Eyes Open, Eyes Closed: Two Approaches to Practice

Phra Ajarn Suraphong explains that practicing the Dharma means learning to remain within the wholesome system, in order to draw in pure energy along with subtle treasures, and to connect with knowing, powerful beings who can help us in every way. Practice has both an eyes-open and an eyes-closed form. Eyes-open practice happens while conducting our work and activities, letting the wholesome system guide us to succeed easily. Eyes-closed practice moves us into ever subtler inner dimensions, refining our elements and qualities toward purity — which means reducing the proportion of the unwholesome and the neutral nature, and increasing the proportion of the wholesome.

Calm and Insight: Stillness and Wisdom

He further explains that meditative cultivation includes both samatha and vipassana. Samatha is inner calm, aimed at eliminating sensual desire. Vipassana gives rise to wisdom — it is a determining of awareness so that we may know clearly whatever we determine to know. Whatever we wish to understand, we determine it, and thereby reach the subtlety and knowledge of that thing, under the guidance of the knowing being responsible for that field. Teachers offer various techniques, but we must also learn the principle the Buddha himself taught, which covers all the substance behind those techniques.

The Principle from the Tipitaka: Eliminating the World's Delight and Distress

He taught, as recorded in the Tipitaka: "Monks, you should determine clear awareness of body, feeling, mind, and dharma, in order to eliminate covetousness and grief toward the world." Covetousness and grief are delight and distress, beginning from simple approval and disapproval. Left unchecked, they expand into delight that scatters the mind, or distress that clouds it. Both throw the heart off balance. When delighted or distressed, we become imprisoned in the dimension of the unwholesome or the neutral nature, which molds, guides, and compels us toward acts that harm ourselves and others.

Score What You've Got: The Grade-School Simile

He explains that where defilement exists, it naturally produces problems and difficulty in practice — this is entirely ordinary. Our role is simply to determine awareness, without delight or distress, staying in equanimity, a neutral heart, so the mind can balance and settle easily. He goes on: each person's proportion of wholesomeness has its own ceiling and floor. It can sink no lower than a certain point, and rise no higher than another, because the wholesome nature's proportion carries only so much strength. It's like a first-grade student: we can score anywhere from 100% down to 0%, depending on which nature guides how we spend our time — on what brings benefit, or what doesn't. Come exam day, we score only what we've accumulated.

Upgrading to the Next Level: Raising Your Proportion of Wholesomeness

But if we want to "upgrade" into another system, another dimension, another level, we must make merit-making an ordinary habit — change our way of life, raise our standard higher than before, and remain within the wholesome system as a daily routine. Only then can we move up to another level — not merely swinging within the old ceiling, but shifting the entire ceiling and floor upward.

What Does It Mean to Determine? Mindfulness, Clear Comprehension, and the Equanimity Factor

To determine is: knowing is mindfulness, knowing clearly is clear comprehension. Mindfulness is recollection — once we recollect, we become self-aware, and our sense of mastery over ourselves arises. Without self-awareness, the heart is imprisoned in another system with no freedom. When self-aware, we notice balance and steadiness; delight and distress lighten, and the mind stops scattering. What governs this balance is a wholesome mental factor called tatramajjhattata cetasika, which keeps the heart balanced, unscattered, and steady — not swung toward either delight or distress.

Reciting with the Focus of Threading a Needle

When determining the meditation object, he asks us to focus as one threading a needle — aware of nothing but the eye of the needle; in that moment the whole world vanishes. The same is true in recitation: there is only "Samma Arahang, Samma Arahang." He warns not to rush or hurry — whatever pressures us to hurry is the unwholesome trying to find an opening. Recite on a foundation of good heart: relaxed, open, at ease, clear, cool. Continue, enjoying the recitation, relaxed and at ease.

The Buddha Image Appears at the Center of the Heart: Form and Quality Together

"Samma Arahang" is the descriptive name of the Arahat Dhamma body. Whatever we determine appears at the heart, because the heart is an accomplishing element. Whatever dharma appears there displays its qualities — if a wholesome dharma, bright and clear, arises, the heart becomes bright and clear too. When we utter his name, both his form and his quality appear at the heart together; form is like a package carrying the quality within. Once he appears, he doesn't appear in vain — the Dhamma body expands, layering with our human body, making our body radiant with the Dhamma body. We merge with him using the actor's technique — putting on the feeling that we are the Buddha image, that the Buddha image is us.

Merging Body and Mind as One with the Buddha Image

Let our entire body — head, face, cheeks, shoulders, arms, torso, down to the feet — become the radiant, clear, crystal Dhamma body, fine, soft, and gentle. The head becomes the crown, crowned with a radiant lotus-bud crest; the eyes become his eyes, closed gently; the face, a serenely smiling countenance. Phra Dej Phra Khun Luang Phor taught that reaching the Dhamma body ranges from easy to hard — easy for those who know and understand, hard for those who don't, since the heart is an accomplishing element: however we determine it, so it becomes. Reaching it ranges from 1% to 100%; whatever we reach, we take as our starting point — better than nothing at all — and gradually build, from 1% to 2%, from 5% to 10%, 15%, 20%, and onward.

Gathering the Mind to Stop and Be Still at the Body's Seventh Base

Once our body has merged as one with his, merge the heart as well by gathering the mind to stop, gathering it to be still, at the center of the body and heart, at the seventh base. Find the position using two imaginary threads: one stretched from the navel to the spine, the other from the right side of the waist to the left; where they cross forms a center point, and two finger-widths above marks the seventh base. Even without a clear sense of the position, the heart already knows it, since we pass through it every time we're born, die, sleep, and wake. This position is the imperial center, the meeting point of every body — coarse, celestial, Brahma, formless Brahma, and the Dhamma bodies — as many as eighteen bodies converging in this one place. The more finely we gather the mind to stop and be still here, the more the stream of merit and treasure can flow continuously through the center of our body and heart.

Dedicating Merit to Ancestors and Karmic Counterparts

As the stream of merit flows continuously in to purify all defilement, making our heart clear, clean, and radiant, let us dedicate this merit to our ancestors and relatives — recalling our parents, siblings, grandparents, and all our teachers and benefactors, along with the devas who help and support us, our caretakers and guardians, and all beings we may have wronged, our karmic counterparts (khu kam khu wen) — asking that we forgive one another and share equally in this merit.

Radiating Loving-Kindness Across the World and the Cosmos

Once merit is dedicated, generate goodwill for the world and all beings, drawing on a mother's love for her own child: may all beings who share in birth, aging, sickness, and death be free of suffering and find happiness; 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. Expand this loving heart to cover our home, loved ones, neighbors, village, subdistrict, district, province, and neighboring countries, until it covers the whole world as a radiant, clean, pure crystal sphere — then further, to earthbound devas, tree devas, sky devas, the heavenly beings of every level, Brahma and formless Brahma realms, even beings in hell, as hungry ghosts, and as animals — and further still, across the countless stars and galaxies of the boundless cosmos.

Closing Aspiration

Phra Ajarn leads an aspiration for success now and in all lives to come, that our path of building perfections be complete with knowledge, happiness, and purity. May the merit of our teachers and our own accumulated goodness combine into sacred, potent merit; may we be freed from misfortune, karmic results, demonic obstruction, and every obstacle; 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 Nibbana. He closes by asking that old wrongdoing be forgiven, and that new merit bear fruit successfully for us all.