Q&A on Jhana, Anxiety, Precepts…

Q: I think we can start with the subject of fear. I think we can all agree that most of our everyday actions are in some way based on different kinds of fears. I often go to the root cause, to the origins of every fear, and I think (this is my subjective view) that there should be one fundamental root cause of all fears we experience every day. So my question is, in your view, what is the root cause of those fears, and how can we tackle it?

N: Well the root cause is death, fear of death and dying. That’s where every fear is rooted. You know, fear of losing possessions, losing loved ones, not getting what you want, it’s all fearful because it implies the certain end of your life, or at least the end of your life the way you know it. So you can’t tackle it in the sense of to not have it, because for as long as you’re alive you’re liable to death. And that’s why the ultimate contemplation the Buddha was talking about was maraṇasati. So you can’t get rid of it, the only thing you can do is develop your mind in regard to it through sīla, samādhi, and then through understanding. But in order to do that, you pretty much need to stop ignoring the fact that you’re going to die. So when people act in their life towards things, families, ambitions, every single one of those actions is underlined by their mind ignoring their own mortality. They never think ‘I might not even live to see the end of this’. Because their life will become quite unpleasant. And that’s an inevitable step, unless you admit the unpleasantness of life condemned to death, you cannot develop your mind towards death correctly, the way the Buddha was teaching. So the first step is to develop very strict virtue, sense restraint, and keep the precepts, because otherwise the mind probably will not be able to bare it, if that’s the direction you want to go and contemplate.

Q: How to calm the mind? Especially when we are in distress, and we fail to cut off the flow of thought. Even observing breathing does not help. I would be happy for a practical solution.

N: You calm your mind when you’re distressed by calming you mind before you get distressed. So don’t wait until you’re distressed to start calming your mind. The only reason your mind is not calm when you’re distressed is because you haven’t cultivated calmness when you were not distressed. So before distress comes your way, and it will, one way or the other, start restraining and not acting out of pressures, towards pleasure, towards avoiding pain. Endure that, and that’s already preparing you for when distress, or any other stress comes. You will already have a ground for not resisting it blindly, and spinning out of control. So there is absolutely no samādhi, no calmness, without the basis of virtue and precepts, it’s absolutely non-negotiable. So if a person doesn’t keep precepts, or not so strictly, or not really committed to them, or sometimes yes sometimes no, well, that’s the type of samādhi you will have. Sometimes you’ll avoid distress, sometimes you won’t, but either way you will be subjected to it.

Q: The best way of dealing with distress when it happens. So suppose we were not following your advice.

N: Right, right. So you haven’t followed the advice and now the distress happens, and you will follow it in the future, but how to deal with the stress that has happened: endure it. There is no magical fix. Basically, if the mind is not strong, the endurance will get unpleasant. If the mind is strong, endurance can be pleasant. Doesn’t matter what it is. That’s like in the Suttas, when the Buddha would be abused by people who shouted insults at him or something, and then some people noticed ‘look, the Tathāgatha, he’s getting even brighter and happier when people do that to him’. Because it just reminds him how free he is. So, if a person is not developed and distress is there, make sure you don’t do anything on account of that distress, that then later you’ll have to deal with. So endure it, even if it’s like the advice from the Suttas: grit your teeth, press the tongue against the roof of your mouth, and endure it until it passes. And then, don’t be careless when it disappears, don’t forget that it will come back. It’s not gonna last forever, that’s for sure, it doesn’t matter how bad it is. The mind itself will run out of energy to spin out of control. You have to wait until that happens, and then start practising, and not be careless again.

Q: Is this also part of the practice, enduring it and not getting distracted?

N: Absolutely. That is the core of the practice. As the Buddha said, enduring patiently is the foremost and the only type of austerity that he approves of. It’s the austerity that can actually result in liberation. So people can endure all sorts of things, people can endure dying out of hunger, people can endure not breathing and whatever else those ascetics were doing, self-torture. But people, what they cannot endure, is distress and fear on the mental level without acting out of it. For that, you need wisdom. And if you do it, you will get wisdom. So it was the Sutta, I don’t remember the exact number, but it was basically when this man was talking about types of austerity, which ones did the Tathāgatha approve of. And he said he did all of them, at one point he stopped breathing, and he said basically, if there are physical pains to be experienced on account of enduring, he has experienced them, and none of that was the right way. And he said not acting out of craving towards your own feelings, a person who can endure that, that is the foremost austerity. Nothing else can match that. Even if somebody, I dunno, hangs from the top of a tree and never eats and never drinks water and dies like that or something, that’s not even close. And the reason why people do these extreme austerities by the way, and endurances, is because they can’t endure their own feelings without acting out of them. So it’s easier to double down and jump into it and try to deal with it on your own terms, and that’s what ignorance is. You’re not in control, and you need to start admitting that, and feeling the weight of it.

Q: Related question, how to practise sensory restraint in the presence of stimuli that does not depend on your will? I understand the restraint of the senses in the sense that, say, you don’t eat or listen to music because of the pleasure. What about when you weren’t looking for a pleasant situation, but you still find yourself in it? Say, do you eat at a restaurant when there’s good music? I know that by retreating into solitude one can minimise how often this happens, but it seems to me that this may fall more into the realm of monastic life.

N: When you’re in the world, the exposure to some of these things is inevitable. So what you do is you have to realise that it’s already a compromise. So you can’t expect for your mind to develop as much as it would if you learn how to deal with solitude. And if you’re fine with that compromise, then just make sure to be very careful when you are in control of your circumstances. So when you do have a say, make sure you don’t slip up. And then if accidentally, if somebody hugs you or something, well it won’t last for three hours, it’s gonna be ten seconds, and that’s fine. So you can endure it because your mind has been sufficiently withdrawn from it when you were in charge of making these choices. So in other words, if when you are in charge of your sense restraint, if you invest effort, proper effort, sufficient effort there, you won’t worry as much about all these kinds of accidental exposures, because the mind will not immediately leap up onto them. Because it has already created some buffer zone through the sense restraint that you practised beforehand.

