Sharpening The Razor

56:51

56:51

Sharpening The Razor

by Ajahn Sumedho

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4.8

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talks

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Meditation

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Everyone

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Ajahn uses the metaphor of sharpening a razor to developing and honing the practice of refining the mind and our attention to the process.

Mindfulness Impermanence Non Attachment Emotional Observation Acceptance Resilience Body Awareness Peace Meditation Attention Mindfulness Breathing Impermanence And Change Emotional State Observation Meditation Experiences

Meet your Teacher

Hemel Hempstead, UK

Meet your Teacher

Hemel Hempstead, UK

Transcript

This is the third complete perfect day. Completely flawless. In which you mindfully observe the results of your endeavors, Practicing meditation. What kind of results have you been getting? Being aware, Reflecting on, Reflecting on and you find your mind becoming confused, You find a lot of depression or anger or discouragement, Doubt. You find your mind becoming obsessed with memories or thoughts or whatever. Just to observe, You're not trying to figure out why anymore. Why you have thoughts, Why you think the thoughts you think or have the memories you have or feel the way you do. Just observing what you're doing, Developing on the palm of sati, Mindfulness of the breath. That's kind of a beginning, Just something to do. Like I said, Like friction, Like on a shot in stone, When you shot your razor. In order to get the razor stock you have to cause friction. So on the palm of sati can be like friction, Something that you're not skilled at doing, You have to make yourself do it. Bring the mind, Your attention back to the breath when the mind wanders, Even though you don't want to bring it back to the breath. You begin to observe the kind of energy that you have in the moment. The wandering, Fantasizing mind or the depressed feeling, The doubts and uncertainty about whether you're doing it rightly or whether you're capable of doing it at all or hoping that you get some kind of good result from it. Compeling yourself, Forcing yourself to do it when you don't want to, Then giving up in this period of the moment as well, You begin to see, Just observe the way you approach anything, It's simply just watching your breath. Theoretically it's understandable isn't it? You can explain it as a method or something that one can do, It doesn't take any great intelligence to be able to understand how to do it. But there's the actual doing it. And then the results we get we observe. The attitude, As I was saying previously, Is very important because if we approach something with the wrong attitude towards ourselves, We end up by destroying the razor we're doing, Or by sharpening rather than sharpening it. If you want to sharpen a razor you figure out how to do it in the right way, Which way to move the razor on the stone and so forth. And rather than just taking a stone and a razor and causing friction like you can bang them together, And that's friction, You can bash the razor with the stone or the stone with the razor. There's different ways of causing friction, But it's not to get friction for its own end, But to learn to develop a skill so that you are sharpening something rather than delicate. So the right attitude is one of careful observation, Of attentiveness to how the results are getting, But always in that place of calm and peacefulness rather than a frantic desperation, Desperately trying to get it sharpened. Like taking a razor and grinding it on the stone, You'll just end up with a completely useless razor. So to sharpen a razor you probably have to have a kind of calmness, The right touch on the stone so that you get a nice smooth stroke. And that's a gentle kind of thing, It's not something harsh and hard and aggressive and forceful. It's that amount of effort it takes to lift the hand up, Pull the razor, Hold up the stone and move it along the stone, Causing the upper amount of friction for sharpening it. And that you only know through practice, No matter how much you might read about it or understand it theoretically, It's only in actually doing it that you develop the skill. So the attitude is one of calm, Cool, Collected peacefulness with what you're doing. So that's why in this meditation retreat, We guard each day as good enough in itself, Rather than the, I've got to make progress today so I can get the past examination at the end of the course. That kind of worldly student attitude that I've got to really struggle and force and cram everything I can until I can pass the exam at the end of the course. The examination is always going on, It's been mindful all the time, So there isn't any examination really. I used to have a reoccurring dream in which during the first few years of practice, I kept having this dream, It would be in variations on the theme, But the theme was that I was doing something like going into a coffee shop or doing something and then I said, Oh, I shouldn't be doing this, I should be studying for the examination because the examination is due very soon and I'm not ready to take it, I know I'll fail. And then I'd sit down and this thing would