Three Feelings Are the Clearest Signal for the Meditation Object

What we can clearly perceive comes down to only three things: pleasure, pain, and neither-pleasure-nor-pain. When we feel happiness or ease, the wholesome side has seized the moment to become master of the house of our heart. When we feel a state that must be endured, or is hard to endure — suffering — the unwholesome side is master. Whichever state is clearer, pleasant or painful, we hold continuous awareness on that state. What matters is that the knowing mind becomes established; once it is established, the "not-knowing" — ignorance — falls away.

The Principle of Body-Feeling-Mind-Dhamma: Abandoning Covetousness and Grief

The Buddha taught the monks to clearly acknowledge body, feeling, mind, and mental objects, in order to remove covetousness (abhijjhā) and grief (domanassa) toward the world. This means establishing right mindfulness — knowing as recollection, clarity as full awareness — regarding body and mind, in order to abandon liking and disliking toward the world. It is precisely this liking and disliking that the unwholesome side and the indeterminate quality (abyākata) use as bait to draw us in. Once we take their bait, they carry us off and imprison us in their dimension, arguing and getting entangled with their issue without our even realizing it. So we simply maintain awareness on the body — the breath, or bodily sensation — or on the mind, such as the feeling of pleasure or pain.

Why Recitation Must Be Paired with Visualization: Closing Three Channels

The mind is what fabricates; we can direct that fabrication ourselves. Take the recitation "Samma-Arahang" — we can make it faster or slower, louder or softer, at will. The sound of this recitation blocks out every other sound that would disturb us. And using a visualized image — a Buddha figure or a crystal orb — blocks out every other image that might intrude. Our revered teacher said that recitation and visualization are a paired set, because our mind can perceive image, sound, and feeling. So if we use the sound of the recitation together with the image of a crystal orb or Buddha figure, along with a feeling of ease, we are using every channel the mind can perceive — and so we block sound, image, and feeling all at once, closing off every doorway the unwholesome side or the indeterminate quality could use to intrude.

Visualizing the Crystal Buddha Image and Merging into One

This recitation, "Samma-Arahang," is the designated name of the Buddha Gem. When we utter this word, its paired visualization naturally appears — a clear, pure, radiant crystal Buddha image at the center of our being. Every time we utter the name, the Buddha Gem appears, continuously arising at our center. He expands and merges with us, becoming one being. Our head becomes the clear crystal of the Dhamma-body; our eyes become the eyes of the Dhamma-body; down to the soles of our feet, everything becomes a clear, pure crystal Buddha image. We are the Buddha image; the Buddha image is us. This Dhamma-body is our true self — every other body we inhabit is only temporary, but this Dhamma-body remains with us always.

50,000 Thoughts a Day — Most Not Truly Our Own

Scientists have researched that a human being has roughly 50,000 thoughts arise in a single day. But when we ask ourselves how many of those thoughts, in a given day, we truly and deliberately generated ourselves, the answer is very few. We might be shocked to learn we think 50,000 thoughts a day without even realizing it. Three natural forces — the wholesome, the unwholesome, and the indeterminate — govern all beings according to their own power, and there is not a single moment free from one of these three systems. Every time one of them possesses the mind, its thoughts are slipped in so that we feel we are thinking them ourselves, driving us to act this way or that until it becomes automatic. We believe we think, speak, and act on our own, but in truth it is all the command of these three natural forces.

Three Levels of Defilement, and the Arising of Rapture

As we maintain awareness within reflective engagement (vitakka-vicāra), defilement at various levels is progressively cleansed — beginning with the coarsest. Once the coarse level is exhausted, we enter a subtler dimension and cleanse the middle level, and then again a subtler one still. The lighter defilement becomes, the clearer our awareness grows, until it becomes clean enough for rapture (pīti) to manifest, and the first jhāna gradually forms in sequence. If rapture and happiness are not yet present, brightness will appear first, one or the other. The brightness that appears will gradually become clearer, until we can enlarge it or shrink it, move it forward or backward, or shift it left or right — and we then gradually move this bright orb into position at the seventh base at the center of the body.

Radiating Mettā and Making a Resolution

As the stream of merit flows continuously in, we dedicate this merit to our ancestors, who wait in the other world with anxious anticipation, our parents, grandparents, teachers and benefactors, the deities who protect us, and all our karmic counterparties (khu-kam khu-wen) — forgiving one another mutually. Then we set a wholesome intention and radiate mettā to all beings, that they be free from suffering and share happiness equally, expanding this heart of loving-kindness outward until it covers the whole world and universe. We then let the mind rest still at the center of the Triple Gem and Nibbāna, and using this auspicious moment, resolve and set an intention: may the merit and blessings of our teachers combine with all we have accumulated, purifying our elements of Dhamma to be bright and pure, freeing us from all obstacles, granting the Eye of Dhamma, reaching the Dhamma-body, and guiding us straight along the path to Nibbāna, to the very end of the Dhamma.