Mind cannot be seen, so where is it?

(Buddhism Podcast) The mind cannot be seen, so where is it? | Buddhist Wisdom

But what is aware that it is aware?

There is a mind-door, greenish in hue, near the heart. This heart-mind seems to be the physical base of consciousness, not the brain in the cranium. When meditating, attention can be adverted to the area around the heart. There there is a mirror reflecting experience, consciousness, awareness. If the "mind" were in the brain or the head, it seems attention would be placed there to find it. But it is very much down closer to what in the West we refer to as the seat of our emotions. The Buddha did not specify a physical base for vijñāna (consciousness) or manas (in Early Buddhism). However, he seems to have been well aware of the practical application of locating this base for the sake of realizing the ultimate nature of mind-and-matter (nama-rupa), ultimate mind (a stream of cittas) and ultimate materiality (a stream of kalapas). But this is for advanced practitioners of Buddhist meditation rather than philosophers and speculators. For those, perhaps Zen no-mind would be better or the compelling mind-only (Yogachara) view.

• Buddhism Podcast (video); text by Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly

Thai Forest Buddhist Meditation (video)

Wisdom Quarterly

(Mrnopparath) Theravada Buddhism in the Thai Forest tradition as Way to Happiness

The pursuit of happiness, the way to freedom from unhappiness, is Buddhist meditation. It is immediately effective (timeless) not because unhappiness ends but because, in the present moment, everything is all right.

Unhappiness (dukkha, disappointment, woe, suffering) is not due to impermanence alone, but by the very threefold nature of "things." Conditioned phenomena are unsatisfying by their very nature.

Buddhism is the path to seeing the true nature of things directly. This opens up the possibility of liberation from all unhappiness. Practice, not theory, is essential. These Western monks, early students of Ajahn Chah, returned to the West and took up the monastic life to benefit the world.

(WanderWolfProject)

Learning to meditate according to the Thai Forest style is much easier in America than Thailand where clear English is hard to come by. But the difficult accommodations, heat, mosquitoes, lack of suitable food, and other hardships make it an experience one never forgets. Here Ajahn Luangta Michael explains breathing meditation according to tradition.

• One of the best and most accessible books ever written on the subject is What the Buddha Never Taught by Canadian journalist Tim Ward.
• Keeping the Breath in Mind by Ajahn Lee Dhammadharo (translated and distributed freely by the eccentric American monk Ven. Thanissaro) is a very helpful "how to" guide.
  

But the most famous Thai monk in this tradition was Ajahn Chah, who created Wat Pah Nanachat ("International Forest Monastery," where Tim Ward visited) for foreigners to learn and practice in English. He had many great Western disciple, the funniest and perhaps most accomplished of which is the great Ajahn Brahm, now an abbot in Australia who (contrary to tradition) welcomes both female and male practitioners.

(DhammaTube) Life of Ajahn Chah in Isan (Laotian NE Thailand)

Basic Instructions

• Place right foot on left leg, right hand on left.
• Eyes closed, "look" at the breath with the mind's eye.
• Bhutto means Buddha. When breathing in, think "bhu."
• When breathing out, think "tho."
• Do this all the time.
• Have a feel (sensation, awareness) when the breath touches the nostril or upper lip.
• Know the breath when breathing in and when breathing out, slowly, comfortably.
• Do it for 10 minutes every day at first, and build up to one or two hours.
• Practice every day 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes and more.
• Up the level of meditation until, like a battery, it is charged, intensified, and concentrated (samadhi).
• When it is full, it can be of use for insight (vipassana) to know what things are true by heart, which is far better than normal thinking.
  

Thailand (Isan) Today
(Thaipulsedotcom) I visited Wat Pah Nanachat (and Ajahn Chah's other temple Wat Nong Pah Pong) in 2011. It is a great place. There were only a few monks about, so I walked around shooting video. I stayed overnight and found that the Australian monk in charge, a young guy maybe 28, was way too engrossed with getting chores done and having a big result from it. He was kind of like a military drill instructor. He was completely stressed out about some new people who had just arrived.