Q: I have a question about concrete suggestions for a lay follower. So, for someone who has decided, for some reason let’s just assume at this point that this is the fact of the matter, that that person cannot ordain at that particular point. So what are some concrete suggestions say, taking into account the vicissitudes of contemporary life as to how one could cultivate the virtuous and contemplative life as wisely and as efficiently as possible. For instance, how to engage with sexual restraint, with limited food consumption, solitude, having contact with like-minded people, and so on and so forth. So what would be, say, some of your concrete suggestions for someone in a lay setting. How could that person pursue these activities and disciplines as efficiently as possible, given the circumstances?

N: Some person can adjust it this way, some person can adjust it the other way. The point is, the adjustment, whatever that might be, should be about minimising your exposure to things that will tempt you and pressure you, where there is a good likelihood you will give in. So, sell your TV, minimise your internet, only use it as a tool when you need it, no browsing of the news, movies, series, use it for Suttas and studies. Unless you have to go to work where there are other people, then when you don’t have to go to work, don’t go and socialise just for the sake of distraction. So basically just read about the five precepts or eight precepts and see what you can do to support what those precepts require. And then see where you fail, and then improve there. So you have to, as I said in my response to the earlier question, you have to recognise, it is already a compromise situation. So you will have to do more side-work aimed at managing the circumstances, because they will tempt you and pressure you.

Q: I would have an additional question here, it’s a very practical one and one that I was curious about for quite some time. In certain Christian traditions for instance, you would have lay movements that would imitate to a certain degree a monastic lifestyle. So this is something that has emerged in specific times throughout history, where lay people had this feeling or desire to engage in a lifestyle that would be similar to the monastic lifestyle. I was just curious whether in the Theravāda tradition there is something of the kind, whether there is a say an institution of sorts that is meant for lay people who would be interested in pursuing the path of wisdom more intensively, without necessarily undergoing the full ordination.

N: Well I think that’s what the Buddha to encouraged people back in the day, that couldn’t ordain, or disrobed out of weakness or whatever else, to at least go back to the monastery on uposatha days, keep the precepts, in other words behave like monks. At least occasionally, because it’s meritorious and it can help your mind, and who knows, maybe it will spur a decision to become a monk again or something. Today I think any monastery, just go and stay in any monastery and you will have to keep the eight precepts and kind of behave like monks. So, yeah, there are many Theravāda monasteries, retreat centres where you can go and you have to be very restrained, follow the routine and so on, so that’s about it. You just go and become an anagārika into the monastery, so you’re not a monk, but you have to behave like a monk. I mean you go to Asia and I think in Thailand you don’t even have to be an anagārika, but in Europe we had to be a whole year as anagārika, then a whole year as a novice, and only then we get our upasampadā. So by that time you’ll know what to expect, and you know if you want to do it, and if you can do it. So for two years, and in some monasteries even longer, for two to three years, before you can become a monk.

Q: I have several questions but, I will try to put them into one. It’s quite similar to the question before: for a lay person, which is the way to live in this society which I think we can all agree is based on the wrong values? How can we maintain our inner peace? In other words, for example, in this society most of the time you have to struggle to maintain your ego, to protect this ego from bad influences, bad people, and so on. And this can be sometimes very stressful. So what is your suggestion to keep inner peace, or try to?

N: You can’t have inner peace in that setting, it’s as simple as that. Household life is crowded and dusty, dirty, full of people with ignorance. So you can’t have inner peace, there is a reason that every Sutta starts like that. So if you truly want complete inner peace, you have to leave that life. So if you can’t leave that life, you have to recognise that you can only have a partial inner peace. And that inner peace comes out of self-control. If you can develop self-control, and you can develop self-control. There were lay people in the Suttas that freed themselves from sensuality and ill-will, still in that setting. Obviously they were not as busy, as occupied, and as engaged as somebody who is completely uninterested in any development. So you do need to keep the precepts, protect your environment, that will then protect your precepts, that will then protect your sense restraint. And start developing self-control. So you’re gonna have to endure a lot of things, one way or the other. As a monk you have to endure a lot, but if you want to stay there, then you have to endure a lot.

As Ñāṇavīra said, existence is a full-time job, it’s not just something people like to think they just go through. So if you want inner peace, be clear with yourself how much of that peace you want, and how much you’re willing to compromise on it. And then yeah, precepts, five precepts, ideally eight precepts, and start developing that self control through them. And then you will know exactly when to say ‘no’ to people and what’s fine and what isn’t, because you start developing these criteria of your behaviour. But probably the most important thing is to realise, it’s gonna be hard work one way or the other, it is unavoidable. So you want peace, you have to work for it. The more you work for it, the more peace you have. And that’s what I think Ajahn Chah said, you give up a little you get a little peace, you work to give up a lot, you get a lot of peace. If you work and give everything up internally, well, you get all the peace. But it doesn’t happen magically. There is no magical technique, or recipe, or method that will then just do the work for you. You can’t have it both ways. So you can’t be in the world and engage with the world, and at the same time expect to be disengaged from the world and peaceful. It’s either/or.

So that’s what I mean, it’s a compromise, and you have to see how far you yourself are willing to go in that compromise. Because if you really value the peace, you could already start tailoring your life and minimising engagements. It will be work, but then it will pay off later on. You’re gonna have less disturbances and so on. If you can’t do that, well, ask yourself, why can’t you do that? What stops you? Like, what stops anyone from leaving the household life? Honestly speaking. At any given second. And same, I say that to the monks, like, don’t use the tradition and robes and the environment you live in to keep you a monk. Make sure, basically, your mind prefers this lifestyle so you go beyond any chance of disrobing on account of sensuality or anything stupid.

So every time you should ask yourself the same: what prevents me from just walking away from whatever I’m doing right now, this very second? What sense of duty have I assumed? So you want to make sure you’re clear about it, because that’s how you will start to value the right things. Because see, you might actually not be changing your environment sufficiently enough, out of some blindly assumed sense of duty that you don’t even really have. But you just fear to think about it, so you don’t give it up, so now you feel stuck. ‘I want peace but I can’t give this up’. Well, you can’t have it both ways. See which one you want more, and then grit your teeth, and you have to endure it. And then maybe, like if you think a solution will present itself later, fine, you have to be patient until then. But again, you have to be honest with yourself and see how much input you yourself have in your own environment. It’s not given. You can say no to everything, if there is a good reason to do so.

