Dhamma Notes No.8

The Basic Method of Meditation (excerpt)

(Edited from a talk given by Ajahn Brahm during the recent 9 day retreat in North Perth)

...The fifth stage is called ‘full sustained attention on the beautiful breath’. Often, this stage flows on naturally, seamlessly, from the previous stage. As one’s full attention rests easily and continuously on the experience of breath, with nothing interrupting the even flow of awareness, the breath calms down. It changes from a coarse, ordinary breath, to a very smooth and peaceful ‘beautiful breath’. The mind recognizes this beautiful breath and delights in it. The mind experiences a deepening of contentment. It is happy just to be there watching this beautiful breath. The mind does not need to be forced. It stays with the beautiful breath by itself. ‘You’ don’t do anything. If you try and do something at this stage, you disturb the whole process, the beauty is lost and, like landing on a snake’s head in the game of snakes and ladders, you go back many squares. The ‘doer’ has to disappear from this stage of the meditation on, with just the ‘knower' passively observing.

A helpful trick to achieve this stage is to break the inner silence just once and gently think to yourself "calm." That’s all. At this stage of the meditation, the mind is usually so sensitive that just a little nudge like this causes the mind to follow the instruction obediently. The breath calms down and the beautiful breath emerges.

When you are passively observing just the beautiful breath in the moment, the perception of ‘in’ (breath) or ‘out’ (breath), or beginning or middle or end of a breath, should all be allowed to disappear. All that is known is this experience of the beautiful breath happening now. The mind is not concerned with what part of the breath cycle this is in, nor on what part of the body this is occurring. Here we are simplifying the object of meditation, the experience of breath in the moment, stripping away all unnecessary details, moving beyond the duality of ‘in’ and ‘out’, and just being aware of a beautiful breath which appears smooth and continuous, hardly changing at all.

Do absolutely nothing and see how smooth and beautiful and timeless the breath can appear. See how calm you can allow it to be. Take time to savour the sweetness of the beautiful breath, ever calmer, ever sweeter.

Now the breath will disappear, not when ‘you’ want it to but when there is enough calm, leaving only ‘the beautiful.’

This pure mental object is called a NIMITTA. ‘Nimitta’ means ‘a sign’, here a mental sign. This is a real object in the landscape of the mind (CITTA) and when it appears for the first time it is extremely strange. One simply has not experienced anything like it before. Nevertheless, the mental activity called ‘perception’ searches through its memory bank of life experiences for something even a little bit similar in order to supply a description to the mind. For most meditators, this ‘disembodied beauty’, this mental joy, is perceived as a beautiful light. It is not a light. The eyes are closed and the sight consciousness has long been turned off. It is the mind consciousness freed for the first time from the world of the five senses. It is like the full moon, here standing for the radiant mind, coming out from behind the clouds, here standing for the world of the five senses. It is the mind manifesting, not a light, but for most it appears like a light, it is perceived as a light, because this imperfect description is the best that perception can offer.

For other meditators, perception chooses to describe this first appearance of mind in terms of physical sensation, such as intense tranquility or ecstasy. Again, the body consciousness (that which experiences pleasure and pain, heat and cold and so on) has long since closed down and this is not a physical feeling. It is just ‘perceived’ as similar to pleasure. Some see a white light, some a gold star, some a blue pearl…the important fact to know is that they are all describing the same phenomena. They all experience the same pure mental object and these different details are added by their different perceptions.

You can recognize a nimitta by the following 6 features: 

1. It appears only after the 5^th stage of the meditation, after the meditator has been with the beautiful breath for a long time; 
2. It appears when the breath disappears;
3. It only comes with the external five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch are completely absent; 
4. It manifests only in the silent mind, when descriptive thoughts (inner speech) are totally absent;
5. It is strange but powerfully attractive; 
6. It is a beautifully simple object. I mention these features so that you may distinguish real nimittas from imaginary ones.

The sixth stage, then, is called ‘experiencing the beautiful nimitta’. It is achieved when one lets go of the body, thought, and the five senses (including the awareness of the breath) so completely that only the beautiful nimitta remains.

Sometimes when the nimitta first arises it may appear ‘dull’. In this stage, one should go immediately back to the previous stage of the meditation, continuous silent awareness of the beautiful breath. One has moved to the nimitta too soon. Sometimes the nimitta is bright but unstable, flashing on and off like a lighthouse beacon and then disappearing. Again this shows that you have left he beautiful breath too early. One must be able to sustain one’s attention on the beautiful breath with ease for a long, long time before the mind is capable of maintaining clear attention on the far more subtle nimitta. So train the mind on the beautiful breath, train it patiently and diligently, then when it is time to go on to the nimitta, it is bright, stable and easy to sustain.

