                                 BUDDHO

                                   by
                       Phra Ajaan Thate Desaransi
                (Phra Nirodharansi Gambhirapannacariya)

                        Translated from the Thai
                         by Thanissaro Bhikkhu


                Printed in Thailand B.E. 2532 (CE 1984)

     This work may be copied or reprinted //for free distribution//
                without permission from the translator.
                    Otherwise, all rights reserved.

                                 * * *
                                          
                         DharmaNet Edition 1994

                 Transcribed for DharmaNet by Myra Fox
                Proofread and formatted by John Bullitt
                                          
        This electronic edition is offered for free distribution
           via DharmaNet by arrangement with the translator.
                                          
                        DharmaNet International
                 P.O. Box 4951, Berkeley CA 94704-4951
                                          
                            * * * * * * * *



 When you go to study meditation with any group or teacher who is
 experienced in a particular form of meditation, you should first make
 your heart confident that your teacher is fully experienced in that
 form of meditation, and be confident that the form of meditation he
 teaches is the right path for sure.  At the same time, show respect for
 the place in which you are to meditate.  Only then should you begin
 practicing.

 Teachers in the past used to require a dedication ceremony as a means
 of inspiring confidence before you were to study meditation.  They
 would have you make an offering of five pairs of beeswax candles and
 five pairs of white flowers -- this was called the five khandha -- or
 eight pairs of beeswax candles and eight pairs of white flowers -- this
 was called the eight khandha -- or one pair of beeswax candles each
 weighing 15 grams and an equal number of white flowers.  Then they
 would teach you their particular form of meditation.  This ancient
 custom has its good points.  There are many other ceremonies as well,
 but I won't go into them.  I'll mention only a very simple,
 easy-to-follow ceremony a little further on.

 Only after you have inspired confidence in your heart as already
 mentioned should you go to the teacher experienced in that form of
 meditation.  If he is experienced in repeating //samma araham//, he
 will teach you to repeat //samma araham, samma araham, samma araham//.
 Then he'll have you visualize a bright, clear jewel two inches above
 your navel, and tell you to focus your mind right there as you continue
 your repetition, without letting your mind slip away from the jewel. In
 other words, you take the jewel as the focal point of your mind.

 If you go to a teacher experienced in meditating on the rising and
 falling of the abdomen, he will have you meditate on rising and
 falling, and focus your mind on the different motions of the body.  For
 instance, when you raise your foot, you think //raising//.  When you
 place your foot, you think //placing//, and so on; or else he will have
 you focus continually on being preoccupied with the phenomenon of
 arising and passing away in every motion or position of the body.

 If you go to a teacher experienced in psychic powers, he will have you
 repeat //na ma ba dha, na ma ba dha//, and focus the mind on a single
 object until it takes you to see heaven and hell, deities and brahmas
 of all sorts, to the point where you get carried away with your
 visions.

 If you go to a teacher experienced in breath meditation, he will have
 you focus on your in-and-out breath, and have you keep your mind firmly
 preoccupied with nothing but the in-and-out breath.

 If you go to a teacher experienced in meditating on //buddho//, he will
 have you repeat //buddho, buddho, buddho//, and have you keep the mind
 firmly in that meditation word until you are fully skilled at it.  Then
 he will have you contemplate //buddho// and what it is that is saying
 //buddho//.  Once you see that they are two separate things, focus on
 what is saying //buddho//.  As for the word //buddho//, it will
 disappear, leaving only what it is that was saying //buddho//.  You
 then focus on what it is that was saying //buddho// as your object.

 People of our time -- or of any time, for that matter -- regardless of
 how educated or capable they may be (I don't want to criticize any of
 us as tending to believe in things whose truth we haven't tested,
 because after all we all want to know and see the truth) and especially
 those of us who are Buddhists: Buddhism teaches causes and effects
 which are entirely true, but why is it that we have to fall for the
 claims and advertisements which we hear everywhere?  It must be because
 people at present are impatient, and want to see results before they
 have completed the causes, in line with the fact that we are supposed
 to be in an atomic age.

 Buddhism teaches us to penetrate into the heart and mind, which are
 mental phenomena.  As for the body, it is a physical phenomenon.
 Physical phenomena have to lie under the control of mental phenomena.
 When we begin to practice meditation and train the mind to be quiet and
 untroubled, I can't see that we are creating any problems at that
 moment for anyone at all.  If we keep practicing until we are skilled,
 then we will be calm and at peace.  If more and more people practice
 this way, there will be peace and happiness all over the world.  As for
 the body, we can train it to be peaceful only as long as the mind is in
 full control.  The minute mindfulness lapses, the body will get back to
 its old affairs.  So let's try training the mind by repeating
 //buddho//.