Q: How to contemplate mindfulness or concentration to the extent that you are aware of your thinking and acting before you do it? And, how to recognise habits, thoughts that harm us along the way? As I understand it, we should avoid the harmful—that’s greed, resistance, and delusions. While greed and resistance are fairly easy to detect, what about delusions?

N: Delusions, practically, are distractions. So, stuff you do to distract yourself, through your senses. Not necessarily sensual, or not necessarily rooted in ill-will. So, watching TV, reading news, talking to others if there is no point, that’s why often the Buddha would talk a lot about avoiding idle chatter, pointless chatter, and it’s even incorporated in those practical precepts. So things you would do throughout the day, little activities, and so on, just to keep yourself busy. All of that would be cultivating delusion. We covered that in that ‘abiding in non-activity’ talk I think, or at least part of it. But the point is yeah, that is the hardest, obviously, to deal with but you can certainly start doing something about it on a small scale. So you’re not sensual, you’re not angry, OK, so why don’t you just sit with yourself doing nothing? Why do you need to, you know, pot around on your phone, or do some work project, or read something, why is that necessary? Why do you depend on the activity of a neutral kind? So it’s not, as I said, unwholesome in terms of greed or ill-will. But, you do depend on the external activity that requires your senses, so it is distracting in that sense. And that’s exactly why delusion is the hardest to see, and hardest to uproot, as the Buddha would say.

Q: So I also have a question. We are all sort of on the way, we all practise some sense restraint and probably some sīla. Obviously we are not, as lay people or probably also as monastics, so developed that we can say for instance that we have already accomplished the previous steps on the gradual training necessary for practising jhāna. So does it mean that in order to start practising jhāna, you need to accomplish all the previous steps? Or is it like this, that you can start sort of a little bit of practice of jhāna, even if you are not completely sense restrained and maybe didn’t fulfil some other steps completely?

N: No, no, you have to be fully developed in virtue. Because even in the Suttas where there were some monks that did have jhānas, and then they started slipping in their virtues, and then they couldn’t get jhānas any more. Although they knew exactly how and what to do, their actions undermined them. So it’s absolutely non-negotiable, and that’s by the way what jhāna is. A full, thorough, complete withdrawal from unwholesome, on the basis of your behaviour that has been cultivated beforehand, of withdrawal from the unwholesome. Through keeping the precepts, abstaining from sexuality, ill-will, pretty much all these things that are rooted in greed and ill-will. And that is already the practice of samādhi by the way, that’s why sīla, samādhi, and then paññā. It’s not sīla, and now let me go and find what samādhi is. Perfecting your sīla is the way of composing yourself rightly, away from the unwholesome states. So you don’t have to think like you’re not practising jhāna simply by keeping precepts. You are actually, you are closer to jhāna by keeping the precepts than if you are doing your ānāpānasati without the precepts. It’s withdrawing your mind from the unwholesome in the world, on account of which the pleasure from that withdrawal arises in the first jhāna, when the mind recognises ‘I am safe here’. And the very first part of that withdrawal is the sīla and virtue. Not a meditation technique or something you read you should do in order to get the jhāna.

Q: I understand this, but nevertheless, should one still practise ānāpānasati or should one just completely give it up and, I don’t know, just do nothing as you suggested in one of your talks?

N: Right right. Well, it depends on the motivation. If you are doing ānāpānasati because you can’t sit still, you’re not doing the right ānāpānasati, you’re just trying to find something to occupy yourself with. You’re being mindless about your own experience, not self aware. And many people would be doing meditation for that reason, because if they just sit, aware, they start to lose their mind. So meditation becomes something to keep you occupied while you’re seemingly ‘doing nothing’. But you’re actually doing a lot. And that’s not ānāpānasati. Ānāpānasati, as the ānāpānasati Sutta says, well, it first requires the right view. So you need to have been very accomplished in virtue and understanding of the Dhamma beforehand. And then secondly, it culminates in fulfilment of the four foundations of mindfulness. There is no mention of, ānāpānasati, then boom, experience of jhāna, in the actual Sutta of ānāpānasati that the Buddha was teaching. So I’m not trying to debate now what leads to jhāna or whatever, but that should be enough to just make you question your own view of what jhāna is. I don’t think we can get into that now, but if you look into the Suttas, you might see that, it might be slightly different from what you’re expecting it to be.

And the same reason, like, why do you want to practise jhāna? Again, ask yourself, while you know that maybe you haven’t been really fulfilled in all the prerequisites. Why do you ask, can I still practise jhāna, why do you want jhāna, without having developed virtue and everything else? What do you expect that jhāna to give to you? Do you think it will bypass the fact that you haven’t developed the virtue? Do you think it will just give you the pleasure, that it’s nice, so you just want a bit of pleasure before you go back to work? Well, that is sensuality 101. ‘Let me get some pleasure so I can then go back to work so that I can get more pleasure’. And that’s not jhāna then. So just be clear about your motivation, and while you’re clarifying your motivation, why you want jhāna, why you want meditation and so on, ‘what is it supposed to accomplish for me?’, be clear about all these things. While you’re clarifying those things, keep practising virtue and fulfilling those prerequisites you know you should be fulfilling.

Q: I have a question that is somewhat related to what we were just talking about. I’ll be very grateful if you could perhaps spend some time talking about the role of reflection and understanding in cultivating the right mindfulness. I think this ties in nicely with what we’ve just been talking about. Mainly, there’s this idea that is very present and prominent in contemporary circles, whereby the idea is to cultivate mindfulness by merely observing. Merely being aware, so developing ‘pure awareness’ that is devoid of all thought and understanding. And then the implicit idea is that you are somehow going to enter into a unique frame or state of mind that will somehow absolve you of all the things that plague you, basically. I mean I’m oversimplifying here intentionally, but I would say that the implicit premise behind many of the contemporary approaches is precisely this. And whenever one reads Suttas, one sees that verbs such as ‘understanding’ and ‘thinking’ and whatnot are present, they’re an integral part of the path. But it’s also clear that this understanding, this thinking, this knowledge, is not, say, a factual, propositional knowledge that is often taught in, say, epistemological courses. So I would be very grateful if you could talk a little bit about the role of reflection and understanding in the contemplative path, maybe with concrete examples so that it is more clear as to how one might integrate it as efficiently as possible into one’s practice.