be nagging away, I should be doing something else other than what I'm doing now because of the exam. So wherever I went, Whatever I did, There'd be this nagging feeling that there's something I should be doing, Then what I'm doing now isn't what I should be doing, There's something else that I haven't done yet that I need to know and do in order to pass the exam. And so this dream kept reoccurring when I would fall asleep. What is it trying to say? I've been practicing meditation for years, What do I have to do if I left something out? Is there something I haven't studied yet or haven't learned? What should I be doing? Maybe I should read the sutras, Maybe I should study Pali, Maybe I should delve into the Abhidhamma, Maybe I should do this or that, Maybe I should develop all the jhanas, Maybe I'm not ready for the exam yet. The doubts would come into my mind that somehow there was something very difficult yet that I had to study and do in order to pass the exam. But as I kept reflecting on this dream, It would keep reoccurring, It's trying to tell me something obviously, What is this dream about, What have I not done that I shouldn't be doing? And I kept reflecting on it and finally one day I had an insight and I realised quite clearly that the answer to the dream was that there wasn't any examination. I've never had to be upset. There's just this doubt and this fear and always thinking that there is one. I thought there was an examination I'd have to pass. But then one can say the examination is going on all the time, Isn't it? In other words, Being mindful is the way to pass the examination. Now in meditation, When you're starting, You're a beginner, You've got to realise that it's like time is like sitting here on this retreat, For some of you, You've never done a retreat before. It's like tying yourself down, Putting yourself in a straight jacket or even like, Sometimes probably like nailing yourself on a cross. I mean you're bound and restricted. You can't talk when you feel like it. You're sitting a lot, Sitting for a formal practice of walking and so forth. You're tied up, You're bound, You're restricted. You can't do what you feel like doing in the moment. You can't just follow your whims and impulses. You have to sit and endure through the impulsiveness of the mind. And because of that, Because we don't have the ability or the opportunity really to get rid of, To just follow the impulse or to repress it, We have to more or less endure its presence, That kind of energy that would make us go off and do something else than what we're sitting here. And then the impulses, Restless impulses arise and we want to do something, Go somewhere. Pain from sitting too long, Like we want to get rid of the pain, We want to reflect, Reflexively just move to get away from discomfort. The mind is confused, Depressed. But when we bind ourselves down to something and we tie ourselves up, We tend to feel very angry sometimes. A lot of aversion arises. We feel negativity arising that we probably never noticed all that much before. Like if I were to hold you down, Take you physically and hold you down to the floor, Pin you down to the floor, You'd feel a lot of negativity towards me, Wouldn't you? Well the same applies when you're bound here to the sitting posture, To the meditation retreat. You can direct that negativity to me or to yourself or whatever, You can, You know, How your patterns and your habits of being negative will become apparent to you. Because you can't do what you want to do, You can't just follow your habits the way you can. If you're not on a 10 day retreat or you're not under someone else's direction, When you can live life on your own terms, Do what you want and eat when you want, Sleep when you want, Do or follow your very impulses when you feel like it. And then suddenly you say, No, No, No, You can't do this, You can't do that, You can't talk, You can't eat once a day, So forth. So that you find you're bound and restricted. So if some of you are experiencing a lot of negativity, That's a natural result of being bound and restricted. It surprised me when I, The first few months of meditation, When I was a Samana, How much hatred and anger I was experiencing. I never thought of myself really as being a negative, Hating person. You know, One has a kind of an image of oneself as being a certain kind, A certain type of person. And my self image was being a jovial, Good-hearted, Kindly person. And then during those first few months of meditation, I found out all kinds of ugly things in me that began to bubble up. Just I couldn't think a nice thought about anybody for weeks at a time. And then when like one old lady in Nong Khai, A Chinese lady, Decided to bring food to me, I even hated her most of the time. And I felt so much hatred for my parents and for, I felt this incredible amount of aversion coming out in every direction. And it was something that I was rather shocked at seeing because when you think of yourself as a kindly, Gentle and good-hearted man and then this really nasty bitchiness kind of spews forward all the time, You don't quite know how to deal with it. You think meditation is really, Before I meditated I was kind and gentle. And now I've become a nasty, Bitchy person. But this was a natural result of one thing being a summoner, Not being able to get away