(HeartS0ngs) I feel fortunate to just be a layperson with enough conviction and wisdom (which I hope lasts) to keep practicing the Noble Eightfold Path alone, with only the Internet for guidance. I'm not sure I could survive life in a forest monastery! But I believe it would be a wonderful opportunity for intensive training and practice for anyone strong enough to undertake it.

(BuddhaWhisper) Seems like there are politics everywhere, even in a Buddhist Monastery, in all traditions. And it's no better in Western Dharma centers.

(Dharmathai) I agree with Ven. Dhammavuddho. I was ordained in a Thai temple full of Thai monks, and the same kind of unhelpful unfriendliness was evident. The Western monks seem to have a much better grip on what a bhikkhu (Buddhist monk, recluse) in the Buddha's Dispensation should represent through actions and speech. However, what Ven. Dhammavuddo says about the lack of stress on meditation is now also true: Many practitioners get lost in rules (vinaya) and dogma and no longer seem to focus on the practice and knowing the real heart.

"What the Buddha Never Taught"

Author Tim Ward (reviewed by Linda Morgan, Whole Earth Review)

WAT PAH NANACHAT, Thailand - "A while back I divested myself of all furniture and 90 percent of everything else I owned to move to a new life. It was one of my most intense therapeutic acts and amazingly easy to accomplish, once I discovered that detachment is the happy companion of spiritual freedom."

The act of letting go is a central theme in this combination travelogue and spiritual odyssey -- that of cutting loose the physical world and the ego to get to the essence of human existence. The author, a Canadian journalist and accomplished student of Eastern meditation, had already experienced this on a certain level when he ventured through the gates of a Thai Buddhist monastery, largely populated by Western Caucasians. In this jungle community he lived a season in poverty and service, and when he left he took with him a different and somewhat unexpected vision of enlightenment -- hence the title.

Through the texture of a beautiful essay enriched with dialogue, we eavesdrop on the inner sanctum of the monks' environment and vicariously experience their world, bound by (or, depending on one's perspective, liberated by) stringent rules of behavior, long hours of meditation, and the nourishment of only one [substantial] meal a day. Consequently, we see the monks as human beings grappling with their own emotional baggage, just like us.

"The first morning Jim and I go on bindabhat [Pali, pindapat, the monastic custom of going on alms round for food] is the first time I notice that monks don't wear sandals on the ninety-minute walk over gravel roads and paddy dykes. Each morning they travel in groups of three or four to the clusters of nearby villages....

"Leather-looted Sun Tin and Nimalo wait for me again at the entrance to our first village. Following their example, I slip the bowl strap from my left shoulder and neck onto my right, Nimalo reminds me to keep my left hand on the lid, supporting the rim of the bowl with my right, arms still as I walk, head reverently bent. Throughout the walk we are to say nothing and never look into the eyes of the villagers....

"Devotees give to the [symbol of the Sangha, the saffron] robe, not to the wearer. They believe it is a ritual for the making of merit, for a better rebirth. If a monk thanks the giver, then by treating it as a personal favour, [great] merit is not gained....

"The ritual is a humbling one, repeated fifty or sixty times that morning until my bowl is heavy with rice, mangos, bananas, dried meat, fishes, and sticky sweets wrapped in leaves. Do these villagers know where we have come from, our lands of swimming pool suburbs, aeroplanes, and revolving restaurants, to walk through their rice paddies and pathways strewn with scraps of lumber, cardboard, and buffalo dung?

"On Wai Phra evening the Ajahn [teacher] gave permission for laymen and pahkows [non-monk residents of the monastery who obey certain precepts] to come to his kuti [meditation hut] for a Dhamma talk [Buddhist sermon]..." More>>

Reality as Consciousness

• More on the fascinating nexus between quantum physics and brain science with researcher and author Gregg Braden: Consciousness Creates Reality