N: Before I answer that, we do have that whole playlist on our YouTube channel about meditation, and a lot of those talks address exactly that. You know, the contemporary notions of focusing practices and so on, whereby people try to avoid thinking and the problem, expecting it to magically disappear. And then the idea of samādhi and jhāna become an extension of that, just ‘I’m focused hard enough on one-pointedness, and then I have this special experience where I’m unaware of myself and everything has disappeared and it was so blissful’. So, not just that that’s not mindfulness, that’s completely the opposite direction. That’s literally absence of your mind. How can absence of your mind be fullness of your mind, mind-full. It’s just the opposite direction.

The role of reflection in the practice of the path, as you said, it’s from the beginning to the end, that’s pretty much the unifying factor. It is because of your reflection that you recognise the nature of your situation as a lay person. It is because of your reflection that you recognise that there is an option to leave that, become a monk, or at least get the precepts on. So it is because of your reflection that you adopt the moral set of behaviour and the virtue and you start valuing it. It is because of your reflection that you then grow out of your precepts. It is because of your reflection that your mind experiences calmness and composure on account of those precepts, that’s your samādhi, and when that has developed, it is because of your reflection you get to understand the complete clarity of things that need to be understood for freedom. So that’s why the Buddha said you cannot have too much of mindfulness. You cannot have too much of that reflection. So sure, sometimes you can be more actively thinking about things. And then sometimes you need to calm down a bit, and just drop the subject, and calm down and so on. That’s kind of the difference between vipassanā and samatha practice. But fundamentally, all is within mindfulness. And the role is, well, immeasurable.

And often even when laypeople would talk to the Buddha, not even to the monks, all he would do is encourage them to start questioning. Don’t go by the tradition, don’t go by the seniority or something. Ask yourself, why do I value this? Why do I hold this? Why do I do this? What do I want from my life? And so on. And that thing never changes. And then for a monk, who has left that life, he should keep constantly asking, ‘is there an arisen sensual lust in me? Is there an arisen ill-will in me? Can a non-arisen sensual lust arise in me?’ He doesn’t ask them as some sort of pointless abstract questions, or mantras that he repeats throughout the day, mumbles to himself. No, he really needs to know, ‘wait, can non-arisen unwholesome states arise in me? I don’t know.’ Well there you go. That’s your work. You need to know. Because not knowing means, yes they can. You’re not clear about it, that’s how those things arise. So then he diligently sets on to do the work and purifies his mind’s states, you know, first watch of the night, third watch of the night, and so on. That’s what purification is, it’s not focusing on the nostrils and become mindless, completely unaware of everything around you. It’s reviewing your mind, not allowing anything unwholesome to be welcomed, delighted in, accepted, not acting out of anything unwholesome, and then contemplating your way out of it. Through that sense restraint, and not acting out. And none of that is possible to do if you’re not mindful and reflexive.

Q: I have a subsequent question that’s related to this. Why would you say thoughts and thinking in general nowadays has become so demonised, to the point where Buddhism, for many people, is basically identified with non-thinking? So this ideal or this idea of thinking being the main culprit of all the existential problems. Is this maybe, you know, a symptom of the Western mind dealing with its own problems, and then just projecting them onto Buddhism? Or, why would thought be so vilified?

N: Well I don’t know if it’s specifically the Western mind, but basically it’s a symptom of a mind, or a symptom of a culture, that has proliferated significantly into sensuality. So the expectation for a quick fix and blaming the external things for problems, it’s the automatic default behaviour. And then when sometimes people cannot blame the obvious external things for their problems, well the next external thing is my thinking in regard to the problem. So then they turn to spirituality, hopefully, and spirituality does offer that, because, you know, most of those people believe in the same solutions, as in, stop thinking and the problem will disappear. It’s like, well, thinking was never the problem. And that’s the whole point. But for as long as you think (ironically enough) that your thinking is the problem, well you’re contradicting yourself. Because you can’t stop thinking, because trying to stop thinking is your own thought. So all you’re hoping is, basically, hopefully sufficiently enough, I can ignore this problem and it will go away. So that’s what I mean, people expect a quick fix, and the quickest fix is ‘block your thoughts from recognising the problem’. Not, ‘hey, my thoughts reveal that a problem is there, let me then deal with the problem, then regardless of what I think, there will be no problem there’. That’s too much work now.

So it’s sensuality, it’s sensual behaviour. And I don’t mean like crazy indulgent or something, it’s just people dependent on their senses, things that come through the sense, activities, distractions, and which means every time you engage in that direction, you are losing the basis for developing patience, basis for developing endurance, and basis for developing self reflection. Because this is pleasant, and covers any problem up, so why do I need to bother to dig up a wound and feel the pain, of it when I can just paste on this magical cream and feel nothing, and continue with my life? Well, until you can’t, and then it’s too late to do anything about it. The wound has festered and spread around, and now you’re done. But again, sensuality will prevent you from seeing that. That’s why people don’t see the peril in it.

So yeah, blaming thoughts, and that’s like I said, meditation practices that are about focusing and not thinking are exactly that. Extension of sensuality, like an animal trying to hunt a prey that it really values, and that will provide me with satisfaction. So people are trying to hunt the special experience that will now provide me with great pleasure and all the disappearances of my problems. That’s it, that’s what most people turn to religion for. And it’s fine if you turn to religion for those mistaken reasons, but it’s not fine if you never actually start questioning those and hopefully, you know, upgrade your expectations and practice. Like, sensual mind cannot expect enlightenment to be anything other than great sensuality. And that’s fine. But it’s when you start to do it and learn about it, if you’ve never abandoned those sensual expectations, well then you’re just, well you’re not getting anywhere.

Q: Yeah, you were just talking about the reflection and contemplation practices, so how to get to the root of the problem? I was just thinking about this. So you recognise that you have a problem, right. And would you say that the correct way of contemplating and meditating upon that problem, of why a certain thing causes desire, aversion, etc. It’s not the why, but the breaking it down into constituent parts, into the five khandhas for example.