from negativity, Like in lay life I've realized that so much of the negative impulses I just, As soon as I felt their presence I'd get away from them as soon as possible. All kinds of habits I developed in which I could escape from the negative side of life as quickly as possible. Smoking cigarettes and drinking and watching television, Reading books and chatting with friends and going to the cinema and so forth. There are all kinds of ways you could get out of it if you were depressed or miserable or full of anger. You could get away from it quickly by changing the mood into something else you found exciting or interesting. But as a summoner suddenly I was denied all possibilities of escape. To sit there in a little hut, Not a very nice little hut either, I spent a lot of time criticizing that hut. And sitting there with a mind full of this anger and aversion. But I realized I kept, I still had the enough wisdom to stay with it. I just kept, I realized that there's really nothing much one can do because you know if you tried to stop it all and make it stop it seemed to, It took so much effort to stop the flow that you could only hold it down for about two seconds and then it would blow you away again. And since you were bound in a yellow robe in a ramshak or kuti and you didn't dare go out or do anything because the people of the other monks would know, You know it's getting, You just decided to just resign myself to my fate and stay with it. And in that resignation was a kind of peacefulness I developed towards all this negativity. Although I just began to accept my fate and just stay and allow these things to just come up and go. And that's the attitude which is beneficial for liberation. Not rather than trying to get rid of these bad moods or repress them or change them but just allow them to just observe that they're changing conditions, Be at peace with them. Don't be frightened by them. Don't be appalled by them. Just see them as changing conditions, As kind of a cleansing of the mind. But before there's so much of yourself you kept holding up, Pushing down, Repressing and you found, You spent a lot of energy in your daily life just trying to keep the things, Keep from having to look at a lot of these ugly nasty things. And now you have all the time in the world just to observe these things as they come forth. But you're not saying, Oh what an awful person I am to have such ugly thoughts or feelings. But you're just observing the anicca of these conditions. Keep seeing these as anicca rather than as personality problems or defilements that are yours that make you some kind of evil demon or nasty person. Begin to think no matter how rotten and ugly and disgusting it might be, Have just changed because all those conditions that are ugly, Nasty and rotten are never permanent conditions. There's nothing permanent that you can find that is nasty and ugly. The very ugly nastiness is an impermanent condition, I guarantee it. Even though when you're caught in an ugly, Nasty hell for a while it seems permanent. But that's because it has the appearance of permanency because you don't want it. Anything you have that you don't want has that feeling of being permanent. Have you noticed? Have you noticed? You. Like when you're depressed, If you're in a depressed state, Somehow you think I'm always going to be depressed, I'm always going to be miserable, I'll never be happy again, I'll never have a joyous moment in the rest of my life, I'll always be this miserable depressed being eternally forevermore. That's what Christians call eternal hell. It has this appearance of being eternal. But when you see that eternal hell is only temporary, Impermanent in nature, Then you have insight into the nature of hell. Eternal hell is impermanent and not self. It is not yours. So even though things may seem permanent, That is how they seem, That's the seeming, That's the illusion they create in your mind. By reflecting on the changing in nature, Impermanent, Characteristic of suffering, Depression, Doubt, Fear, Anger, Greed, Lust, Stupidity, When you reflect on the changing characteristics, Then you begin to say abandon your identification with the condition and begin to see it from a perspective of seeing it as a changing condition that's separate from you, It's not me, It's not mine. That's what we mean by not self. But before, When you're attached to that condition, Like if you're depressed, Attachment to the depression thing, You think I am depressed, I'm miserable, I'm no good, There's no hope for me, I'll always be miserable and unhappy and don't bother. You think and you add to the depression, Depressing thoughts that make you more depressed, And then you think I'll always be depressed, And that very thought, I'll always be depressed, Has that illusion of eternity, I'll always be depressed, Eternal hell, That's the illusion of the thought, Isn't it? At that particular moment in time, I'll always be depressed, I'll always be miserable forever. That's the illusion of eternity, Of being in hell for eternity. But see that as an illusion, Just like when you're in pain, Physical pain, Where you've been sitting for an hour and you have pain in your knees or legs, Whatever. Now that pain seems like, You know, If you have to, If you watch a clock, You're waiting for a bell to ring, Five minutes for the