Two Parts of Practice: Eyes Open and Eyes Closed

Phra Ajarn Suraphong opens by explaining that Dhamma practice has two parts: the part with eyes open and the part with eyes closed. Practicing with eyes open is cultivating right mindfulness alongside our activities — work, business, conversation, family life, or being alone, even recreation — all of it requires dwelling within the wholesome system. When it's time to enter the refined inner dimensions, we close our eyes, to go deeper within.

The Human Body's Role: Only to Determine and Know

Once we close our eyes, must we do anything? No. The human body's only role is to determine — to know, staying with the body. Ordinary practitioners stay with their chosen meditation object, but those who know more go further, dwelling with their true inner self, with stopping and stillness, knowing at a level beyond most people. Reaching that true self through stopping and stillness only requires knowing and understanding — it can be done even while things remain dim and murky, because the human body's role is simply to determine and know.

The Mind Is an Element That Accomplishes: Whatever We Determine, So It Becomes

Whatever we determine, that is what becomes, because the mind is an element that accomplishes. We can determine it well or badly, tainted or bright — it depends entirely on what we determine. Life, then, depends on right view versus wrong view (samma diṭṭhi and micchā diṭṭhi) — opposite understandings. Right view requires correct understanding, gained through guidance from those who have been taught, then tested and proven until results appear. Our role is to learn, test, and prove — knowing good results as good and poor results as poor. When we find something good, we naturally want to recommend it to others, including our own children and family.

Focus Like Threading a Needle: Only Knowing and What Appears Before Us

To reach the refined inner dimensions in practice, we must first give our attention. Focus like threading a needle: threading a needle leaves only the eye of the needle and the thread — the whole world disappears, leaving only that. Right now is the same: there is only knowing and the state appearing before us. But what appears before us is dim, murky, unclear — we cannot interpret or name it. When this is so, that is the state of ignorance (avijjā), of not-knowing.

Knowing Is Mindfulness, the Known Is Ignorance: Two Things That Truly Exist

We perceive the ignorance, the not-knowing, appearing before us, but this perception itself relies on knowing — knowing is mindfulness (sati). Because we have mindfulness, we know that a dim, murky, unnameable state exists. Simply stay continuously aware, without lapsing, that this state exists before us — know it as it truly is. The first thing to understand is that this knowing itself is called sati; the thing known, which cannot be interpreted, is ignorance, the state of not-knowing. What knows is sati; what we are knowing but cannot interpret is ignorance. Right now there are two things to learn and perceive — first, simply know that these two things exist. They truly exist right now — but before, with our eyes closed, we never noticed that these two things were there.

Like Listening to a Song or Watching an Image: The Knower and the Known We Never Distinguish

It is like when we listen to a song: there is us as the listener, and the song — both present, but we never clearly distinguish them; we dwell in a blur. The same applies to seeing an image: we live in the dimension of seeing, where there is a seer and the seen image appearing before us. Clarity needs to arise so that this sphere of knowing — mindfulness — can draw in the pure energy called merit, flowing into the center of its brightness, to purify the defiling, obscuring elements that keep us from understanding the true, hidden state.

The Sphere of Knowing Draws In Merit to Purify Defilement, Shifting Sati Into Sampajañña

As we determine, mindfulness — the sphere of knowing — continuously draws in the pure energy called merit, flowing into the center of its brightness. This pure energy purifies the defiling, obscuring elements, thinning them gradually until, at a certain level, the obscuring elements dilute enough for the subtle dhamma state to appear. Mindfulness then shifts into clear comprehension (sampajañña), which perceives that state. What is this hidden state? It is the subtle wholesome mental factor — lightness of body and mind, softness, gentleness, refinement — arising together with a wholesome mind, but obscured by ignorance until now unable to be sensed.