N: No, that would be basically, pretty much an abstract analysis you’re doing in order to get rid of the problem. So if you see a problem of five khandhas and so on, you wanna see that from the problem. You don’t want to be putting it into a problem and making it be so. That’s what often people say, ‘oh I reflect like this, and everything’s anicca’, all that is just trying to manage this problem that you can’t deal with, using Buddhist terminology and so on. You want to recognise that whatever problem is there, first of all, it doesn’t matter why. It doesn’t matter how, it doesn’t matter who. That’s like the simile the Buddha gave in the Suttas, like a man gets shot with an arrow. And he’s bleeding, and it’s very painful. But he refuses to deal with the bleeding and the pain until he finds out who shot him, why they shot him, what clan was the person that shot him, could have he done something to not be shot, all of that is completely… and he wastes his time and he bleeds to death. He tries to manage his suffering, provide the satisfying answers to justify his suffering, all in order to not deal with the suffering.

So that’s the first step to recognise, is that it doesn’t matter why, what, what for, and who, what matters is, sooner or later, something will bother you, something will arise for you, and that’s the problem. Doesn’t matter where it came from, or for what reason. So then you start, and that’s already the first step to stop blaming the world, or trying to justify or psychologise, ‘oh this is what happened so next time I won’t do that’, all of that is to try to prevent your liability to suffer. The only way you can prevent that is by becoming a fully enlightened person. So you realise it’s not about management, it’s not about finding the underlying causes or the reasons, it’s about accepting the liability to suffering, feeling the suffering here and now whenever it wants to arise, not trying to prolong it, but not trying to get rid of it either, enduring it, not breaking the precepts on account of it, not distracting yourself with sensuality on account of it, and that will already force your mind to see it for what it is. Or at least, stop turning a blind eye to it.

And from there you will get to, if you endure that, that pure dukkha, without a cover up, without psychologising, without all these distractions in regard to the dukkha, well, everything else you read in the Suttas is going to start to make more sense. Because now you actually have a basis for the things that the Buddha was talking about. And that’s how your contemplation on Dhamma and so on from that abstract level of ‘this is one aggregate, two aggregates, three aggregates’, comes down onto the very concrete level of, you see it in what you’re enduring. Not at the expense of, and not in regard to getting rid of what bothers you. And then, incidentally enough, that will get rid of all the suffering, full understanding. But not through the management, but through the what we call ‘uprooting’ in our talks. And that’s the big difference.

So your mind might start picking up stuff that you read from the Suttas, but make sure you’re not motivated by trying to get rid of the suffering. Because you’re not trying to understand it, you’re trying to get rid of it with justifications using the information you collected from the Suttas. And many people do that, like ‘oh yeah, yeah, everything is anicca, yeah, I understand that’. Especially when things bother them, they keep repeating the mantra ‘everything is anicca, everything is anicca’ not because they understood anicca, or they see it directly, it’s just the mantra helps them dismiss the pain. And that’s not the anicca the Buddha was teaching about. You first need to endure things in order to see that they’re anicca. Not, apply and paste your response over them.

Q: I think you said what I was trying to say actually, I didn’t mean the abstract breaking it down, but feeling the feeling…

N: Well sure, like, again, maybe I used ‘abstract’ in too concise a way, but the point is, if you’re trying to even contemplate these aggregates and everything else that you’ve read from the Suttas in order to deal with the pain, that means you want to get rid of the pain, you’re acting out of aversion towards pain. And that’s why you will not see the Dhamma. Not because you haven’t read the right Sutta, it’s because you still cultivate the basic principle of craving that the Dhamma begins with. Aversion towards pain, lusting after pleasure, and ignoring the neutral feeling. So you will inevitably have to start like that, but if you keep your mind on your motivation ‘why am I doing this?’ it can become apparent to you that you are trying to contemplate the Dhamma because you’re still cultivating aversion towards pain. And that’s why you cannot get to the Dhamma, because of that aversion, not because of your insufficient cultivation or contemplation.

So suffering needs to be accepted. That’s why the Buddha said, ‘I teach only two things: suffering and freedom from it’. So most people cannot even suffer, because they immediately go into the mode of aversion. So whatever they do, even practise, become monks or whatever, is to get rid of the suffering, through aversion. So as an ultimate goal, sure, you want to be free from suffering, that’s fine. But how you go about it will determine whether you succeed or not. Is your practice of getting rid of it still rooted in aversion to that suffering? Or, are you realising, OK, I want to get rid of it, which means now I have to ensure suffering for what it is, not try to remove it on my own terms. And that’s how you will basically stop acting out of aversion towards suffering.

Q: Can you please clarify what you mean by ‘on your own terms’?

N: Yeah, well that’s what it is. Like, there is suffering present for example, something bothers you. You already by default refuse to accept it. Even if you say ‘I accept this suffering’, emotionally you are averse towards it. As the Suttas would say, there is aversion there enduring. So whatever you do now, it’s rooted in you acting out of that aversion, which means whatever you do will be things you want to do in order to remove this to which you are averse, but you are not removing your aversion. So that’s like, you try to do it on your own terms, as opposed to realising that you must accept the suffering, not try to do anything rooted in aversion, not try to do anything rooted in your own terms, and then endure it. See, enduring it is not on your own terms, because you don’t want to do it, you’re averse to it. And if you endure it sufficiently, without breaking the precepts or acting out of it, stuff you read from the Suttas, you start seeing it, you start recognising it in it. You don’t need to be applying it and thinking it actively. It’s like, as the Suttas would say, it would become apparent. Oh look, it’s there. The only reason I wasn’t seeing it is because I was too busy acting out of aversion to see it. So that’s the difference between doing it on your own terms, or enduring it first, which will prevent you to act out on your own terms.

Q: So I have reflected now a little bit on your answer to my question about samādhi and jhāna. So what if, for an individual, the inability to experience that peace that one probably experiences at retreats leads him to abandon the lay life and become a monastic. So it seems to me that this experience of samādhi, even if it is connected with sensuality, can be beneficial for the progress. So how do you view it?