The main reason why the nimitta can appear dull is that the depth of contentment is too shallow. You are still ‘wanting’ something. Usually, you are wanting the bright nimitta or you are wanting Jhana. Remember, and this is important, Jhanas are states of letting go, incredibly deep states of contentment. So give away the hungry mind, develop contentment on the beautiful breath and the nimitta and Jhana will happen by themselves.

The main reason why the nimitta is unstable is because the ‘doer’ just will not stop interfering. The ‘doer’ is the controller, the back seat driver, always getting involved where it does not belong and messing everything up. This meditation is a natural process of coming to rest and it requires ‘you’ to get out of the way completely. Deep meditation only occurs when you really let go, and this means REALLY LET GO to the point that the process becomes inaccessible to the ‘doer’.

A skilful means to achieve such profound letting go is to deliberately offer the gift of confidence to the nimitta. Interrupt the silence just for a moment, so so gently, and whisper as it were inside your mind that you give complete trust to the nimitta, so that the ‘doer’ can relinquish all control and just disappear. The mind, represented here by the nimitta before you, will then take over the process as you watch it all happen.

You do not need to do anything here because the intense beauty of the nimitta is more than capable of holding the attention without your assistance. Be careful, here, not to go assessing. Questions such as ‘What is this?’, ‘Is this Jhana?’, ‘What should I do next?’, and so on are all the work of ‘the doer’ trying to get involved again. This is disturbing the process. You may assess everything once the journey is over. A good scientist only assesses the experiment at the end, when all the data is in. So now, do not assess or try to work it all out. There is no need to pay attention to the edge of the nimitta ‘Is it round or oval?’, ‘Is the edge clear or fuzzy?’. This is all unnecessary and just leads to more diversity, more duality of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, and more disturbance.

Let the mind incline where it wants, which is usually to the centre of the nimitta. The centre is where the most beautiful part lies, where the light is most brilliant and pure. Let go and just enjoy the ride as the attention gets drawn into the centre and falls right inside, or as the light expands all around enveloping you totally. This is, in fact, one and the same experience perceived from different perspectives. Let the mind merge in the bliss. Let the seventh stage of this path of meditation, Jhana, occur.

There are two common obstacles at the door into Jhana: exhilaration and fear. Exhilaration is becoming excited. If, at this point, the mind thinks "Wow, this is it!" then the Jhana is most unlikely to happen. This ‘Wow’ response needs to be subdued in favour of absolute passivity. You can leave all the ‘wows’ until after emerging from the Jhana, where they properly belong. The more likely obstacle, though, is fear. Fear arises at the recognition of the sheer power and bliss of the Jhana, or else at the recognition that to go fully inside the Jhana, something must be left behind – You! The ‘doer’ is silent before Jhana but still there. Inside Jhana, the ‘doer’ is completely gone. The ‘knower’ is still functioning, you are fully aware, but all the controls are now beyond reach. You cannot even form a single thought, let alone make a decision. The will is frozen, and this can appear scary to the beginner. Never before in your whole life have you ever experienced being so stripped of all control yet so fully awake. The fear is the fear of surrendering something so essentially personal as the will to do.

This fear can be overcome through confidence in the Buddha’s Teachings together with the enticing bliss just ahead that one can see as the reward. The Lord Buddha often said that this bliss of Jhana "should not be feared but should be followed, developed and practised often"(LATUKIKOPAMA SUTTA, MAJJHIMA NIKAYA). So before fear arises, offer your full confidence to that bliss and maintain faith in the Lord Buddha’s Teachings and the example of the Noble Disciples. Trust the Dhamma and let the Jhana warmly embrace you for an effortless, body-less and ego-less, blissful experience that will be the most profound of your life. Have the courage to fully relinquish control for a while and experience all this for yourself.

If it is a Jhana it will last a long time. It does not deserve to be called Jhana if it lasts only a few minutes. Usually, the higher Jhanas persist for many hours. Once inside, there is no choice. You will emerge from the Jhana only when the mind is ready to come out, when the ‘fuel’ of relinquishment that was built up before is all used up. These are such still and satisfying states of consciousness that their very nature is to persist for a very long time. Another feature of Jhana is that it occurs only after the nimitta is discerned as described above. Furthermore, you should know that while in any Jhana it is impossible to experience the body (e.g. physical pain), hear a sound from outside or produce any thought, not even ‘good’ thoughts. There is just a clear singleness of perception, an experience of non-dualistic bliss which continues unchanging for a very long time. This is not a trance, but a state of heightened awareness. This is said so that you may know for yourself whether what you take to be a Jhana is real or imaginary.

