Practice: the Only Path to Getting Better

Meditation practice is essential for every life, because we constantly live under the control of nature, which operates through three systems: the wholesome, the unwholesome, and the neutral (abyākata). Each has a clearly distinct aim. The unwholesome aims to utterly destroy us; the neutral squanders our precious time, leaving it worthless; the wholesome nurtures great benefit — happiness, success, and the fulfillment of everything right and good.

If we don't practice, leaving life to fate, what can we hope for? No one can help us unless we practice in a way that supports the working of the wholesome side, so it can bring great benefit into our lives. Past karmic debts must still be repaid, but the present must be made good and corrected — and we can only improve through the wholesome system. Nothing else can make us better.

Determined Knowing: the Easiest, Most Valuable Good Deed

Supporting the wholesome system calls for many kinds of goodness, but the easiest and most valuable good deed of all — the one that most supports the wholesome side — is simply determined knowing. It requires no resources whatsoever. Just know. It can be done at any time, eyes open or closed: know your own body, know the breath, know the recitation "sammā-arahaṃ," know the Buddha image.

The Buddha taught the monks clearly: "Bhikkhus, you should determine and know clearly body, feeling, mind, and dhamma, in order to abandon covetousness and grief toward the world." That means you must determine — you must have mindfulness. The mind cannot determine on its own; it hasn't reached that automatic stage. We must command it manually first. If we don't command the mind, something else will command it instead — the neutral nature will invite us to watch movies, listen to music, play games, eat, play, dance, and wander endlessly. We must cultivate in ourselves, by ourselves, a love for developing right mindfulness.

Delight and Sorrow: Tools of the Unwholesome and the Neutral

Delight and sorrow are the world's covetousness and grief. They are used as tools to imprison us, presenting things that make us leap with delight — like a pendulum swinging to one extreme with the force to swing all the way to the other: now laughing, now crying. He therefore calls these two the tools that the unwholesome and neutral natures use to manage humans and all beings, making them leap with greed and fear.

They rely on ignorance (avijjā) and wrong view (micchādiṭṭhi) to keep humans from knowing the truth of life, then use a whispering voice to pressure and control us, drawing on feelings of boredom, stress, irritation, exhaustion, discouragement, hopelessness, gloominess, restlessness, and resentment as tools to manage humans until they are worn down past endurance. Because we lack right mindfulness, we cannot remain within the system where the wholesome protects and cares for us — the sinful side imprisons us in its own dimension and deceives us.

The Electric-Drill Analogy: Right Mindfulness Must Find Balance First

Once right mindfulness is mastered, right concentration becomes easy. Without mastering right mindfulness — without recognizing it or knowing how to use it — hoping to attain right concentration remains a lifelong wish that rarely bears fruit. Right mindfulness is like drilling into metal: you place the electric drill at the marked spot, hold it steady and balanced first, then push the bit into the metal or wood. If it isn't balanced, it slips and skids, causing an accident. So we must first hold still, let it settle into balance, then push the spinning bit in.

Right mindfulness is this settled steadiness — simply knowing the point of what we are aware of right now. Knowing the breath is just knowing the breath: there is an in-breath, an out-breath. Clear comprehension (sampajañña) is knowing the fine, subtle quality of that breath. In the beginning we may not need that level of detail — just knowing the breath is enough. The moment we know it, the sphere of knowing draws in pure energy that purifies the ignorance obscuring that dimension. Clarity of that dimension is cleared away by the pure energy called merit, growing lighter and lighter, and we come to know more and more clearly.

A Car Needs Fuel, a Phone Needs a Battery, Electricity Powers Appliances: Why the Wholesome System Needs Merit

The human body can accomplish only so much on its own. Defilement covering humanity is abundant, layered, and locked in place. We need only determine our knowing to draw pure energy in; the wholesome system then takes that pure energy and runs its own automatic machinery to make corrections — just as a car with no fuel cannot run or drive, a mobile phone with no battery cannot work, and every electrical appliance in our home needs power to function. The automatic wholesome system is exactly the same: without the pure energy called merit, it cannot run the automatic mechanism of goodness. Energy is required to run the system.

Determined knowing is itself a wave that can draw in the wave of good energy; a bad wave — the unwholesome wave — draws in unwholesome energy to drive the unwholesome system instead. Each side needs energy to power its own automatic system. This is exactly why we must practice — if we don't, where would the pure energy come from to drive the wholesome system to benefit us? What's so hard about determined knowing? We're already knowing this and that all the time anyway — just know always without lapsing, know what the Buddha taught, know body and mind.