            PRELIMINARY STEPS TO PRACTICING MEDITATION

 Before practicing meditation on the word //buddho//, you should start
 out with the preliminary steps.  I.e., inspire confidence in your mind,
 as already mentioned, and then bow down three times, saying:

       //Araham samma-sambuddho bhagava//
             --  The Blessed One is pure and fully self-awakened.

        //Buddham bhagavantam abhivademi//
             -- To the Blessed, Awakened One, I bow down.

                        (Bow down once.)


        //Svakkhato bhagavata dhammo//
             -- the Dhamma is well-taught by the Blessed One.

        //Dhammam namassami//
             -- To the Dhamma, I bow down.

                        (Bow down once.)


        //Supatipanno bhagavato savaka-sangho//
             -- The Community of the Blessed One's disciples have
                conducted themselves rightly.

        //Sangham namami//
             -- To the Community, I bow down.

                        (Bow down once.)


        //Namo tassa bhagavato arahato samma-sambuddhassa.//
                        (Three times).


 (Think of the virtues of the Buddha, the foremost teacher of the world,
 released from suffering and defilement of every sort, always serene and
 secure.  Then bow down three times.)

 //Note//:  These preliminary steps are simply an example. There's
 nothing wrong with chanting more than this if you have more to chant,
 but you should bow down to the Buddha as the first step each time you
 meditate, unless the place in which you are meditating is unconducive.

                           *       *       *

 Now, sit in meditation, your right leg on top of left, your hands
 palm-up in your lap, your right hand on top of your left.  Sit
 straight.  Repeat the word //buddho// in your mind, focusing your
 attention in the middle of your chest, at the heart.  Don't let your
 attention stray out ahead or behind.  Be mindful to keep your mind in
 place, steady in its one-pointedness, and you will enter into a state
 of concentration.

 When you enter into concentration, the mind may go so blank that you
 don't even know how long you are sitting.  By the time you come out of
 concentration, many hours may have passed.  For this reason, you
 shouldn't fix a time limit for yourself when sitting in meditation. Let
 things follow their own course.

 The mind in true concentration is the mind in a state of one-
 pointedness.  If the mind hasn't reached a state of one-pointedness, it
 isn't yet in concentration, because the true heart is only one.  If
 there are many mental states going on, you haven't penetrated into the
 heart.  You've only reached the mind.

 Before you practice meditation, you should first learn the difference
 between the heart and the mind, for they aren't the same thing.  The
 mind is what thinks and forms perceptions and ideas about all sorts of
 things.  The heart is what simply stays still and knows that it is
 still, without forming any further thoughts at all. Their difference is
 like that between a river and waves on the river.

 All sciences and all defilements are able to arise because the mind
 thinks and forms ideas and strays out in search of them. You will be
 able to see these things clearly with your own heart once the mind
 becomes still and reaches the heart.

 Water is something clean and clear by its very nature.  If anyone puts
 dye into the water, it will change in line with the dye. But once the
 water is filtered and distilled, it will become clean and clear as
 before.  This is an analogy for the heart and the mind.

 Actually, the Buddha taught that the mind is identical with the heart.
 If there is no heart, there is no mind.  The mind is a condition.  The
 heart itself has no conditions.  In practicing meditation, no matter
 what the teacher or method:  If it's correct, it will have to penetrate
 into the heart.

 //When you reach the heart, you will see all your defilements, because
 the mind gathers all defilements into itself.  So now how you deal with
 them is up to you//.

 When doctors are going to cure a disease, they first have to find the
 cause of the disease.  Only then can they treat it with the right
 medicine.

 As we start meditating longer and longer, repeating //buddho, buddho,
 buddho//, the mind will gradually let go of its distractions and
 restlessness, and gather in to stay with //buddho//.  It will stay
 firm, with //buddho// its sole preoccupation, until you see that the
 state of mind which says //buddho// is identical with the mind itself
 at all times, regardless of whether you are sitting, standing, walking
 or lying down.  No matter what your activity, you will see the mind
 bright and clear with //buddho//.  Once you have reached this stage,
 keep the mind there as long as you can.  Don't be in a hurry to want to
 see this or be that -- //because desire is the most serious obstacle to
 the concentrated mind//.  Once desire arises, your concentration will
 immediately deteriorate, because the basis of your concentration --
 //buddho// -- isn't solid.  When this happens, you can't grab hold of
 any foundation at all, and you get really upset. All you can think of
 is the state of concentration in which you used to be calm and happy,
 and this makes the mind even more agitated.

 Practice meditation the same way farmers grow rice.  They're in no
 hurry.  They scatter the seed, plow, harrow, plant the seedlings, step
 by step, without skipping any of the steps.  Then they wait for the
 plants to grow.  Even when they don't yet see the rice appearing, they
 are confident that the rice is sure to appear some day in the future.
 Once the rice appears, they are convinced that they're sure to reap
 results.  They don't pull on the rice plants to make them come out with
 rice when they want it.  Anyone who did that would end up with no
 results at all.