N: Well, becoming a monk is not progress in itself. So if you have a wrong view, it won’t change even if you wear robes, doesn’t matter. So progress is, if you experience the right peace. Progress is if you’re clear from the wrong views.

Q: This desire for peace…

N: The problem with that is, desire for peace is fine, and it’s fine if you go on a retreat and get the best peace you can. But what is not fine is to think this peace stands in place of the right peace, because you will then not seek what the right peace is. So that’s my entire point here. You should keep trying to get the peace, nobody says you shouldn’t. But why you must be careful is, when you do so, you might fall into a view that the relative peace you find, since that’s the only peace you know, you’ll be conflating that with the peace that the Buddha was teaching, and that’s not the case. Because otherwise you would be at least a sotāpanna, an anāgāmī, or an arahant. And that’s always my point when people say, ‘oh but bhante, meditation techniques help me’, well, are you confusing that help for the fulfilment of the Dhamma? Or, are you fully aware that that help is just managing until you find the way how to pull the arrow out, but you never forget that it’s pulling of the arrow out that your goal is. And people often do forget that. If you manage your pain, if you find that temporary peace long enough, you will start believing in it. So don’t let that happen to you.

Like, now you might be aware, but the more effort you make towards management, the more risk there is you’re gonna start believing that is what the practice is. And because of that, you won’t start pushing further to find what the actual practice is. And that’s what happens when people go to retreats and have super-special peaceful experiences, they’re just too pleasing to be given up now. And somebody comes and tells them no no, that’s not the peace, the peace of understanding is completely different, well, they’ll get upset with that person. Because of the pleasure of the peace, not because they fully understood what that peace was, and they know this person is wrong. No, it’s simply a threat to the pleasure that they know. That’s it, that’s all it takes for you to fall into the wrong view. If you’re careful, if you’re transparent about it, fine no problem. Keep trying at any peace you can get, just don’t lose perspective that peace begins only with sotāpatti or higher. Not with a special experience of your meditation.

Q: OK, yeah, that’s exactly what my point was and also what my understanding is, thank you. If possible I have another question, so we are discussing now very practical things, and this is very helpful for me, but there are some things in Buddhism which I have a real problem with. Like for instance, belief in rebirth and things like this, and talks about cosmology that the Buddha gave. So what is the attitude towards them for somebody who doesn’t have this experience?

N: Don’t conflate the two. You might have a problem with those side things, and who knows what those conversations were rooted in, and what those things meant. You know, like in the Suttas it says ‘five hundred arahants came’ and so on, it’s just ‘five hundred’ meant like a common way of saying ‘many’. I’m not saying that ‘oh the Buddha didn’t mean future lives and previous lives and gods’, I’m just saying it’s never directly related to the four noble truths and freedom from suffering, and that should really be your concern. Because if your problem with cosmology prevents you from that which you can verify for yourself, which is craving and freedom from suffering in this life, well, you’ll be at a great loss. So take that as something that maybe you can think about later. Don’t look for faults on account of which you will avoid doing things you are capable of, and you would benefit immensely from.

But yeah, you don’t need to accept it by the way, ‘oh you must believe’, no, you don’t. It’s never directly related to any relevant Sutta about freedom from suffering or anything else. So you realise, yeah, it’s not really directly related. And I’m sure there were plenty of people in India at the time that didn’t believe in rebirth. You had all sorts of teachers who said ‘no, this is the only life’ and so on. And it was not a requirement. Because why? Because you suffer in this life. You’re pressured by your emotions in this life. You don’t know the escape from fear and anxiety in this life. That’s all you need to know. And you know, accepting Buddhist cosmology does not make you more of a Buddhist than if you don’t accept it. What makes you more of a Buddhist is if you keep the five precepts, the eight precepts, and apply your tireless energy day and night to cultivating the Buddha’s instruction. That’s it, that’s what makes you Buddhist. Not your proclamation of belief in, you know, gods and so on that the Buddha laid out in those Suttas. And if it bothers you, well, don’t let that become a motivation for avoiding things that you can practise, in this life, that you can understand for yourself, in this life.

So endure that bother, in other words, that’s what I’m saying. Endurance is pretty much the crossroads people come at between, either you’re going to manage, try to manage and get rid of your suffering, or you’re actually going the right way of being able to uproot it eventually, and get the right view and so on. It’s not blind endurance, it’s not focus on your nostrils and endure, it’s mindful, full self awareness, not acting out of greed, aversion, or distraction, endurance—the foremost austerity that the Buddha talks about. So it is, it’s like the basis for the right practice, for the direction of the right practice. Being able to endure things without acting out. And you probably hear or read me often saying that, to not act out. Not act out, rooted in emotions against which you have either aversion or lust, or you want to distract yourself from. That’s why sīla and sense restraint needs to come first as a container, because it doesn’t matter how much mentally you wish to not act out if your body still caries the habit of acting out, you are acting out. It’s just wishful thinking to believe you’re not.

Q: I have a question about anxiety. We’ve touched upon this briefly, I would like to bring forth what seems to be, like, a dual aspect of anxiety. On the one hand of course it seems to be an unwholesome mental state, but on the other hand there’s something to be said for a potentially beneficial impact and aspect of anxiety. After all, it was existential anxiety that led Buddha on his path. It is existential anxiety that Buddha speaks of when he says ‘monks, everything is burning’. It is existential anxiety that you said yourself is sometimes lacking even among the monastics. So how does one cultivate this existential anxiety, existential dread, this ongoing awareness of, let’s say, mortality, in the broader sense of the term?

N: The problem with anxiety is that people want to get rid of it because it’s unpleasant. In itself, anxiety is not unwholesome, anxiety is just revealing that there is something that can still undermine you, that you can still suffer on account of. So anxiety as a mental state, well, people like to think it’s unwholesome because it justifies them trying to get rid of it by any means necessary, you know including medications and so on. It’s not, it’s just an emotional recognition of a symptom of a problem. That’s why anxiety is pretty much a sense of urgency that the Buddha would inspire in monks, the ones that got negligent. So that’s pretty much what you need to do first, don’t try to get rid of it, don’t try to find the answers for it, but—surprise—endure it.

