..续本文上一页nse of mind consciousness)
A: Well it”s just like a mood; vedana (feeling) is attractive, repulsive or neutral, but citta can be quite fuzzy - you can feel emotionally confused or hesitant, or muddled or just dull and very nebulous feelings of moods. If you”re practising citta vipassana you”re really aware of what your citta is like. But sometimes people in meditation develop a technique, and they do it no matter what. They aren”t aware of their actual mood or what”s affecting them. They become conditioned to a meditation technique: "It”s 8.35 - time to do my anapanasati," and then they”re not aware. They”ve just been on the telephone, and their Mother told them that their Father ran away with the secretary and that the electricity bill wasn”t paid so the lights go out and there are all these things that make you upset -and then they wonder why: "I couldn”t meditate last night, I was too upset; I just couldn”t concentrate on my breath!" But if you”re meditating properly, then if some horrible thing happens, you can watch your citta. Don”t think you”ve got to do anapanasati at that time -I mean its not going to be much use. No wonder. There”s a lot going on here that you have to accept and notice. You can do anapanasati when nothing much is disturbing you.
People ask me, they say: "I”ve been trying to do anapanasati for years, I haven”t gotten anywhere" They have this idea that to do anapanasati is a good practice, but they, don”t reflect on other factors in life: what kind of work they do, what kind of family situation they”re in and all the things that are going to influence and affect their mind and heart. Maybe for a moment you might be able to suppress everything out, but it all comes exploding back into your mind again. So the more quiet you get, the easier it is just to concentrate on the breath.
When I first started meditating I couldn”t do anapanasati at all. So I did mantras. Something like mantras I found very helpful to calm - like fighting fire with fire. My mind was such an obsessed thinker that I needed a thought. I couldn”t contemplate on anything as subtle as my breathing, So I made up this mantra - "Let go" - and it worked. After a while, I just kept saying this mantra: "Let go" The first month of my meditation when I was a novice was an utter hell realm for me really. Suddenly I found myself living a very lonely life in the monastery, all alone. Nobody to talk to, nowhere to go. I”d just sit there and wait for them to bring me the meal. I became obsessed about the food - really ridiculous. And then try to do this anapanasati. In the end I thought, "Let go, just say: ”Let go”" So I did that, and I found through obsessing my mind with those two words eventually the thinking began to still - I”d get moments when I wasn”t actually thinking; there was a moment of calm. And I”d notice it. And then the mind went back into obsession, and I”d say: "Let go, let go, let go" Eventually it was really like a machine gun! And after a while my mind became much more calm, so I could just more or less casually go about it. That”s working with the mind. Then after a while mantras seemed ridiculous - I had no need for them - and then anapanasati became something I really enjoyed, I really liked to do.
Q: If consciousness and the khandhas** cease in a Tathagata, in a Buddha, in someone who becomes enlightened, who exists, what kind of existence is there left
Is there anything, is there nothing, or what
A: There”s no delusion, about it any more. There”s consciousness -the buddha was conscious, he wasn”t unconscious - and he had a body and he had perception. He had vedana and he had sanna sankhara, vinnara. He had sense organs, and could see, hear, smell, taste, touch, think, and he had vedana,- there was vedana but there w…
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