 The same holds true with meditation.  You can't be in a hurry.  You
 can't skip any of the steps.  You have to make yourself firmly
 confident that, "This is the meditation word which will make my mind
 concentrated for sure."  Don't have any doubts as to whether the
 meditation word is right for your temperament, and don't think that,
 "That person used this meditation word with these or those results, but
 when I use it, my mind doesn't settle down.  It doesn't work for me at
 all."  Actually, if the mind is firmly set on the meditation word you
 are repeating, then no matter what the word, it's sure to work --
 because you repeat the word simply to make the mind steady and firm,
 that's all.  As for any results apart from that, they all depend on
 each person's individual potential and capabilities.

 Once in the Buddha's time there was a monk sitting in meditation near a
 pond who saw a heron diving down to catch fish and eat them.  He took
 that as his meditation subject until he succeeded in becoming an
 arahant.  I've never seen a heron eating fish mentioned as a subject in
 any of the meditation manuals, but he was able to use it to meditate
 until he attained arahantship -- which illustrates what I have just said.

 When the mind is intent on staying within the bounds of its meditation
 word //buddho//, with mindfulness in control, it is sure to grow out of
 its rebelliousness.  We have to train and restrain it, because we are
 looking for peace and contentment for the mind. Ordinarily, the mind
 tends to be preoccupied with looking for distraction, as I have already
 explained, and for the most part it strays off to this sort of
 distraction:  When we start meditating //buddho, buddho, buddho//, as
 soon as we focus the mind on //buddho//, it won't stay there.  It'll
 run out to think of whatever work we are about to start or have left
 undone.  It thinks about doing this and doing that until it gets all
 worked up, afraid that the work won't come out well or won't succeed.
 The work we've been assigned by other people or which we're doing on
 our own will be a waste of time or will cause us to lose face if we
 don't do as we've been told....

 This is one of the distractions which prevent new meditators from
 attaining concentration.  You have to pull your mind back to //buddho,
 buddho, buddho//, and tell yourself, "Thoughts of this sort aren't the
 path to peace; the true path to peace is to keep the mind with
 //buddho// and nothing else" -- and then keep on repeating //buddho,
 buddho, buddho//....

 After a moment, the mind will go straying out again, this time to your
 family -- your children, your wife or husband:  How are they getting
 along?  Are they healthy?  Are they eating well?  If you're far apart,
 you wonder about where they're staying, what they're eating.  Those who
 have left home think about those at home.  Those at home think about
 those who have gone far away -- afraid that they aren't safe, that
 other people will molest them, that they have no friends, that they're
 lonely -- thinking in 108 different ways, whatever the mind can
 imagine, all of which exaggerate the truth.

 Or if you're still young and single, you think about having fun with
 your friends -- the places you used to go together, the good times you
 had, the things you used to do -- to the point where you actually say
 something or laugh out loud.  This sort of defilement is the worst of
 the bunch.

 When you are meditating //buddho, buddho, buddho//, your defilements
 see that the situation is getting out of hand and that you'll escape
 from their control, so they look for things to tie you down even more
 tightly all the time.  Never from the day of your birth have you ever
 practiced concentration at all.  You've simply let the mind follow the
 moods of the defilements.  Only now have you begun to practice, so when
 you repeat //buddho, buddho, buddho// to get the mind to settle down
 with //buddho//, it's going to wriggle away in the same way that fish
 try to wriggle back into the water when they're tossed up on land.  So
 you have to pull the mind back to //buddho//.

 //Buddho is something cool and calm.  It's the path for giving rise to
 peace and contentment -- the only path that will release us from the
 suffering and stress in this world//.

 So you pull the mind back to //buddho//.  This time it begins to settle
 down.  As soon as you feel that it's staying put, you begin to get a
 sense that when the mind stays put, it is rested and at ease in a way
 different from when it's not still, when it's restless and upset.  You
 make up your mind to be careful and alert to keep the mind in that
 state and... Oops.  There it goes again. Now it's taking your financial
 interests as an excuse, saying that if you don't do this or search for
 that, you'll miss out on a really great opportunity.  So you focus your
 mind on that instead of your meditation word.  As for where //buddho//
 has gone, you haven't the least idea. By the time you realize that
 //buddho// has disappeared, it's already too late -- which is why they
 say that the mind is restless, slippery and hard to control, like a
 monkey which can never sit still.

 Sometimes, after you've been sitting in meditation a long time, you
 begin to worry that your blood won't be flowing properly, that your
 nerves will die from lack of blood, that you'll grow numb and end up
 paralyzed.  If you're meditating far from home or in a forest, it's
 even worse:  You're afraid that snakes will bite you, tigers will eat
 you, or ghosts will haunt you, making all kinds of scary faces.  Your
 fear of death can whisper to you in all sorts of way, all of which are
 simply instances of you yourself scaring yourself.  The truth is
 nothing at all like what you imagine.  Never from the day of your birth
 have you ever seen a tiger eat even a single person.  You've never once
 seen a ghost -- you don't even know what it would look like, but you
 fashion up pictures to scare yourself.

