Mind in the Thai Forest Tradition

Agreed dxm_dxm.

There’s no amount of stretching I could do on this last comment of yours (to allow or twist the data as possibly not eternalism).

:slight_smile:

/\

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In a previous post (on the orignal thread) you said:

Pretty much everybody except A.Bhram monastery believes in a true self in the thai forest tradition.

The forest tradition is more diverse than this, as in fact one would expect. There are a number of monks who, as far as I know, have never taught eternalism. Apart from Ajahn Chah, there is Ajahn Tate – one of the most famous of all the forest meditation teachers – and several of Ajahn Chah’s most well-known disciples, such as Ajahn Liem, the abbot of Wat Pah Pong, and Ajahn Ganha. It seems that Ajahn Liem has explicitly rejected the idea of an eternal mind as wrong view.

Reality is usually more diverse than things appear from a distance. Part of this, I think, is that certain ideas tend to be dominant at particular times, and so they tend to suppress the expression of alternative ideas, giving the appearance of uniformity.

Another issue is whether the Thai Forest Tradition really deserves that name, as it once did. There is very little forest left in those areas where the old forest masters lived, and most of their monasteries are no longer forest monasteries – by almost any standard, but especially by the standards of the EBTs. So it might be more precise to refer to the contemporary monks as disciples of the Forest Tradition, rather than as being part of it. And I am not just saying this to be pedantic. Whether one is part of a real forest tradition or not will affect one’s success in meditation and one’s ability to achieve the full results of the Buddhist path. And although wrong view must have existed alongside the realisation of the Dhamma all along, we should probably not be surprised if it has increased as the forest tradition has declined, and continues to do so.

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Venerable Sir @Brahmali,

are you saying that only in the forest the Buddhist path can be accomplished? What about for example intensive meditation within a city meditation centre?

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It seems to me that one reason for such divergent teachings is that the suttas themselves seem, on their face, to point in different directions and allow for such divergent readings.

Eternalism, as I understand it, is the doctrine that there is an eternal self or core of one’s identity that is everlasting and permanent. That’s the view that the teachings clearly identify as wrong view. But that leaves open the question of whether there is a non-personal eternal realm, or eternal element, or whether on the contrary everything there is is permanent without exception. That there is such a realm or element is at least strongly suggested by some suttas. How to interpret these suttas seems to be a matter about which both experienced, educated commentators and spiritual masters have differed. Some take the statements about the deathless realm or deathless element at face value, and hold that while the the liberated Arahant is in no sense identical to that deathless element, their liberation in some sense includes “touching” that element, or “turning toward” it or having some kind of conscious grasp of it. Others have interpreted the talk of the deathless in more figurative terms, and held that the Arahant’s attainment of the deathless only means that the Arahant has achieved a cessation of ahamkara and mamamkara, and so there is no longer any birth and death for him.

The suttas seem to be much clearer about what sorts of things come to an end with supreme liberation - suffering, greed, hatred, delusion, the asavas - than they are about what ultimate reality consists in and must be like in order for the ending of these things, and the bliss of liberation, to be possible.

I have listened to and read many, many dhamma talks from various teachers in the Forest Sangha tradition over the years, and I would have to say that there appear to be some subtle differences of opinion among them about the nature of the mind and the nature of the goal. The tradition, on the whole, is practice-oriented and seems to emphasize the cultivation of the path through meditation and the other trainings, rather than theorizing and metaphysical analyses. There is a whole book by Ajahan Sumedho called The Path to the Deathless. I have read the book, but could not say I now know what he thinks the Deathless is!

All of these metaphysical frameworks are intellectual fabrications people have put together and employed in order to characterize their spiritual experiences, and there may be no way of knowing which, if any, of them rightly characterize the ultimate truth. Imagine you have attained the goal, and are abiding in an experience of perfect peace, bliss, serenity and freedom, unperturbed by even the slightest ripple of dissatisfaction or obstruction. What are you then experiencing in a positive sense? Does your experience of bliss have an objective correlative or intentional object, and consist in the experience of a blissful realm or state of being? Or is your experience a kind of pure “nothing” that does not consist in the cognition of any kind of object? Or is it even possible to say? It might be that even the Arahant or the Tathagata doesn’t know for sure, although they can come up with some words that do a better job of describing the state than other.

