The book can be purchased at Amazon. Ebook is available for loan at the Singapore National Library.
In this book, Ayya Khema explained the way and how to meditate. She guided us along the path to insights through meditation. She elaborated on the Four Noble Truths, Twelve links of Independent Origination and the transcendental dependent arising. The importance of faith and confidence in the Buddha, Dhamma and the Sangha. She explained the Four Establishments of Mindfulness, the Jhanas on both material and non-material meditative absorptions and the Seven Factors of Enlightenment.
Below are the brief explanation and quotes:
Meditation is the only way to arrive at deep concentration and it is a means and a tool and not an end in itself. The goal of meditation is insight, and tranquility (samatha) is the means to that end. Thinking is our habit and we need to stop thinking in order to have control. To control requires meditation.
Quote: Unsatisfactoriness is a feature of existence. If we experience it in ourselves, we prove that the Buddha’s teaching is correct. That’s all. We don’t need to start suffering over it, we can just observe it and say, “Evidence.” There are innumerable things that expose us to unsatisfactoriness, but we can remember the first noble truth that “unsatisfactoriness is” and say, “That’s right, that’s what the Buddha taught.” End quote.
Our suffering is due to craving. The only way to deal with suffering is to let go of the wanting. To stop looking outward and to stop engaging in many unnecessary activities. Meditation helps us to keep looking inside ourselves.
Quote: The Buddha said, “The one way for the purification of beings, for the elimination of pain, grief, and lamentation, for the final ending of all pain and grief, for entering the noble path, for attaining liberation, is mindfulness.”
“Meditation is the means by which we can practice mindfulness to the point where insight become so strong that we can see absolute reality behind the relative. Mindfulness trained in meditation can then continue in every activity.” End quote.
Many thoughts arise when we meditate. “If thoughts are like clouds in the background, not solid but quick to disappear, it is unnecessary to run after them with a label.
It is the same in our daily life. We drop unwholesome thoughts and substitute wholesome ones. just like we drop all thoughts in our meditation and bring our mind to our breath.
What we have experienced in the past has gone and the future is nothing but a concept. To gain insight and wisdom, we have to constantly live at the present. The more we live at the present, the more we experience the Four Noble Truths.
The Buddha spoke about four supreme emotions, which are the only ones worth having, they are loving-kindness (mettā), compassion (Karunā), sympathetic joy (muditā), and equanimity (upekkkhā).
Quote: The Buddha said that in order to meditate properly one has to be comfortable in mind and body. We need a benevolent feeling toward ourselves, not only to give us ease in our daily lives, but also to succeed in our meditation. To relax within doesn’t mean that we no longer know what our defilements are but that we realise that why, too, are acceptable.” End quote.
Ayya Khema further taught three types of loving-kindness meditation and the five recollections which is important to me.
- I am of the nature to decay. I have not gone beyond decay
- I am of the nature to be diseased. I have not gone beyond diseased.
- I am of the nature to die. I have not gone beyond death.
- All that is mine, dear, and delightful will change and vanish.
- I am the owner of my kamma, the heir of my kamma, born of my kamma, related to my kamma. Whatever kamma I shall create, whether good or evil, that I shall inherit.
Quote: The Buddha said, “Who sees dependent arising, sees Dhamma. Who sees Dhamma, sees dependent arising.”
“We also need to remember again and again that meditation taken out of context cannot succeed. It may bring some peacefulness eventually, but it will not bring the real transformation that a spiritual path provides.” End quote.
To end the cycle of birth and death, whatever that is in our head and the things that we’ve experienced or come to us, we just have to be aware of it and not put ourselves into wanting the pleasant or getting rid of what is unpleasant. In other words, we practise equanimity, even-mindedness.
Quote: The whole of the Buddha’s teaching, and the sole purpose of meditation in the Buddha’s dispensation, is elevating our worldly, everyday, consciousness to liberation. End quote.
Feelings are just feelings. When feelings arise, we acknowledge and accept them without having to react. This way we can achieve equanimity.
Quote: We need to prepare the mind to become so calm, one-pointed, and strong that it will no longer flinch when it is confronted by the deepest truth. End quote.
We are made of four elements, earth, water, fire and air and it is impossible to find a “self” in this combination. The feeling and sensation that we have are impermanent. We focus on the arising and ceasing of feeling and sensation in the meditation. When we have experienced the impermanence and the constant change, we’ll place ourselves as a little less solid than before.
Quote: As long as our consciousness has not yet become Dhamma consciousness, we will all fall into that trap. End quote.
The Buddha often start with “secluded” when explained in the meditation process, it means “secluded from sense contact.” In order to be secluded from sense contact, we need to have the inner feeling of happiness, of ease, of contentment. Contentment and satisfaction come from knowing that one has done one’s utmost.
There are five spiritual faculties when developed bring fruition. They are mindfulness, faith, wisdom, energy and concentration. Mindfulness is the leader. We must always be mindful when we are sitting, walking, standing or lying down. Mindfully knowing what we are doing. Mindfully living at the present. Without mindfulness, we are constantly being carried away by our emotions and thus, suffering entails.