Travelogue To The Four Jhanas (excerpt) 

By Ajahn Brahmavamso

...The Buddha, as everyone knows, sat under the Bodhi tree, developed the jhanas and based on the power of that jhana, the clarity of that jhana, developed all of these wisdoms, first of all recollecting past lives, recollecting the action of kamma, the depth of kamma, how it sends beings to various parts of rebirth, and then lastly the Four Noble Truths.

It was only because of the power of that sort of mind that he could penetrate to such a degree of subtlety and uncover things which had been clouded completely from him. Since then he always tried to teach and encourage the practice of jhana as an essential ingredient of the Eightfold Path, an essential part of becoming enlightened. If one wishes to use Buddhism not as only a half-hearted path but to take it to its fullness, and aim for enlightenment, then sooner or later one will have to come across these jhanas, cultivate them, get to know them and use their power and do exactly the same as the Buddha did and become fully enlightened.

The next stage, the third stage in my scheme, the fourth stage in the Buddha's Anapanasati Sutta, is where, having attained that second stage and not letting it go, not letting go of the awareness of the breath one moment, one calms that object down, calms the object of the breath down.

There are several ways of doing that. Perhaps the most effective is just developing an attitude of letting go, because the object of the breath will calm down naturally if you leave it alone. However, sometimes some meditators have difficulty letting go to that degree and so another method which can be very effective is just suggesting calm, calm, calm. Or suggesting letting go. There is a great difference between the attitude of letting go and suggesting letting go. With suggesting letting go, you are still actually controlling things, you are getting involved in it but at least you are getting involved by sending it in the right direction, sending it towards the place where the attitude of letting go is occurring, without the need to put it into words or to give it as orders or commands. You are programming the mind in the right direction. But I use both, either just letting go as an attitude of mind or subconscious suggesting, just calm, calm, calm, and to feel the object of your attention, being here the feeling of the breath, get more and more refined, more subtle. The difficulty or the problem here will be that you have to always maintain your attention clearly on the breath. In other words, not letting go of the second stage when you develop the third stage. Keep full awareness of the breath, but just make that breath softer and softer and softer, more and more subtle, more and more refined, but never letting go of it. As the breath gets more and more refined, the only way of not letting go of it is by treating it very, very gently. You're going towards an effortless awareness on the breath, an effortless attention where the breath is just there.

A bit of a problem here with many meditators is that they are not quite sure of the correct way of knowing the breath in this state. There is a type of knowing which is just knowing, being mindful of, without naming, without thinking, without analyzing, a sub-verbal type of knowing. You have to be confident that you are actually watching the breath. Sometimes you may not have the width of mind to know exactly what type of breath you are watching, but you know you are watching the breath. The point is, it's a type of knowing which is getting much more refined. Our usual knowing is very wide and full of many details. Here, the details are narrowing down until a point comes where sometimes we have so few details that we don't know if we truly know, a different type of knowing, a much more refined knowing. So the wisdom has to be very strong here and confidence has to be strong, to understand that one still knows the breath. The breath hasn't disappeared at all and you do not need, as it were, to widen the width of knowing through effort of will, this will just disturb the mind. Just allow everything to calm down. The object will calm down and so will the knowing start to calm down. It's at this stage where you start to get a samadhi nimitta arising. I call this part of the third stage.

If you calm the physical feeling of breath down, the mental feeling of breath starts to arise -- the samadhi nimitta -- usually a light which appears in the mind. However, it can sometimes just appear to be a physical feeling. It can be a deep peacefulness; it can even be like a blackness. The actual description of it is very wide simply because the description is that which everyone adds on to a core experience, which is a mental experience. When it starts to arise you just haven't got the words to describe it. So what we add to it is usually how we understand it to ourselves. Darkness, peacefulness, profound stillness, emptiness, a beautiful light or whatever. Don't particularly worry about what type of nimitta it actually is.