My working assumption is that it is a bad idea to get too hung up on these debates or take a strong stand in any of the alternatives as some pre-condition for progress on the path. The human mind and human language are conditioned systems and organs for working with everyday life in the samsaric realm, just like our hands, legs, teeth and tongues are. We use these organs to grasp and communicate about the concepts, forms and objects of everyday, dukkha-filled life. And some people are also able to fashion ideas and forms of words with these organs that help lead others away from samsaric existence toward liberation. But the idea that when liberation is achieved, it depends on something grasped by and held in the mind, or that anything we can grasp now adequately represents what is to be achieved, might be just as fanciful as thinking that liberation consists in something that can be held in the hand or the mouth.

I suppose we can always, like Iris DeMent, let the mystery be! :slight_smile:

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But it is the mystery that is sheer torment, resulting in ache and the feeling of helplessness that overcomes the mind when life becomes increasingly difficult to accept because it seems to be unfair and unjust. If nothing (deeds, actions etc.) in the present life could be used as an acceptable cause for one’s pain and anguish, then the overwhelming desire is to charge something or someone other than oneself with culpability. Instead, the Dhamma puts forward kamma as the explanation and says that one’s actions in past lives act in conjuction with present actions. This is the nucleus of the Buddha’s analysis of the human condition and to me, it is thoroughly mysterious.

Regarding the experience of nothingness, sometimes it would be such a big relief given the incessant churning of the mind. It pales before the attainment of the three knowledges, but it’s still an alluring state…

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This could end up being a very long discussion, and I don’t really feel like entering into that. But I will make a couple of minor comments.

From my point of view, these very expressions are misleading. They don’t really refer to anything in the Pali. “Deathless”, for instance, is supposed to be a translation of amata. Mata means dead and the a is a negative prefix. A common use of such prefixes is as a privative, that is, to show the absence of the term they are associated with. Amata should therefore be translated a “freedom from death”. That this is correct can be seen from it’s usage in MN26, where it is clear from the context that the Buddha is searching for the freedom from death, not some sort of deathless state.

I don’t even know what the Pali word behind “realm” is supposed to be, and I am not sure if there even is one. But the Pali word behind “element” is dhātu, and “element” is not really a satisfactory rendering, at least not in this context. For instance, in the suttas you have the nirodha-dhātu, which would then be the “element of cessation”. This is fine, but only if we expand our normal understanding of “element”. A better translation might be “the property of cessation”. In the same way, amatadhātu can best be rendered as “the property of freedom from death”.

A “non-personal realm” is exactly what deep samādhi is. But it’s not eternal.

Again, this cannot be differentiated from deep samādhi.

If you look for eternal bliss, that’s what you will find, except you will be disappointed. Your view will decide how you interpret your experience. If you get it wrong, you will get stuck. So yes, have an open mind, but remember that nibbāna means extinguishment, not eternal bliss.

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I think the forest is very helpful. In the DN16 the Buddha specifically says that the long-term survival and prosperity of Buddhism depends of monastics living in the forest. There is a sutta in the Anguttara where the Buddha praises a monk who is nodding in the forest but is down on a monk who is in samādhi close to a village. This latter is really quite a strong statement, and most people are surprised by it. So we need to be careful with ideas like “if it works, then it’s good”. What “works” is really a big picture thing.

City meditation centres have their place, but I think there comes a point where you will want and need real seclusion.

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Thank you Bhante. This is a good place to note how much I admire your paper on what the Nikayas do and do not say about nibbana! Just one reservation about this:

My understanding is that in all of the attainments short of final liberation, the underlying tendency to engage in I-making and my-making is still present. Each of those attainments has a base, and the person who attains that level of samadhi still has not eradicated the tendency to cognize the experience with reference to a self - thinking at some level that the base of the attainment is something that is identical to oneself, or something that is part of one self, or something that oneself is part of, or something that one, oneself grasps or possesses or has attained. The operation of the tendency is supposed to be extremely subtle, since the deep samadhis will be silent states, and not full of articulate inner speech or mental imagery. The tendency is so subtle that devas and formless beings can get stuck in these pleasurable states for eons, thinking they have attained nibbana! And so long as this I-making and my-making is going on at any level, there will be suffering, even if only very, very slight ripples of suffering, because one will still have a craving to perpetuate the being one cognizes oneself to be, in some state of being or other, and will thus experience the inevitable underlying anxiety that goes along with the impossibility of perpetuating that being indefinitely in face of impermanence.

