Why We Practice

Meditation practice is vital for every life, because we need pure merit energy to sustain our humanity — and our happiness, success, and fulfillment all depend on this same energy to draw good things into our lives. For this pure energy to flow through us, we must build the causes of goodness. There are many methods, but the easiest and most effective is cultivating right mindfulness and right concentration.

Right Mindfulness: Knowing Body, Feeling, Mind, and Dhamma

The Buddha taught: "Monks, you should clearly know the body, feelings, mind, and dhamma-objects, to eliminate craving and aversion toward the world." There are four key places to mark and specify — body, feeling, mind, and dhamma — because whichever of the three natures possesses us will show its behavior clearly in these four places. In observing the body, we may notice one part or the whole through full awareness — for instance the touching of fingertips, or the rise and fall of the abdomen. What matters is that the signal be clear and continuous, so mindfulness can establish itself firmly.

Mental Factors: When a Nature Possesses the Heart

Whenever a nature possesses the heart, its own thinking appears there. When the unwholesome seizes the host position, it overlays its own mental factors — sometimes greed, sometimes aversion, delusion, lust, or various hindrances — onto our heart. Negative thoughts thus arrive bundled with negative feelings. Conversely, when the mind is wholesome, its mental factors are wholesome too: conscience, shame of wrongdoing, non-greed, non-hatred, non-delusion, mindfulness, faith, wisdom — much goodness arises. For the human mind to rise to something nobler, it needs the wholesome nature to bring down the mental factors of a higher realm to teach it.

Eliminating Craving and Aversion Toward Sense Pleasures

The purpose of cultivating right mindfulness is to eliminate craving (delight) and aversion (distress) toward the world — arising from how eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body reach out toward form, taste, smell, sound, touch, and mental objects. Living without clinging to delight or distress, we feel equanimity — a level mind. Something tasty, we simply know it as tasty, keeping the mind level; something foul, we need not feel aversion. Because the moment displeasure arises, irritation follows, opening the door for the unwholesome to take the lead — bringing greedy wanting and, with it, a dark sphere of sin plotted onto our life's timeline.

Accumulated Defilement Makes Even Earning a Living Hard

Even small delights and distresses breed selfishness. The unwholesome overlays itself, drawing in defilement together with misfortune — a dark sphere lodged within the sphere of sin, sealed as a fixed pattern laid onto our life's timeline. When its time comes, we meet problems and obstacles, grief and heartache; our wit and wisdom are steadily worn down, and things become harder to understand. **Even honest work yields little return — the effort invested doesn't match the reward. Life becomes hard to live precisely because defilement has been piling up. Others earn money with ease, while we run into obstruction and difficulty at every turn — even wanting the same decent standard of living others enjoy becomes an uphill struggle.** This is why we must clear defilement through cultivating right mindfulness.

Patience and Equanimity When Defilement Surfaces in Practice

The heavier the defilement, the more suffering must be endured, and sometimes it is genuinely hard to bear — as when several days pass without practice, defilement piles up, and the next sitting feels intensely uncomfortable. We must be patient and keep the mind level. Patience (khanti) brings austerity (tapa) to our aid, so that the state we must endure does not become torment. As the mind settles into equanimity, the mental factor of even-mindedness (tatramajjhattupekkha) steps in to restore balance, keeping us unshaken by whatever stimulates us.

Why We Half-Close Our Eyes

Our teachers instruct us to keep the eyes gently half-open, because we need light to see — whether the outer world or the inner one, both require light. Half-closing the eyes also keeps us at the threshold between the inner and outer worlds. If we plunge straight in, the unwholesome lies in wait with hindrances such as drowsiness, making us dazed, confused, and foggy. So we stay at that threshold, determining awareness so that mindfulness clears away these obstructing hindrances first — only once the drowsiness has cleared do we move fully into the inner world, clear-headed rather than dazed.

