Ajahn Maha Bua

When the mind becomes more refined, then whatever appears, whatever state arises, we are bound to know, and to know increasingly, in line with the strength of our own mindfulness and discernment.

Ajahn Maha Bua (12 August 1913 – 30 January 2011) was a Thai Buddhist monk.

Quotes

Straight from the Heart

Straight from the Heart: Thirteen Talks on the Practice of Meditation, as translated from the Thai by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu

Full text online at dhammatalks.org

The Principle of the Present

• ‘Try to make the mind stay with just a single Dhamma theme—its meditation word.’ Don’t get involved with other topics at that moment. If you let it think of the texts while practicing concentration, [the mind] won’t be willing to stick just with that practice. A great deal of extraneous knowledge will interfere, disrupting the mind until everything is a turmoil, and no stillness will result.

• However much Dhamma the Buddha taught, we gather it all to our own confusion. It’s as if we were building a hut and yet went around to gather up plans for hundred-story buildings and spread them out for a look. They just don’t go together. The plan for a building and the plan for a hut are as different as earth and sky, and yet here we are going to gather the mind into one point, which is like building a hut. Only after we have the strength can we then begin enlarging it into a building.

• When the mind becomes more refined, then whatever appears, whatever state arises, we are bound to know, and to know increasingly, in line with the strength of our own mindfulness and discernment.

• ‘External feelings’ refer to physical feelings, feelings of pleasure, pain, and neither pleasure nor pain in the various parts of the body. ‘Internal feelings’ refer to the feelings of pain, pleasure, and neither pleasure nor pain in the heart. ... These things are the bosses, lording it over the heart. ... The heart is their vessel, their seat. That’s where they sit. Or you could say it’s their toilet, because that’s where they defecate. Whichever one comes along, it gets right up there on the heart. Now pain jumps up there and defecates. Now pleasure gets up there and defecates. Now a feeling of neither pleasure nor pain gets up there and defecates. They keep defecating like this, and the heart is content to let them do this, because it doesn’t have the mindfulness or discernment to shake them off and not let them defecate. This is why we have to develop a great deal of mindfulness and discernment so that we can fight them off.

• Your basic problem is that you don’t yet know yourself inside and simply want to know what’s outside. This will only make you agitated and confused, without serving any purpose.