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The Basic Method of

Meditation

Ajahn Brahmavamso



NAMO TASSA BHAGAVATO ARAHATOSAMMĀSAMBUDDHASSA

The Basic Method of Meditation

Edited from a talk given byAjahn Brahmavamso

during a 9 day retreat inNorth Perth, Western Australia

in December 1997.



CONTENTS

PART 1…………………………………………. 5 - Sustained attention on the present moment

PART 2…………………………………………17 - Silent awareness of the present moment - Silent present moment awareness of the breath - Full sustained attention on the breath

PART 3…………………………………………31 - Full sustained attention on

the beautiful breath

- Experiencing the beautiful Nimitta - First Jhana



7The Basic Method of Meditation

PART 1

“The goal of this meditation is the beautiful silence.Stillness and clarity of mind.”

Meditation is the way to achieve letting go. Inmeditation one lets go of the complex world outsidein order to reach the serene world inside. In all types

of mysticism and in many traditions, this is knownas the path to the pure and powerful mind. Theexperience of this pure mind, released from theworld, is very wonderful and blissful. During this meditation retreat there will besome hard work at the beginning, but be willing tobear that hard work knowing that it will lead youto experience some very beautiful and meaningfulstates. They will be well worth the effort! It is a lawof nature that without effort one does not makeprogress. Whether one is a layperson or a monk,without effort one gets nowhere, in meditation orin anything.



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Effort alone, though, is not sufcient. Theeffort needs to be skilful. This means directing your

energy just at the right places and sustaining itthere until its task is completed. Skilful effort neitherhinders nor disturbs you, instead it produces thebeautiful peace of deep meditation. In order to know where your effort should be

directed, you must have a clear understanding ofthe goal of meditation. The goal of this meditationis the beautiful silence, stillness and clarity of mind.If you can understand that goal then the place toapply your effort, the means to achieve the goal

becomes very clear. The effort is directed to letting go, to developinga mind that inclines to abandoning. One of themany simple but profound statements of the LordBuddha is that “a meditator whose mind inclinesto abandoning, easily achieves Sama d̄hi (the goalof meditation)”. Such a meditator gains thesestates of inner bliss almost automatically. What theLord Buddha was saying was that the major causefor attaining deep meditation, for reaching thesepowerful states is the willingness to abandon, to letgo and to renounce. During this meditation retreat, we are not




going to develop a mind which accumulates andholds on to things, but instead we develop a mind

which is willing to let go of things, to let go ofburdens. Outside of meditation we have to carrythe burden of our many duties, like so many heavysuitcases, but within the period of meditation somuch baggage is unnecessary. So, in meditation see if

you can unload as much baggage as you can. Thinkof these things as burdens, heavy weights pressingupon you. Then you have the right attitude forletting go of these things, abandoning them freelywithout looking back. This effort, this attitude, this

movement of mind that inclines to giving up, iswhat will lead you into deep meditation. Even duringthe beginning stages of this meditation retreat, seeif you can generate the energy of renunciation, thewillingness to give things away, and little by littlethe letting go will occur. As you give things away in your mind you will feel much lighter, unburdenedand free. In the way of meditation, this abandoningof things occurs in stages, step by step. You may go through the initial stages quicklyif you wish, but be very careful if you so do.Sometimes when you pass through the initial stepstoo quickly, you nd that preparatory work has not



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been completed. It is like trying to build a townhouse on a very weak and rushed foundation. The

structure goes up very quickly, but it comes down very quickly as well! So you are wise to spend a lotof time on the foundations, and on the ‘rst stories’as well, making the groundwork well done, strongand rm. Then when you proceed to the higher

stories, the bliss states of meditation, they too arestable and rm. In the way that I teach meditation, I like tobegin at the very simple stage ofgiving up thebaggage of past and future. Sometimes you may

think that this is such an easy thing to do, that it istoo basic. However, if you give it your full effort, notrunning ahead to the higher stages of meditationuntil you have properly reached the rst goal ofsustained attention on the present moment, then you will nd later on that you have establisheda very strong foundation on which to build thehigher stages. Abandoning the past means not even thinkingabout your work, your family, your commitments, your responsibilities, your history, the good or badtimes you had as a child etc, you abandon all pastexperiences by showing no interest in them at all.




