposite direction , don't indulge. If you go in the opposite direction you will get all the beautiful happiness.  You will get  the inspiration, the knowledge that the Buddha was an Arahant, and that's a difficult thing to know.  You may think you know  it, but you only knew that when Stream Winning happens.  What actually is a Buddha? What is an Arahant? Why is the Dhamma swakkhato and what is the Ariya Sangha? You've got these beautiful things just waiting for you: an amazing banquet of insights, releases, freedoms, jhanas, magga and phala, path and the fruit, a beautiful banquet with delicious food.  But we keep on eating dog pooh instead.  So what are you doing that for? Surely you've got enough  wisdom, and understanding to know what Enlightenment is.  So why don't you do it? Don't wait for tomorrow: don't wait until you get to your next monastery in a few weeks time. Don't wait, otherwise you'll die and you'll wonder why you wasted so much time.  It's probably what happened to you in your last lifetime.  Why wasted so much time now and in the lifetime before and the one before that. It's just wasted time.  So please don't allow these defilements to run riot over you.  Resist the defilements .  Dry out and have the beautiful flames of jhana coming into the mind, rather than the restlessness and distraction of the kilesas.