An attitude of conviviality is an attempt to encourage you to open to the holy life as beautiful and enjoyable rather than just shut down. But sometimes we see meditation as a way not of opening but of shutting ourselves off from things.

In any religious tradition there is a lot of confusion because often what is said can seem at times to be contradictory: At one moment you are being told to shut down, close your eyes, and concentrate your mind on the breath; and then you are asked to open up with metta for all sentient beings. This is just to point out the limitations of words and conventions. When we grasp conventions, we bind ourselves to particular views. Teachers might even encourage this by the way we interpret the scriptures. But remember to bring back the awareness that each of us as individuals has our own experiences, which are the center of our universe.

When you see yourself in personal terms as someone who needs to get something or get rid of something, you limit yourself to being someone who has to get something you don’t yet have or get rid of something you shouldn’t have. So we reflect on this and learn to be the witness, buddho—that which is awake and aware, which listens to and knows personality views and emotional states without taking them personally.

What I encourage is a moving toward simplicity rather than complexity. We’re already complicated personalities. Our cultural and social conditioning is usually very complicated. The monastic form is a move toward simplicity.

What is most simple is to wake up—“buddha” means “awake,” it’s as simple as that. The most profound teaching is the phrase “wake up.” Hearing this, one then asks, “What am I supposed to do next?” We complicate it again because we’re not used to being really awake and fully present. We’re used to thinking about things and analyzing them, trying to get something or get rid of something—achieving and attaining. In the scriptures there are occasions where a person is enlightened by just a word or something very simple.

One tends to think that people in the past had more perfections (Pali: parami) and a greater ability to awaken and be fully liberated than we have. We see ourselves through complicated memories and perceptions. My personality is very complicated: It has likes and dislikes, it feels happy and sad, and it changes at the snap of a finger. If I hear somebody say something irritating, that can trigger anger in a moment. When the conditions arise, consequent states come to be—anger, happiness, elation. But with mindfulness and clear comprehension (Pali: sati sampajanna) we learn to sustain an awareness that transcends these emotions.

The way out is awakeness, attention.

If we couldn’t do this, there would be no hope, no point in even trying to be Buddhist monks or nuns, or anything else at all. We’d be helpless victims of our habits and stay trapped in repetitive patterns. The way out is awakeness, attention. Conviviality is goodwill, happiness, brightness, welcoming, opening. When I’m convivial, I’m open. When I’m in a bad mood, then I’m not, and my mind says, “Leave me alone, don’t bother me.”

It is easy to hold strong views about meditation, Theravada Buddhism, or whatever convention we are using. People have very strong views, and when they hold to any religious convention, they tend to form very strong opinions around it. But in awakened consciousness there’s no convention. Instead, consciousness perceives phenomena in terms of dhamma—the natural way. It’s not created or dependent upon conditions supporting it. If you hold to a view, then you are bound and limited by that very thing that you are grasping.

In awakened awareness there’s no grasping. It’s a simple, immanent act of being here, being patient. It takes trust, especially trust in yourself. No one can make you do it or magically do it for you. Trusting this moment is therefore very important.

In contrast, the skeptical approach is a real challenge. One has to use it to learn to trust, not in views or doctrines but in the simple ability that each of us has to be aware. Awareness includes concentration. When you do concentration practices or put your attention on one thing, you shut out everything else. With samatha practice you choose an object and then sustain your attention on it. But awareness is broad, like a floodlight; it’s wide open and includes everything, whatever it may be.

Learning to trust in this awareness is an act of faith, but it is also very much aligned with wisdom. It’s something that you have to experiment with and get a feeling for. No matter how well I might describe or expound on this particular subject, it is still something that you have to know for yourself. Doubt is one of our main problems, because we don’t trust ourselves. Many of us strongly believe that we are defined by the limitations of our past, our memories, our personality; we’re thoroughly convinced of that. But we can’t trust that. I can’t trust my personality; it will say anything! Nor can I trust my emotions; they flicker around and change constantly. Depending on whether the sun’s out or it’s raining, whether things are going well or falling apart, my emotions react accordingly. What I trust is my awareness.

This inclusive awareness is very simple and totally natural. The mind stops, and you are just open and receptive. Even if you’re tense and uptight, just open to it by accepting it and allowing it to be as it is. Being in a pleasant state of mind is not a prerequisite for inclusive awareness. One can be in the pits of hell and misery and yet still open to the experience of being aware, and thus allow even the most upsetting states to be just what they are.

