Biodata of Bro. Teoh Kian Koon

Bro. Teoh graduated from University of Malaya in Civil Engineering in 1979. He has been a spiritual practitioner cum ‘Meditator’ since 1971. Since his retirement in 2001 from his Engineering career, he has been sharing his understanding and experiences with those who are keen in their search for true happiness, peace and liberation from birth and death and all mental suffering so that they can be more virtuous, nobler and wiser human beings. He gives Dharma talks and holds meditation classes & retreats and weekly Dharma classes at various meditation centers, Buddhist society and places that invite him.

For more details of Bro. Teoh’s dharma activities and his Kalyāṇamittaship grouping please login to his dharma website at: http://broteoh.com

1. Introduction

It is Bro. Teoh’s sincere hope that Dhamma friends, spiritual practitioners, seekers of truth, and ‘meditators’ will be able to make use of this enclosed transcript notes on meditation to develop a better understanding of the Buddhist meditation as taught by the Buddha so that they may progress along the path of dhamma to become more virtuous, noble and wiser human beings that can be a blessing to all of humanity and mankind.

As these notes were compiled based on a direct transcript from the recording done, its wordings will be more like those of spoken language rather than a written text. Hence we hope readers will be able to adjust themselves accordingly to understand its true meaning and intent better and a good way to do this is to listen to the recordings first before reading this transcript notes. For those who want to listen to the recording they can download the talk at this link:

http://broteoh.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Teoh-class-130912.mp3

Or contact Bro. Ng Swee Aun at sang47500@yahoo.com for further details.

2. Acknowledgement

It is the donors’ sincere intention that this transcript notes be given free to all those who are interested and have the affinity to receive them. I would like to take this opportunity to thank and rejoice in the generosity and wholesomeness of all those Dhamma friends or Kalyanamittas who had donated and helped out in the transcription, typing, typesetting, formatting, proof reading, etc to make this free distribution of dhamma dana possible.

By the power of all these wholesomeness may all beings be well and happy, free from all suffering and danger and may there be love, peace and joy - deep within their hearts. And may it also paved the way for there to be causes and conditions for all dhamma friends who had donated or helped out to realize their good and noble wishes soonest possible.

With Metta always,

By Bro. Teoh Kian Koon

(Dated: 31.10.2013).

3. Session 1

THURSDAY MEDITATION CLASS dated 12.9.2013 - held at Bro. Swee Aun’s Subang Jaya house

Understanding The Meditation As Taught By The Buddha (Part 1 - Based on a direct transcript from the recorded talk)

3.1 Pre-Puja [To cultivate the 5 spiritual faculties needed to counter the 5 mental hindrances]

You compose your mind, to develop the Saddhā, the very strong faith through understanding how special and how wonderful the Buddha is, how important his teaching is, so that your faith in the Buddha and his teaching can be firmly established until it is very stable. When this happen, your confidence in the Buddha and his teaching will make your mind very compose and calm. Through that faith, you will have confidence in yourself to cultivate the Viriya (or spiritual zeal) that is needed for you to understand his teaching much better and then with that you can also assimilate what has been shared much more easily.

Once the Saddhā and Viriya are established, we will pay respect mindfully to the Buddha to cultivate the 3rd spiritual faculty of Sati or mindfulness, and then we will start the pre-puja.

Salutation to Lord Buddha:-

Namo tassa bhagavato arahato sammā–sambuddhassa (3X)

Taking of the three refuges:-

Buddhaṃ saraṇaṃ gacchāmi, Dhammaṃ saraṇaṃ gacchāmi, Saṅghaṃ saraṇaṃ gacchāmi

Dutiyampi Buddhaṃ saraṇaṃ gacchāmi, Dutiyampi Dhammaṃ saraṇaṃ gacchāmi, Dutiyampi Saṅghaṃ saraṇaṃ gacchāmi

Tatiyampi Buddhaṃ saraṇaṃ gacchāmi, Tatiyampi Dhammaṃ saraṇaṃ gacchāmi, Tatiyampi Saṅghaṃ saraṇaṃ gacchāmi

Taking of the 5 precepts:-

Pāṇātipātā veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi;

Adinnādānā veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi;

Kāmesumicchācāra veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi;

Musāvādā veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi;

Surā-meraya-majja-pamā daṭṭhānā veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi.

