พระอาจารย์สุรพงค์สอนว่าทุกข์ขณะนั่งสมาธิเป็นเรื่องธรรมดา อธิบายต้นตอของเหตุทั้งปวงคือธรรมชาติ 3 ฝ่าย และชี้ให้เห็นว่าใจเป็นเพียงเครื่องมือกลางที่ไม่ใช่ตัวเรา พร้อมเล่าเรื่องการช่วยพระผู้มีอาการตื่นตระหนกให้หายด้วยการนั่งสมาธิ และวิธีขยับร่างกายอย่างมีสติระหว่างเจริญภาวนาPhra Ajarn Suraphong teaches that suffering during meditation is entirely ordinary, explains the origin of all causes as the three natures, and shows that the mind is merely a neutral tool, not the self. He shares a story of helping a panic-stricken monk recover through meditation, and gives practical instruction on mindfully shifting posture during practice.
You May Shift Position While Sitting — the Perfection of Patience and the Meditation Object
Meditation practice can be done in any posture — whether sitting or engaged in other activities, we can equally fix the mind and develop and concentration. It's fine to shift position, but before doing so, we must first fix the mind on the base of our meditation object, keep the mind held there, and then move — just as when we move through daily activities, we remain grounded in our meditation object or in , fully aware, before we act. But if we wish to gain the , we may choose to endure all the way to the very limit of suffering; what we gain from that is austerity (tapa), a shield protecting us from suffering's torment — it depends on each person's own purpose.
Three States That Appear in Every Moment — Pleasure, Pain, and Neutral
When we sit in meditation, only three things can arise: pleasure or comfort, pain — that which is hard to endure — and a neutral feeling, neither pleasant nor painful. These three states appear right before us in every present moment, constantly. The instant we close our eyelids, we can sense this directly, without any need to think. External surroundings tend to draw our minds toward pleasant things, obscuring suffering; but once we lower our eyelids, nothing pulls the mind toward what's pleasing anymore, and we come to understand the true inner state as it actually is in that moment.
Why Meditation Sometimes Brings Suffering — Our Only Job Is to Recognize It
When we direct the mind inward, suffering naturally tends to arise, because when is the ruling host within, demerit dominates due to the im present. So sitting in meditation naturally means encountering suffering — this is entirely ordinary. The Buddha taught that when suffering appears, simple recognition is enough, because the moment we recognize it, the sphere of knowing — mindfulness — arises, and once established, it draws pure energy, merit, flowing into the brightness at the center of that sphere, driving the system of wholesome states and gradually lightening the impurity that causes suffering. But without this understanding, someone might wonder why meditation brings them suffering while others seem to feel bliss, and give up thinking they're doing it wrong — when in fact nothing is wrong at all. We must therefore understand the laws governing what happens to us. Our lives contain only these three states, appearing directly before mind and eye at every moment.
The Root of All Causes — the Wholesome, Unwholesome, and Neutral Natures
We must know that the root nature behind every cause is the three natures: kusalā dhammā, akusalā dhammā, and abyākatā dhammā. This is the most profound teaching there is, dating back to the era before the previous Buddha. Before our current Buddha's enlightenment, no one ever knew that this was the true root of all causes. People sought liberation from suffering by doing good, avoiding evil, and purifying the mind, yet never found genuine freedom — still cycling endlessly through rebirths in countless realms, simply because they didn't recognize these three natures. Ancient teachers therefore placed these three terms at the very opening of funeral chants, so they would never be buried within the body of the text — because nothing is more important. These three natures rely on and non-Dhamma as their tools for controlling all beings.
The Three Natures Compete for the Voice in Our Head
Every thought is not truly our own. If a thought were genuinely ours, the moment we stopped thinking it, it should vanish — but why doesn't it? It lingers stubbornly, like a child throwing a tantrum, insisting on getting a toy. This is the nature of the unwholesome, seeking to draw in energy — impurity — to power its own system. Some people believe themselves to be brilliant thinkers, skilled planners, persuasive speakers — but should the three natures one day stop feeding them thoughts, they would feel utterly blank, startled, at a loss for what to do. This reveals that we never truly knew how to think for ourselves — the three natures had been supplying information all along; we merely chose which piece of information to use. Realizing this, we simply need to learn the system and choose to remain within the right one. The wholesome offers , prosperity, correctness, and goodness; the unwholesome yields the opposite — suffering, torment, ruin; and the neutral neither helps nor harms, merely stalling us, wasting day after day without any real benefit.