bell, You know the bell will ring and you'll be able to get out of the pain without losing your self-respect. So you think five minutes left, Oh that's not very long, Oh I can endure for five minutes, Then you're waiting for the bell to ring and the pain increases, Absolute agony, I mean it should be five minutes by now and you look only one minute. It has the, Because pain, When you're in pain, You have what is, What daytime seems to increase its length. One minute of agonizing pain seems like an hour. An hour of happiness and bliss seems like a minute, Because that's the illusion of those conditions. Heavenly happiness was what we like and what we would like to have for eternity, Isn't it? I'd like to be happy forever, In love forever, Romance forever, I'd like to have all this beauty forever. Heaven, We'd like to stay in heaven eternally, But the illusion of heaven is that it seems to go by too fast, It's too impermanent for one. Heavenly happiness is, Is, Is, Goes by too quickly for us, When we would like it to stay on and linger hour after hour after hour, Day after day, Month after month, Year after year. They were talking about the illusions that we have, Dealing with time, The feelings, Sensations, And the body, The moods that we have. The illusion of self as connected to these particular conditions, These changing transient conditions. Just like one minute of pain is like one hour. We don't want the pain, We'd like the pain to go away. We'd like it to go away instantly, As quickly as possible, Not have to wait, Because physical pain has, Makes us terribly impatient, We want to get away from it quickly. The quicker the better. So even a minute of pain seems like an eternity, Because we don't want that pain. And when we don't want, When we have something we don't want, We want to get rid of it immediately, Destroy it, Annihilate it, Without, Because we're impatient. That's the blind reaction to the unpleasant and painful. Then the reaction, Blind reaction to the pleasant and the beautiful is wanting to possess it forever more, Make it mine forever. I want this beautiful thing to be mine forever. I want this pleasurable feeling to be mine forever. I want to be happy like this forever more. I wish I could always be happy and joyful and loving like this all the time. The illusion, Wanting something that you like to be yours forever, Wanting to get rid of something you don't like that you have already, Wanting to get rid of it instantly, As quickly as possible. Now observe this in your mind, You know, You're just observing, You're not trying to change anything but just observe the way things are so you'll not be deluded by these conditions. Because it's the delusiveness, The illusions of these experiences that is the suffering. This thinking that this pain is mine forever or this ugly thought is me or these terrible memories are mine or these bad habits are mine or this body, If it's sick and weak or ugly or whatever is me and mine, You know, Want it to be me or mine, You want it to be, If it's beautiful, Say we have beautiful body, Beautiful appearance, Beautiful thoughts, Beautiful feelings, Then we'd like that to be that way forever. To be forever eternally beautiful, Radiant, Joyous, Happy. But since we find ourselves in this particular condition of the human form, Let's reflect on this human body as it is in nature. It's an animal's body, Isn't it? It functions just like any other animal's body. Doris, You notice she has two eyes, Two ears, Nose and mouth just like we do. She has a heart and she has veins and liver and clean kidneys, Big fat stomach. And she's been eating too much, Just like we would have if we were eating too much. We don't have fur all over our body, But we do have hair, Bodily hair. She has claws and we have nails, There are slight differences. We don't have tails. But notice this body, This human body, Its functions. Now we'd like to think of ourselves, When you think of yourself, What you want to appear like to other people, What you want to, The kind of impression you want to radiate outward to others is that you're not an animal. Say if you're an animal that just eats and sleeps and goes to the toilet like cats and like dogs will just defecate anywhere, I don't want the road where we wouldn't do that. We don't want, I don't want people to realize this is an animal's body. So we have spent thousands of pounds building little clocks. We've mouth porcelain toilets and clean water that we can wash our hands and making it fairly attractive and clean and pleasant so that the cause function of elimination, Eliminating the bonding waste is not too unpleasant or mindless too much of the coarseness of this body. It's thinking in the materialist age of how much money is spent on beautifying and decorating the bathroom and toilets. Well you can in the West, In Britain, America, America has some of the most beautiful toilets in the whole world. Because in this position that we have to put ourselves in, It's not one that we like to, Would like to have our photographs taken or something that we would want to share with any of our friends. Because this is a cause and growth function of the body, Something that we are ashamed of or we would rather not have to think about as being ours. If you notice little children, Then they feel very different about it. Like before they're