Sādhu! X3 (Rejoicing). Okay, let’s pay respect mindfully to Lord Buddha to end the pre-puja.

3.2 Meditation Briefing And Instructions For Meditation

Start: Okay, just relax yourself and maintain some form of attention then we will start the meditation class. A very good evening, to all, brothers and sisters in the dhamma; Tonight - I rejoice, because there were some very good written questions. These questions are very relevant so we will go through it before we start the meditation. You all must listen attentively because this is a very good question, and that’s why I said ‘you all must ask’, otherwise, I don’t know where you all got ‘stuck’. And I won’t know which are the relevant, essential dhamma that you all need me to speak and elaborate on to develop the understanding, but through your questions, I will know. The first question is:-

Qs: Hello, brother Teoh, when we do ‘body sweeping’, is it just a thought or an actual feeling?

Answer: Do you all understand the question? Reflect properly, ‘body’ sweeping, - did I ever said ‘body’ sweeping. I always tell you ‘mind sweeping method’, right? It’s okay, - at least he asked, and then I can help clarify - which means he asked a very relevant question. ‘Is it just a thought or an actual feeling?’ So, what do you think? Ha! Yes! I always said it is ‘to de condition the heedless thinking’ i.e. no more thought, no more thinking. You just feel, feel and relax, but he asked a very important question because he still cannot understand. He said, ‘what do you mean by feel?’ When I sit like that, - He said “the thought went out; it’s still a thought, isn’t it?” I said, ‘are you sure?’ It’s still a thought because you don’t understand and you think a lot, also because you are heedless, - that’s why you think it’s still a thought. But when I say ‘you feel’ means what? I will teach you and you can learn now, - ‘you feel your body, - hot or cold?’ You just put your hand on your body and silent your mind to just feel, and then what happen? Feel the sensation, understand or not? Or put your hand on the floor mat, - the moment that sensation or feeling is there, you have no thought, but the trouble is, the moment you see your hand, thoughts arise, understand or not? Then the moment before you can feel you start to think, understand or not? That is where the problem is. So what you need to do is to experience that feeling with a silent mind without thought. Which means when you feel something hot or cold.... – let say you go and touch somewhere cold, like the floor or the floor mat, that feeling is there, so when you say you ‘feel’ means what? You actually sent your hand down there to make contact. Then you send your mind to the contact to feel. That’s how your mind feels. The body cannot feel or sweep, understand or not? Only the mind can feel and sweep through the body via feeling and relaxing at the location you place your mind.