 The obstacles to meditation mentioned here are simply examples.  There
 are actually many, many more.  Those who meditate will find this out
 for themselves.

 //If you hold buddho close to the heart, and use your mindfulness to
 keep the mind with nothing but buddho, no dangers will come your way//.
 So have firm faith in //buddho//.  I guarantee that there will be no
 dangers at all -- unless you've done bad kamma in the past, which is
 something beyond anyone's power to protect you from.  Even the Buddha
 himself can't protect you from it.

 When people begin meditating, their confidence tends to be weak.  No
 matter what their meditation subject, these sorts of defilements are
 sure to interfere, because these defilements form the basis of the
 world and of the mind.  The minute we meditate and make the mind
 one-pointed, the defilements see that we're going to get away from
 them, so they come thronging around so that we won't be able to escape
 from the world.

 When we see how really serious and harmful they are, we should make our
 minds forthright and our confidence solid and strong, telling ourselves
 that we've let ourselves be deceived into believing the defilements for
 many lifetimes; it's time now that we be willing to believe the
 Buddha's teachings and take //buddho// as our refuge.  We then make
 mindfulness solid, and fix the mind firmly in //buddho//.  We give our
 lives to //buddho//, and won't let our minds slip away from it.  When
 we make this sort of commitment, the mind will drop straight into
 one-pointedness and enter concentration.

 When you first enter concentration, this is what it's like: You'll have
 no idea at all of what concentration or one-pointedness of mind is
 going to feel like.  You are simply intent on keeping mindfulness
 firmly focused on one object -- and the power of a mind focused firmly
 on one object is what will bring you to a state of concentration.  You
 won't be thinking at all that concentration will be like this or like
 that, or that you want it to be like this or like that.  It will simply
 take its own way, automatically.  No one can force it.

 At that moment you will feel as if you are in another world (the world
 of the mind), with a sense of ease and solitude to which nothing else
 in the world can compare.  When the mind withdraws from concentration,
 you will regret that that mood has passed, and you will remember it
 clearly.  All that we say about concentration comes from the mind which
 has withdrawn from that state.  As long as it is still gathered in that
 state, we aren't interested in what anyone else says or does.

 You have to train the mind to enter this sort of concentration often,
 so as to become skilled and adept, but don't try to remember your past
 states of concentration, and don't let yourself want your concentration
 to be like it was before -- because it won't be that way, and you will
 just be making more trouble for yourself.  Simply contemplate //buddho,
 buddho//, and keep your mind with your mental repetition.  What it does
 then is its own business.

 After the mind has first attained to concentration, it won't be the
 same way the next time around, but don't worry about it. Whatever it's
 like, don't worry about it.  Just make sure that you get it centered.
 When the results come out in many different ways, your understanding
 will broaden and you'll come to develop many different techniques for
 dealing with the mind.

 What I've mentioned here is simply to be taken as an example.  When you
 follow these instructions, don't give them too much weight, or they
 will turn into allusions to the past, and your meditation won't get
 anywhere. Simply remember them as something to use for the sake of
 comparison after your meditation has begun to progress.

 No matter what method you use -- //buddho//, rising & falling or
 //samma araham// -- when the mind is about to settle down in
 concentration, you won't be thinking that the mind is about to settle
 down, or is settling down, or anything at all.  It will settle down
 automatically on its own.  You won't even know when you let go of your
 meditation word.  The mind will simply have a separate calm and peace
 which isn't in this world or another world or anything of the sort.
 There's no one and nothing at all, just the mind's own separate state,
 which is called the world of the mind.  In that state there won't be
 the word 'world' or anything else.  The conventional realities of the
 world won't appear there, and thus no insight of any sort will arise in
 there at all.  The point is simply that you train the mind to be
 centered, and then compare it to the state of mind which isn't centered
 so that you can see how they differ, how the mind which has attained
 concentration and then withdraws to contemplate matters of the world
 and the Dhamma differs from the mind which hasn't attained
 concentration.

 The heart and the mind.  Let's talk some more about the heart and mind
 so that you'll understand.  After all, we're talking about training the
 mind in concentration:  If you don't understand the relationship
 between the heart and the mind, you won't know where or how to practice
 concentration.

 Everyone born -- human or animal -- has a heart and mind, but the heart
 and mind have different duties.  The mind thinks, wanders and forms
 ideas of all sorts, in line with where the defilements lead it.  As for
 the heart, it's simply what knows.  It doesn't form any ideas at all.
 It's neutral -- in the middle -- with regard to everything.  The
 awareness which is neutral:  That's the heart.