made self-conscious about it, They're quite proud of their defecation and elimination of waste. Cause they get praised for it, I remember my little nephew when he was being trained for the party and my sister would praise him every time that he went to the party. So he would, Whenever guests would come to the house. My sister would feel quite embarrassed for that. But then we outgrow that, We find that's not something that we share or boast about to others. Now this, Just to see, To remind yourself that this is a part of nature, This is the course and no matter how refined we might become, No matter if we're Queen Elizabeth or the most glamorous film star or the most respected and well-educated man or woman, No matter how important we are in the world, No matter how wise we become, No matter how refined we may be, We still have to perform these gross functions of the body. So we might be able to delude ourselves in a public image basis of say, Appearing very well dressed, Beautifully presenting ourselves as to give the illusion of being not an animal at all but being some kind of ethereal lovely celestial being. What we would like, Would rather be mistaken for like a star in the sky, A movie star, A glamorous lovely beautiful deva or angel, Something that was, Or an impressive fighter or warrior, A great father, An all-loving mother and identifying with the great mythical heroes of the past. We would like to say seek our identities with those kinds of qualities rather than with the animal ones, Just the animal function. So even something like eating food is made into something so that the kind of coarseness of eating is diminished. You can see in Europe that refined etiquette in the eating of food, Serving it in beautiful dining rooms on china silverware, Crystal goblets, Beautiful crystal chandeliers and bobs, Everybody dressed in fine clothes, Nobody, Everybody pretending to be like a deva. The men in neat suits and tied women in satin gowns. The illusion of glamour, Of we're doing something that is very civilised and refined and numbling, Eating food. It's like Doris gobbles down a fish without any pretense of being glamorous. So we have the illusion of being very refined and lovely if trying to make the gross bodily function seem not quite so gross a cause. So in our meditation we're not trying to say ignore these anymore but to see them in perspective, To understand the cause, The necessity, It's necessary to eat food isn't it? Even though the Buddha forbade many things because he didn't deny them the food. So that's the necessity, That's something very important, Just for maintaining this physical body so that it doesn't become too miserable a condition. So in the way we eat as bhikkhus out of the bowl it's to be aware of this, We're not just eating for the pleasure of the taste of food, Just to kill time. Or are we pretending to be glamorous devas, We're just dumping it in a bowl and eating it. So in your hands when you look in your arms you see you're going to transfer that food into your mouth, Go into your stomach and then out eventually. So you begin to say pay attention to eating just as it is not with the attitude of aversion to it but trying to see, Bringing forth that kind of awareness of the attitudes and feelings of attraction and version of your experience in regards to the eating of food. Now sometimes when you meditate you get a lot of samadhi, You get concentrate, You get refined, So refined that you don't even want to eat anymore because eating is so gross, That if you can stay in samadhi for a long period of time in a refined kind of mental state you'd rather do that than have to endure the course eating. But eventually even though you can stay in samadhi for a long time you eventually have to come out of that and start eating again. Eating something because the body needs that kind of movement. So the Buddha allowed us to eat and we eat one meal a day of food that's authored by generous lay people. So you can see in the human birth in your own mind a longing for refinement, Desire to experience heavenly bliss and happiness because in heaven there's no, Heaven does not contain anything like defecation, Urination. Tons of boiling excreta are strictly reserved for hell. Big tons of boiling excrement is reserved for the hellish space not for the heavenly one. The heavenly ones are where everything is light, Clean, Clear, Bright, Beautiful, Pleasant, Blissful and helpful. This is what we would like to have forever. So this animal's body is a teacher's body. It's not something we should regard with contempt or aversion or mistreat or misuse but to have the proper respect, The proper attitude towards it. What we mean by metta. Having the proper attitude towards this creature here, This being, This body. Learning how to take care of it properly without being neglectful of its need or indulgent. Now the mentality can become very refined. You can experience refined mental states of happiness and equanimity, Go off into nothingness and the state of the highest state attainable for refinement of the human consciousness is a state of neither perception nor non-perception. A mental state so refined that it's neither perception nor non-perception. Which is very, What a lot of people think is the ultimate goal of Nibbāna. But the Buddha realized that even when he went