A System That Looks Harmless but Yields No Substance
The neutral is a system that seems harmless enough, yet consumes our entire life without producing any real benefit — endless eating, playing, wandering about, gaming, chatting idly, watching films and television, day after day passing without gain, leaving life weary and dull. We long to be free from such an unproductive existence but don't know how, because we don't even recognize that we're trapped within the neutral system governing our lives. This nature has persisted since the era before the previous Buddha; after each Buddha's era passed, humanity fell back under its sway, until our present Buddha attained enlightenment and clarified this truth once again. Yet 2,500 years later, people have largely forgotten it, returning to old, ineffective understandings once more.
Dhamma Is What the Mind Alone Can Perceive — the Five Sense Bases and the Element of Dhamma
We contact the world through the five sense faculties — eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body — perceiving forms, sounds, smells, tastes, and tangible things, both visible and invisible, such as wind or certain gases. But Dhamma can be perceived only through the mind. It is a subtle element of earth, water, wind, and fire, one that cannot be verified by any instrument, yet is knowable through the mind at various levels — the subtle elements of earth, water, wind, fire, space, and consciousness, along with waves of information, , and thought: , the sphere of , concentration, wisdom, liberation, and liberation-, together with the energy of merit and demerit. All of this together is called Dhamma, because it can only be known through the mind.
The Mind as the Central Generator — the Six Sovereign Gateways
The mind is an element of accomplishment, our organ of knowing, our engine generating power. Feeling, thought, and Dhamma are tools layered within it. Being an element of accomplishment, whatever we fix upon the mind, the mind brings into manifestation. The mind resembles a computer or smartphone — one part storing memory, one part acting as the CPU, doing the thinking and processing, and consciousness as the part interacting with the outside world. When one of the three natures possesses the mind, it first appears through feeling. If the unwholesome possesses it, feeling shows suffering and torment; if possesses it, feeling shows happiness and ease; if the neutral possesses it, feeling remains simply neutral. Feeling can only register these three things — nothing else at all. Whichever nature becomes the ruling host of the mind draws from the storehouse of memory, shaping it within the sphere of formations, then passes it to the sphere of consciousness to act it out through interaction with the eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body.
Inviting the Triple Gem to Reside at the Six Sense Gates
We've heard the chant led before sitting in meditation: inviting the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, past, present, and future, to reside at the eye-gate, ear-gate, nose-gate, tongue-gate, body-gate, and mind-gate. These six gates are the crucial channels through which results manifest whenever perception passes through them. The unwholesome deliberately focuses attention on whatever will stir up trouble, in order to draw in the energy of impurity to power its own system. The wholesome, by contrast, relies on the Triple Gem to teach us how to draw in the energy of merit, together with subtle assets and a good, completed blueprint, in order to build a better world, like the world of the celestial realms. This is why our revered senior teacher taught us to invite the Triple Gem to reside at these six gates — so the wholesome side can take up residence there instead.
The Sovereign Ruling the Body — Our Duty to Direct
Our body has us as its ruling sovereign, like a monarch who must issue commands. If a monarch never issues any decree, the kingdom cannot prosper. We must therefore learn to govern our own kingdom toward prosperity. The duty of the human body is to direct the mind; if we fail to direct it, another nature will direct it in our place, producing no benefit at all. When we fix the mind repeatedly on "Samma-Araham," within days we will certainly reach that inner state, because we are directing the mind toward something worthwhile — drawing in pure energy to cleanse defilement. Every act of directing the mind has this purpose: to gather energy. The mind serves as the central generator, while whatever Dhamma is established within it functions like software, determining what kind of energy gets drawn in. Our lives are never free from this constant drawing of energy, because the three natures are always competing to overlay their own "software" onto the mind, in order to power their respective systems.
