January 2006 Newsletter

Vipassana Fellowship Newsletter

January 2006 Edition

"Absence of occupation is not rest,

A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed"

- English Poet, William Cowper (1731-1800)

May Meditation Course

Our next 90 day course begins on May 6^th and provides an excellent introduction to meditation from the Buddhist tradition.

Vipassana Fellowship's online meditation courses have been offered since 1997 and have proven helpful to meditators in many countries around the world. The main text is based on a tried and tested format and serves as a practical introduction to samatha (tranquility) and vipassana (insight) techniques from the Theravada tradition of Buddhism. Intended primarily for beginners, the 90 day course is also suitable for experienced meditators who wish to explore different aspects of the tradition. The emphasis is on building a sustainable and balanced meditation practice that is compatible with lay life.

The course is suitable for users of any major operating system (Windows, Apple Mac, Linux) provided they have a recent web browser that can display Macromedia Flash files. The course uses our Online Course Campus which adds additional flexibility and permits greater interactivity. Participants also receive an audio supplement on CD-Rom containing guided meditations and chants to support the online material.

The course is led by Andrew Quernmore, an experienced meditation teacher based in England.

Registration details are available at:

http://www.vipassana.com/course/

Parisa – Support for Continuing Meditators

If you have taken one or more of our online courses during the past 8 years you are eligible to subscribe to our new Parisa support and encouragement programme for former participants. Parisa provides ongoing access to the latest edition of the 90 day course (there are 3 of these each year), new material to aid your practice and understanding of the Dhamma in the form of monthly themed "parisa packs" and a similar level of access to personal support from Andrew as available to regular course members. This is a flexible scheme that can be joined throughout the year for as long or as short a period as you wish. It is hoped that regular contact during the three courses we run each year and added inspiration from the parisa packs will help to provide a support network for those who do not have access to a local group or who would like to further explore our tradition. Recent Parisa themes have included how to make use of traditional Observance Day practices, alternative approaches to Anapanasati Meditation, Ethical Living, and Buddhanussati.

If you have already taken one of our courses, Parisa details can be found here:

http;//www.vipassana.com/parisa/

Every Grain of Sand

by Ven. Acariya Maha Boowa

Excerpts from a talk given on April 10, 1982

(from 'Things As They Are')

...When we investigate, we have to investigate over and over, time and time again, many, many times until we understand and are fully sure. The mind will then let go of its own accord. There's no way we can try to force it to let go as long as we haven't investigated enough. It's like eating: If we haven't reached the point where we're full, we're not full. There's no way we can try to make ourselves full with just one or two spoonfuls. We have to keep on eating, and then when we're full we stop of our own accord. We've had enough.

The same holds true with investigating. When we reach the stage where we fully know, we let go of our own accord: all our attachments to the body, feelings, labels, thought-formations, cognizance, step by step until we finally penetrate with our discernment into the mind itself - the genuine revolving wheel, the revolving mind - until it is smashed to pieces with nothing left. That's the point - that's the point where we end our problems in fighting with defilement. That's where they end - and our desire to go to nibbana ends right there as well.

The desire to go to nibbana is part of the path. It's not a craving. The desire to gain release from suffering and stress is part of the path. It's not a craving. Desire has two sorts: desire in the area of the world and desire in the area of the Dhamma. Desire in the area of the world is craving. Desire in the area of the Dhamma is part of the path. The desire to

gain release from suffering, to go to nibbana, strengthens the Dhamma within us. Effort is the path. Persistence is the path. Endurance is the path. Perseverance in every way for the sake of release is the path. Once we have fully come into our own, the desire will disappear - and at that point, who would ask after nibbana?

Once the revolving wheel, the revolving mind has been smashed once and for all, there is no one among any of those who have smashed that revolving mind from their hearts who wants to go to nibbana or who asks where nibbana lies. The word 'nibbana' is simply a name, that's all. Once we have known and seen, once we have attained the genuine article within ourselves, what is there to question?

This is what it means to develop the mind. We've developed it from the basic stages to the ultimate stage of development. So. Now, no matter where we live, we are sufficient unto ourselves. The mind has built a full sufficiency for itself, so it can be at its ease anywhere at all. If the body is ill — aching, feverish, hungry, or thirsty — we are aware of it simply as an affair of the body that lies under the laws of inconstancy, stress, and lack of self. It's bound to keep shifting and changing in line with its nature at all times - but we're not deluded by it. The khandhas are khandhas. The pure mind is a pure mind by its nature, with no need to force it to know or to be deluded. Once it's fully true from every angle, everything is true. We don't praise or criticize anything at all, because each thing is its own separate reality - so why is there any reason to clash? If one side is true and the other isn't, that's when things clash and fight all the time - because one side is genuine and the other side false. But when each has its own separate reality, there's no problem.