So, the mind goes to wherever you want it to be, which means you train the mind to be at the location you want it to be. That’s why you go to the forehead. And you must have something for the mind to do. Otherwise this mind will keep on heedlessly wanders off, that’s why when you do Anapanasati, within spilt second the awareness of the in and out breath is gone, - split second it’s gone (loss in thoughts). This is the reason why you have to train this heedless mind. To train means to train your mind to be at the location you want it to be and you must at the same time let the mind do something; otherwise it will heedlessly wander off. So we need to come out with a skillful means for the mind to do something. That’s why we ask the mind to just feel - don’t think. Feel what? What do you want the mind to feel? Let’s say at the forehead, what are you feeling? What did I tell you? Ah…! If there is any tension, tightness, or stress within, just relaxes them’. And these three words (tension, tightness and stress) are so easy to understand, isn’t it? When you are having a headache, there is a lot of tension there, isn’t it? But if you have a lot of problem, - you worry a lot, there is a lot of stress and tension inside your head. Your worry, your fear, your anxiety, - all these you will feel it. Understand or not? Your emotions and fear are in your heart, whereas thinking arises in your forehead - because the forehead is the place where thoughts arise via response to memories and the heart is the place where you feel the emotion arising and they are related because when you think of fearful things and unhappy things or things associated with problem then it will condition your fear, worry and anxiety, etc, then it will create stress for you. That is how you get into trouble in life. And this is only the theory part, but to really understand it, you have to meditate and do the practice. That’s why I want you to feel. When you really feel, you will come to realise that after a tired or stressful day at the office or after you had done your household chores as a housewife, you are not relax and not peaceful because there are still quite a lot of unresolved matters going on in your head and bothering you. These so called problems of life are still creating stress and tension for you, that’s why you find it so difficult to relax. So in a way, this meditation can allow you to de stress and unwind yourself to recuperate. So that you can have more moments of silent mind to really relax your body and mind. It’s like you go for a facial or to a SPA. You just let everything down, relax and let them do the massage to unwind you. Then how do you feel? You feel very good isn’t it? Because you are able to relax, then all those stress and tension will go off, and you like doze off yet you are very relax and peaceful. But during meditation you need to be aware, understand or not? So, it’s more than just to relax and doze off. If you do that then you don’t develop any awareness at all. So meditation is to develop this awareness or mindfulness leading to the heedfulness so that you can be mindful of what is going on, to investigate into life. To understand how thoughts and consciousness come to be and how your thoughts condition you into the various mind states and emotions, and then you start to understand how all these function following a nature’s law which they call citta niyama. Citta is mind, so you develop the understanding of how your mind actually functions. The Dependent Origination, the four Noble Truths, the essential dhamma, - all these you will start to see when you have mindfulness. That’s why mindfulness is very important.

To be mindful, you need to be aware and feel without the thought, that’s why the mind sweeping method is very useful. Okay, so with that understanding, we can start the meditation now. Always remember - meditation has two parts, first part is to just train this mind to be aware, to be mindful without thought. So how do we train? We use a skillful mean call ‘mind sweeping method’ which I had already explained, - so you do that first (if you still need to), otherwise you can start your meditation straight away. Okay, sorry there is someone new to the class; - luckily Bro. Swee Aun let me know.

Qs. You meditate before? ..... - Good, what kind of meditation? What about metta, or loving kindness meditation? You have done it before? Then what about the mind sweeping method, - are you familiar? Okay afterwards I will give you the necessary instructions to help you de condition your heedless thinking, thereby training your mind to be in a relax state of silent, inner awareness.

Instructions: ‘Close your eyes; relax your body and mind, and then ensure that your backbone is straight. Then you feel your forehead and don’t think. Just feel and relax. Any tension, tightness or stress within – just relax them all.’ You start doing this mind sweeping method training from your forehead down to your buttock, so that you can become more peaceful. Then I need to let you know one more thing because you are new. You look at the white board; there are these five mental hindrances and the five spiritual faculties. According to the Buddha, the reason why human beings are not able to be peaceful to develop the meditation is because of these five mental hindrances. Do you know what these mental hindrances are? It is a negative mind state that hinders your mind from becoming peaceful, from entering the meditative state of silent, inner awareness. It means this mind has the mental hindrances that hinder it from becoming peaceful.