 The heart doesn't have a body.  It's a mental phenomenon. It's simply
 awareness.  You can place it anywhere at all.  It doesn't lie inside or
 outside the body.  When we call the heart-muscle the heart, that's not
 the true heart.  It's simply an organ for pumping blood throughout the
 body so as to keep it alive. If the heart-muscle doesn't pump blood
 throughout the body, life can't last.

 People in general are always talking about the heart:  "My heart feels
 happy... sad... heavy... light... down..."  Everything is a matter of
 the heart.  Abhidhamma experts, however, speak in terms of the mind:
 the mind in a wholesome state, the mind in an unwholesome state, the
 mind in a neutral state, the mind on the level of form, the mind on the
 formless level, the mind on the transcendent level and so on, //but
 none of them know what the real heart and mind are like.//

 The mind is what thinks and forms ideas.  It has to make use of the six
 senses as its tools.  As soon as the eye sees a visual object, the ear
 hears a sound, the nose smells an aroma, the tongue tastes a flavor,
 the body comes into contact with a tactile sensation -- cold, hot, hard
 or soft -- or the intellect thinks of an idea in line with its
 defilements, good or bad:  If any of these things are good, the mind is
 pleased; if they're bad, it's displeased.  All of this is an affair of
 the mind, or of defilement. Aside from these six senses, there's
 nothing the mind can make use of.  In the texts they are analyzed into
 the six faculties, the six elements, the six forms of contact, and all
 sorts of other things, but all these things lie within the six senses.
 So these are characteristics of the mind:  that which can never sit
 still.

 When you train the mind -- or, in other words, practice concentration
 -- you have to get control over the mind which is wriggling after the
 six senses, as already explained, and make it stop still with one
 thing:  its meditation word, //buddho//.  Don't let it go straying out
 ahead or behind.  Make it stay still, and know that it's staying still:
 That's the heart.  The heart has nothing to do with any of the six
 senses, which is why it's called the heart.

 When people in general talk about the heart of something, they are
 referring to its center.  Even when they talk about their own hearts,
 they point to the center of the chest.  Actually, the heart doesn't lie
 in any particular place at all -- as I have already explained --
 although it lies right in the center of everything.

 If you want to understand what the heart is, you can try an experiment.
 Breathe in deeply and hold your breath for a moment. At that point
 there won't be anything at all except for one thing: neutral awareness.
 That's the heart, or 'what knows'.  But if you try to catch hold of the
 heart in this way, you can't hold on to it for very long -- only as
 long as you can hold your breath -- but you can give it a try just to
 see what the true heart is like.

 (Holding the breath can help reduce physical pain.  People who are
 suffering from great pain have to hold their breath as one way --
 fairly effective -- of relieving their pain.)

 Once you realize that the heart and mind have different duties and
 characteristics like this, you'll find it easier to train the mind.
 Actually, the heart and the mind are really the same thing.  As the
 Buddha said, the mind is identical with the heart. When we practice
 concentration, it's enough just to train the mind; once the mind is
 trained, that's where we'll see the heart.

 Once the mind has been fully trained by using mindfulness to keep it
 with //buddho// as its only preoccupation, it won't go straying after
 different things, and instead will gather into oneness.  The meditation
 word will disappear without your being aware of it, and you will feel a
 sense of peace and ease which nothing else can equal.  Those who have
 never experienced this ease before, when they first experience it,
 won't be able to describe it, because no one else in the world has ever
 experienced that kind of peace and ease.  Even though other people
 //have// experienced it, it's not the same. For this reason, you find
 it hard to describe -- although you can describe it to yourself.  If
 you try to describe it to others, you have to use similes and analogies
 before they'll understand you.  Things of this sort are personal:  Only
 you can know them for yourself.

 In addition, if you have developed a lot of potential in previous
 lifetimes, all sorts of amazing things can happen.  For example, you
 may gain knowledge of heavenly beings or hungry ghosts. You may learn
 about your own past and future, and that of other people:  In that
 particular lifetime you were like this; in the future you'll be like
 that.  Even though you didn't intend to know these things, when the
 mind attains concentration it can know on its own in a very amazing
 way.

 This sort of thing is something which really fascinates beginning
 meditators.  When it happens to them, they like to brag to other
 people.  When those people try to meditate, but don't get the knowledge
 or abilities, they become discouraged, thinking that they don't have
 the merit or potential to meditate, and they begin to lose faith in the
 practice.

 As for those who see these sorts of things, when that knowledge or
 ability deteriorates -- because they've been carried away by external
 things, and haven't taken the heart as their foundation -- they won't
 be able to grab hold of anything at all.  When they think of the things
 they used to know, their minds become even more stirred up.  People who
 like to brag will take the old things they used to see and talk about
 them in glowing terms.  Avid listeners really love to listen to this
 sort of thing, but avid  meditators are unimpressed -- because true
 meditators like to listen only to things which are present and true.