Contemplate the mind so as to reach this stage, the stage where each thing has its own separate reality. Yatha-bhuta-nana-dassana: the knowledge and vision of things as they are. The mind knows and sees things as they are, within and without, through and through, and then stays put with purity. If you were to say that it stays put, it stays put with purity. Whatever it thinks, it simply thinks. All the khandhas are khandhas pure and simple, without a single defilement to order their thinking, labeling, and interpreting any more. There are simply the khandhas pure and simple — the khandhas without defilements, or in other words, the khandhas of an arahant, of one who is free from defilement like the Lord Buddha and all his Noble Disciples. The body is simply a body. Feelings, labels, thought-formations, and cognizance are each simply passing conditions that we use until their time is up. When they no longer have the strength to keep going, we let them go in line with their reality. But as for the utterly true nature of our purity, there is no problem at all....

... Those who have reached full release from conventional realities of every sort, you know, don't assume themselves to be more special or worse than anyone else. For this reason, they don't demean even the tiniest of creatures. They regard them all as friends in suffering, birth, ageing, illness, and death, because the Dhamma is something tender and gentle. Any mind in which it is found is completely gentle and can sympathize with every grain of sand, with living beings of every sort. There's nothing rigid or unyielding about it. Only the defilements are rigid and unyielding. Proud. Conceited. Haughty and vain. Once there's Dhamma, there are none of these things. There's only the unvarying gentleness and tenderness of mercy and benevolence for the world at all times.

The Reward of the Contemplative Life

Just as if there were a pool of water in a mountain glen - clear, limpid, and unsullied - where a man with good eyes standing on the bank could see shells, gravel, and pebbles, and also shoals of fish swimming about and resting, and it would occur to him, "This pool of water is clear, limpid, and unsullied. Here are these shells, gravel, and pebbles, and also these shoals of fish swimming about and resting;" so too, the monk discerns as it actually is, that "This is stress... This is the origin of stress... This is the stopping of stress... This is the way leading to the stopping of stress... These are mental effluents... This is the origin of mental effluents... This is the stopping of mental effluents... This is the way leading to the stopping of mental effluents. " His heart, thus knowing, thus seeing, is released from the effluent of sensuality, released from the effluent of becoming, released from the effluent of unawareness. With release, there is the knowledge, "Released." He discerns that, "Birth is no more, the holy life is fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world."

'This, great king, is a reward of the contemplative life, visible here and now, more excellent than the previous ones and more sublime. And as for another visible reward of the contemplative life, higher and more sublime than this, there is none.'

- Samannaphala Sutta, Digha Nikaya

(tr. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, for free distribution only)

Permanency?

A course participant writes:

I'm working on vipassana meditation but intellectually I have a couple of questions: It's true that our sensations may be fleeting, our thoughts may not last, our atoms may interchange, but doesn't our self identity remain the same throughout the years? If things change, how would one explain memory?

Andrew replies:

The real answers to these questions are to be found directly during vipassana practice - we don't need to believe the theory - but it takes quite a lot of steady work for "first hand" understanding to arise. With dedication you will find that glimpses of your own impermanence do arise and that the foundations on which we shore up the I-dentity are pretty flimsy. This can come as quite a shock but that soon seems strangely reassuring as the perspective from which we view life and make our choices about actions radically shifts.

The self identity doesn't actually remain the same through the years. If we are just look at this intellectually we can see that there are radical changes in who we feel we are as the decades unfold. Is there any meaningful relationship between the self identity of a 2 year old child ... the adolescent youth... the "same" person at 45 years old .... and again as the person declines in old age? There are certainly links between these snapshot identities but were we to be able to accurately represent the world view and self view of the 2 year old and the 45 year old could they really be called the same? Buddhism does not deny a link between any of these identities; it just says take a close look and see if anything is fixed. Is there any single aspect of our identity that is not subject to change? Is there anything there that is not accounted for by overlapping processes, happening in different ways and with differing speeds of coming into existence, changing, subsiding...

Memory changes too. Changes may happen quickly or very slowly. A family member has Alzheimer's and it is amazing to witness how dramatically it changes who he is from day to day. There are "good" days when his memory allows him to conform to the expected identity and "bad" days when his memory doesn't allow him to know much about who he is. Alzheimer's is an extreme case, of course, but even now in my forties memory plays tricks. It simply isn't as reliable as I would hope or had expected. If the data is not present or inaccessible then part of "me" changes - old anicca at play again! Memory is like any other conditioned process: it is in constant flux and has no permanency. Certain things are retained for longer than others but nothing will be retained for ever. We can give ourselves mental exercises and build skills to help us to choose and access those things that we would like to remember, we can take herbal remedies or prescription drugs if we have particular problems, but this is hardly reliable.

That all things change does not mean that each change happens simultaneously and with the same dynamic. When we are talking about our identity this is held together, to some extent, by the fact that some of the processes are slower or more obvious than others. We cling "for grim death" to those overlaps.

With metta

Andrew

The Vipassana Fellowship Newsletter is published about 10 times each year and is sent only on request and to previous participants of our courses. Vipassana Fellowship is an organisation dedicated to the dissemination of accurate and useful information on Buddhist meditation practices as found in the Theravada tradition. Our next mailing will be in December. Our site can be accessed via the vipassana.com and vipassana.org domains.