What are they? – They are sensual desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness of mind and doubt. These five things are actually common sense. But the Buddha identified them for you; otherwise, you may not know what is going on. The first two hindrances has something to do with your senses, first one is positive craving, or sensual desire, - when you see something, hear something, smell, taste or tactilely feel something, you will react, understand or not? Whether you like it or you don’t like it; so if you like it, then you will have desire for that sense experience, and if you don’t like it, you will develop the dislike, or anger or aversion (like envy and jealousy) towards it. So these are actually positive and negative reactions of mind conditioned by your wrong view. The Buddha said your mind tend to oscillate between likes and dislikes, pleasant and unpleasant sense experiences. So when you keep on doing that – what will happen? It becomes a habit, right? So habitual tendencies will develop and condition you into heedlessness i.e. during every moment of your sense experience (while living your life) - whether you are seeing something or thinking or hearing something, - you think a lot because of your habitual reactions to sense experiences. You keep on reacting to what you see, what you hear and what you think, and because of that this mind becomes so habitual with all the likes and dislikes, pleasant and unpleasant sense experiences. These habitual reactions will cause you to be heedless which means you cannot pay attention to life, and you are not able to see things as they are because you are preoccupied with your heedless thinking via reactions to sense experiences. Because of your constant stirring of your mind via your reactions to sense experiences, - you are heedless in that sense. So meditation is to understand that this heedless way of living has to stop. Otherwise you will continue to be heedless because there is no equanimity in you; - equanimity means the mind that is not distracted; the mind that is calm, unwavering, collected and peaceful. So when you have Samādhi, the stability of mind to stay collected and unwavering will be there, and then whatever you see, whatever you hear and think, - your mind will not stir, your mind will not waver. Ah! Samādhi! - That is a spiritual faculty, that is not a mental hindrance. That’s why you have to cultivate the opposite five spiritual faculties which are written on the right hand side of the white board and they are Saddhā, Viriya, Sati, Samādhi and Pañña. These are pali terms, - Saddhā is faith, or confidence in the Buddha and his teaching; when you have confidence, your mind will have no more restlessness, which is the fourth hindrance.

The mind becomes restless because when you have problems, you tend to worry about them, hence triggering off fear, worry and anxiety which will make you restless, understand or not? Then you are not calm anymore, not compose because you have a problem, you got a situation which you don’t know how to resolve. So these are the hindrances of mind. Then the third hindrance is sleepiness, or sloth and torpor, - when you want to do something but you don’t see the importance of it, you become sleepy.  And when you are sleepy, you cannot develop anything. It’s just like studying, when you are sleepy, you cannot study. You go to a class or lecture, and you don’t like the subject, so what happen? You feel so sleepy isn’t it? You totally cannot understand what is being taught. So meditation is the same, - when you have sleepiness, it’s a hindrance to understanding; it’s a hindrance to the development of meditation. So these are the first 4 types of mental hindrances that will hinder one from entering the meditative state of peace and calm. Then, the last one is doubt; - when you don’t understand what is going on, and you are not sure why your life is like that and how come you are like that – which means you don’t even know that the hindrances are the one that are responsible for your lack of peace. So these five mental hindrances are very real. The Buddha said, these are the ones that cause you to be heedless. Hence you have to train your mind to develop the opposite five spiritual faculties, so that you can overcome the hindrances to develop the meditation.

The first spiritual faculty is Saddhā which we had developed via our pre-puja just now. We develop this faith in the Buddha and his teaching via understanding how special and unique the Buddha is. Since the Buddha is the fully enlightened one – perfect in wisdom and virtues. We can say, he was the wisest and most virtuous living being ever to be born during his era. To have such a great being as our refuge cum teacher is an honour and our respect and gratitude towards the Buddha leading to the faith in him will be very strong. Then Viriya which is the 2nd spiritual faculty will arise after we had understood how wonderful and important his teaching is. This Viriya is a spiritual tenacity or zeal to cultivate his teaching. Then you develop the third spiritual faculty which is Sati. Sati is mindfulness or awareness before the knowing, before the thinking, before the arising of thoughts or the aggregates of mind. You just silent your mind and maintain awareness, like when you pay respect to the Buddha, - I said do it mindfully mean what? It means body and mind move as one without thought, - that is mindfulness. So when you want to train your mind to be in Sati, your heedless thinking must stop. To achieve that you must make use of the mind sweeping method to do it. I.e. you just feel and relax -no more thinking, and you keep on training your mind this way until your mind become more and more peaceful naturally. Then after a while your mind will become calmer and more conducive for you to start the meditation. This Sati can also be trained using other techniques and methods or skillful means. Some practitioners use chanting, some use an object of meditation, and some use an appropriate skillful mean that is suitable for them, because everyone is different. So what we normally do is, - While doing the mind sweeping method and I will combine it with loving kindness or metta, so that your mind will become more compose, peaceful and calm. Then only you train that mind to stabilize the mindfulness. The mindfulness need to be stabilized, otherwise you cannot use it because it is too weak and not stable enough. If you stabilize it, it will become Samādhi. Understand or not? When in Samādhi the mind becomes collected and unwavering. So the question is how can we stabilize it? That’s why the Buddha advised the Bhikkhus to do Anapanasati which is Mindfulness on the in and out breath to stabilise the mindfulness and because our breathe is always with us, within the moment - so if you can silent your mind and be aware of this in and out breath (without thought) then you will be with the moment in Sati and you can become very peaceful and very calm very fast because there is no thought hence no fear, worry and anxiety. Instead there is just peace, silent and stillness of mind leading to all the pīti, sukha and passaddhi.