If you want to know the way to develop that nimitta, then this fourth stage of developing the four jhanas is to pay attention to that aspect of the nimitta which is beautiful, which is attractive, which is joyful, the pleasant part of it. And again, it is at this stage where you have to be comfortable with pleasure and not be afraid of it, not fear that it is going to lead to some sort of attachment, because the pleasure of these stages can be very intense at times, literally overpowering: overpowering your sense of self, overpowering your control, overpowering your sensitivity to your physical body. So you have to look for that pleasure and happiness which is in the nimitta, and this becomes the fourth stage because once the mind has noticed the pleasure and happiness in the nimitta, that will act like what I call the magnet or the glue. It is that which will draw one's attention onto it, and it's not the will or the choice or the decision which takes the attention and puts it onto the samadhi nimitta. In fact once the choice, the intention, the orders inside yourself arise, they'll actually push you away. You have to let the whole process work because the samadhi nimitta at this stage is very pleasurable; it literally pulls the mind into it. Many meditators when the possibly experience their first taste of a jhana, experience the mind falling into a beautiful hole. And that's exactly what's happening. It's the joy, the bliss, the beauty of that nimitta which is before the mind that actually pulls the mind into it. So you don't need to do the pushing, you don't need to do the work. At this stage it becomes a natural process of the mind. Your job is just to get to that second stage, calm that breath down, allow the samadhi nimitta to arise. Once the samadhi nimitta arises strongly, then the jhana happens in and of itself.

Again, because the quality of knowing is very strong but very narrow in these states, while you are in these states, there is no way that you can truly assess where you are and what's happening to you. The ability to know through thinking, through analysing, is taken away from you in these states. You usually have to wait until you emerge from these states, until your ordinary thinking returns again, so you can really look back upon and analyse what has happened. Any of these jhana states are powerful experiences and as a powerful experience, they leave a deep imprint on your mind.

...The mind moves onto the object, and remember the 'object' here, the thing you are aware of, is the piti-sukha. That is why it is the main factor of this jhana, because you are aware of bliss. That's the object of your meditation, not the breath, not the body, not any words but you are aware of bliss. And you will also be aware, and this is one of the characteristics of the first jhana, that the mind will still be wobbling a little bit. The bliss which is the object of your awareness will appear, as it were, to fade or to recede, and as it fades, as it recedes, as it weakens, the mind will go towards it again. Attracted as it were, by its power, by its bliss, the mind goes towards it; that is called 'vitakka', the movement of the mind onto its object. When it reaches the object it will hold onto it, this is called 'vicira', which will be an effort of mind, but a very subtle effort of mind. This is an effort of mind; this is not an effort of will. It is not an effort coming from you, it's the mind doing it by itself. All along you are a passive observer to all of this. And as it holds onto it, eventually, as it were, it will lose its grip and will recede away from the object of bliss again. In this way, the object of bliss will appear to be wobbly, not truly firm. As such, the mind will seem to have a little bit of width to it, but not be truly solid. However, that width is very small and you never move far away from that bliss because as soon as you move a little away from it, it retracts and pulls the mind straight back again.

Because it's only got a little bit of width this is called one-pointedness of mind: all of the energy, the focus, of the mind being in one point, both in space and one point in time. This experience does not change over many, many, many minutes in a full first jhana. This experience is maintained, it's just the mind going towards this bliss and this bliss lasting there for a long time. Now again, this is only how you'll see it when you emerge from the jhana. You will not be able to analyse this experience into five factors during that time because the mind will not have that width, that ability to think, the ability to analyse, while you are in the state. While in the state all you'll be aware of is just the bliss. You are literally blissed out, not really quite knowing why or what's happening, but having some sort of feeling or confidence that this is worthwhile, this is beautiful, this is profound, this is worth doing, so that you can stay in those states.

It's usual that a person's first experience of jhana will be the first jhana. After a while, the strength of the samadhi, what you actually brought into that state with you, will begin to decline and the mind will move away from the bliss, and the vitakka will not be strong enough to take it back into it again, and you emerge from the jhana. The jhana will break up and you will be able to think and analyse again. Thoughts will come up into your mind and this will probably be one of the first things which arises after the jhana breaks, as it were. The mind will still have a lot of happiness and bliss to it but will not be as one-pointed. The body will usually not be recognized at the beginning and only later will the mind care to look and see what the body has been doing all this time.