You become someone who has no history duringthe time that you meditate. You do not even think

about where you are from, where you were born,who your parents were or what your upbringing waslike. All of that history is renounced in meditation.In this way, everyone here on the retreat becomesequal, just a meditator. It becomes unimportant

how many years you have been meditating, whether you are an old hand or a beginner. If you abandonall that history then we are all equal and free. Weare freeing ourselves of some of these concerns,perceptions and thoughts, which limit us and which

stop us from developing the peace born of lettinggo. So every ‘part’ of your history you nally let goof, even the history of what has happened to youso far in this retreat, even the memory of whathappened to you just a moment ago! In this way, you carry no burden from the past into the present.Whatever has just happened, you are no longerinterested in it and you let it go. You do not allowthe past to reverberate in your mind. I describe this as developing your mind likea padded cell! When any experience, perceptionor thought hits the wall of the ‘padded cell’, it doesnot bounce back again. It just sinks into the padding



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and stops right there. Thus we do not allow the pastto echo in our consciousness, certainly not the past

of yesterday and all that time before, because we aredeveloping the mind inclined to letting go, givingaway and unburdening. Some people have the view that if they take upthe past for contemplation they can somehow learn

from it and solve the problems of the past. However, you should understand that when you gaze at thepast, you invariably look through distorted lenses.Whatever you think it was like, in truth it was notquite like that! This is why people have arguments

about what actually happened, even a few momentsago. It is well known to police who investigate trafcaccidents that even though the accident may havehappened only half an hour ago, two differenteyewitnesses, both completely honest, will givedifferent accounts. Our memory is untrustworthy.If you consider just how unreliable memory is, then you do not put value on thinking over the past.Then you can let it go. You can bury it, just as youbury a person who has died. You place them ina cofn then bury it, or cremate it, and it is donewith, nished. Do not linger on the past. Do notcontinue to carry the cofns of dead moments




on your head! If you do, then you are weighing yourself down with heavy burdens which do not

really belong to you. Let all of the past go and youhave the ability to be free in the present moment. As for the future, the anticipations, fears, plans,and expectations -- let all of that go too. The LordBuddha once said about the future “whatever you

think it will be, it will always be something different”!This future is known to the wise as uncertain,unknown and so unpredictable. It is often completestupidity to anticipate the future, and alwaysa great waste of your time to think of the future

in meditation. When you work with your mind, you ndthat the mind is so strange. It can do some wonderfuland unexpected things. It is very common formeditators who are having a difcult time, who arenot getting very peaceful, to sit there thinking “Herewe go again, another hour of frustration”. Eventhough they begin thinking like that, anticipatingfailure, something strange happens and they getinto a very peaceful meditation. Recently I heard of one man on his rsttenday retreat. After the rst day his body washurting so much he asked to go home. The teacher



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said, “Stay one more day and the pain will disappear,I promise”. So he stayed another day, the pain got

worse so he wanted to go home again. The teacherrepeated “just one more day, the pain will go”. Hestayed for a third day and the pain was even worse.For each of nine days, in the evening he would go tothe teacher and, in great pain, ask to go home and

the teacher would say, “Just one more day and thepain will disappear”. It was completely beyond his

expectations, that on the nal day when he startedthe rst sit of the morning, the pain did disappear!It did not come back. He could sit for long periods

with no pain at all! He was amazed at howwonderful is this mind and how it can produce suchunexpected results. So, you don’t know about thefuture. It can be so strange, even weird, completelybeyond whatever you expect. Experiences like thisgive you the wisdom and courage to abandonall thoughts about the future and all expectationas well. When you’re meditating and thinking, “Howmany more minutes are there to go? How muchlonger have I to endure all of this?”, then that is just wandering off into the future again. The paincould just disappear in a moment. The next moment




might be the free one. You just cannot anticipatewhat is going to happen.

When on retreat, after you have beenmeditating for many sessions, you may sometimesthink that none of those meditations have been anygood. In the next meditation session you sit downand everything becomes so peaceful and easy. You

think “Wow! Now I can meditate!”, but the nextmeditation is again awful. What’s going on here? The rst meditation teacher I had told mesomething that then sounded quite strange. Hesaid that there is no such thing as a bad meditation!

He was right. All those meditations which you calledbad, frustrating and not meeting your expectations,all those meditations are where you do the hardwork for your ‘pay cheque’. It is like a person who goes to work all dayMonday and gets no money at the end of the day.“What am I doing this for?”, he thinks. He worksall day Tuesday and still gets nothing. Another badday. All day Wednesday, all day Thursday, and stillnothing to show for all the hard work. That’s fourbad days in a row. Then along comes Friday, he doesexactly the same work as before and at the end ofthe day the boss gives him a pay cheque. “Wow! Why



