Dhamma talkMaui Retreat16 Nov 2016
Morning instructions — Continuity of Awareness and Right View
Sayadaw U Tejaniya · 1 hr 5 min
Original audio: Burmese · English interpretation
0:00−1:05:02
Uses compressed audio.
AI-written summary
Meditation instructions emphasize relaxed, continuous awareness of the six senses without excess effort, viewing all phenomena as natural. Yogis are advised to observe the mind's reactions to thoughts or pain and maintain mindfulness all day.
Topics
Talks in this retreat
Maui Retreat · 18 talks
- Viewing11 hr 5 minMorning instructions — Continuity of Awareness and Right View16 Nov 2016
- 21 hr 18 minQuestions and answers — Expectation in Generosity and Continuity in Daily Life16 Nov 2016
- 335 minMorning instructions — Checking Attitude and Knowing Awareness17 Nov 2016
- 41 hr 15 minQuestions and answers — Wisdom Supervising Mindfulness, Delusion, and Preparation for Death17 Nov 2016
- 514 minMorning instructions — Personal Effort, Natural Effort and Continuous Awareness18 Nov 2016
- 61 hr 32 minQuestions and answers — Concept vs Reality and Noticing the Attitude Towards Suffering18 Nov 2016
- 724 minMorning instructions — The Object, the Knowing, and Awareness19 Nov 2016
- 81 hr 34 minQuestions and answers — Choice-Less Awareness and Physical vs Mental Sensations19 Nov 2016
- 942 minMorning instructions — Being Aware in the Present Moment20 Nov 2016
- 101 hr 35 minQuestions and answers — Working with Greed, Fear, and Pain20 Nov 2016
Transcript
English
The wheels turn.
English
So we need to start now? Yeah.
English
Oh. Mindfulness meditation jumped your mind. So Sayadaw will tell us about mindfulness meditation.
English
Oh, you don't— yeah, I told you I should ask.
English
Sit in a lower. Sit lower. First of all, we need to know, remember, that meditation is the work of the mind. We meditate with our minds. It's Bhavanā or meditation, but yeah, I told you I should ask. What is it? And Bhavanā, which is roughly translated as meditation, Bhavanā literally means cultivation.
[Burmese segment]
English
I've gone around, pew pew pew, ta-pa-nyāra, ta-ta-ri-pa-tham, bāle-ya-ru-kho. And what are we cultivating? He says we are cultivating what we call the five faculties. The five faculties are
English
awareness, stability of mind, faith, wisdom, and right effort. And not in that order. And so we're cultivating these five faculties, and the way Sayadaw says it, when these five faculties work together, we call that meditation.
English
Uh, sit here the bhava-va-va— she didn't get all of it. The woman bhajangya there is a tattu yu chhāṅge. She said the tattu yu not said the whole. And the— Tattu yu chhāṅge. And the nature of the mind is that it arises and passes away every moment, but there is hope because it— the mind leaves behind, it leaves behind its quality, it leaves an inheritance for the next mind.
English
So the next mind picks up the qualities of the mind that has just passed away, and it can carry on its work with the qualities that it has received, and it goes on. I'm going to say it very pitty. I'm going to say it very So whatever we are cultivating in the moment with our minds, whether it's something skillful or unskillful, the more we cultivate that quality, the stronger that quality becomes.
English
And so that's why, if we understand this nature of how cultivation helps the mind to make itself stronger, we then begin to understand the importance of meditating all the time.
English
We generally approach meditation
English
sometimes in a part-time fashion. We set aside time to meditate. So, he says, so our mind hasn't sometimes totally embraced the fact that we have to meditate or be aware all the time.
English
I'm obviously going to be pity down, yeah, the unknown people, yeah. So he says the reality is that the moment we're not aware, then there is delusion. And so in order to give awareness and awakening a chance, we need to cultivate it all the time so that that becomes the stronger quality in the mind, the way the mind is heading.
English
Vipassanā , yeah, a . And that is why all meditation teachers emphasize that we need to be aware from the moment we are awake in the morning till we are asleep, whenever that is.
English
awareness . And so that is why continuity of awareness is so very important. a con . So when we do something continuously, we're cultivating these qualities of awakeness, of awareness, all the qualities that work together, he says, they become much, much stronger.
English
They become a power. So first, he says, the way we use our minds, we've got to
English
learn how to use our minds in the right way, and then we need to cultivate that. We need to keep going with that.
[Burmese segment]
English
But generally, he says, in our lives, he says, there is so much, you know, frustration, greed, delusion, and it's very normal, he says, for these qualities to come into our meditation. We'll find these qualities manifesting themselves as we try to meditate.
English
So sometimes almost unnoticed, sneaky, they come in and they try to do the meditation. Our greed, aversion, and our delusion.
English
. So no pressure, but we need to remind ourselves that
English
the mind that we bring to meditation, the mind that is being aware, that mind, that awareness needs to be
English
not deluded, not greedy, not averse. And all we need to do is check. We don't actually need to correct it, we need to check to see what that mind that is being aware, how is it doing its work.
English
And it depends on whether we see what's happening in our minds. Sometimes it's like we don't notice, and sometimes we do. And he says, if we check often, we will begin to notice more, and perhaps more often, if there is any, if there are any spies in our mindfulness.
English
Yeah. And it depends on where we are at any moment, right? Our minds go from skillful to unskillful in various modes during the day.
English
And he says, in moments of skillfulness, we might find it quite easy to detect these, you know, things in our mind, and
English
just detecting it might correct it. And sometimes we can be in a state where we're so zoned in to what we're trying to observe, we don't notice how we are observing it. Anything is possible.
English
And he makes a special point that, you know, this noticing how we are being mindful is important because when we start becoming sort of blinkered, we are becoming too invested in what we are trying to observe.
English
That's greed. Or we become averse to what we are observing. We're becoming judgmental about our experience. He says, we can become so blinkered because we think we need to fix it. And he says, when we don't notice that that's how we're doing it, we keep doing it. And we can go a whole day, sometimes days, just in that mode. So please check.
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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.…