 The Buddha taught that whether his teachings will flourish or
 degenerate depends on those who practice them.  The teachings
 degenerate when meditators get just a little bit of knowledge and then
 go bragging to other people, talking about external matters with no
 substance at all, instead of explaining the basic principles of
 meditation.  When they do this, they make  the religion degenerate
 without their even realizing it.

 Those who make the religion flourish are those who speak about things
 which are useful and true.  They don't speak just for the fun of it.
 They speak in terms of cause and effect:  "When you meditate like this,
 repeating the meditation word in this way, it will make the mind gather
 into one and snuff out its defilements and restlessness like this...."

 //When you meditate on buddho, be patient. Don't be in a hurry.//  Be
 confident in your meditation word, and use mindfulness to keep the mind
 with its //buddho//.  Your confidence is what will make the mind firm
 and unwavering, able to let go of all its doubts and uncertainties. The
 mind will gather in on its meditation word, and mindfulness will keep
 it solely with //buddho// at all times. Whether you sit, stand, walk,
 lie down, or whatever work you do, mindfulness will be alert to nothing
 but //buddho//.  If your mindfulness is still weak, and your techniques
 still few, you have to hold on to //buddho// as your foundation.
 Otherwise your meditation won't progress; or even if it does progress,
 it won't have any foundation.

 //For concentration to be strong, the mind has to be resolute.//  When
 mindfulness is strong and the mind resolute, you decide that this is
 what you want:  "If I can't catch hold of //buddho//, or see //buddho//
 in my heart, or get the mind to stay put solely with //buddho//, I
 won't get up from my meditation.  Even if my life will end, I don't
 care."  When you do this, the mind will gather into one faster than you
 realize it.  The meditation word //buddho//, or whatever it is that may
 have been bothering or perplexing you, will vanish in the flash of an
 eye.  Even your body, which you have been attached to for so long,
 won't appear to you. All that remains is the heart -- simple awareness
 -- cool, calm and at ease.

 People who practice meditation really like it when this happens.  The
 next time around, they want it to happen again, and so it doesn't
 happen again.  That's because the desire keeps it from happening.
 Concentration is something very subtle and sensitive. You can't force
 it to be like this or that -- and at the same time you can't force the
 mind //not// to enter concentration either.

 If you're impatient, things get even more fouled up.  You have to be
 very patient.  Whether or not the mind is going to attain
 concentration, you've meditated on //buddho// in the past, so you just
 keep meditating on //buddho//.  Act as if you had never meditated on
 //buddho// before.  Make the mind neutral and even, let the breath flow
 gently, and use mindfulness to focus the mind on //buddho// and nothing
 else.  When the time comes for the mind to enter concentration, it will
 do it on its own.  You can't arrange the way it will happen.  If it
 were something you could arrange, all the people in the world would
 have become arahants long ago.

 Knowing how to meditate, but not doing it right;  having done it right
 once, and wanting it to be that way again, and yet it doesn't happen:
 All of these things are obstacles in practicing concentration.

 //In meditating on buddho, you have to get so that you are quick and
 adept.//  When a good or a bad mood strikes you, you have to be able to
 enter concentration immediately.  Don't let the mind be affected by
 that mood.  Whenever you think of //buddho//, the mind gathers
 immediately:  When you can do this, your mind will be solid and able to
 rely on itself.

 When you have practiced so that you are adept and experienced in this
 way, after a while you will find that your defilements and attachments
 to all things will gradually disappear on their own.  You don't have to
 go clearing away this or that defilement, telling yourself that this or
 that defilement has to be removed with this or that teaching or this or
 that method.  Be content with whatever method you find works for you.
 That's plenty enough.

 To have the defilements gradually disappear with the method I've just
 explained is better than trying to arrange things, entering the four
 levels of absorption, sustained thought, rapture and pleasure, leaving
 just one-pointedness and equanimity; or trying to arrange the first
 stage of the path to nibbana by abandoning self-identity views,
 uncertainty and attachment to precepts & practices; or by looking at
 your various defilements, telling yourself, "With that defilement, I
 was able to contemplate in such-and-such a way, so I've gone beyond
 that defilement. I have so-and-so many defilements left. If I can
 contemplate in such-and-such a way, my defilements will be finished" --
 //but you don't realize that the state of mind which wants to see and
 know and attain these things is a defilement fixed firmly in the mind.
 When you finish your contemplation, the mind is back in its original
 state, and hasn't gained anything at all//. On top of that, if someone
 comes along and says something which goes against the way you see
 things, you start disagreeing violently, like a burning fire into which
 someone pours kerosene.

 So hold firmly to your meditation word, //buddho//. Even if you don't
 attain anything else, at least you've got your meditation word as your
 foundation. The various preoccupations of the mind will lessen, or may
 even disappear, which is better than not having any foundation to hold
 to at all.