The mind will be very powerful at this stage. You've just emerged from a jhana, you'll still have a lot of happiness and bliss and in the words of the Buddha the mind will be 'malleable', it will be 'workable'. It will be like a piece of clay which is not too wet and not too dry, which you can turn into any shape you want with ease because of the power which you invested in the mind, and that becomes the experience of the first jhana. Once you've experienced that once then it's good to find out what caused that jhana to arise. What did you do? Or more appropriately, what did you let go of, to give rise to that jhana? Rather than what you did, what you let go of becomes a much more powerful indicator of the ways into these states. You usually find out that you developed that second stage when you started to let go of this 'controller', let go of the wandering mind, let go of the fear of these states and especially when you let go of the controller and just allowed the mind to show its face when you're not there, giving all the orders. Once you start to get to know this and get to know the ways into these jhanas, then you should try and develop them, to repeat them again and again because not only are you developing insight, you are developing the skill, the skill of letting go of things which are the causes of deep attachment.

Even though these are very strong pleasures, mental pleasures, the Buddha said they are not to be feared. He said this in many places in the Suttas and there was one place, in the Digha Nikaya, where he told the monks: if a person develops these jhanas, makes much of them, is almost attached to them, attached to their development then there are four consequences of that attachment to that development. The word I am translating here as attachment is anuyoga. Our word 'yoke' comes from this word 'yoga' which means 'tying onto'. Anu means 'along with' or 'tied along with' so it literally means 'practising frequently', doing it again and again and again, what some people would interpret as 'being attached to.'

So there are four results from practising jhanas in this way, not five results, not three results, but four results. And those four results of practising jhana again and again and again are stream entry, once returner, non-returner and Arahat. The Buddha was unequivocal about this. It does not lead to more attachment to the world, it actually leads to the enlightenment experiences, to separation from the world. The way to develop them is that as you develop the first jhana more and more, you can aim towards the higher jhanas. The only way you can aim towards the higher jhanas is to do it before you enter this whole area of the mind we call the jhana realm. Because once you are in any jhana, you are stuck there and you cannot give any orders or any commands, you cannot drive your vehicle once you are in any of these absorptions. The aiming, the driving, the putting in of instructions has to be done beforehand.

...The second jhana is the first true state of samadhi because here you've settled down that which was a disturbance of the first jhana, which was a wobbling of the mind, the vittaka-vicara has been abandoned. So now the mind has the object of bliss firmly unified with it, and this state is one of rock-like samadhi, where there is this one object in the mind, of bliss, and there is no room in the mind at all. It is completely one-pointed, stuck solid as a rock and blissed out, so the object is not moving at all, not changing an iota, it is there one moment after another moment after another moment. Because of the solidity and stability of that state, the second jhana will last much, much longer than the first jhana; the deeper the jhanas, the longer they will last and you are usually talking in terms of hours for the second jhana, simply because it is a very solid state. Whereas the first jhana can be just for a matter of minutes, a good second jhana should be quite long -- and it is very solid. Once you are in it there is no way you can get out until the energy of that jhana just uses itself up. That's the only way, because you cannot form the resolution, "now's the time to come out." If someone calls you, you just will not hear them, if someone taps you on the shoulder, you will not recognise that, because you are completely separated from the external world. You are literally right in the centre of your mind and you cannot be contacted. Again, that second jhana, once it starts to break up, will break up into what is tantamount to first jhana then it will break out into the verbalisation of thought. You come down again.

For those who want to explore these states a lot, one important thing one can do, rather than to leave it to the momentum of your energy to quieten down your energy of samadhi, is to make resolutions before you enter these states. You just need to say to yourself, "I'll just enter the jhana for half an hour or for one hour." Because the mind is very refined in these states it will have power, your suggestion will be like programming a computer and once the hour is up, the mind will just come out of the jhanas. I can't say exactly how it works, but it does. In the same way you can go to sleep and say, "I'll wake up at three o'clock" and you do wake up at three o'clock or five minutes either side, without the use of an alarm clock. The mind, if you programme it with mindfulness, responds. And so that is a very useful way and a very good instruction; to use those resolutions so that you do not spend over long in those states when you have maybe an appointment or some things you have to do. Make a resolution first of all. However, when you are in that state, you cannot make a resolution, you cannot think, you cannot analyze. All you know is that you are blissed out, you are not quite sure what is happening and only afterwards you have the opportunity to emerge and then to analyze and to see what has gone on and why.

If one wishes to go deeper into the jhanas, then at this point one has to understand that that bliss, which is in the second jhana born of samadhi, born of full unification of mind, a bliss with a different taste, has an aspect to it which is still troublesome to the mind and that is this aspect of piti. This is almost like a mental excitement and that can be overcome if one aims to quieten that bliss down.