Reciting "Sammā Arahaṃ": Staying Only With the Newest Syllable

Knowing the mind means knowing happiness, suffering, or neither — or knowing the recitation and mental image of "sammā-arahaṃ," settling still at the center of the body or wherever feels familiar and comfortable. The mind is a fully-accomplished element: however we determine it, so it becomes. With each syllable of "sammā-arahaṃ," we know it so that mindfulness has something to hold onto, so it doesn't scatter elsewhere. Don't pay attention to the syllable that has already passed — attend only to the newest, present syllable, staying with the present, never the one gone by.

Because the dimension of the present sets us free, carrying us into ever more refined new dimensions. If we cling to a past syllable — even one from a moment ago — we become imprisoned in the dimension of another nature; only the wholesome dwells purely in the present. "Sammā-arahaṃ" abides in the recitation itself — this is the nāma-state, something we must actively construct. This nāma-state is paired with a rūpa-state; our revered teacher stated plainly that form and name always come as a pair — wherever there is name, there is form.

Nāma and Rūpa: When Name Is Uttered, Form Appears

When we utter the nāma-state "sammā-arahaṃ," the rūpa-state — the crystal-clear dhammakāya-arahant — appears bright within the center of our body. Once he appears, he takes on his function: expanding and superimposing, fusing us and him into one. He arises together with immense virtue and benefit, together with the spheres of precepts, concentration, wisdom, liberation, and knowledge-and-vision of liberation, refining and correcting us.

This can be proven. Anyone who cannot sleep at night and doesn't want to rely on medicine can sit in the half-lotus posture, recite "sammā-arahaṃ" while recalling the Buddha image for a moment, and soon fall asleep — because he arises and refines, corrects, and cares for us. It must be done in this seated posture, because every atom of our body needs correction; otherwise the sinful side slips in here and there, pressuring and suppressing us so we cannot sleep. This is proof that it truly has an effect, even when we don't see it.

The Crystal Dhammakāya Radiating Through the Whole Body

With every recitation, uttering his name, he appears — superimposed as one with us, arising again and again, like the blue top-view image of the crystal Buddha image, fusing us into a single unity. We are the image; the image is us. Our head becomes the clear, pure crystal of the dhammakāya; our forehead too is clear, pure crystal; our face becomes his gentle, soft, tender countenance; our eyes become his half-closed eyes with their soft, gentle smile, brimming with loving-kindness and compassion.

Our neck, shoulders, arms, chest, abdomen, back, hips, thighs, knees, shins, calves, and the soles and tops of our feet all become the clear, pure crystal of the dhammakāya. From head to toe we are the crystal dhammakāya, luminous and radiant. We are the image; the image is us. Cast off entirely the feeling of the human body, leaving only the feeling that we are the image, and the image is us.

The Stream of Merit and Dedicating Merit to Our Ancestors

The stream of merit flows forth continuously, refining the dhamma-elements — seeing, remembering, thinking, knowing, and the earth, water, wind, fire, space, and consciousness elements — making them clear, pure, and radiant. Within the bright sphere of merit are contained subtle assets: physical assets, wealth, virtues, retinue, honor and praise, the path and fruit of Nibbāna, and the knowledge of the dhammakāya, all complete within the sphere of merit. As merit flows continuously through the center of our being, we then dedicate this merit to our ancestors.

Let us recall our ancestors, grandparents, parents, siblings, and the teachers who have helped us, along with the guardian devas who assist us, and all beings we may have wronged — our karmic counterparts (คู่กรรมคู่เวร) — asking for mutual forgiveness, that they too may share fully in this merit.

Radiating Loving-Kindness to All Beings and the Universe

Having dedicated this merit, we turn to wishing well for ourselves and for the whole world and all beings. Our teacher taught us to draw upon the heart of a mother toward her infant child, taking that feeling of love, loving-kindness, and goodwill, because it is the purest form of mettā — and then wish: may all beings who share this same suffering of birth, aging, sickness, and death be free from suffering and find happiness together; may those with much suffering have less, those with little suffering be free of it entirely, those with little happiness have more, and those already happy grow happier still.

We then extend this heart, filled with loving-kindness, outward to cover our home, village, sub-district, district, province, country, and the whole world, and onward throughout the universe, embracing countless stars without limit. This special quality of mettā can dissolve the resentment present in our own heart and in the hearts of all beings, leaving them clean and pure.

Resting in the Triple Gem and the Closing Aspiration

Phra Ajarn leads the mind to rest, still, in the center of the Triple Gem — the Buddha jewel, the Dhamma jewel, the Sangha jewel — and in the center of the great teachers who watch over our merit and Dhamma at all times, resting in the center of Nibbāna. The stream of merit from the subtlest part of Nibbāna flows in to purify every dhamma-sphere and every body within us, making them clear and pure. Using this auspicious moment, he leads an aspiration, setting a blueprint for success — for happiness, prosperity, knowledge, happiness and purity, and fulfillment of every righteous wish, both in this life and every life to come, closing with a Pali chant of dedication.