The Great Teacher always said: "stay continuously aware, never lapse." Because knowing is mindfulness, a wholesome quality, once established it brings recollection. We are not the ones purifying the defilement — we are only the ones who determine, so that purity can arise. The sphere of knowing draws in the pure energy, and that pure energy itself purifies the defilement.

Resting the Mind in Balance: Neither Pleased Nor Displeased

Staying continuously aware of what is known — the murky, unclear state — we rest the mind evenly, without gladness or sorrow, without pleasure or displeasure, keeping the mind neutral. This neutral state isn't quite equanimity (upekkhā) yet — it is better called a balanced mind, one that doesn't drift toward gladness, sorrow, pleasure, or displeasure. We simply distinguish what appears in each present moment as being just this much — the mindfulness we use to determine and recall the natural state clearly present before us, even if we still cannot interpret or name it. This good foundation makes it hard for other states to intrude.

The Center of the Center Has No End: The Microscope Analogy

A neutral mind has many levels — center of center, center of center of center — ever more refined centers without end. It's like marking a dot with a pen, then magnifying that dot under a microscope: we see the center of the enlarged dot. Prick that center with a needle, then magnify the needle's point with an even finer microscope, and we see the center of that point too. The center of the center has no end. The more we reach into the center of the center, the more refined our mind becomes — but reaching it requires an open, spacious foundation. The more we reach the center of the center, the more open, light, and unconfined the mind becomes; if it feels cramped or tight, something is wrong.

The Bright Wholesome Sphere, the Dark Unwholesome Sphere: An Inner Universe Under Occupation

This sphere of mindfulness has the character of a round, clear, bright sphere. It can only arise in one place — the heart — never anywhere else. All dhammas, wholesome, unwholesome, or neutral, arise only there. The wholesome sphere is round, clear, and bright; the unwholesome sphere is dark, pitch black. Even once we establish mindfulness as a sphere of knowing, why does it still feel dim? It's like a universe long dominated by darkness, long ruled by the unwholesome — our mind is the same. To change this inner cosmos and make it bright, we must determine to dwell within the wholesome — the sphere of mindfulness — staying continuously aware, never lapsing.

Staying Continuously Aware: Sovereignty Over Ourselves and Maturing Faculties

In the moment we stay continuously aware, we hold sovereignty over ourselves — even amid dimness and murkiness, we still hold that sovereignty, able to know things as they truly are, aware of what we are knowing right now. This lets the sphere of knowing continuously draw in the pure energy called merit, which purifies the obscuring elements that cause the problems and hardships troubling our life — in business, family, or in practice itself.

This sovereignty over oneself is called, in monastic language, "faculties" (indriya). Mature faculties begin from training in right mindfulness itself — staying continuously aware, knowing what we know, on a foundation that is neutral and balanced, without gladness, sorrow, pleasure, or displeasure.

The Gap Between Moments: The Root of Our Mistakes

Throughout the day — morning, midday, evening, night, across all our activities — we have lived lacking mindfulness, though we still know something. What we know, without holding sovereignty over ourselves, is because our knowing comes in bursts, moment to moment, with gaps in between where mindfulness is absent — moments the unwholesome and the neutral seize to occupy the mind. We know, yet cannot hold sovereignty, because of the subtlety involved: the mind jumps from one moment to the next, and in the gap between, mindfulness lapses, ignorance arises, and mistakes are born from the time ignorance occupies.

Closing With the Buddha's Words: Determining Body, Feeling, Mind, and Dhamma

We must therefore learn to understand this, to refine our mind. A refined mind can occupy the very gaps that ignorance once held, intervening and claiming them — giving rise to our own sovereignty, reducing the mistakes born of ignorance, and developing completeness and correctness. As recorded in the Tipitaka, the Buddha taught the monks: "Bhikkhus, you should clearly determine body, feeling, mind, and dhamma, in order to eliminate the world's covetousness and grief." Covetousness and grief are simply gladness and sorrow, pleasure and displeasure, arising from the world as it relates to eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind.