The Gentle Way of
Buddhist Meditation
Dhamma Talks by Godwin Samararatne
Hongkong, 1997
Day 1: 6th October 1997
(Chi Lin Nunnery)
Why We Should Meditate
~~~
Godwin Samararatne:
I'm very happy to see some old faces, some old friends and I'm also
very happy to see so many new faces. So what I propose to do now is to give a
talk on why we should meditate and then we can have a discussion. After the
discussion we can meditate for some time and then we will end the session with
chanting. Pali chanting and Chinese chanting.
So the question is why should we meditate? What is the importance of
meditation? Why is it emphasized so much in the Buddha's teaching? So these are
some of the questions that I'm going to explore in my talk.
The word meditation comes from the Pali word Bhavana which means
cultivating the mind, developing the mind, mental culture. So the whole
emphasis is on the mind. When you read the Buddhist text, you are so amazed
about the Buddha's profound and deep statement about the human mind. It is
amazing that he should have made this statement 2,600 years ago. In fact,
modern psychologists, psychotherapists are also deeply inspired by the Buddha's
statement on the human mind.
Meditation: Knowing the Mind, Shaping the Mind, Freeing the Mind
The idea of meditation has been expressed by a writer in these terms:
knowing the mind, shaping the mind and freeing the mind. I like to repeat the
words : Meditation is knowing the mind, shaping the mind and freeing the mind.
So knowing the mind is understanding how the mind is working. If we do not know
our mind, really we are like machines. So therefore it is extremely important
to know, to understand, how our mind works and when we know our mind, then we
can shape the mind. Shaping the mind is developing mastery over our mind and if
we do not develop mastery over our mind, what happens is we become slaves to
our own mind. So when we become slaves to our mind, then thoughts and emotions
control us and that results in more and more suffering. Therefore it is very
important to learn to shape the mind and when you learn to shape the mind, then
you can achieve a mind that is free. So the importance of meditation is
learning to achieve a mind that is free, a mind that is happy, a mind that is
peaceful, a mind that has loving kindness.
Achieving a Completely Healthy Mind
It is interesting the things we do to keep our body healthy. We feed
our body, we keep the body clean, when the body becomes sick, we go to the
doctor and get medicine to cure the illnesses. We do so many things to keep the
body healthy. An interesting question is what do we do to keep our mind
healthy? Have you given thoughts to this very important question? We have to be
clear about what makes our mind sick, what makes our mind unhealthy. What are
the symptoms of the human sicknesses of the mind? So meditation is learning
from them and achieving a mind that is completely healthy. Some areas where the
mind becomes sick, we can consider some emotions as contributing to the
illnesses of the human mind. I like to mention some of these emotions and I'm
sure everyone here can relate to them. Anxiety, stress, fear, insecurity,
sadness. I can draw up a long list which I think, as I have said, we all can
relate to. Sometimes we don't realize that they make our mind sick. If we do
not know that they can create our sickness, we can continue to have that
sickness without finding a solution to the sickness. In one of my talks, I will
be speaking about emotions and I will present to you how meditation helps us to
work with emotions. When I speak about emotions, I will be interested to hear
from you what emotions really bother you in this country. So I will be
presenting some practical ways of working with these unpleasant emotions and
then finding a way to be free from these emotions.
Taste & Experience Buddhism
Another very important aspect of meditation is that meditation helps
us to experience things that arise. There are some who know very well what the
Buddha taught, so they are very knowledgeable about Buddhism but they have not
experienced anything from Buddhism because they have not meditated. They are
like some people who know about meals but they have hardly tasted the food from
the meals. So meditation helps us to taste it and when you have tasted it, you
achieve a kind of taste for the freedom of the mind. And when you taste it, you
really see for yourself how we can free ourselves.
Become Completely Self-Reliant
Related to this is another point, that meditation helps us to become
completely self reliant. When you meditate you realize that we have to take
responsibility for what is happening in our mind. Sometimes I define meditation
with my own words as finding the medicine for the sickness we have created
ourselves. So as we create the sickness ourselves, we have to find the
medicine. When you are sick, if you want to heal yourself, you cannot tell the
others to take the medicine. Buddha emphasized this point very much: to be self
reliant, to rely on own efforts. The Buddha said: self effort is the best
effort. And when we develop self effort, when we become self reliant, then what
happens is we learn to become completely self confident about ourselves. When
we have this self confidence and then when we see for ourselves that the
medicine is helping, then that gives us more confidence in the medicine and it
also helps us to develop faith, confidence in the person who discovered the
medicine.
So in my talk so far I have been telling you some benefits, some
aspects of meditation. And I have been trying to tell you the importance of
meditation. I have been trying to answer the question : why we should meditate.
So now I like to pause and then if there are any questions about what I have
been saying about meditation, we can discuss them. So please ask questions.
When I try to teach meditation to children, I tell them sometimes that
meditation is asking questions and finding the answers ourselves. Asking
questions like: "Why do we get angry? How is stress created?" So to raise such
questions and to find an answer, meditation can be seen as trial and error so
therefore I would like that you ask some questions and then we might try to
find the answers ourselves.
Q&A
Audience:
When we do
the meditation and after that, I would sleep. When I fall asleep,
I found some vibration in my head, just like someone hit my head
but it doesn't hit. What happened? Why does it happen?
Godwin Samararatne:
When we meditate, many things happen
in our mind and body, sometimes very very unusual and strange. So
what is important, what we are learning in meditation is :
whatever is happening in our mind and body, just to know it is
happening. And also learning to accept them, learning not to react
to them. There are different stages in meditation so you may be
experiencing certain stages. Sometimes finding a reason may not
necessarily be helpful but rather, as I often say, to learn to
make friends with them and to see them as learning experiences and
also not to see them as problems and difficulties. So what I like
to suggest is, whatever happens when you are meditating, that can
be an unpleasant experience sometimes but just to know it, it's
just a sensation and just to say OK to it, make friends with it
and then it will pass. So I like you to continue and ma
Audience: I find your
point on how children meditate very interesting. I want to learn
something more about teaching children meditation. Firstly, I want
to ask: how do children accept the concept of meditation and how
do they practice meditation? And the second question is: you just
mentioned the way to learn meditation is to learn to ask questions
and to answer them, when we ask ourselves questions, what are we
going to do then?
Godwin Samararatne: So
the first question is about teaching meditation to children. It is
very interesting that trying to teach meditation to children, it
has enabled me to learn from them because they have very simple
uncomplicated minds. It is interesting for me to see the
difference between trying to teach meditation to children and to
adults. In a way meditation can be seen as developing a child-like
mind and learning to see things as if for the first time, learning
to be curious about things and being very honest and genuine about
themselves. So I really enjoy being with children and trying to
teach them meditation. So to answer your question, I never tell
them that it is meditation. I ask them: now would you like to play
with our breath? As you know, children love playing, so I suggest
let's play with our breath. So I tell them now please see this as
a good game. The game is: can you be aware of your breath from
moment to moment? And sometimes I tell them to play hide and seek.
Sometimes you are with the breath and sometimes you are not with
the breath. So let us play the game for 10 to 15 minutes and see
what happens. And it is so inspiring for me to see how completely
still they sit during those 10 to 15 minutes, how they seem to be
enjoying it, very happy smiling friendly faces. When I see adults
meditating, I see different expressions on their faces. And what
also inspires me most is when I ask them : do you have any
questions, do you have any problems, do you have any difficulties,
most of the time they say no. It's an interesting question to find
out what we have done to our mind. It's a very serious question
that we should explore. In fact it is really connected to
meditation, related to meditation. So this was the first question
and the second question was about, what is it?
[After we have asked ourselves questions, what do we do?]