MINDFULNESS IN MEDITATION

“What does Reality look like in Detail? The first three mindfulnesses were already an investigation into reality, but now it becomes very detailed, very subtle, and very precise. It is the complete precision of a very stable mind, which investigates into reality. And this investigation is done by mind itself as the non-moving observer. We sit in meditation and let the agitated observer completely calm down, it doesn’t have to do anything. We let reality come towards us. It is not that the observer would have to go and search for reality. We let it come by itself, and it is in this way that the understanding arises.

With a very light, awake intelligence we open up to the basic problems of samsara. The list of problems is long: the five obstacles are a problem, identification with the skandhas (heaps of reality) is a problem, attachment to the senses is a problem, and so on. We investigate into problems that give rise to suffering. We don’t just deal with anything, we deal with the basic problems of existence. But we nevertheless remain in freshness all the time, in meditative equipoise, the balance of wakefulness and relaxation: not too tense, not too loose. Trungpa says: It is like being in a room and having the windows wide open. You look out, but you don’t run out. You stay. You look and you see. And you share the freshness of the world, but you don’t get entangled in the world. Look what happens and remain free of clinging. We look right into the present moment. Very precisely.”—Lama Lundrup

If you don't watch your mind, you don't know what's motivating your actions. What you should be doing is detecting negative motivation, the cause of suffering, and changing it into positive. You should be applying your meditation like a medicine to the eradication of harmful thoughts, the delusions — the disturbing emotions that harm yourself and others. You need to eradicate these and make your mind healthy and your attitude beneficial, just as the Buddha explained in the verse I quoted before:

For example, when you're sitting or when you're walking, ask yourself the question, "What am I doing?" Then your mind will answer, "I'm sitting," "I'm walking," "I'm eating," depending on what it is that you're doing. "I'm cooking," "I'm talking." Whatever you are doing, you can meditate on emptiness. One way in which you can do this is to reply to the answer "I'm walking" with another question: "Why do I say 'I'm walking'?" Then you analyze; you look for the reason. What you find is, "The only reason I say this is that my aggregate of body, the base I label "I," is walking." Your body is walking — just because of that, your mind labels and believes "I'm walking." After you've done that, check how your I appears to you at that moment. Is it the same as before or has there been a change? Usually you'll find that it's not the same, that there's been a definite change. Suddenly, the old view of a real I in your body, appearing from that side, the I you have always believed to be there in your body, has vanished, become non-existent. And that's the truth. It's not a false view. The old I was the false one. When you do not meditate, do not analyze, the I that appears to you and in which you believe — the I that seems to be on these aggregates, in this body — is the false one. In philosophical texts, we refer to that I as inherently existent or existing by nature. In Western psychological terms, we call it the "emotional I." The emotional I — the one that you believe is in your body or on your aggregates — is totally non-existent. That is what you have to discover — that it's empty. You have to discover that it is totally non-existent, totally empty. If you can realize that — that there's not even the slightest atom of an I there — and feel as if you yourself have become totally non-existent, you have entered the Middle Way. At that time, when you realize emptiness, you gain full conviction, or definite understanding, that you can attain liberation, you can cease all suffering and its cause. Remain in the state of your discovery of the absence of the emotional I. Keep your mind in the emptiness of that. When your mind gets distracted, again ask yourself the question, "What am I doing?" Then, when your mind replies, ask again, "Why do I say 'I'm doing... '? There's no reason other than...," whatever it is. If the answer is, "I'm meditating," ask yourself, "Why do I say 'I'm meditating'?" There's no reason other than the fact that the base, the aggregates of mind, are transforming into virtue (which is what meditation really means). Then check again to see what effect this has had on your I. Has there been a change or not? Doing this meditation again and again helps you see the false I more and more clearly.—Thundrup Zorpa

Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw also laid stress on awareness of daily activities. If he saw a meditator slowing down all actions and movements, sitting down slowly before him, arranging hands and legs slowly, bowing down very, very slowly, the Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw was very pleased with this meditator. He said, "Such a meditator cannot miss any Magga or Phala." So the first important thing is to note mental state, emotional state, thoughts, ideas, opinions, mental images and so on. The second important factor is to be aware of all daily activities in more and more detail, as much as possible, slowing down all actions and movements.—Chanmyay Sayadaw