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can’t every day be a pay-day?” Why can’t every meditation be ‘pay-day’? Now,

do you understand the simile? It is in the difcultmeditations that you build up your credit, where you build up the causes for success. While workingfor peace in the hard meditations, you build up yourstrength, the momentum for peace. Then when

there’s enough credit of good qualities, the mindgoes into a good meditation and it feels like‘payday’. It is in the bad meditations that you domost of the work. In a recent retreat that I gave in Sydney, during

interview time, a lady told me that she had beenangry with me all day, but for two different reasons.In her early meditations she was having a difculttime and was angry with me for not ringing the bellto end the meditation early enough. In the latermeditations she got into a beautiful peaceful stateand was angry with me for ringing the bell too soon.The sessions were all the same length, exactly onehour. You just can’t win as a teacher, ringing thebell! This is what happens when you go anticipatingthe future, thinking, “How many more minutes untilthe bell goes?” That is where you torture yourself,




where you pick up a heavy burden that is noneof your business. So be very careful not to pick up

the heavy suitcase of “How many more minutes arethere to go?” or “What should I do next?” If thatis what you are thinking, then you are not payingattention to what is happening now. You are notdoing the meditation. You have lost the plot and are

asking for trouble. In this stage of the meditation keep yourattention right in the present moment, to the pointwhere you don’t even know what day it is or whattime it is -- morning? afternoon? -- don’t know!

All you know is what moment it is -- right now! Inthis way you arrive at this beautiful monastic timescale where you are just meditating in the moment,not aware of how many minutes have gone or howmany remain, not even remembering what day it is. Once, as a young monk in Thailand, I hadactually forgotten what year it was! It is marvellousliving in that realm that is timeless, a realm so muchmore free than the time driven world we usuallyhave to live in. In the timeless realm, you experiencethis moment, just as all wise beings have beenexperiencing this same moment for thousands of years. It has always been just like this, no different.



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You have come into the reality of now. The reality of now is magnicent and

awesome. When you have abandoned all past andall future, it is as if you have come alive. You arehere, you are mindful. This is the rst stage of themeditation, just this mindfulness sustained only inthe present. Reaching here, you have done a great

deal. You have let go of the rst burden whichstops deep meditation. So put forth a lot of effortto reach this rst stage until it is strong, rm andwell established. Next we will rene the presentmoment awareness into the next stage -- silent

awareness of the present moment.




PART 2

“Silence is so much more productive of wisdom andclarity than thinking.”

In part one of this three part article, I outlinedthe goal of this meditation, which is the beautifulsilence, stillness and clarity of mind, pregnant with

the most profound of insights. Then I pointed outthe underlying theme which runs like an unbrokenthread throughout all meditation, that is the lettinggo of material and mental burdens. Lastly, in partone, I described at length the practice which leads towhat I call the rst stage of this meditation, and thatrst stage is attained when the meditator comfortablyabides in the present moment for long, unbrokenperiods of time. As I wrote in the previous article“The reality of now is magnicent and awesome.Reaching here you have done a great deal. Youhave let go of the rst burden which stops deepmeditation.” But having achieved so much, one



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should go further into the even more beautiful andtruthful silence of the mind.

It is helpful, here, to clarify the differencebetween silent awareness of the present momentand thinking about it. The simile of watchinga tennis match on T.V. is informative. When watchingsuch a match, you may notice that, in fact, there are

two matches occurring simultaneously -- there is thematch that you see on the screen, and there is thematch that you hear described by the commentator.Indeed, if an Australian is playing a New Zealander,then the commentary from the Australian or New

Zealand presenter is likely to be much differentfrom what actually occurred! Commentary is oftenbiased. In this simile, watching the screen withno commentary stands for silent awareness inmeditation, paying attention to the commentarystands for thinking about it. You should realize that you are much closer to Truth when you observewithout commentary, when you experience just thesilent awareness of the present moment. Sometimes it is through the inner commentarythat we think we know the world. Actually, thatinner speech does not know the world at all! It isthe inner speech that weaves the delusions that




cause suffering. It is the inner speech that causes usto be angry with those we make our enemies, and

to have dangerous attachments to those we makeour loved ones. Inner speech causes all of life’sproblems. It constructs fear and guilt. It createsanxiety and depression. It builds these illusions assurely as the skilful commentator on T.V. can

manipulate an audience to create anger or tears.So if you seek for Truth, you should value silentawareness, considering it more important, whenmeditating, than any thought whatsoever. It is the high value that one gives to one’s

thoughts that is the major obstacle to silentawareness. Carefully removing the importance onegives to one’s thinking and realizing the value andtruthfulness of silent awareness is the insight thatmakes this second stage -- silent awareness of thepresent moment -- possible. One of the beautiful ways of overcomingthe inner commentary is to develop such renedpresent moment awareness, that you are watchingevery moment so closely that you simply do nothave the time to comment about what has justhappened. A thought is often an opinion on whathas just happened, e.g. “That was good”, ‘That



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was gross”, “Whatwas that?” All of these commentsare about an experience that has just passed by.

When you are noting, making a comment aboutan experience that has just passed, then you arenot paying attention to the experience that has justarrived. You are dealing with old visitors andneglecting the new visitors coming now!