So the way I interpret those who believe that there is an eternal (unchanging, undying) nibbanic “realm” or “plane” or “sphere” of reality, in some positive ontological sense, is that they think that whatever it means to attain or reach this plane, upon final liberation, that attainment differs from the previous ones in that there is no longer an underlying tendency toward I-making and my-making present in it.

Of course, to my mind, that seems to describe a change in the striving, meditating subject, and so I don’t see why one needs to bring an external eternal realm of any kind into the picture to describe those changes.

I suppose this all connects with different ways people understand “the unconditioned”. One interpretation is that this phrase simply refers to the cessation of the sankharas - the conditioning, forming, constructive activities. One attains the unconditioned by no longer engaging in conditioning. But another interpretation is that the phrase refers to some dimension or sphere or realm of reality, an eternal dimension that abides beyond, an in contrast to, the lower conditioned dimension.

There is no doubt that all the textual descriptions of nibbana focus on what has been extinguished or brought to an end. The fires of greed, hatred and confusion have gone out, the asavas have been destroyed, the defilements eradicated, the fetters severed, the burden put down, etc. But that leaves open the logical possibility that once these things have been eliminated, extinguished or eradicated, there is something positive that remains. Aren’t there places in the canon where the Buddha is described as “enjoying the bliss of liberation”?

I think it is helpful here remembering the distinction between liberation while an arahat is alive, that is while the five khandha are operative, and a supposed state of eternal bliss - or whatever positive state of being - that a liberated mind might enjoy after death. It is in order to refute this latter possibility, I believe, that Ajahn Brahmali was reminding us of the ‘negative’ meaning of nibbana.

See e.g Iti 44

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Indeed, but I think the crucial issue here is that these tendencies are precisely underlying. In other words, they are not always making their presence felt, but they will inevitably return unless they are eliminated. In deep samādhi they will be temporarily absent, only to return when you come out, usually taking that state of samādhi as its object.

Again, I prefer “freedom from the conditioned”. When the EBTs speak of nibbāna it almost invariably refers to the living experience of an arahant. The arahant is free from the conditioned in the sense that they have no craving or attachment. But they are still subject to phenomena in the sense that they are conditioned by what happens around them. They respond when spoken to, they eat when they are hungry, they feel physical pain because the body responds to external stimuli, etc. I do not know of any evidence from the EBTs that asaṅkhata refers to any “realm” or “element” beyond the ordinary experiences of the arahant.

Yes, and this liberation is precisely the being free from craving, etc. Just that and nothing more, as far as I can see. I like the sequence in MN59, where the highest happiness is the happiness of the cessation of perception and feeling. There is no need to bring in anything beyond this.

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Ah, OK, that’s interesting. I had tended to assume that the sense of self is still present in the samadhis as an experiential fact, not just as a disposition that will manifest itself in experience only after emerging from samadhi. On this account, even the formless beings are actively suffering. Their suffering - like their sense of self - is highly subtle and attenuated, like a fine ripple disturbing a pond rather than the great storms and gross stresses we lesser beings feel, but it is still there disturbing what would otherwise be perfect peace.

By the way, you might be familiar with some recent psychological research on the self and ego construction that seems to point in the direction of a distinction between a sense of self and a robust self-concept. For example, in the rubber hand illusion, subjects can be stimulated to have an experience of an external object as part of their own body. The subject subjectively feels the rubber had to be “mine” And yet, they don’t really believe it is part of their body, and so don’t have the belief “that’s my hand”. So we might say that something like the same thing is true of the being in samadhi. For example, we might say the being who is in the first arupa state is in conscious contact with the base of that state - unbounded space - and is still clinging to it, and “feels” it to be something intimately related to themselves. And that’s why they are still suffering.

