Click to view this page in Burmese
Sayadaw explains:
how his method came to be:
“This teaching method has come into being because of the inadequacy of traditional teachings. In traditional teachings and methods there are a many weaknesses, especially concerning the role of ‘I’. In traditional methods, action is essential. And because there is action, there comes the doer of the action, which is the misunderstanding of ‘I’. Whatever you do with ‘I’, you are doing with non-enlightenment and attachment. In this way, you are accepting the enemies as your friends, that’s why, however much you practice, it is very unlikely to get to the goal of real enlightenment.
“Most meditators, (especially in Myanmar), have the idea ‘I must meditate,’or ‘meditation is something I should do’. Their intention is not bad but the weak point is that what they understand and practice is not really meditation - because ‘I’ is meditating. In reality, knowing there is no ‘I’ is meditation. Instead of [trying to accept] the truth of no ‘I’, they practice [various] techniques with ‘I’ and that’s why although they have the right intention, it is nearly impossible they will reach the final goal.
“I see that there are a lot of misunderstandings when it comes to meditation, so I determined to try and solve this problem. Because of my hard work for over 4 years, this explanation appeared and it really works for nearly all people.”
Sayadaw explains:
how his method came to be:
“This teaching method has come into being because of the inadequacy of traditional teachings. In traditional teachings and methods there are a many weaknesses, especially concerning the role of ‘I’. In traditional methods, action is essential. And because there is action, there comes the doer of the action, which is the misunderstanding of ‘I’. Whatever you do with ‘I’, you are doing with non-enlightenment and attachment. In this way, you are accepting the enemies as your friends, that’s why, however much you practice, it is very unlikely to get to the goal of real enlightenment.
“Most meditators, (especially in Myanmar), have the idea ‘I must meditate,’or ‘meditation is something I should do’. Their intention is not bad but the weak point is that what they understand and practice is not really meditation - because ‘I’ is meditating. In reality, knowing there is no ‘I’ is meditation. Instead of [trying to accept] the truth of no ‘I’, they practice [various] techniques with ‘I’ and that’s why although they have the right intention, it is nearly impossible they will reach the final goal.
“I see that there are a lot of misunderstandings when it comes to meditation, so I determined to try and solve this problem. Because of my hard work for over 4 years, this explanation appeared and it really works for nearly all people.”
AUDIO INDEX:
Click the following CD covers to download the contents Esnips.com, or click here for a complete index for downloading.
In Burmese
In English
In English
Excerpts (click to download):
- 'Know Nothing' - About how sayadaw, himself, practiced
- An Introduction - sayadaw explains about his meditation method and history
- "Anger" - about how the arising of anger is a tests the mastery of our meditation
Short Teachings
- "Pixels" - About how nothing really exists, everything in the universe is made out of pixels
"The Godfather"
Discussions
- With a Vietnamese Monk (no 2) - a very interesting discussion [35 min]
ARTICLES INDEX:
- Real Education
- The Lost Father
An article by
Sayadaw U Ottamasara
Edited by Florian Dobson
Education in human society is only temporary. If you don’t keep studying, what you put in your memory will soon be forgotten. Meditation is the real education because the truth we come to understand is eternal. To practice we do nothing, and by doing nothing the peace comes naturally, the freedom comes naturally. By knowing nothing, wisdom appears naturally, never to disappear again. Because it came from nature automatically, it is permanent.
By meditating, wisdom will appear more and more fully, [always increasing]. If you read a book written about 4 noble truths or if you listen to my teachings, you will understand only while you are listening. After some time, your understanding will disappear; it is impermanent. If you meditate, the understanding through wisdom that appears in you does not depend on me or on you - it doesn’t depend on what is impermanent so it doesn’t disappear.
This wisdom will begin to appear only when you can abandon your effort – in other words, your ego. Doing without effort is doing without ‘I’, which means accepting and surrendering to nature. We are breaking the limitation of 'I' by staying simply with the emptiness of nature. On the other hand, doing with ‘I’ is going against nature – it is breaking the natural law of emptiness of self. So, by taking ourselves to be ‘I’, we are breaking the natural law and we suffer because of it. We lose our freedom and take on the endless responsibilities of a man. A man has everything to like, dislike, worry and think about. The idea of a man is only a creation of mind (not an eternal God), everything mind creates is only an illusion. So meditation is destroying the false creations of mind, destroying the limitations caused by accepting the mind as ‘mine’. In reality, there is no mine in mind, knowing this is wisdom.
The wisdom, which understands there is no I ,will appear in whoever follows this method exactly. It’s only cause and effect, if you make the right cause, the desired effect will surely appear, it can't go wrong. If there is no effect, you are making the wrong cause; which means you are not following the method exactly. It has nothing to do with who you are, how old you are, or which religion you believe in. The appearance of wisdom will be the benefit for whoever makes the right cause.