"Samma Arahang": The Name That Brings the Form

Once inside the inner world, recite from a deep, subtle level of consciousness — because the mind is an element of accomplishment: whatever way you set it, that is what it becomes. "Samma Arahang" is a name derived from qualities, meaning "the One who has practiced well, practiced rightly, practiced the path away from all defilements." Uttering his name brings him forth at the center of the heart, since form and name are always paired, and dhamma arises nowhere but the heart. He appears as a clear, pure crystal Buddha-image — the crystal Dhamma Body crowned with a radiant lotus bud. Once he appears, he takes our seeing, remembering, thinking, and knowing, and refines them to purity, clearing away every defilement, while a continuous stream of merit wells up at the center of the heart.

Merging Into One With the Buddha Image

He also expands to overlay and become one with our human body, protecting and caring for us. His wish is for us to become one unity with him, so we take on the feeling — like an actor inhabiting a role — that we are the Buddha-image, and the Buddha-image is us: the One who has practiced well, practiced rightly, practiced the path away from all defilements. Our entire body, from the crown of the head, the face, eyes, nose, mouth, chin, throat, shoulders, arms, chest, abdomen, back, hips, thighs, all the way to the feet, becomes the radiant, clear, cool, pure crystal Dhamma Body, delicate and gentle throughout.

Stopping Within Stopping, Stilling Within Stillness — the Sphere and Body Expand

Once the body is merged, merge the mind with his mind as well. He cultivates the attainment of cessation, stopping and stilling the mind within us — so we do the same. Stop within stopping, still within stillness, soft and light, at the center of the Buddha-image, the center of our body, the center of our heart — not left, not right, not forward, not back, not up, not down — straight into the center of the center. As we enter, the sphere expands, the body expands, revealing a new sphere and a new body, and we continue inward, center after center, with Buddha-images welling through one after another, our intent directed straight along the middle path within, toward Nibbana.

The Center of Nibbana and the Stream of Merit

We appear radiant at the center of Nibbana — the center of every Buddha, every Silent Buddha, and every Arahant — because Nibbana holds all beings within its own center already. Any being who abides in universal goodness, regardless of religious belief, already carries the Triple Gem within, which will shine forth, and the stream of merit from the refined depths of Nibbana will flow into them as well.

Radiating Loving-Kindness to Benefit the World and Universe

Loving-kindness is a tool of the wholesome nature, given to those with merit to benefit others. Our teacher, Luang Pu, advised drawing on the heart of a mother who loves and wishes only good for her young child — the highest-quality form of metta — and setting that heart within us. We then expand it to cover our home, village, sub-district, district, province, and country, until it covers the entire world as a crystal world, radiant and pure. May the world and all beings be free from suffering and find happiness; may those with much suffering have less, and those with little happiness have more. We extend it further still, across countless stars and worlds, spanning ten-thousand world-systems and uncountable universes. This loving-kindness also purifies the environment — earth, air, trees, mountains, buildings, and homes — making it fit for beings to live in peace.

Dedicating the Merit and the Closing Aspiration

As we stop and still the mind within the continuously welling stream of merit, we dedicate it to all beings, our ancestors, relatives, parents, siblings, grandparents, benefactor teachers, protective devas, and all our **karmic counterparts** (คู่กรรมคู่เวร) whom we may have wronged, asking mutual forgiveness. We then settle into the center of happiness, purity, the Triple Gem, and the exceptionally refined Dhamma Body of our revered teachers — Luang Pu, Luang Phor, and Khun Yai Acharn. We pay respects and set an intention anchored within this radiant sphere of merit — that our lives be filled with knowledge, happiness, and purity, that all accumulated merit converge to clear away misfortune and karmic obstacles, granting the eye of Dhamma, penetration into the Vijja Dhammakaya, sound health, long life, and unwavering resolve — and when this life ends, rebirth in the Dusita heaven's special merit circle — closing with the traditional chant of homage to all Buddhas.