You may imagine your mind to be a host ata party, meeting the guests as they come in thedoor. If one guest comes in and you meet themand start talking to them about this that or theother, then you are not doing your duty of paying

attention to the next guest that comes in the door.Since a guest comes in the door every moment, all you can do is to greet one and then immediatelygo on to greet the next one. You cannot afford toengage in even the shortest conversation with anyguest, since this would mean you would miss theone coming in next. In meditation, all experiencescome through the door of our senses into themind one by one in succession. If you greet oneexperience with mindfulness and then get intoconversation with your guest, then you will missthe next experience following right behind. When you are perfectly in the moment with




every experience, with every guest that comes in your mind, then you just do not have the space

for inner speech. You can not chatter to yourselfbecause you are completely taken up with mindfullygreeting everything just as it arrives in your mind.This is rened present moment awareness tothe level that it becomes silent awareness of the

present in every moment. You discover, on developing that degree ofinner silence that this is like giving up anothergreat burden. It is as if you have been carryinga big heavy rucksack on your back for forty or fty

years continuously, and during that time you havewearily trudged through many, many miles. Now you have had the courage and found the wisdom totake that rucksack off and put it on the ground fora while. One feels so immensely relieved, so light,and so free, because one is now not burdened withthat heavy rucksack of inner chatter. Another useful method of developing silentawareness is to recognize the space betweenthoughts, between periods of inner chatter. Pleaseattend closely with sharp mindfulness when onethought ends and before another thought begins-- THERE! That is silent awareness! It may be



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only momentary at rst, but as you recognize thateeting silence you become accustomed to it, and

as you become accustomed to it then the silencelasts longer. You begin to enjoy the silence, once you have found it at last, and that is why it grows.But remember silence is shy. If silence hears youtalking about her, she vanishes immediately!

It would be marvellous for each one of us ifwe could abandon the inner speech and abidein silent awareness of the present moment longenough to realize how delightful it is. Silence is somuch more productive of wisdom and clarity

than thinking. When you realize how much moreenjoyable and valuable it is to be silent within,then silence becomes more attractive and importantto you. The Inner Silence becomes what the mindinclines towards. The mind seeks out silenceconstantly, to the point where it only thinks if itreally has to, only if there is some point to it. Since,at this stage, you have realized that most of ourthinking is really pointless anyway, that it gets younowhere, only giving you many headaches, yougladly and easily spend much time in inner quiet. The second stage of this meditation, then, issilent awareness of the present moment. You




may spend the majority of your time just developingthese two stages because if you can get this far

then you have gone a long way indeed in yourmeditation. In that silent awareness of ‘Just Now’ you will experience much peace, joy and consequentwisdom. If you want to go further, then instead of being

silently aware of whatever comes into the mind, you choose silent present moment awareness of just ONE THING. That ONE THING can bethe experience of breathing, the idea of lovingkindness ( Metta ), a coloured circle visualised in the

mind ( Kasina ) or several other, less common, focalpoints for awareness. Here we will describe the silentpresent moment awareness of the breath. Choosing to x one’s attention on one thingis letting go of diversity and moving to its opposite,unity. As the mind begins to unify, sustainingattention on just one thing, the experience of peace,bliss and power increases signicantly. You discoverhere that the diversity of consciousness -- like havingsix telephones on one’s desk ringing at the same time-- is such a burden and letting go of this diversity --only permitting one telephone, a private line at that,on one’s desk -- is such a relief it generates bliss. The



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understanding that diversity is a burden is crucialto being able to settle on the breath.

If you have developed silent awareness ofthe present moment carefully for long periods oftime, then you will nd it quite easy to turn thatawareness on to the breath and follow that breathfrom moment to moment without interruption.

This is because the two major obstacles to breathmeditation have already been subdued. The rstof these two obstacles is the mind’s tendency togo off into the past or future, and the secondobstacle is the inner speech. This is why I teach

the two preliminary stages of present momentawareness and silent awareness of the presentmoment as a solid preparation for deepermeditation on the breath. It often happens that meditators start breathmeditation when their mind is still jumping aroundbetween past and future, and when awareness isbeing drowned by the inner commentary. With nopreparation they nd breath meditation so difcult,even impossible and give up in frustration. Theygive up because they did not start at the right place.They did not perform the preparatory work beforetaking up the breath as a focus of their attention.




However, if your mind has been well prepared bycompleting these rst two stages then you will nd

when you turn to the breath, you can sustain yourattention on it with ease. If you nd it difcult tokeep attention on your breath then this is a signthat you rushed the rst two stages. Go back to thepreliminary exercises! Careful patience is the fastest

way. When you focus on the breath, you focus onthe experience of the breath happening now. Youexperience ‘that which tells you what the breath isdoing’, whether it is going in or out or in between.