 Actually, all meditators have to hold firmly to their meditation word.
 Only then can they be said to be meditation //with a foundation//. When
 their meditation deteriorates, they'll be able to use it //as something
 to hold to//.

 The Buddha taught that people who make the effort to abandon
 defilement have to act like old-time warriors. In the past, they'd have
 to build a fortress with strong walls, moats, gates and towers to
 protect themselves from enemy attack. When an intelligent warrior went
 out to battle and saw that he was no match for the enemy, he would
 retreat into his fortress and defend it so that the enemy couldn't
 destroy it. At the same time, he would gather enough troops, weapons
 and food (i.e., make his concentration forthright and strong) and then
 go out to resume his fight with the enemy (i.e., all the forms of
 defilement).

 //Concentration is a very important strength. If you don't have
 concentration, where will your discernment gain any strength? The
 discernment of insight meditation is not something that can be
 fashioned into being by arrangement. Instead, it arises from
 concentration which has been mastered until it is good and solid.//

 Even those who are said to attain Awakening with 'dry insight': If they
 don't have any mental stillness, where will they get any insight? It's
 simply that their stillness isn't fully mastered. Only when we put the
 matter this way does it make any sense.

 When your concentration is solid and steady to the point where you can
 enter and leave it at will, you will be able to stay with it long and
 contemplate the body in terms of its unattractiveness, or in terms of
 its physical elements. Or, if you like, you can contemplate the people
 of the world until you see them all as skeletons, or you can
 contemplate the entire world as empty space....

 Once the mind is fully centered, then no matter whether you are
 sitting, standing, walking or lying down, the mind will be centered at
 times.  You will be able to see clearly how your own defilements --
 greed, anger and delusion, which arise from the mind -- //arise// from
 this and that cause, how they //remain// in this or that way, and you
 will be able to find means to //abandon// them with this or that
 technique.

 This is like the water in a lake which has been muddy for hundreds and
 hundreds of years suddenly becoming clear so that you can see all the
 things lying along the lake-bottom -- things which you never dreamed
 were there before.  This is called insight -- seeing things as they
 truly are.  Whatever sort of truth they have, that's the truth you see,
 without deviating from that truth.

 Forcing the mind to be still can make it let go of defilement, but it
 lets go in the same way a person cuts grass, cutting just the part
 above ground, without digging up the roots. The roots are sure to send
 up new shoots when rain falls again.  In other words, you do see the
 harm of the preoccupations which arise from the six senses, but as soon
 as you see it, you retreat into stillness without contemplating those
 preoccupations as carefully as you do when the mind is in
 concentration.  In short, you simply want stillness, without wanting to
 spend any time in contemplation -- like a ground lizard which relies on
 its hole for safety.  As soon as it sees an enemy coming, it runs into
 its hole, escaping danger only for a while.

 If you want to uproot your defilements, then when you see that
 defilement springs from the six senses -- for instance, the eye sees a
 visual object or the ear hears a sound, contact is made which causes
 you to be pleased or displeased, happy or sad, and then you grasp onto
 it as your preoccupation, making the mind murky, disturbed and upset,
 sometimes to the point where you can't eat or sleep, and can even
 commit suicide -- when you see this clearly, make your concentration
 firm and then focus your mind exclusively on examining that particular
 preoccupation.  For instance, if the eye sees an attractive visual
 object which makes you feel pleased, focus on examining just that sense
 of pleasure, to find out whether it arises from the eye or from the
 visual object.

 If you examine the visual object, you see that it's just a physical
 phenomenon.  Whether it's good or bad, it doesn't try to persuade you
 to be pleased or displeased, or to make you love it or hate it.  It's
 simply a visual object which appears and then disappears in line with
 its own nature.

 When you turn to examine the eye which sees the visual object, you find
 that the eye goes looking for objects and, as soon as it finds one,
 light gets reflected into the optic nerves so that all kinds of visible
 forms appear.  The eye doesn't try to persuade you to be pleased or
 displeased, to love or to hate anything.  Its duty is simply to see.
 Once it has seen a visible form, the form disappears.

 As for the other senses and their objects, attractive or unattractive,
 they should be examined in just the same way.

 When you contemplate in this way, you will see clearly that all the
 things in the world which become objects of defilement do so because of
 these six senses.  If you contemplate the six senses so that you don't
 tag along after them, defilements won't arise within you.  //On the
 contrary:  Insight and discernment will arise instead, all because of
 these same six senses.//  The six senses are the media of goodness and
 evil.  We will head for a good or a bad destination in the next life
 because of the way we use them.

 The world seems broad because the mind isn't centered, and is left free
 to wander among the objects of the six senses.  The world will narrow
 down when the mind has been trained in concentration so that it lies
 under your control and can contemplate the six senses exclusively
 within it.  In other words, when the mind is fully concentrated, the
 outer senses -- the eye seeing forms, the ear hearing sounds and so on
 -- won't appear at all.  All that will appear are the forms and sounds
 which are mental phenomena present exclusively in that concentration.
 You won't be paying any attention to the outer senses at all.