The Mind Is Not You — the Story of a Monk Who Suffered Panic Attacks
The mind is a neutral tool — usable by the wholesome, the unwholesome, or the neutral alike — our organ of knowing that receives commands from the three natures through it. The mind, therefore, is not us; we are not the mind. There's a story of a newly ordained monk from abroad who had suffered severe panic attacks since his teenage years. When the episodes intensified, he would feel as though his head were burning, accompanied by an inner voice insisting he was about to die, sometimes severe enough to require hospitalization. Doctors said it was an extremely rare case they had no clear way to treat, so he was brought under closer supervision. Asked whether he wished to recover, he said yes — so he was told to stop his medication and instead join in sitting meditation together throughout the entire day, from waking until sleep, because the goal was to let the episode actually appear so it could be confronted and addressed directly.
When the episode did appear, the guidance given was to understand that the mind is not us. The mind is like a child; if that child is being tormented by the unwholesome and crying, the parent must comfort it rather than panic along with it, gently soothing it again and again until it settles. This was the first time the burning-head senon didn't appear. Asked why the sensation had not occurred, the explanation was that the burning sensation resulted from a fire-element hormone triggered by the mind's own panic; without that panic, the nervous system was never stimulated to release the hormone in the first place. Whether the condition would fully resolve depended on karmic results, so continuous sitting was needed to draw in pure energy to power the system of wholesome states, which would itself cleanse the impurity — not something we ourselves could directly control, since we don't even know where the true root cause lies. Over several more months, the condition gradually improved until it became entirely normal, and the monk eventually returned to his home country. The condition never recurred, even years later.
The Perfection of Patience and Shifting Position — the Root of Suffering Is Impurity
Whether to shift position or endure through sitting depends on what we're seeking. If we want the perfection of and austerity, wanting to reach the very limit of the mass of suffering so as never to suffer that particular pain again, we endure to the very end; what we gain is austerity. Numbness and discomfort arise from impurity — without impurity, suffering could not arise at all. Enduring to the limit of that mass of suffering is itself repaying a karmic debt; and at that very limit, an image of the past action responsible for it will appear on its own, revealing the karmic origin, together with the gift of austerity as a shield against future suffering from karmic results. But if we don't wish to endure to that extreme, we may shift position instead — first clearly fixing the base of the mind, then shifting while the mind stays anchored to that base, just as when practicing during ordinary activity. Noble ones can stand, walk, sit, lie down, pick things up — anything at all — so long as the base where the mind is fixed remains firmly established.
The Elder Monk Who Froze Mid-Street — Sustaining the Mind While Moving
There's a story of an elderly monk who rarely entered town. On one such occasion, while walking across the street, his mind slipped from its anchor at exactly that moment — so he simply stood still, right there in the middle of the road, until he could re-establish the mind's anchor. Cars had to stop and wait, watching him. After a while, once his mind settled and no longer wavered, he gently, gradually resumed walking. This story reminds us that the base for the mind can be the breath, the center of the abdomen, or any point we're familiar with — wherever it is, when engaging in any posture and mindfulness slips out of balance, we simply hold steady until balanced again before continuing. The method: before shifting — say, getting up to use the restroom after sitting — first firmly fix the mind, then move slowly, watching whether the mind stays anchored. If it slips, pause, re-anchor, then move again.
Developing Toward an Automatic System
Meditation practice must be done both with eyes open and eyes closed, continuing until it becomes automatic — like everything in the world gradually becoming automated, from coffee machines to self-driving cars. Before becoming fully automatic, a system passes through a semi-automatic stage — we must first "start" it ourselves, fixing the mind firmly, then letting the system continue on its own. At first, it may take a full hour just to become settled; with continued practice, that time shortens progressively — thirty minutes, fifteen, ten, five, three, two, one minute — until fixing the mind brings immediate entry into the inner dimension, no longer needing to count "one, two, three." Once entry becomes reliable, we develop it into a fully automatic system — start it, then let it run on its own while we go about other activities, simply checking in periodically. This automatically running system draws pure energy in, carrying us progressively deeper into subtler and subtler dimensions. The more subtle the dimension, the less impurity it contains, and the weaker the power of the unwholesome becomes there. The pure energy drawn in becomes correspondingly purer and more sacred, able to cleanse impurity with far greater effect, while the knower of power presiding over that subtler dimension possesses even greater knowledge and ability, explaining things to us with ever deeper clarity.