Then your mindfulness will stabilize to become Samādhi. You have to train it until you are so skilful with it, until you don’t need to depend on the object of meditation to become peaceful, which means you don’t need the breath to anchor your Sati anymore. You can become peaceful on your own because your mind is already established in Sati and Samādhi. These spiritual faculties of Sati and Samādhi are very important because when you have Sati and Samādhi the fifth spiritual faculty which is Pañña or wisdom will come to be via your ability to see things as they are. So the 1st part of meditation is just to cultivate and develop these spiritual faculties, and then after your mind has developed all these 5 spiritual faculties, there will be no more mental hindrances. Then you will be able to meditate very easily and very naturally. That silent mind in Sati is the meditative mind. The meditative mind can understand thing very fast. Then the second part is to use the mind with the spiritual faculties to cultivate the meditation as taught by the Buddha which is the noble eightfold path, and the noble eightfold path includes the four foundation of mindfulness, and all the rest of the other essential dhammas. So that is the gist of it. So now I will off the light and I will give you all the appropriate instructions to develop the meditation. For those who already know how to meditate, you can start straight away.

3.3 Meditation Proper

Okay, relax your body and mind; make sure you have a very stable posture. If you have problem crossing your leg, you can just lean against the wall or sit on the couch and relax. Make sure your posture is stable, and then your backbone, if possible make sure it is quite straight and don’t sloth. Then you close your eye, relax body and mind completely, - completely relax. Then you just feel, - feel your forehead and don’t think. If you can detect any tightness, any tension, or any stress within, you just silently relax every part of it to release them. Feel your forehead, soothingly relax. Relax them all. Then you move your attention to your eye muscles, again just feel and don’t think. Normally after a tired day, the eye muscles are quite tense. So just feel and relax all these eye muscles. Then you feel your eyes soothingly relax. Then you move your attention to your facial muscles, - for the first time, feel your facial muscles (don’t think, just feel), feel every part of it. You will come to realise that most of the time it is not relax and there is a lot of tension and tightness there. Because if you are relax, you will be able to radiate a radiant smile and you will have joy inside your heart. A happy mind is a relax mind. But when you have problem, - tension, stress and worry will build-up. When you are having a situation that worries you, then you will become affected and there will be stress within your facial expression. The unhappiness will be reflected on your facial muscles. So you need to relax both body and mind. But if you still find it not easy to relax then you can combine with loving kindness or metta to help you relax. Radiating Metta is a very good way to enable you to relax your facial muscle. You just visualize yourself facing a mirror, radiating a radiant smile. Just visualize (don’t think) yourself radiating a radiant smile, then your facial muscle will relax on its own naturally because when you can smile means you are happy, you have joy and because of that you are naturally relax otherwise you cannot radiate a radiant smile. So that’s how your facial muscle can be very relaxed. Then after that you can start radiating loving kindness to yourself, you can recite following what I recite.