 When your concentration is fully solid and strong, you will be able to
 contemplate this //world of the mind// which gives rise to sensory
 contact, perceptions, preoccupations and all defilements. The mind will
 withdraw from everything leaving just the heart, or simple awareness.

 The heart and the mind have different characteristics. The mind is what
 thinks, forming perceptions and preoccupations to the point of latching
 on holding them to itself. When it sees the suffering, harm and stress
 which come from holding onto all the defilements, it will go and
 withdraw from all preoccupations and defilements.  The mind will then
 be the heart.  This is how the heart and mind differ.

 The heart is what is neutral and still.  It doesn't think anything at
 all.  It is simply aware of its stillness.  The heart is a genuinely
 neutral or central phenomenon.  Neutral with no past, no future, no
 good, no evil:  That's the heart.  When we talk about the heart of
 anything, we mean its center.  Even the human heart, which is a mental
 phenomenon, we say lies in the center of the chest.  But where the real
 heart is, we don't know.  Try focusing your attention on any part of
 the body, and you'll feel the awareness of that spot. Or you can focus
 your attention outside the body -- on a post or the wall of a house,
 for example -- and that's the spot you'll be aware of.

 So we can conclude that the true heart is still and neutral awareness.
 //Wherever there is neutral awareness, that's where the heart is.//

 When people in general talk about the heart, that's not the true heart.
 It's simply a set of muscles and valves for pumping blood throughout
 the body to keep it alive.  If this pump doesn't send blood throughout
 the body, the body can't live.  It'll have to die.  The same holds true
 with the brain.  The mind thinks of good and evil by using the brain as
 its tool.  The nervous system of the brain is a physical phenomenon.
 When its various causal factors are cut off, this physical phenomenon
 can't last.  It has to stop.

 But as for the mind, which is a mental phenomenon, Buddhism teaches
 that it continues to exist and can take birth again.  This mental
 phenomenon will stop only when insight discerns its causal factors and
 uproots their underlying causes.

 None of the various subjects and sciences of the world have an end
 point.  The more you study them, the more they fan out.  Only Buddhism
 can teach you to reach an end.  In the first stage, it teaches you to
 acquaint yourself with your body, to see how it is made up of various
 things (the 32 parts) put together, and what their duties are.  At the
 same time, Buddhism teaches you to see that the body is inherently
 unattractive.  It teaches you to acquaint yourself with this world (the
 world of a human being), which is made up of suffering and stress, and
 which will ultimately have to fall apart by its very nature.

 So now that we have received this body -- even though it is full of
 foul and unattractive things, and even though it is made up of all
 kinds of suffering and stress -- we're still able to depend on it for a
 while, so we should use it to do good to repay our debts to the world
 before we leave it at death.

 The Buddha teaches that although the nature of a person (this world) is
 to fall apart and die, the mind -- the overseer of this world -- must
 come back to be reborn as long as it still has defilements.  Thus he
 teaches us to practice concentration, which is an affair exclusively of
 the mind.  Once we have practiced concentration, we will fell every
 sensory contact inside, just at the mind.  We won't be concerned with
 out seeing and hearing at the eye or the ear.  Instead, we will be
 aware of the sensory contact right at the mind.  This is what it means
 to narrow down the world.

 The senses are the best means for taking the measure of your own mind.
 When sensory contact strikes the mind, does it have an impact on you?
 If it has a lot of impact, that shows that your mindfulness is weak,
 and your foundation is still shaky.  If it has only a little impact, or
 no impact at all, that shows that your mindfulness is strong, and you
 are fully able to care for yourself.

 These things are like Devadatta, who created trouble for the
 Bodhisattva all along. If not for Devadatta, the Bodhisattva wouldn't
 have been able to bring his character to full perfection. Once his
 character had been fully perfected, he was able to gain Awakening and
 become the Buddha.  Before gaining Awakening, he had to withstand the
 massive armies of temptation; and right after his Awakening, the three
 daughters of temptation came to test him once more.  As a result, the
 people of the world have praised him ever since for having conquered
 defilement in this world once and for all.

 //As long as the inner senses still exist, mental contact is still a
 preoccupation.//  Thus those who know, having seen the harm of these
 things, are willing to withdraw from them, leaving just the heart which
 is neutral...neutral...neutral, with no thinking, no imagining, no
 fashioning of anything at all.  When this is the case, where will this
 world be formed?  This is how the Buddha teaches us to reach the
 world's end.

                            * * * * * * * *


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 TITLE OF WORK: Buddho
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 AUTHOR: Phra Ajahn Thate Desaransi (Thanissaro Bhikkhu, translator)
 AUTHOR'S ADDRESS: Wat Hin Mark Peng
                   Sri Chiang Mai
                   Nongkai, Thailand 43130
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