Good question. Take the case of Siddhattha who became the Buddha. Do
you know the question that came to his mind? Very simple questions: Why do
people die? Why do people get old? Why do people become sick? Why do people
become monks and nuns? So by finding an answer to these simple questions that
he asked, he ended by becoming the Buddha. I will give another example. Newton,
the scientist. Do you know the simple question that enabled him to discover the
very profound scientific theory? Why do apples fall? Simple question but it
ended in making a very profound, very important scientific discovery. Someone
have said that a genius is one who is continuing to have the curiosity of a
child, and we all have this beautiful capacity as children, and as adults we
have lost this questioning aspect in us. So relating to meditation, asking
questions like: Why do I get angry? When you ask that question and when you try
to find an answer, what is the answer you discover? I like to hear the answer
from you.
Audience: My friend
makes me angry.
Godwin Samararatne:
It's always the other person. So the
point is my friend is not behaving in the way I want the friend to
behave. So you see from the simple question, you discover the
problem is not with my friend but with me by having an expectation
of how my friend should be. So as I said earlier about meditation,
then you learn to take responsibility for your anger, and we stop
blaming others and we start taking responsibility. And that's how
a change, a transformation can take place in ourselves from the
single question: why do I get angry? I'm happy you are asking
questions, so I hope there will be more questions.
Audience:
I am calm
right now but when my kids get poor marks in school, I get angry
although I love my children.
Godwin Samararatne:
I
like such practical questions. I think all parents can relate to
that question. I know certainly that this happens in Sri Lanka
also. So how does meditation help in such situation? One thing you
said is that you are now feeling calm, so one point to remember is
that we should not expect to be always calm. We can learn from a
mind that is calm. We can also learn from a mind that is not calm.
If you expect to be always calm, as it happened in your case, when
you are not calm, you suffer as a result. You are angry about
yourself. You are disappointed about yourself. You give yourself a
minus. So I would suggest that in the situation that you
described, when you get angry, just know that you are angry. And
tomorrow I will be speaking about the importance of the practice
of awareness or mindfulness -- a very important aspect of
meditation. So the first suggestion I like to offer is just to be
aware of the anger, because if you are aware of the anger and just
to stay with the anger, you will not be able to perhaps express
that anger in a violent way. So just being aware of the anger and
not expressing the anger enables us to develop some sort of
control, mastery over our anger, so this is the first point. The
second suggestion is by being with that after some time, you may
recover from the anger. And when you recover from that anger, you
ask the question: why did I get angry with my son? I love him so
much, and here I'm getting angry, perhaps I'm making him angry. So
when you explore that question you realize in a way, the problem
is that you have an expectation how your son should be in class.
These are reasonable expectations for parents to have but it's
another matter to find how far that expectation is realistic. How
far is my son capable of meeting my expectations? Shouldn't I find
out from my son why he is not doing well in class? This is
something very very important because with more and more
meditation, we learn to try to understand other persons' behaviour
and try to see things from the perspective of the other person
rather than project your own expectations on others. So if you can
talk to your son in a very friendly, gentle, understanding way: my
dear son, what are the difficulties you have in class? This is
something very important which the Buddha emphasized, to have a
spiritual friendship with everyone that you have to relate to. It
is very important for parents to have this kind of friendly
relationship with children so that the child is in a position to
talk to the parents honestly, in a friendly way, on the
difficulties the children are having. I feel this extremely
important. I know in Sri Lanka, some children are completely
alone, there's no one that they can look for because they are
afraid to talk honestly to their parents, they are afraid to talk
about their difficulties to teachers, so they are completely lost
and it is really sad when children are unable to confide when they
are in difficult situations. So I like to stress and emphasize
that it is very important in such situation to make a connection
with the child and then try to understand what the child is going
through, and this would be something very helpful, meaningful
rather than getting angry. I think there is time for one more
question.
Audience:
We have
thoughts, we have desires, and suffering. Is it true by meditating
you can stop having these thoughts, desires and
suffering.