‘May I, this body and mind of mine, be well and happy, well and happy’ - (You must feel your entire body and mind, i.e. your entire being having this well-being and happiness within your entire body and mind). Then you can repeat it one or two more times, ‘May I (this body and mind of mine) be well and happy, well and happy (feel your body, each and every cell of it relaxing, and having this well-being and happiness.) Then after that you continue to radiate, ‘May I this body and mind of mine be free from all suffering (both physical and mental suffering). You must arise the feeling to feel that you are both physically and mentally having no more suffering. Then you continue, ‘May it too be free from all harm and danger, May all my mind states too, be without enmity, without ill will and untroubled. May my mind be happy and peaceful always. May it too be free from all fear, worry, anxiety and negativity. Then you can continue to radiate, ‘May my heart too be calm and peaceful always, May there be love, may there be joy and May there be peace deep within my heart.

Then you can radiate to your love ones (like your parents, your spouse, your children, your good friend or your brothers and your sisters or someone very close to you), and wish them well being and happiness. You must radiate from your heart instead of parroting. You can visualize them radiating a radiant smile too, then you direct your metta to them by reciting, ‘May my loved ones too be well and happy, well and happy. May they all too be free from all sufferings (both physical and mental suffering). May they all too be free from all harm and danger. May their mind states too be without enmity, without ill will and untroubled, and may they keep themselves happy and peaceful always. May there be love, May there be joy and may there be peace deep within their hearts.’

Then you can radiate to all beings, ‘May all beings within this vicinity of brother Swee Aun’s and Mee Fong’s house and all our kalyanamitta/dharma friends, co-cultivators, etc, - may they all too, be well and happy, well and happy, and may they all too be free from all sufferings (both physical and mental sufferings). May their mind states too, be without enmity, without ill will and untroubled. May they keep themselves happy and peaceful always. May there be love, may there be joy and may there be peace deep within their hearts.’ Then you can continue to radiate this metta to all sentient beings. ‘May all beings within the vicinity of Subang Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia, South East Asia, Asia, our planet (mother earth), then the solar system, then all beings within our galaxy, the milky way and finally, all beings within the entire existence of the whole universe. May they all too be well and happy, well and happy.’ Feel the wellbeing and happiness deep within your heart and radiate to all. Then may they all too be free from all sufferings (both physical and mental sufferings). May they all too be free from all harms and danger. May their mind states too, be without enmity, without ill will and untroubled. And May they keep themselves happy and peaceful always. May there be love, may there be joy and may there be peace deep within their hearts. Then after that you come back to your facial muscle. By now you should be calmer and more compose.

Then you feel and relax every part of your facial muscle. Now it will be easier, and you will feel it like completely relax with a lot of joy. Then you feel your neck, and relax. Feel your shoulder and relax, and back to your neck. Relax every part. Then you move your attention to your heart or your chest area, - this is a very important location within your body. This is where the heart beat is, this is where the seat of consciousness is. This is where your life force arises and passes away. So you just silent your mind and just feel (don’t think), feel your heart area. If you can detect any vibration or your heart beat, - you just silent your mind and maintain awareness to feel it. For those who are new - if you are not train in your mindfulness and you don’t have such ability, then you just relax and feel. No need to do anything, - just like you feel your forehead, you just feel your heart area then continue to relax, just feel and relax. Feel it soothingly relax. Then you move your mental attention down to your stomach, do the same, - just feel and relax (no thinking), just feel and relax. Then you sweep down to your abdomen, again you just feel and relax. When you feel, you just send the mind there and just silent, and then let it feel. Understand or not? Don’t go and look for it, just feel around the abdomen area; just silent your mind to feel, - it is just like you send your mind to your hand that feels the floor mat. It will feel and detect it, so you just silent and you will detect the abdomen’s rising and falling. If you do just that, - just aware to feel without the thought, then the mindfulness will come then you can also feel your buttock and relax, then your legs, - do the same and relax, just feel and relax, it will de condition your heedless thinking; it will make you very calm and very peaceful. Then you can reverse the whole cycle. From the leg, feel & relax; buttock, feel and relax, then you go to your abdomen, feel & relax; stomach, feel, & relax; your heart, or your chest area, just silent and feel & relax everything; then shoulder, hand then back to shoulder, just feel & relax, then your neck, facial muscle, and then your eye muscles, again, feel and relax, then back to your forehead. By now you would have completed one complete cycle of the mind sweeping method training.