through, He attained that state of neither perception nor non-perception, He realized that it's also an impermanent condition. And that one has to come down from that state and start feeding the body eventually. You know you don't want to. You can't amatiate it. He had to eventually accept some milk from sudvāta rather than just stay off and refine it. You have to learn to live within the restrictions and the conditions of the human form. So even though we would rather not have to deal with the coarse pain and gross functions of the body and like to get as far away from it as possible, Part of our life has to inevitably is that we have to deal with these things. With sleeping and eating. With eliminating the waste. Bathing, Covering the body, Keeping it warm when it's cold. Cooling it when it's too hot. Taking care of it when it gets sick, When it gets feverish, When it becomes weak. So the human birth means we can't stay too long in the day, Baba, Because this body will see that we don't. You can go up for a while to state the refinement and then you inevitably come down to the coarse functions of the body, Its pain. Now why is it like this? What is the lesson we have to learn from these restrictions we find ourselves in in the human birth? This is why we are here practicing meditation. Developing this right attitude, This proper attitude towards the body and the conditions of the mind. And the proper attitude is being at peace with both the coarse and the refined. Taking no sides, Not trying to get rid of one and keep the other. Not trying to make the refined state into my personal possession, My heaven, And deny and repress and get rid of that which you don't like. But it's that clarity of mind and seen in perspective of non-attachment that these conditions change. Heavenly happiness is impermanent in oneself as well as pain, Physical pain. The body, The condition of the mind no matter how gross or refined they might be are impermanent and another not felt. And so we during this lifetime within this human form and this convention of being a human being, The attitude is one of peaceful kindliness towards everything, Towards the body, Our own body, Towards the conditions of the mind, Towards those things that we perceive outside of us, The other people, The other animals, The other beings. This kind of peaceful coexistence knowing that all these conditions are just changing conditions. All that arises passes away, All that begins and. . . So for this evening we start our fourth day, Another perfect day, Starting with this evening, This evening. And this evening I was living together with my family for 1-2 years. I'm learning to be at peace with everything, With whatever, With whatever is now. Now just to be there how can you be at peace? When you're so used to say resisting. Like if I were holding you down on the floor and you were resisting me you'd both become exhausted. After a while you can only do that for so long. And when you stop resisting, Relax, You see then you can be at peace with me. Which will affect me, Won't it? If I'm trying to hold you down and force you down, Keep you down on the floor, Pin you there, The more you resist, The more I resist. So there's a struggle going on all the time. You try to resist each other, Pushing and struggling with each other. But if you relax, Just relax, Then I have nothing to struggle with, So I can relax. So, To say it in this, Apply this to your practice here, Relax within it. Regard this meditation, This 10 day retreat, As a time for mental ease, In which you can just be aware of the dis-ease that comes and goes, Or the pleasure or the pain that you experience. See it not as a test of your endurance to prove that you can do this, Or to compete with this person, Or to get something out of it, Or to get rid of your defilements, Or to get hold of the eye of the Dharma. At least it's a struggle and resistance, Where we got it as more or less a chance to give every opportunity just to be at peace. Not much is demanded of you at all, Is it? We're not in a military camp where roles take place, Where you have to report every half hour of a month. How you use the time is up to you. But this is my way of suggesting an attitude which will be most beneficial, Or the practice of insight. I've seen people go into meditation and spend years trying to get rid of evil, And try to change this and try to become that. And you wonder, They've been doing it for years, They never learn. They keep doing the same old things over and over. They don't need to get any wisdom, Even years of meditation, Because they haven't developed the white hat issue. They still do meditation with the idea of gain, Or with the idea of annihilation. The in the middle way is neither gaining nor annihilating. Transcending means not attaching to anything. It doesn't mean annihilating everything. This means that gentle calm, Vibhāna, Being at peace with all conditions. The body still functions, The mind will still go, But you're not reacting like a blind fool anymore to those changing conditions. You're not demanding that this animal body be a deva. You're not demanding that pain be other than it is. You're not demanding that the coarse bodily functions be other than they are. You can be at peace even with the most unpleasant in being. And with the most pleasant in being. Thank you.