VIPASSANA 

Purification of View This is k›ya-passaddhi, physical serenity. As for the mind, it’s crystal clear all around. And like the glow coming off the mantle of the lantern, it’s of use to people and other living beings. This is what’s meant by ‘pabhassaram idaª cittaª’—the mind is radiant. When we can keep the mind pure in this way, it gains the power to see what lies deeper still—but as of yet we can’t know clearly. We’ll have to make our strength of mind even more powerful than this: That’s vipassana, clear-seeing insight. When vipassana arises, it’s as if we put kerosene directly on the mantle of a lantern: The fire will flame up instantly; the light will dazzle in a single flash. The concepts that label sensations will disappear; the concepts that label mental acts will disappear. All labeling and naming of things will disappear in a single mental instant. Sensations are still there, as always; mental acts are still there, as always, but the labels that take hold of them are cut, just like a telegraph line: The transmitter is there, the receiver is there, the line is there, but there’s no connection—the current isn’t running. Whoever wants to send a message can go ahead and try, but everything is quiet. So it is with the heart: When we cut through labels and concepts, then no matter what anyone may say to us, the heart is quiet. This is vipassana, an awareness beyond the sway of unawareness, free from clinging and attachment. The mind rises to the transcendent, released from this world. It dwells in a ‘world’ higher than the ordinary worlds, higher than the human world, the heavenly and the Brahma worlds. This is why, when the Buddha gained the knowledge of unsurpassed right self-awakening, a tremor went through the entire cosmos, from the lowest reaches of hell up through the human world to the worlds of the Brahmas. Why? Because his mind had gained full power so that it could part its way up above the Brahma worlds. For this reason, we should reflect on the common breath we’re breathing right now. It gives rise to benefits mixed with harm. The refined breath nourishes the blood vessels and nerves. The profound breath adjusts the breath sensations throughout the body so that the breath is self-sufficient in its own affairs. —Ajahn Lee Dhammadharo

“Our newly discovered simplicity will develop into a very direct, uncomplicated approach to life and meditation, without second thoughts, and will finally have the effect of becoming one with mindfulness. Simplicity becomes mindfulness. There is no more observer and observed: mental movement and awareness become one. This is the point where mindfulness becomes pristine awareness, the entrance to the realm of deep insight (lhaktong, vipashyana) which will develop into mahamudra, the path of true awareness where appearances and awareness arise simultaneously without distinction.”

• Vipassana is to see things as they truly are in order to free oneself from clinging.
• anything that is not controllable according to our wish cannot be called ours.
• The job of a Vipassana practitioner is simply to transform oneself into a new perspective, from a demander, a desire-worshipping warrior, and an egoist, to an observer, a knower, and a truth-worshipping warrior in what one is facing instead.
• You are being asked to look back against the stream of your thought, yet you still do not know where to look, in order to realize that it is impermanent and uncontrollable.
• Simply through realizing the difference between having doubt and temporarily free of doubt can be counted as the initial phase of gaining mindfulness
• When there is something that prompts you to be mindful of your breath, such mindfulness will condition your breath to be longer automatically. (it's not "long" it pauses for a longer period when you are concentrating)
• Heightened mindful awareness which is capable of extensive coverage in various phenomena continuously, either long or short, and gross or subtle, is what we really want for advancement to higher levels of Vipassana.
• The Buddha advised one to be aware of one’s breath frequently, as breathing is something that must be ongoing 24 hours a day, and it is pure.  The more one is aware of one’s breath, the more mindfulness one would gain.
• Beginning with being aware once every two minutes will not create any stress, instead it will lead you to a stronger mindfulness.
• When you can be aware once every minute consecutively for half an hour, you may feel that the world is dramatically different and the clock becomes something in excess and no longer necessary.  That is because your mindfulness begins to occur automatically.
• Write down the phrase ‘be aware of your breath’ on sticky notes and post them on many spots in your bedroom, at least two places or more.  It will be best if you post them on the spots where you frequently, yet unintentionally, look at.
• You have to throw away your previous beliefs which you used to think that stress originates from the external encounter, such as pressure in the work place or at home.
• There is no single particular condition that is you yourself permanently.  The more you realize the differences between such conditions, the more you will gain the wisdom to realize that every condition is not your true self-entity.
• If one observes it in more detail, one may profoundly realize that just only like and dislike may amazingly be differentiated into innumerable defilements.
• If one carefully observes like and dislike disintegrating by nature, one’s mind will be released from all sorts of luring delusion, until they finally extinguish.
• People in general cannot see like and dislike within their minds, because like and dislike once occurred, it becomes a chain reaction, resulting in words and deeds according to one’s desire instantaneously.  Unless you train to use your breath as a tool to measure how long like or dislike would last, you will start to know how to be aware of like or dislike.  And once you become skillful, you no longer rely on the breath as a tool anymore, but you can directly observe the arising and ceasing of like and dislike all at once.
• Such guidelines of self-observation would indicate that you have started practicing Vipassana.  The followings are the minor details, which you may find occurring spontaneously after practicing Vipassana for a while.