Some teachers say to watch the breath at the tipof the nose, some say to watch it at the abdomenand some say to move it here and then move itthere. I have found through experience that it doesnot matter where you watch the breath. In fact it isbest not to locate the breath anywhere! If youlocate the breath at the tip of your nose then itbecomes nose awareness, not breath awareness, andif you locate it at your abdomen then it becomesabdomen awareness. Just ask yourself the questionright now, “Am I breathing in or am I breathingout?” How do you know? There! That experiencewhich tells you what the breath is doing, that is



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what you focus on in breath meditation. Let go ofconcern about where this experience is located;

just focus on the experience itself. A common problem at this stage is thetendency to control the breathing, and this makesthe breathing uncomfortable. To overcome thisproblem, imagine that you are just a passenger in

a car looking through the window at your breath.You are not the driver, nor a ‘back seat driver’,so stop giving orders, let go and enjoy the ride.Let the breath do the breathing while you simplywatch without interfering.

When you know the breath going in and thebreath going out, for say one hundred breaths ina row, not missing one, then you have achieved whatI call the third stage of this meditation,sustainedattention on the breath. This again is morepeaceful and joyful than the previous stage. To godeeper, you now aim for full sustained attention onthe breath. This fourth stage, orfull sustained attentionon the breath, occurs when one’s attention expandsto take in every single moment of the breath. Youknow the in-breath at the very rst moment, whenthe rst sensation of in-breathing arises. Then you




observe those sensations develop gradually throughthe whole course of one in-breath, not missing even

a moment of the in-breath. When that in-breathnishes, you know that moment, you see in yourmind that last movement of the in-breath. You thensee the next moment as a pause between breaths,and then many more pauses until the out-breath

begins. You see the rst moment of the out-breathand each subsequent sensation as the out-breathevolves, until the out-breath disappears when itsfunction is complete. All this is done in silence and just in the present moment.

You experience every part of each in-breathand out-breath, continuously for many hundredbreaths in a row. This is why this stage is called‘FULL sustained attention on the breath’ .You cannot reach this stage through force, throughholding or gripping. You can only attain this degreeof stillness by letting go of everything in the entireuniverse, except for this momentary experience ofbreath happening silently now. ‘You’ don’t reach thisstage; the mind reaches this stage. The mind doesthe work itself. The mind recognizes this stage to bea very peaceful and pleasant abiding, just beingalone with the breath. This is where the ‘doer’, the



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major part of one’s ego, starts to disappear. You will nd that progress happens effortlessly

at this stage of the meditation. You just have to getout of the way, let go, and watch it all happen. Themind will automatically incline, if you only let it,towards this very simple, peaceful and deliciousunity of being alone with one thing, just being with

the breath in each and every moment. This is theunity of mind, the unity in the moment, the unity instillness. The fourth stage is what I call the ‘springboard’of meditation, because from here one can dive

into the blissful states. When you simply maintainthis unity of consciousness, by not interfering, thebreath will begin to disappear. The breath appearsto fade away as the mind focuses instead on what isat the centre of the experience of breath, which isthe awesome peace, freedom and bliss. At this stage I use the term ‘the beautifulbreath’. Here the mind recognizes that this peacefulbreath is extraordinarily beautiful. You are awareof this beautiful breath continuously, moment aftermoment, with no break in the chain of experience.You are aware only of the beautiful breath, withouteffort, and for a very long time.




Now you let the breath disappear and allthat is left is ‘the beautiful’. Disembodied beauty

becomes the sole object of the mind. The mind isnow the mind as its own object. You are now notaware at all of breath, body, thought sound or theworld outside. All that you are aware of is beauty,peace, bliss, light or whatever your perception will

later call it. You are experiencing only beauty, withnothing being beautiful, continuously, effortlessly.You have long ago let go of chatter, let go ofdescriptions and assessments. Here, the mind is sostill that you can not say anything.

You are just experiencing the rst oweringof bliss in the mind. That bliss will develop, grow,become very rm and strong. Thus you enter intothose states of meditation calledJha n̄a. But that isfor Part 3 of this talk!




PART 3

“Do absolutely nothing and see how smooth and beautiful and timeless the breath can appear.”

Parts 1 and 2 describe the rst four stages (asthey are called here) of meditation. These are: • Present moment awareness.

• Silent awareness of the present moment.• Silent present moment awareness of thebreath.

• Full sustained attention on the breath. Each of these stages needs to be well developedbefore going in to the next stage. When one rushesthrough these ‘stages of letting go’ then the higherstages will be unreachable. It is like constructinga tall building with inadequate foundations. Therst storey is built quickly and so is the secondand third storey. When the fourth storey is added,though, the structure begins to wobble a bit. Thenwhen they try to add a fth storey it all comes



