Practicing With Both Eyes Open and Closed: Two Paths, Trained Together

Phra Ajarn Suraphong opens by explaining that meditation practice happens both with eyes open and eyes closed. With eyes open, we train right mindfulness to arise, so that we and the Triple Gem become one throughout our daily activities; they watch over us, refining and guiding us at all times. When we wish to travel the inner middle path, we close our eyes. The principle stays the same either way: relying on mindfulness and clear comprehension, aware, unlapsing. We should train both, because both are essential to living well in the outer world and the inner world alike.

Half-Closing the Eyes Before Fully Closing Them: Guarding Against the Grogginess Waiting Inside

Luang Phor recommends that before we shut our eyes fully, we should first half-close them, and take up a meditation object while doing so, to draw in pure energy and lighten the stains enough that we can then close our eyes fully and enter the inner dimension smoothly. If we close our eyes immediately, the unwholesome side will be waiting with grogginess and confusion ready to overtake us, drifting us into unaware sleep without noticing. He teaches: do not pressure yourself; proceed gently and relaxed, because pressure itself comes from a force that does not wish us well.

Clearly Knowing Body, Feeling, Mind, and Dhamma: The Buddha's Instruction to the Monks

He cites the Buddha's teaching to the monastic sangha: "Monks, you should clearly know body, feeling, mind, and Dhamma, in order to eliminate craving and displeasure toward the world." This determining of awareness must have a purpose — to eliminate the world's elation and dejection. If a good experience arises during the sit, don't be pleased by it; suppress both delight and distress, rest the mind in equanimity, abide in contentment, and be satisfied with whatever experience arises, however small.

Heavy Stains, Heavy Suffering — Light Stains, Light Suffering: Why Practice Is Easy for Some and Hard for Others

He explains that where stains are present, hardship naturally appears — that's expected, and it's fine. Simply determine awareness so the sphere of knowing arises; this sphere draws in the pure energy called merit, letting it flow in to cleanse the stains that create obstacles. As the stains lighten, the problems automatically lighten as well. But where stains are heavy, drawing in pure energy takes more time — we must give purity the time it needs to cleanse them.

The Sphere of Knowing Arises, and the Stream of Merit Flows In Continuously

When the sphere of knowing arises, the sphere of not-knowing — ignorance — falls away. This sphere draws in the pure energy called merit, letting it flow continuously into the center of its own brightness — like dipping a coffee straw into water and blowing, producing a continuous stream of bubbles, becoming a stream of merit. Within this sphere of merit lies subtle wealth: physical fortune, material wealth, virtue, retinue, honor, praise, happiness, the path and fruit of nibbāna, and the knowledge of the Dhamma body. When merit flows through us, this subtle wealth flows through as well.

Reciting the Name "Sammā Arahaṃ": The Dhamma Body Appears, Form and Name Together

Luang Pu explained that name and form always come as a pair — wherever there is a name, there is a form; form is like the vessel or box that holds the qualities named. When we recite "Sammā Arahaṃ," the name of the Dhamma body, he appears together with his boundless wisdom, purity, and compassion, together with the spheres of morality, concentration, wisdom, liberation, and the knowledge and vision of liberation, the instruments proper to every body. With every syllable we recite his name, one Dhamma body after another arises continuously at our center, then expands and merges as one with our coarse human body.

We Are the Buddha Image, the Buddha Image Is Us: Every Atom of the Body Becomes a Crystal Dhamma Body

He leads a visualization: our head becomes a clear, pure crystal of the Dhamma body; our forehead, eyes, neck, shoulders, arms, chest, belly, back, hips, thighs, knees, shins, and soles of the feet all become bright, clear crystal of the Dhamma body. From head to toe, our entire body becomes a crystal Dhamma body, radiant, clear, cool, clean, pure, and warm. He has us repeat, again and again: "We are the Buddha image, the Buddha image is us." Whether we see it clearly or not, simply feeling that it is there is enough.