Say you can’t find your anxiety any more, or it’s not coming up, it’s only for two reasons. Either you became an arahant, or you become complacent. If you’re an arahant, no problem, you got your answer. If you’re complacent, all you need to do (and the anxiety will come back in no time) is tighten your sense restraint. And you’ll see, it will be there, fear of death will be there. Just by saying no to sensuality, the first thing that comes knocking is fear of death, and fear of dying, and the death of your loved ones or whatever else. And that’s why people immediately run back, they feel justified. But whether it’s a monk or a lay person, if you don’t have anxiety, means you don’t have enough sense restraint.

Just think about it, I mean, take the average layman and tell him ‘how about you abstain from sexual intercourse for the rest of your life’, as a demand. If it were to be taken seriously, every single person would freak out at that thought. It will be this intense arising of pain and fear at the thought of never experiencing that sensual pleasure ever again. And within no time, they will be full of anxiety and their minds will just be swinging with their moods left and right. And same for the monks, if there is no anxiety, there is no sense of urgency. Means you are getting complacent in your environment, in your set-up, in whatever else. So all you need to do is start saying no to your eyes, ears, nose, mouth, touches and so on, avoid the comfort and so on, and anxiety will be back, fear of death will be back. Because it just reveals the situation you’re still in, you’re not free from death. But if you want to practise with anxiety and cultivate it, the basis of virtue is necessary.

Q: So it’s like an indicator of progression in training?

N: Anxiety’s not an indicator, it’s how much you resist it or not, that’s the indicator of your progression. So if you’re not resisting it, not trying to justify it, get rid of it, and it’s still there, then yeah, it’s a good indicator that you’re doing things rightly. But yeah, how much anxiety you feel, that doesn’t matter. The same reason that people suffer so much and have fears in the first reply, is because sensuality is the only means of escape people know, but it’s the escape that makes the problem even worse. So it’s not really an escape. So you don’t try to not have anxiety, you will, most certainly, if you start practising sense restraint and keeping sīla and so on, and enduring solitude. The point is to train my mind to not resist it with aversion as something I must get rid of. And then it will cease to be unpleasant.

Any suffering is suffering because you are averse towards it, not because it’s unpleasant in itself. That’s the truth of the first noble truth. Your craving is the root of every suffering, even in those extreme circumstances when, I dunno, highway robbers attack a monk and started hacking him with machetes and so on. The Buddha said, if he has any resistance towards that emotionally, he hasn’t fulfilled my teaching. Because that’s never where the suffering is rooted. The extreme discomfort is not the root of dukkha, it’s your aversion towards it, every single time, no exception. So, anxiety is a problem because people are averse towards it, not because it’s a problem in itself. And, well, fear is a problem because people are averse towards it, not because it’s a problem in itself. Fear may be just telling you, ‘oh this is a dangerous situation for my body for my health or for something’. But it’s you being averse emotionally towards it, that’s why you suffer on account of all of those mental states.

Q: So I have to say that I didn’t realise the necessary connection between increasing sense restraint and increasing anxiety. So let’s say that if you adopt another sīla or additional sīlas, if you attempt over the five or the eight, then you either see that you can do it, or you see that you cannot do it. How do you mean that adding some additional sīlas is going to increase your anxiety?

N: So as I said, you will not be experiencing anxiety if you’re either fully free from sensuality and almost an arahant say, or because you’re still using means of escape, through sensuality. So that’s why sensuality is not so intoxicating for people just because it’s pleasant, it’s because it’s the only form of approximation of an escape that they would know from the unpleasantness of existence in itself. So that’s why, as I said even when people don’t necessarily engage with coarse sensuality or ill-will, just having things to do, needing things to do, depending on activity of the senses, is still your means of escape. So start restraining that. And you will feel anxious because you are refusing to engage with the only direction of escaping the unpleasant pressure of unresolved existence of your self. Because if you resolved it, you would be an arahant, and there would be no pressure for you.

So that’s what I mean by sense restraint. Like, precepts, sure, that’s fine. But now ask yourself, OK, I’m reading this book, am I self-aware while I’m doing that? Not really? Well then I’ll stop reading it, I’ll just endure solitude and boredom and see where that takes me. Well, it will take you straight to anxiety, every single time, unless you have uprooted it. That’s why people are terrified of boredom, having nothing to do. And say if you were to put an arahant in a cell without anything, he would not lose his mind because there is no mind to be lost, in that sense. He has dealt with it beforehand, so there is nothing for him to lose there. There is nothing for him to resist there. If you locked him in a little box he will not suffer, he will not experience terror or anxiety. Because basically he has already abandoned this life. So that’s what I mean by increasing sīla, not mean like add some random observances or precepts mechanically as a sense of duty, no, I mean find other things you do, within your good sīla and virtue, and see why you’re doing them, and restrain them.

Wind yourself a up a bit more and you’re gonna feel anxiety. If you need to—like, don’t do it if you’re already full of anxiety. Like, you can have too much of a sense of urgency as the Buddha would say, so only when you get ‘oh am I actually feeling the urgency of practice? I’m not sure, well maybe I should restrain myself. Maybe today I will not see or talk to anyone, I will not leave this room, I will not switch the TV or phone on, I will just sit alone with myself’. Which is neutral in itself by the way, there’s nothing bad just sitting in a room by yourself with your own thoughts, yet nobody can do it. Well, unless people have developed samādhi and then become arahants and so on. So you realise OK, that’s a challenge. And if you go in that direction, as I said, anxiety is guaranteed. Boredom leads to anxiety, anxiety leads to dread. So you recognise that you cannot deal with it overnight, but you certainly don’t adopt the view that it should not be dealt with, or you can avoid dealing with it. Because that’s where arahantship is. What’s the Ajahn Chah, ‘die before you die’. So, abandon this life before it abandons you. And you abandon it by completely removing any desire towards it, any lust, any aversion, and so on. Any unwholesome mental state.

Q: Maybe you’ve already answered this question, but maybe you have something to add. How does Buddhism understand self or ego? It this identity or self really the biggest enemy? And then how to treat or limit it?