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tumbling down. So please take a lot of time on thesefour initial stages, making them all rm and stable,

before proceeding on to the fth stage. You shouldbe able to maintain the fourth stage, ‘full sustainedattention on the breath’, aware of every moment ofthe breath without a single break, for two or threehundred breaths in succession with ease. I am not

saying to count the breaths during this stage,but I am giving an indication of the sort of timeinterval that one should remain with stage fourbefore proceeding further. In meditation, patience isthe fastest way! The fth stage is called ‘full sustainedattention on the beautiful breath’ . Often, thisstage ows on naturally, seamlessly, from theprevious stage. As one’s full attention rests easilyand continuously on the experience of breath, withnothing interrupting the even ow of awareness,the breath calms down. It changes from a coarse,ordinary breath, to a very smooth and peaceful‘beautiful breath’. The mind recognizes this beautifulbreath and delights in it. The mind experiencesa deepening of contentment. It is happy just to bethere watching this beautiful breath. The minddoes not need to be forced. It stays with the




beautiful breath by itself. ‘You’ don’t do anything.If you try and do something at this stage, you

disturb the whole process, the beauty is lost and, likelanding on a snake’s head in the game of snakesand ladders, you go back many squares. The ‘doer’has to disappear from this stage of the meditationon, with just the ‘knower’ passively observing.

A helpful trick to achieve this stage is to breakthe inner silence just once and gently think to yourself “calm”. That’s all. At this stage of themeditation, the mind is usually so sensitive that justa little nudge like this causes the mind to follow the

instruction obediently. The breath calms down andthe beautiful breath emerges. When you are passively observing just thebeautiful breath in the moment, the perceptionof ‘in’ (breath) or ‘out’ (breath), or beginning ormiddle or end of a breath, should all be allowed todisappear. All that is known is this experience of thebeautiful breath happening now. The mind is notconcerned with what part of the breath cycle this isin, nor on what part of the body this is occurring.Here we are simplifying the object of meditation,the experience of breath in the moment, strippingaway all unnecessary details, moving beyond



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the duality of ‘in’ and ‘out’, and just being awareof a beautiful breath which appears smooth and

continuous, hardly changing at all. Do absolutely nothing and see how smoothand beautiful and timeless the breath can appear. Seehow calm you can allow it to be. Take time to savourthe sweetness of the beautiful breath, ever calmer,

ever sweeter. Now the breath will disappear, not when ‘you’want it to, but when there is enough calm, leavingonly ‘the beautiful’. A simile from English literaturemight help. In Lewis Carrol’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ ,

Alice and the Red Queen saw a vision of a smilingCheshire cat appear in the sky. As they watched,rst the cat’s tail disappeared, then its pawsfollowed by the rest of its legs. Soon the Cheshirecat’s torso completely vanished leaving only thecat’s head, still with a smile. Then the head startedto fade into nothing, from the ears and whiskersinwards, and soon the smiling cat’s head hadcompletely disappeared – except for the smile whichstill remained in the sky! This was a smile withoutany lips to do the smiling, but a visible smilenevertheless. This is an accurate analogy for theprocess of letting go happening at this point in




meditation. The cat with a smile on her face standsfor the beautiful breath. The cat disappearing

represents the breath disappearing and the disembodied smile still visible in the sky standsfor the pure mental object ‘beauty’ clearly visiblein the mind.

This pure mental object is called a nimitta.

‘Nimitta’ means ‘a sign’, here a mental sign. Thisis a real object in the landscape of the mind ( citta )and when it appears for the rst time it is extremelystrange. One simply has not experienced anythinglike it before. Nevertheless, the mental activity called

‘perception’ searches through its memory bank oflife experiences for something even a little bitsimilar in order to supply a description to the mind.For most meditators, this ‘disembodied beauty’,this mental joy, is perceived as a beautiful light. It isnot a light. The eyes are closed and the sightconsciousness has long been turned off. It is themind consciousness freed for the rst time from theworld of the ve senses. It is like the full moon, herestanding for the radiant mind, coming out frombehind the clouds, here standing for the world of theve senses. It is the mind manifesting, it is not a light,but for most it appears like a light, it is perceived



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as a light, because this imperfect description is thebest that perception can offer.

For other meditators, perception chooses todescribe this rst appearance of mind in terms ofphysical sensation, such as intense tranquility orecstasy. Again, the body consciousness (that whichexperiences pleasure and pain, heat and cold and

so on) has long since closed down and this is nota physical feeling. It is just ‘perceived’ as similar topleasure. Some see a white light, some a gold star,some a blue pearl -- the important fact to know isthat they are all describing the same phenomena.

They all experience the same pure mental objectand these different details are added by theirdifferent perceptions. You can recognize a nimitta by the following6 features: 1. It appears only after the 5th stage of themeditation, after the meditator has been with thebeautiful breath for a long time. 2. It appears when the breath disappears. 3. It only comes when the external ve senses ofsight, hearing, smell, taste and touch are completelyabsent 4. It manifests only in the silent mind, when




descriptive thoughts (inner speech) are totally absent. 5. It is strange but powerfully attractive.