Godwin Samararatne:
It's not so easy. It's interesting you
mentioned about thoughts. I feel that it is the most important
area in the human mind because from the time we wake up to the
time that we go to sleep, what happens? There is continuous
thoughts going through our mind. I think everyone here can relate
to that. Here, when I'm talking you have your own thoughts going
through your mind. I often raise this question: what are you
thinking about from morning to night? Can anyone suggest an
answer? What are we thinking about from morning to night, without
ever stopping. So you see the importance of asking simple
questions. What do we think about?
Audience:
Most of the
time, we think of ourselves, the "I" and "mine", all the
time.
Godwin Samararatne:
Absolutely right, even when we are
thinking of others, they are always related to you. Isn't that
interesting? And the next question is in relation to ourselves and
others, what do we do with our thoughts? What we are doing is we
make judgement. And the simple way I describe that is we give
pluses and we give minuses. When you remember some good thing you
have done, you feel happy, big plus. When we remember some wrong
things we have done, some mistake that we have done, some bad
things we have done, big minus. And we do the same in relation to
the others. The bad things, the wrong things the others have done,
we give them minuses. Good things others have done, we give them
pluses. So isn't it interesting from morning to night, we become
teachers giving pluses and minuses? I know some people who live in
a hell they have created and in that hell, only minuses exist.
They have thoughts only about their mistakes, about their
shortcomings. And in relation to the others, we have similar
thoughts, so by that we can create a hell and we can really feel
sad and live in depression, so this is how we create our own
suffering with our thoughts. And you will realize there is a
connection with thoughts and emotions. An interesting question to
find out is: what comes first, the thought or emotion? Have you
discovered the answer? What comes first, the thought or the
emotion? Do you see the importance of meditation? So anyway, I
will be discussing these things as we go along. Going back to the
question, what we can do is what I will be talking tomorrow -- the
importance of awareness. With awareness, just to observe the
thoughts that are going through our mind and just to realize how
we are using thoughts destructively which create suffering for
ourselves and suffering for others. And also we can use thoughts
creatively which I will be talking about later on. And the
question you asked about desires, there again you see a
relationship, connection between thoughts and desires. As I said,
this is the importance of meditation. This is why the Buddha made
such important, very very profound statements about how the mind
is working. and through that understanding by using awareness, you
see how we create our own suffering, our own problems. Through
that realization is to free ourselves from suffering and problems,
this is what meditation is. So we will be discussing these very
important issues as we go along in the next few days.
Anyway I'm very happy that you asked some very good questions and now
I would suggest you take a small break. So you can go out, and come back when
we ring the bell, and then we can meditate. So I suggest, please make an effort
to be silent and also please make an effort to be mindful. Just to walk slowly
and just to know what is happening when you are walking. And as we have
discussed about thoughts, just to know what thoughts you are having in your
mind, just be alert, be attentive. So during the next 5 minutes, please also
let us learn just to watch, just to discover what is happening in our mind and
body from moment to moment and when you hear the gong, please come back slowly
and in silence. Thank you very much.
[Break] - [Guided
meditation] - [Chanting]
Thank you very much for the beautiful chanting. So tomorrow's talk
will be about the practice of mindfulness and after the talk, we will
distribute a book on a text which is based on the practice of mindfulness. So I
like to suggest that tomorrow, during the day, please make an effort just to
know what is happening in your mind and body from moment to moment as far as
possible. Just try to know the thoughts that you will be having during the day
tomorrow. And please see how we give pluses and minuses to ourselves and others
and please see the connection between thoughts and emotions. And I would also
like to suggest to please make an effort to be friendly, to be gentle, to be
kind towards our mind and body. If you practise these things, what I will be
presenting tomorrow will make sense in your own experience. So once again, I
like to thank you very much for asking questions and then responding to my
suggestions. So I'm looking forward very much to meeting you tomorrow also. And
may you all be well, may you all be happy, may you all be peaceful and may you
learn to be free of suffering and when you go to sleep, may you sleep
peacefully and wake up peacefully.