With faith, we are devoted and committed in our practice. Wisdom allows us to know whether we are devoted and committed to the truth. Unless we have that assurance, our faith could be ill placed.
Energy spurs us to meditate. With excess energy, we’ll experience mental and physical restlessness, thus our concentration will be affected. With less energy, we’ll fall into sloth and torpor. We’ll unable to concentrate. Balance is required to balance the faculties of both energy and concentration.
Quote: When heart and mind are balanced, the mind understands what we are doing, and the heart can feel. The spiritual path can only be practiced through our feelings. If we understand the teaching but don’t feel any benefit, it is an intellectual exercise and belongs at the university. End quote.
Practising tranquility is necessary for liberation and meditative absorptions are part of the path. Without meditation, we are not able to go deeper into understanding the Buddha’s profound teachings.
Quote: When we can stay with the subject of meditation and do not become distracted, we gain confidence through the experience that, first of all, it is possible to; secondly, that we are able to do it; and thirdly, that the results that accrue are exactly as the Buddha said.
Initial and sustained application are the first two factors of the meditative absorptions and can be likened to unlocking the door to concentration. End quote.
We have to meditate, study and practise the Buddha’s teachings and make it a habit. Gradually, it will become part of our life. As we sit and meditate and is able to enter into the meditative absorptions and with pleasant abiding, we’re able to purify our negative emotions like anger, ill will, hate or dislike.
Ayya Khema further explained the way leading to the meditative absorptions which is the four jhanas and the four realms of non-material world.
Quote: When we experience deep peace and contentment, with no wishes, no problems, the world can no longer hold the same attraction for us as it used to, and we have taken a step toward liberation. …”the knowledge and vision of things as they really are. Vision is the inner experience and knowledge is the understanding of it.” End quote.
Whatever that is happening in life is conditioned. Even our mental awareness is also conditioned. With sense contact, our sense consciousness generates feeling, perception and related thought follow. We observe pleasant and unpleasant feeling whenever it arises and ceases. This helps us recognise the causes of our feelings and enables us to better restrain in our thought, action and speech, not to be reactive. This way, we can divert our thought to a wholesome direction.
Quote: we investigate the five aggregates of which we are composed: body or movement, mind consisting of feeling, perception, mental formations or thoughts, and sense consciousness. When the process of arising and ceasing has become clear to us, it has given us such a significant insight into ourselves and others that we no longer need to get angry at anybody, because we know that our anger is merely one of the aggregates arising and ceasing. End quote.
Joy comes from gratitude and happiness and helps us in our meditation. The meditative steps that were taught by the Buddha leads to insight. The meditative absorptions are preconditions for the attainment of wisdom. When the mind is calm and collected, it is capable of “knowing things as they really are.”
Quote: The attainment of liberation of freedom is a slow and arduous process, frequently even tedious, and sometimes appears to make no progress at all. At other times, profound insights follow each other so quickly that we would like to step back and say, “Not so fast, I’m not quite ready for all this!” End quote.
When we are disenchanted about the whole world around us, we no longer find them attractive nor would we want to cling to them. It is a gradual process into feeling dispassion.
There are ten fetters that the Buddha spoke of. The first three are non-self, not being attached to rites and rituals and skeptical doubt. Non-self is losing the belief in ourselves as an entity, having identity or personality. One has understood that the body, feeling, mind and mental objects arise due to conditions. There is never a solid self. When one has understood the Dhamma, rites and rituals no longer seem important. However, that doesn’t mean that one cannot perform them. Understand that liberation requires the effort of practising and understanding the Dhamma and it has to be done by ourselves and nothing or anyone else can help liberate us.
Lastly, we have all the confidence in the Buddha’s teaching by studying, practising and meditating as well as insights into the Buddha’s teaching. Though not fully attained, is stable and not swayed by any external factors or other beliefs.
Quote: Traditionally, it is said that a stream-enterer has a maximum of seven more lives as a human being before becoming fully enlightened. However, it is possible for liberation to take place in a single lifetime. Such a person will remain the Buddha’s disciple and can never again break any of the five precepts. End quote.
The non-returner loses the fetter of hate and greed and see the world as it is. They no longer attracted to things around them and are aware that the conditions that have been keeping us in the cycle of birth and death. The remaining five fetters are restlessness, the desire to be born in the fine-material and the nonmaterial realms, conceit and ignorant. These fetters can only be eliminated when one has become enlightened.
Quote: When aversion, rejection, resistance, anger, jealousy, pride, greed, or craving arise within, we can take a moment to look at them mindfully. When we recognise their burdensome impact on us, we understand that we need not continue to let them exist. We can substitute compassion, or the idea that they are not important, or the understanding of impermanence, or corelessness. End quote.
We all have the potential to become enlightened only when we practise in accordance with the Buddha’s teachings and perfect them!
The End.
With Ayya Khema’s “Know Where You’re Going”, I end the year 2024!
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