6. It is a beautifully simple object. I mention these features so that you maydistinguish realnimittas from imaginary ones. The sixth stage, then, is called‘experiencingthe beautiful nimitta’ . It is achieved when one

lets go of the body, thought, and the ve senses(including the awareness of the breath) so completelythat only the beautifulnimitta remains. Sometimes when the nimitta rst arises it mayappear ‘dull’. In this case, one should immediately

go back to the previous stage of the meditation,continuous silent awareness of the beautiful breath.One has moved to the nimitta too soon. Sometimesthe nimitta is bright but unstable, ashing on andoff like a lighthouse beacon and then disappearing.This too shows that you have left he beautifulbreath too early. One must be able to sustain one’sattention on the beautiful breath with ease for a long,long time before the mind is capable of maintainingclear attention on the far more subtle nimitta. Sotrain the mind on the beautiful breath, train itpatiently and diligently, then when it is time to go onto the nimitta, it is bright, stable and easy to sustain.



Ajahn Brahmavamso40

The main reason why the nimitta can appeardull is that the depth of contentment is too shallow.

You are still ‘wanting’ something. Usually, you arewanting the bright nimitta or you are wanting J ha n̄a .Remember, and this is important, J ha n̄a s are statesof letting go, incredibly deep states of contentment.So give away the hungry mind, develop contentment

on the beautiful breath and the nimitta and J

ha n̄

a will happen by themselves.

Put another way, the reason why the nimitta is unstable is because the ‘doer’ just will not stopinterfering. The ‘doer’ is the controller, the back seat

driver, always getting involved where it does notbelong and messing everything up. This meditationis a natural process of coming to rest and itrequires ‘you’ to get out of the way completely. Deepmeditation only occurs when you really let go, andthis means REALLY LET GO to the point thatthe process becomes inaccessible to the ‘doer’. A skilful means to achieve such profoundletting go is to deliberately offer the gift ofcondence to the nimitta. Interrupt the silence justfor a moment, so so gently, and whisper as it wereinside your mind that you give complete trust to thenimitta, so that the ‘doer’ can relinquish all control




and just disappear. The mind, represented hereby the nimitta before you, will then take over the

process as you watch it all happen. You do not need to do anything here becausethe intense beauty of thenimitta is more than capableof holding the attention without your assistance.Be careful, here, not to go assessing. Questions such

as ‘What is this?’, ‘Is this J

ha n̄

a?’, ‘What should Ido next?’, and so on are all the work of ‘the doer’

trying to get involved again. This is disturbing theprocess. You may assess everything once the journey is over. A good scientist only assesses the

experiment at the end, when all the data is in.So now, do not assess or try to work it all out.There is no need to pay attention to the edge ofthe nimitta ‘Is it round or oval?’, ‘Is the edge clearor fuzzy?’. This is all unnecessary and just leadsto more diversity, more duality of ‘inside’ and‘outside’, and more disturbance. Let the mind incline where it wants, whichis usually to the centre of thenimitta. The centre iswhere the most beautiful part lies, where the lightis most brilliant and pure. Let go and just enjoythe ride as the attention gets drawn into the centreand falls right inside, or as the light expands all



Ajahn Brahmavamso42

around enveloping you totally. This is, in fact, oneand the same experience perceived from different

perspectives. Let the mind merge in the bliss. Letthe seventh stage of this path of meditation, J ha n̄a ,occur. There are two common obstacles at the doorinto J ha n̄a : exhilaration and fear. Exhilaration is

becoming excited. If, at this point, the mind thinks,“Wow, this is it!” then the J ha n̄a is most unlikely tohappen. This ‘Wow’ response needs to be subduedin favour of absolute passivity. You can leave all the‘Wows’ until after emerging from theJha n̄a, where

they properly belong. The more likely obstacle,though, is fear. Fear arises at the recognition ofthe sheer power and bliss of the J ha n̄a , or else atthe recognition that to go fully inside the J ha n̄a ,something must be left behind – You! The ‘doer’is silent before entering J ha n̄a but it is still there.Inside J ha n̄a , the ‘doer’ is completely gone. The‘knower’ is still functioning, you are fully aware,but all the controls are now beyond reach. Youcannot even form a single thought, let alone makea decision. The will is frozen, and this can appearscary to the beginner. Never before in you wholelife have you ever experienced being so stripped




of all control yet so fully awake. The fear is the fearof surrendering something so essentially personal as

the will to do. This fear can be overcome through condencein the Buddha’s Teachings together with the enticingbliss just ahead that one can see as the reward. TheLord Buddha often said that this bliss of J ha n̄a