1. When looking up to the sky, seeing cloud or stars, instead of having romantic imagination, you simply see the steady state of mental serenity, without clinging to the taste of happiness, arisen from such state of serenity.
2. When your ego and conceit arisen as ‘you’ or ‘I’, with a strong sense of discrimination, you would hate what is going on within your mind, analogous to a person with keen eyes seeing innumerable dog ticks or fleas attached to one’s body.
3. When you see your own mistakes arisen from thinking, speaking or doing anything, and then realize that your mind has a nature of being unwholesome, such as being indignant, feeling gloomy, being manic, anxious, etc., then you become mindful and remorseful in a new way.  That is you do not feel sad, or keep blaming yourself.  Instead you realize that unwholesomeness is simply a dark shadow casting on your mind.  Simply realize that such dark shadow is not you yourself, once it arises, it will have to disintegrate as a norm, and you would gain the sense of voidness instead.
4. When you persistently continue to be a Vipassana practitioner, as days pass, voidness would expand itself exponentially.  That is seeing any mental phenomenon vanishing, it is like your mind continuously gains more ground of emptiness and you have constantly gained more genuine happiness. 
5. When stopping your habit of thinking that you know more than others and know how other people are, but instead you look at yourself and realize that you do not truly know much about yourself, until finally a new habit is gradually being cultivated.  That is you investigate yourself more than prying into other people’s matter.  
6. When fear arises, you realize that fear is simply another mental phenomenon that lures you to think that ‘you yourself’ is being the unfortunate person.  Yet when closely observed through Vipassana, you realize instead that there is only fear left, there is no such unfortunate person to be found anywhere.
7. When you realize that the extreme foible is absentmindedness or unawareness.
8. When you feel that the past is simply a memory, and you also feel that memory is like a candle light, that slowly dims into darkness.
9. When you notice that some of your behavior have changed, i.e., from being used to talk to yourself frequently, or even up to fighting a heavy war of words in your head, to resting quietly with the inner peace instead.
10. When someone told you that you are luminous, you feel that he or she is talking about the state of luminosity, not talking about you yourself.
11. When you are truly aware that you differ from other surrounding people who do not practice Vipassana, yet you do not see yourself different from them.  Because everyone by nature is the same, that is everything that arises, eventually must vanish.
12. When someone introduces you to other people as a ‘Vipassana practitioner,’ your mind simply denies it and does not feel proud, does not think that it is an honor, and realizes that even ‘being a Vipassana practitioner’ is not you yourself at all.

THE FOUR FRAMES OF REFERENCE

The proper objects that act as frames of reference are four: 

1. The body in and of itself, 
2. Feelings in and of themselves, 
3. The mind in and of itself, (thoughts, ideas, images)
4. Mental qualities in and of themselves (concentrated, unconcentrated, mundane, supramundane, jhana factors, enlightenment factors).

(The "in and of itself" here is important. To take the body as a frame of reference in this way, for instance, means that one views it not in terms of its function in the world-for then the world would be the frame of reference-but simply on its own terms, as it is directly experienced. In other words, one is not concerned with its relative worth or utility in terms of the values of the world-its beauty, strength, agility, etc.-but simply what it is when regarded in and of itself.

The four frames of reference are: focusing on the body in and of itself, focusing on feelings in and of themselves, focusing on the mind in and of itself, and focusing on mental qualities in and of themselves. All four of these are gathered in the body and mind. This is one way of looking at them, called anuloma, or in line with the standard way. The other way is called patiloma, in reverse of the standard way, in which we take all four and turn them into one. The standard way is when we practice directed thought and evaluation. But when we take all four and turn them into one, we take only one part of the body, as they say in the Great Frames of Reference Discourse: We focus on the body in and of itself as an object of tranquility meditation. In other words, we take all four parts and gather them into the body: the properties of earth, water, fire, and wind. That’s the body. When we see that it has many parts and many aspects, preventing the mind from growing still, making it distracted, we choose only one of the parts. For example, we put aside the properties of earth, water, and fire, and stay still only with the property of wind. We focus down on the wind property as the object we keep in mind: This is called the body in and of itself.—Ajahn Lee Dhammadharo