I made many causes to change my life and that’s why my life changed forever. If you are in doubt you are making the wrong cause, if you are hoping for the result you are making the wrong cause. Thinking and being interested are also the wrong causes - which result in suffering instead of wisdom. [Ironically] the only right cause is trying to make no other cause than to do and know nothing. This means, not accepting anything that appears, which is the result of the wrong causes we have made previously. So, practically, we must accept ourselves as nothing (empty of ‘I’) and let our mind rest in the moment, moment after moment after moment. This is stopping the mind’s work, or, protecting the mind to be free of action/doing. In this way, our mind can live without making the wrong causes of thinking, hoping for the future, revisiting the past, and being busy in present. Mind will become mind only.
“If you accept knowing something [it is making the wrong cause]; the effect will be something to know will appear endlessly. And along with it, there will be a person [‘I’] who misunderstands that something to exist. In this way, ‘I’ will always be suffering, always being busy with the non-stop [appearance of] endless things to do and thing to know. On the other hand, knowing of nothing is removing the cause of all suffering, because for nothing there is nothing to do or know, it is complete in itself.
Not accepting anything is the cause we have to make, and as a result, the wisdom of emptiness will appear. The appearing of this wisdom is the cause of freedom, the cause of purity of mind, of a peace of mind that can never be imagined by the ego – or ‘I’. The liberation we get by meditating depends on nothing that’s why it is permanent, because nothing can only be nothing. That is why the happiness, freedom, and liberation we get from knowing nothing is permanent. We have nothing to take care of; nothing to do to protect our peace of mind.
“With [the misunderstanding of] 'I', there are endless to do, endless things to think about, to be seen and heard. Because of this misunderstanding, we are always busy; busy with nonsense. Because of non-enlightenment, people will never get freedom, they will always be busy misunderstanding 'I' to be real. So we must practice meditation with the idea of nothing … because freedom appears when knowing nothing is happening.
An article by
Sayadaw U Ottamasara
Edited by Florian Dobson
If we consider nibbana to be something, it is the only something. There can be nothing else except for nibbana because only nibbana exists eternally. If you want to understand something, you must clear your mind of obscurations, - you must purify 'your mind' to be mind only and stop grasping to the mind as 'mine'.
The quality of mind and the quality of matter are quite opposite. Mind only - or pure mind - is very powerful, its quality of wisdom is unlimited. Mind can know everything, but matter is ignorance, it has no wisdom . That’s why when mind combines with the body of a man it becomes impure and its original power is lost. Man's body is only like the earth it is very heavy and weighs down the mind. So, if we accept ourselves as a man, as 'I', our mind is imprisoned in the body and everything we know is only an illusion, not the real something which is nibbana.
Mind has become very attached to the life of a man, mind [even] thinks 'these are my hands, these are my legs, I am a man and this is my body'. Mind and body are like man and woman, they depend on each other. Man cannot live without woman, woman cannot live without man. So also, a man's body cannot live without the mind, and because of its attachments, mind cannot live without the body. But Man is the creation of mind, so mind has become a slave to its own creation of ‘a man '. Only when mind can detach from its creation, and can stay as mind only, it will become pure and regain its original power. With this power, mind can understand the only real ‘something’ which is nibbana.
To understand the Truth, we must stop the mind from continuously connecting with the body. In other words, the mind must detach from the body and leave behind the field of mind and matter. We must divorce the mind and matter couple and stay with mind only. This is meditation - freeing the mind from matter.
A free mind can understand everything, it understands how to combine with matter in order to create everything, and solve all problems. Humans are mistaken, because they depend on matter [material things], they depend on things like money, beauty, and on one another; but they never depend on the very powerful mind – the father mind.
[In reality], man, woman, and animals are the product of the combination of mind and matter. Mind and matter are like husband and wife and the infinite living beings are like their children. But men and women think 'he is my father', 'she is my mother'. They don’t understand that in reality, the true parents are mind and matter. By accepting ourselves as 'a man', 'a woman' we are accepting ourselves as only the creation and not the creator. Humans use only their human abilities, so they can't understand the infinite creative quality of mind without matter - mind only, which is the very powerful father… the lost father.
Zee: the god father
Sayadaw: yes…
[laughing]
By meditation I discovered the lost father and learned to depend on mind only. Mind is the origin - it is very powerful, it is really the only thing to depend on. People are in trouble because what they depend on is unreliable. The rich depend on their money, the president depends on his power, people depend on others, but nobody depends on mind which is eternal. In meditation I depend only on mind, not 'my mind', only pure, empty mind. Mind is very powerful, that’s why if you want to understand the real something, if you want to know the truth of everything, you must stop depending on yourself as a man and learn to depend on mind only.
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