“should not be feared but should be followed,developed and practised often”( Laṭ ukikopama Sutta, Majjhima Nik ā ya ). So before fear arises, offer yourfull condence to that bliss and maintain faith inthe Lord Buddha’s Teachings and the example of

the Noble Disciples. Trust the Dhamma and let the J ha ̄na warmly embrace you for an effortless, bodylessand ego-less, blissful experience that will be themost profound of your life. Have the courage tofully relinquish control for a while and experienceall this for yourself. If it is a J ha n̄a it will last a long time. It doesnot deserve to be called J ha n̄a if it lasts only a fewminutes. Usually, the higher J ha n̄a s persist for manyhours. Once inside, there is no choice. You willemerge from the J ha n̄a only when the mind is readyto come out, when the ‘fuel’ of relinquishment thatwas built up before is all used up. These are such



Ajahn Brahmavamso44

still and satisfying states of consciousness that their very nature is to persist for a very long time. Another

feature of J ha n̄a is that it occurs only after thenimitta is discerned as described above. Furthermore, you should know that while in any J ha n̄a it isimpossible to experience the body (e.g. physicalpain), hear a sound from outside or produce any

thought, not even ‘good’ thoughts. There is justa clear singleness of perception, an experience ofnon-dualistic bliss which continues unchanging fora very long time. This is not a trance, but a stateof heightened awareness. This is said so that you

may know for yourself whether what you take to bea J ha n̄a is real or imaginary. There is much more to meditation, but hereonly the basic method has been described usingseven stages culminating with the First J ha n̄a . Muchmore could be said about the ‘Five Hindrances’ andhow they are overcome, about the meaning ofmindfulness and how it is used, about the FourSatipaṭṭ ha n̄a and the Four Roads to Success ( Iddhipa d̄a )and the Five Controlling Faculties ( Indriya ) and, ofcourse, about the higher Jha n̄as. All these concernthis practice of meditation but must be left foranother occasion.




For those who are misled to conceive of allthis as ‘just Samatha practice’ without regard to

Insight ( Vipassana ̄ ), please know that this is neitherVipassana ̄ nor Samatha. It is called ‘ Bha v̄ana ’̄, themethod taught by the Lord Buddha and repeatedin the Forest Tradition of N.E. Thailand of whichmy teacher, Ven. Ajahn Chah, was a part. Ajahn

Chah often said that Samatha and Vipassana ̄ cannotbe separated, nor can the pair be developed apart

from Right View, Right Thought, Right MoralConduct and so forth. Indeed, to make progresson the above seven stages, the meditator needs

an understanding and acceptance of the LordBuddha’s Teachings and one’s precepts must bepure. Insight will be needed to achieve each of thesestages, that is insight into the meaning of ‘lettinggo’. The further one develops these stages, themore profound will be the insight, and if you reachas far as J ha n̄a then it will change your wholeunderstanding. As it were, Insight dances around

J ha n̄a and J ha n̄a dances around Insight. This isthe Path to Nibba n̄a, the Lord Buddha said, “forone who indulges in J ha n̄a , four results are to beexpected: Stream Winner, Once Returner, NonReturner or Arahant”( P a s̄a d̄ika Sutta, D ī gha Nik a ̄ ya ).



The Buddhist Society of WA and Dhammaloka Buddhist Centre in Perth

The Buddhist Society of WA has beenestablished to encourage the teaching, practice andrealisation of the Dhamma (the Buddhist wordfor ‘Truth’) with special emphasis on Theravada

Buddhism. To full this aim, the Society hasestablished Bodhinyana Monastery in Serpentine,60 km south of Perth, and Dhammasara Nuns’Monastery in Gidgegannup, 35 km north east ofPerth. The Society actively supports the monastic

communities living there. The complex which we call DhammalokaBuddhist Centre at Nollamara consists of a largeDhamma Hall, used for talks on Buddhism,instruction in meditation and for major BuddhistCeremonies; adjoining meditation and shrine rooms;a Community Hall for Buddhist cultural activities.A multipurpose building provides accommodationfor monks, ofces for the administration of theBuddhist Society, a library containing many booksfor loan and sale as well as audio cassettes and CDrecordings of many talks given by monks and nunsand a reception area and kitchen where visitors can



sit down to a cup of tea and friendly chat. The wholecomplex of buildings is set in beautiful grounds on

a very quiet street opposite a park, just 5 km northof the centre of Perth. Dhammaloka Buddhist Centre aims to servethe whole Buddhist community and others, regardlessof age, gender or country of origin.

Addresses

The Buddhist Society of WA (Inc)Dhammaloka Buddhist Centre

18-20 Nanson Way Nollamara WA 6061Phone: (61-8) 9345 1711 Fax: (61-8) 9344 4220

Bodhinyana MonasteryLot 1, Kingsbury Drive Serpentine WA 6205Phone: (61-8) 9525 2420 Fax: (61-8) 9525 3420

Dhammasara Nuns’ Monastery287 Reen Road Gidgegannup WA 6083Phone: (61-8) 957 6583

Website: www.dhammaloka.org.auEmail address: [email protected]: www.bswa.org



May all beings be happy and well

T_The-Basic

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