From 1% to 100%: Reaching the Inner Buddha Image Comes Gradually

Luang Phor once said that reaching the inner Buddha image ranges from 1% up to 100%. If right now we reach only 1% or 2%, that's fine — keep gradually accumulating purity, and clarity will arise on its own, step by step: from 1%, to 2%, to 10%, to 20%. We must sustain diligence so that the sphere of energetic effort arises; once that reaches its limit, we rely on the sphere of patience to help push through the obstacle of hardship. Patience, truthfulness, aspiration, loving-kindness, and equanimity together drive us forward continuously.

The Dhamma-Body Arahat: Our True Self Across Every Lifetime

This is the heart of this teaching. He teaches that the Dhamma-body arahat is our true self; every other body is only a temporary lodging. When we close our eyes and leave this world, we must leave every one of these bodies behind to decay and crumble, and depend on yet another body to keep cycling through birth and death in an endlessly long saṃsāra. Only the Dhamma-body arahat follows us wherever we go, staying with us at all times, watching over and helping us every single moment without ever stopping — because he is our true self.

What He Wants Most: Perfect Unity Between Us and Him

He teaches that what the Dhamma body wants most is to become one single unity with us. We must therefore repeat, again and again, the truth of who we really are: "We are the Buddha image, the Buddha image is us." Keep determining this constantly, and the recognition between us and him will gradually and clearly appear on its own, growing ever clearer, developing continuously and wondrously. The mind is a wish-fulfilling element — whatever we determine, so it becomes. If we deny it, it is not; if we accept it, it is.

Brightness at the Center of the Triple Gem and Nibbāna

As the stream of merit and fortune flows in continuously at our center, together with one Dhamma body after another arising and merging as one with us, we come to shine radiantly at the center of the Triple Gem — the Buddha Jewel, the Dhamma Jewel, and the Sangha Jewel — together with the great teachers: the Dhamma body of Luang Pu, the Dhamma body of Luang Phor, and the Dhamma body of Khun Yai Ajarn, all resting at the center of nibbāna, the boundless knowing and empowered one. They take the elements of our being — seeing, remembering, thinking, knowing, earth, water, fire, wind, space, and consciousness — and refine them clear and pure, dissolving suffering, sorrow, illness, danger, and karmic obstruction, while connecting our stream of merit and fortune.

Dedicating Merit to Ancestors and Karmic Counterparties

As the stream of merit flows through our center, through our mind, we dedicate this merit to our ancestors — recalling our parents, relatives, and descendants, together with the teachers who have shown us kindness, the guardian spirits who help us, and all beings we may have wronged, our karmic counterparties, asking for mutual forgiveness so that all may share equally in this merit.

Radiating Loving-Kindness Across the World and the Cosmos, Without Regard to Race or Religion

Once the dedication of merit is complete, he has us set an aspiration of goodwill for the world and all beings — fellow travelers through birth, aging, sickness, and death — that they may be free from suffering and share happiness equally: may those with much suffering have less, those with little suffering have none, those with little happiness have more, and those with much happiness have ever more. He has us expand this loving-kindness-filled heart to cover our home and our workplace, spreading across village, district, province, throughout Thailand and neighboring countries, and finally the whole world, without regard to race, religion, or ethnicity, until it becomes a radiant crystal sphere, clean and pure. From there it expands further still, across the countless stars and galaxies of the boundless cosmos — just as the Buddha-to-be once cultivated loving-kindness until he was born in the Brahmā realm, and later as a universal monarch ruling the four continents.

Closing Aspiration

In closing, Phra Ajarn leads an aspiration for success to be established in us, now and in all lives to come. May the merit and blessings of our teachers and our own accumulated goodness since beginningless time combine into sacred, potent merit. May we be freed from misfortune, karmic results, demonic obstruction, and obstacles of every kind; may greed, hatred, delusion, lust, ignorance, wrong view, craving, and clinging come to an end; may we gain the eye that sees the Dhamma and penetrate the knowledge of the Dhamma body; may we be strong in health and steadfast in spirit as we build perfections toward nibbāna. He closes by asking that old wrongdoing be forgiven, and that new merit bear fruit successfully for us all, life after life.