The Way of Wisdom: Welcome Back to Your Self

When I arrived at last week's Dharma talk, held up by ferocious rain and Bangkok traffic, Phra Cittasamvaro Bhikku was talking about the fella who thinks he's in charge when the boss is away. You know, the boss is out for the day and everyone slacks off. People put their feet up, get a coffee, read the paper.

And there's always one chap who goes around telling people they'd better get back to work. Does anyone listen? Of course not. They tell him to get lost. Our thoughts do the same. We think we're the boss. We think we're in charge, and our thoughts ignore us completely. "Work? Who's going to make me?"

This is, of course, the monkey mind. It leaps from branch to branch, now swinging to this idea, now that. Phra Pandit also described it as the caterpillar mind, one end of it reaching out to cling onto the next bit of leaf before letting go of the last. And with each touch, he suggested, comes Dukkha. It's all in the contact.

The funny thing is, we can step back and see it in action. In a short meditation exercise at the end of his talk, Phra Pandit guided us to examine the sense of our body. Then sounds. Then what you can see, the light behind the eyelids, what you can smell, and, finally, the passing of thoughts. And then back to the breath.

Of course, thoughts flew around. Possibly, without anything visual to engage them, much more furiously than they do when you are not meditating. Then, with the commitment to focus on the breath, they very gradually slow down, and I sit and watch them. I still don't fully understand why it's good to do this.

Yet even when it's not immediately calming, I still feel that somehow meditation has a beneficial effect on my day and in my life. That's why I try to keep doing it. But I'm not good at it, and on Thursday night I helped myself out by accompanying each breath with a word from Thich Nhat Hanh's silent gatha:

In, out
Deep, slow
Calm, ease
Smile, release
Present moment, wonderful moment.

I like using this as it brings peace and calm right away. As Thich Nhat Hanh says, "we practice not to be happy in the future; we practice to be happy right in the present moment. When we’re sitting, we should have happiness as we are sitting." I also like to chant, especially the name of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, and sometimes to pray too.

I suspect that these practices may take me away from the direct observation of the body and mind that Phra Pandit talks about, but I feel they are useful for accessing what he describes as our non-conceptual inherent Wisdom, that which lies beyond our normal conventional selves. Better known to me as Buddha-nature. They are a welcome back to True Self.

The Mindfulness Bell:

Thich Nhat Hanh: Sitting in the Wind of Spring