Yes, I tend to agree with your interpretation. But those who think otherwise make a great deal out of the passage in the Udana 8.3:

“There is, monks, an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned. If, monks there were not that unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, you could not know an escape here from the born, become, made, and conditioned. But because there is an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, therefore you do know an escape from the born, become, made, and conditioned.”

I know many people interpret this passage as referring to some kind of eternal space in which conditioned things come to be and cease to be, or even as a “ground of being” out of which conditioned things emerge and then reflux as they decay. But I’m more inclined to see the passage as just saying something like “detachment from conditioning must be possible in order for their to be an escape from it.”

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When i was looking for asankhata, found this discussion between Bharadwaja and beeblebrox in DW clear my doubt on the topic of ajaata, abhuuta, akata, asankhata.

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Interestingly I have just came across the case of Venerable Upasena Vaṅgantaputta who would only fully ordain and take as disciples bhikkus who would - just as he used to do - accept to live in the forest, wear rags and eat only almsfood.

Ven. Upasena is recorded in the origin story of NP15 as being praised by the Buddha himself for doing so:

“When anyone asks me for the full ordination, Venerable Sir, I tell them this: ‘I dwell in the forest, I eat almsfood, and I wear rag-robes. If you, too, will dwell in the forest, eat almsfood, and wear rag-robes, I will give you the full ordination.’
If they agree, I ordain them; otherwise I don’t. And I do the same when anyone asks me for support. It’s in this way that I train my followers.”

“Good, Upasena, you train your followers well."

https://suttacentral.net/pi/pi-tv-bu-vb-np15

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Dear Ajahn Brahmali, I really like this replacing “not” by “freedom from”. I always found it strange that the Buddha would have talked of deathless instead of birthless, but if we translate it freedom from death then it makes sense.

What about for anatta “freedom from self” instead of not-self which I also dislike very much?

The term freedom from goes very well with non-objectivation and instead of completion of a process. While no-self, deathless, etc. makes you believe there are objects.

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The most important thing is the correct technique of meditation.
Silent retreats are great. but if they teach you the wrong meditation methods, then you won’t get anywhere.
Also, it is very pointless, when people that have not achieved any type of mental stillness have strong opinions about meditation. Right meditation is samadhi is jhana.

“The goal of this meditation is the beautiful silence,
stillness and clarity of mind” Ajahn Brahm : meditation a pdf file.

Yes, I think that would certainly be acceptable. But normally I use “freedom from” in conjunction with things that are negative, such as death or suffering, because you are free from something oppressive. An attā is not negative as such, and therefore I prefer something like "without self"or “void of self”.

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Blockquote You are correct in saying that Ajahn Chah never used terms like ‘original mind’ or approved of using them.

Blockquote

I think he did use the term ‘original mind’

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Yes. But that must be put in context both in Thai and in western Buddhism, where in the latter it’s not wise to promote the ‘original mind’ perspective. Thanissaro says broadly speaking the Thai forest tradition saw the mind primarily in terms of being subject to defilements:

" In the Thai Wilderness tradition, for instance, teachers frequently describe Dhamma practice as an attempt to outwit the defilements so as to end their obscuring influence in the mind. To practice, they say, is to learn how little you can trust the mind’s urges and ideas because they’re darkened with the defilement of delusion, whose darkness in turn can allow greed, aversion, and all the other derived defilements to grow. Only by questioning the mind’s urges and ideas can you free yourself from the
influence of these defilements, leaving the mind totally pure."

Welcome to the forum @rybka3 :slight_smile:

A nice link you have posted, thank you

One thing I’ve noticed is that some terms have different connotations and usages in different traditions. It makes it tricky to differentiate exactly in what way it is being used, without being familiar with the context, or using it in different ways across different traditions. I guess the term ‘original mind’ is one of these terms.

with metta :slight_smile: :sunflower:

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The talk in which he mentioned the Original Mind is “The path to peace”, which can be found in the link below.

Still not really sure what that term means there. If anyone can determine whether that term means eternal citta, please explain.

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