In one’s life one develops so many ways of distracting oneself from feelings such as despair, unhappiness, depression, and fear that one no longer even does so consciously—it becomes habitual to distract oneself from painful experiences. The encouragement now is to begin to notice it. It’s a matter of opening to the way it is, not the way you think it should be or the way you think it is.

You don’t have to perceive them with thoughts or words, or analyze them; you’re just allowing the experience to be, just the way it is. It’s more a case of developing an intuitive sense, what I call intuitive awareness.

With intuitive awareness we are taking our refuge in awakeness, which is expansive, unlimited. Thoughts and mental conceptions create boundaries. The body is a boundary; emotional habits are boundaries; language is a boundary; words expressing feelings are also boundaries. Joy, sorrow, and neutrality are all conditioned and dependent upon other conditions. Through awakening we begin to recognize what transcends all of this.

Whatever is happening for you now is that way; it is what it is. It’s a matter of recognizing what it is and not judging what you see. As soon as you add to it in any way, it becomes more than what it is; it becomes personal, emotional, complicated. One’s whole life is an endless procession of meeting and separating. We get so used to it that we hardly notice it or reflect on it. Sadness is the natural response to being separated from what one likes, from people one loves. But the awareness of that sadness is not itself sad. The emotion we feel is sadness, but when the emotion is held in awareness, then the awareness itself is not sad. The same is true when being present with thinking of something that gives rise to excitement or joy. The awareness is not excited; it holds the excitement. Awareness embraces the feeling of excitement or sadness, but it does not get excited or sad. So it’s a matter of learning to trust in that awareness rather than just endlessly struggling with whatever feelings might be arising.

This awareness is subtle and simple. But if no one ever points it out, we don’t learn to trust in it, and so we will relate to meditation from the mind-state of achieving and attaining. It is very easy to go back into this dualistic struggle: trying to get and trying to get rid of. Right and wrong, good and bad—we’re very easily intimidated by righteous feelings. 

If we don’t have boundaries, we tend to get lost. The precepts are a vehicle that simplifies our lives and limits our behavior. If we have no way of knowing limitations, then we follow any impulse or idea that we might feel inclined to in the moment. So the Vinaya and sila are always a form of restriction. It’s a vehicle; its purpose is to aid reflection.

The thing is not to try complicating yourself even more by adopting another role but to learn to observe how the restrictions of this form bring into the open one’s resistance, indulgence, attachment, and aversion, to see that all of these reactions are like this. In this way you’re going beyond the dualistic structures of thought and conditioned phenomena. Your refuge is in the deathless, the unconditioned—in dhamma itself rather than someone else’s view about dhamma.

If you hold to a view, then you are bound and limited by that very thing that you are grasping.

If I had not developed this awareness, then life would be more difficult, because I’m always struggling with my feelings. Sometimes the sangha will be going well, and people will say that they love Amaravati and want to remain monks and nuns all their lives and that they believe Theravada Buddhism is the only way. Then all of a sudden they change to saying that they’re fed up with this joint and want to convert to some other religion. Then one can feel dejected and think one has to persuade them that joining some other religion is not the way, getting into one’s righteous Buddhist mood about how “right” one is. 

If we’re emotionally attached to the way we do things, we feel threatened by anyone who questions it. I’ve found that whenever I get upset by someone criticizing Theravada Buddhism, our sangha, or the way we do things, it is due to my personality and its tendency to attach and identify with these things. You can’t trust that at all. But you can trust awareness. As you begin to recognize it and know it, you can rest more in being aware and listening to the sound of silence. As you sustain awareness in this way, consciousness can expand and become infinite. When this occurs, you are just present in a conscious moment and you lose the sense of being a self—being a person, this body. It just drops away.

It is not possible for emotional habits to sustain themselves, because, being impermanent, their nature is to arise and cease. You then begin to recognize the value of this expansiveness, which some people call emptiness. It’s a natural state, it’s not created—I don’t create this emptiness. When I was first getting into concentration practices I was always feeling frustrated, because just when I’d be getting somewhere, someone would slam the door. That type of practice is all about trying to shut out, control, and limit everything. It can be skillful to do that kind of practice, but if you hold on to it, then you are limited by it; you can’t take life as it comes, and instead you start trying to control everything.

You see monks going all over the place trying to find the perfect monastery where they can get their samadhi together. But in this expansive awareness, everything belongs, so it doesn’t demand certain conditions in which it may be cultivated. Intuitive awareness allows you to accept life as a flow, rather than being endlessly frustrated when life seems difficult or unpleasant.

Stillness is here in the heart.

♦

© 2007 by Ajahn Sumedho, The Sound of Silence: The Selected Teachings of Ajahn Sumedho. Reprinted by arrangement with Wisdom Publications.