N: Again when people talk abstractly about it, it misses the point. Even when they asked the Buddha ‘so master Gotama says there is no self?’ and he wouldn’t answer it. Because it’s already wrong assumption. Practically speaking how you want to go about it is, self, identity, ego, whatever you want to call it, it’s a symptom of a problem. It’s not the problem in itself. So how do you deal with the symptom of a problem? Well, you recognise what it is a symptom of. And the Suttas tell us, it’s a symptom of greed, aversion, delusion, it’s a symptom of not understanding the nature of existence, it’s a symptom of ownership, owning things, possessions, acquisitions, as the Buddha talked about that you acquire through sensuality and pursuit of pleasure that you get through those acquisitions. That’s why you have a functioning sense of self that endures and becomes the owner, the appropriator, the controller, the master and so on.

So how do you curb it? Well, sense restraint, start saying no to your desires, relinquish unnecessary acquisitions, don’t seek to gain more, contemplate death, contemplate losing things that are dear to you, and you are curbing your sense of self, and it’s gonna feel like dying. Because yeah, the self is dying. Your identity is ceasing, and that’s literally gonna feel like death, because that’s what death is, cessation of identity. That’s why an arahant cannot die, because he has already killed his identity, in that sense. So death doesn’t apply to him. Even when the Suttas talk about it, they say such-and-such a person dies, such-and-such other person dies, but when an arahant dies it doesn’t use the word die, it says ‘aggregates break apart’. Because death doesn’t apply to him. Death applies when there is still lingering identity.

Q: So if I accept death like a normal state of my life, then I will be free of any delusions…

N: You can’t accept it as a matter of choice though, because as I said, the reason why you don’t accept death, why you fear death—that’s it, that’s already a form of non-acceptance—is because you’re not free from sensual desires, you’re not free from aversion, you’re not free from ignoring your own self, distracting yourself from yourself. The reason why you don’t accept death is not because you decided to not accept it. So you can decide to accept it, but unless you uproot the underlying tenancies of lust, aversion, distraction, that feed the actual non-acceptance of it, you will not be free from it. So it’s good to accept death, but make sure you don’t fall into a trap of like that psychologisation as I say, whereby ‘yes, I accept death, I’m at peace with it’, and then continue with your desires and aversion. That’s actually, if you look closely, a contradiction in terms. That’s just on the level of belief, you believe that you accepted death. But you’ll be surprised when the actual death comes, you’ll realise how little that acceptance will matter. It only mattered while you were alive, believing that you accepted it.

So you don’t need to decide to accept death or to decide to not accept death, if you start diminishing your desires, practise sense restraint, and endure not acting out of craving towards your feelings, you are actually freeing yourself from death. However small steps those might be, you are still going in that direction. That’s why some people in the Suttas, when they never encountered the Buddha before but they were practising on their own and obviously were doing it more or less rightly, when they came across the Buddha, one sentence made them an arahant. Fully enlightened, just hearing one instruction from the Buddha. Because they actually did all that work of removing the underlying tendencies because of which they were not enlightened. Then the Buddha just set the pieces right, the pieces that they built and cultivated correctly. So you can’t just accept it without having had that basis developed and cultivated thoroughly and sufficiently.

Q: Thank you, very good answer. Can I put another question to you? I am fifty-two years old and all my life I have built a house of cards. So it’s very hard for me to destroy this house of cards and start a new life.

N: Yeah so that’s what I mean like, you will obviously have fear of death, recognition that it’s coming closer. You can think about it or not, it’s up to you, but recognise that dealing with that problem, with that actual fear, is in controlling your other behaviour towards life. It’s not like ‘how will I address this now?’ So that’s what the Buddha meant, practise before it’s too late. Because now you still can, doesn’t matter if you’re fifty-three or sixty-three, you still have functioning senses, your faculties of making choices and being transparent in regard to your motivation about those are still there. So use that to start diminishing lust, acting out of lust, acting out of craving, acting out of aversion, enduring it on that emotional level and not giving in, keeping the precepts. Pretty much what the Buddha advised that king when he said ‘what would you do if men come from the east, west, north and south, four men come and tell you ‘there are four great mountains coming your way, and those mountains are crushing everything in their way. There is no escape. Every direction you try to run, you’ll just run towards one of the mountains.’’ And he said, ‘well, what else is there to do lord, I would then be restrained, practise Dhamma, make merit, keep the virtue’, you know, that’s pretty much the only thing left to do because you can’t outrun it. And he says ‘so I’m telling you, there are four mountains crushing you, it’s old age and death coming your way. So you better do what you just said you would do in that instance.’ So that’s what I mean, whether you think about the mountains and death and how close you are, the way to deal with it is to start being mindful, sense restrained on the level of your day to day behaviour and choices you make in between those reflections.

Q: I have one question regarding monastic discipline. So as far as we know, some rules in the Pātimokkha were caused just by the opinions of how things should be at the time of the Buddha, where it says like not cutting trees, and things like this. So why is it important nowadays to attend to these rules, and still keep them?

N: Well, actually that happened right after the Buddha died. Ānanda said ‘oh, the lord said we can abandon all these minor rules’. And then the arahants said, the council said, ‘well, which ones were the minor rules, according to the lord?’ And venerable Ānanda said ‘I forgot to ask that’. So they could have speculated, and had a pretty good guess what the minor rules were, but then they said, well, if we do that, the first thing people will say is ‘look, their head teacher died and the first thing they do is start reducing the amount of rules’. So let’s keep all of them since it makes no difference. Like, the rules that you have to keep that have nothing to do with the Dhamma, are not in the way of your practising the Dhamma. And many of those rules as well were often like were qualified in themselves, like ‘this is an offence unless it’s done for this reason’, or ‘in case of this, you can do this, but if that’s not the case you can’t do that’. So in other words they’re quite flexible in themselves. So there isn’t really any of those rules that would be in the way of you practising correctly. And that’s the reason why it’s kept, just because Ānanda forgot to ask, and it would have looked bad upon the Order and the upon value of the Dhamma for those who haven’t understood it but might have had a chance to understand it. They may have said ‘look, I don’t want to listen to them, their teacher died and they’re already disrespecting him’. So it was for the benefit of others they still adhered to the rules, and we do so.