Q&ASaddhamma Meditation Society Retreat2 Dec 2016
Day 3a interviews — Light Awareness, Observing the Mind, and Recognizing Feelings
Sayadaw U Tejaniya · 1 hr 46 min
Original audio: Burmese · English interpretation
0:00−1:46:43
AI-written summary
The interview covers working with disliking, sleepiness, and distinguishing mental emotions from physical sensations. The teacher advises maintaining light awareness, honestly acknowledging aversion, and not identifying the self with thoughts or the unfolding mental process.
Topics
Talks in this retreat
Saddhamma Meditation Society Retreat · 16 talks
- 11 hr 14 minDay 1 · opening — Cultivating Mind Qualities, Right Effort, and Attitude30 Nov 2016
- 21 hr 39 minDay 2a interviews — Observing Aversion and the Knowing Mind1 Dec 2016
- 32 hr 5 minDay 2b interviews — Practicing with the Mind and Daily Defilements1 Dec 2016
- Viewing41 hr 47 minDay 3a interviews — Light Awareness, Observing the Mind, and Recognizing Feelings2 Dec 2016
- 51 hr 46 minDay 3b interviews — Knowing the Mind Process and Natural Experience2 Dec 2016
- 61 hr 47 minDay 5a interviews — Watching the Reactive Mind and Knowing the Awareness4 Dec 2016
- 737 minDay 5b interviews — Observing the Mind as Object and Investigation4 Dec 2016
- 81 hr 50 minDay 6a interviews — Overly Active Mind and Observing the Thinking Mind5 Dec 2016
- 91 hr 20 minDay 6b interviews — Samādhi, Sampajañña and Awareness in Daily Life5 Dec 2016
- 101 hr 56 minDay 7a interviews — Distinguishing Reality and Concept, Observing Emotions with Right View6 Dec 2016
Transcript
English
Sadhama Meditation Society, Virginia, Fall Retreat 2016, 3rd day, December 2, interview English Nganmar Group.
English
No.
English
No question, but if something happens, like some noise or, you know, some disliking thing happens, that it causes some dislike feeling, emotion, so should I watch the emotion until the emotion disperse, or just acknowledge it's a dislike feeling and then return to my anchor, like the reservoir?
English
？，，。6，5。 。。，。，，。 ？ 。 。 。 ，。。 ，，。 。 。 ，。 ？ 。 。 The purpose of
English
being aware is to understand what you are observing, right? So it is not to observe
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the disliking mind so that it disappears. It is to observe the disliking mind
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so that you can understand the nature of disliking mind. Whether it disappears or not is irrelevant. You are watching it to understand the workings of the disliking mind. Okay.
English
And as you watch your disliking mind, if you
English
feel okay watching the disliking mind, you can continue watching the disliking mind. Okay? But if you feel,
English
as you watch the disliking mind, you actually feel more confused, or you start to have some reaction towards having a disliking mind, right, then he says you should not watch the disliking mind because you're watching with the wrong attitude, right? The mind now has a version to it. So then you should take a neutral object. Okay.
English
And the other alternative is that you know a neutral object, but you have the disliking mind
English
in view. So you are not only watching the disliking mind, you are watching, say, maybe your anchor, right, which is neutral, and you also keep acknowledging. You keep acknowledging the disliking mind. So you continue to know both. Okay. So another question is, sometimes I feel that some
English
negative emotion or, like, a fearlessness, it comes out somehow. It looks like that it's maybe
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a conscious, very deep consciousness. I cannot find the cause, but I feel that. But sometimes that dislike is very strong and
English
even it affects my breath. But I cannot find the cause. So for that case, should I change to a different object or just let it be like that? Do you feel
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uncomfortable watching it? Yeah. Sometimes some feeling is very strong, like some fearlessness.
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But I know that some consciousness is not. I don't understand the word cause. It's fear, but
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is watching it, does it feel disturbing to watch it, or you can watch it in a calm way? No. I mean, at that time I tried to watch, but I don't know what's, you know, it's just kind of fearless. I cannot.
English
He says it's not important to know the reason why the fear is there.
English
The present moment there is fear. All you need to know and acknowledge and watch is the fear, right? But if you want to know the reason for the fear a lot, you know, if you want to know too much, also it doesn't help. Okay. So for something like fear, it's probably helpful to anchor your mind and watch the fear from the corner of your eye.
English
Okay. Okay? Okay. Thank you. Keep it in there, in mind, but not direct. Okay. So you know, understanding the cause for something, the reason for something, all that is not your immediate goal.
English
That's an eventual— Conditioning. Conditioning. Yes. Yes. What? That's an eventual result that will happen when you have done enough observing and learning and seeing more, and then when everything is understood, when all the conditions are right, you know, all the things you need to know have been known, then the mind will make its own, will have its own understanding of what it is.
English
But finding the cause is not our immediate work. Our immediate work is to observe, learn, explore. Yes. But sometimes I can, you know, for a long time watch, I can find the cause. For example, you know, in daily life, if I meet some person or some condition, cause my
English
heart beats very fast. Boom, boom, boom, boom. It's very—so I just try to find why that's cause. That's not enough. But eventually
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I try to watch, watch, finally I found the reason point on my chest, somewhere that part cause very subtle feeling. That feeling immediately cause the heart beat increase. Yes. So after I know that that subtle feeling cause heartbeat, so later that does not happen again.
[Burmese segment]
English
So if you think back about that episode, he says, when you were observing, you know, your heart beating and everything with this person, when, you know, you get flustered. Right? At that time, you did not think, you didn't know what you were going to discover, right? You just watched. Very simply. You just watch and watch and watch. Until one day you notice something else.
English
And then once you discover that, that helps. So you must remember the beginning of your experience, not the end. Right? So the next time you start having something you want to understand, you don't think of what you understood before. You think of how you started and when you didn't know anything. And that's how you should start again. Okay.
English
The mind needs to be simple. Okay. If we want too much to know something, the mind is not simple at all. Yeah. The mind is in a hurry. It cannot understand. Okay. Thank you.
English
I mean,
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Sayadaw U Tejaniya began his Buddhist training as a young teenager in Burma under the late Shwe Oo Min Sayadaw (1913–2002). After a career in business and life as a householder, he has become a permanent monk since 1996.…