Now you can proceed to stabilise this Sati that you have developed via Anapanasati.  Okay, so what is Anapanasati. Anapanasati is mindfulness of in and out breath. The word ‘anapana’ - means in and out breath, and Sati is mindfulness. So Anapanasati is just mindfulness of the in and out breath and it is very simple. Like you feel your forehead, now you feel your breathing. Your just maintain awareness or attention in front of your nostril, and then you just silent your mind. Allow your breathing to go on naturally. Then as you detect the breathing via your mind, you just allow the mind to follow this breathing, - like the Buddha said, ‘Breathing in, it is aware, breathing out it is aware’, but for those who are new if you are not train, - within split second, the mindfulness will be lost, it will just wanders off. Then you become heedless very fast, you find that you are hardly aware, but don’t worry - be patient. Every time it wanders off, you just silently and patiently bring it back to the breathing. You just maintain attention at the breathe location and just feel. If you are patient enough, your Sati will stabilize, and your Anapanasati will develop. It is actually easier than learning how to ride a bicycle. If you patiently and continuously train, then sooner or later the mindfulness of the in and out breath will happen by itself naturally without thought. Initially, it’s like within split second it’s gone, split second it’s gone, then after a while, the mental hindrances will come and disturb you, like sleepiness, restlessness, sensual cravings and doubts, but don’t worry, if you patiently train your mind, just be silently aware (without any reactions of mind) via right views then sooner or later you will come to know that you will have more and more moments of mindfulness and you are no longer so easily distract like before.

As it stabilise, there will be a point in time when suddenly you will come to realize that you had become very calm and very peaceful. You had developed the initial calmness leading to the spiritual calmness call pīti. Pīti is a type of spiritual joy, a spiritual rapture that can arise when the mind is trained.

When the mind is in Sati, it is just aware without thought. Then if you continue to relax and allow the Anapanasati to develop, you will become more and more calm, more and more peaceful and your mind will become more and more tranquil. Later on, this pīti will stabilise until you just like to meditate. Then if you continue to relax, just aware and silent, the pīti will become sukha (or bliss). Sukha is a very refine state of pīti. When the mind becomes so subtle and so refine, it will cumulates into bliss. It’s a very blissful feeling. You will feel so good and you will like to meditate, because it is a very ‘beautiful’ spiritual mind state, but the only danger is, many meditators get attach to this sukha or bliss. They get, absorbed into it, and they keep on looking for it to be repeated because it is so blissful. That’s how they get stuck, and then they don’t progress anymore. Because like any good food, after you had experienced tasting it many times, it’s no longer special, - that’s the reason why, later on you will start to develop the restlessness, doubt and unhappiness again. So what you should do is, when you come across this sukha, - experience it (especially if you are having it for the first time), just to understand its characteristics and nature so that you will not deludely cling on to it. Then you should just allow it to be and continue to relax and allow this sukha to continue to become more and more refine. After awhile, this sukha will transform and the mind will become very quiet, very peaceful and very tranquil and then you will enter what they call the mind state of passaddhi. Passaddhi is tranquility of mind , stillness of mind, the silent mind without thought, - when you reach that state you will realize that all of your objects of meditation, whether it is your breathing (or Anapanasati) or rising and falling will become very subtle, - very, very subtle like no more breathing, like you cannot detect it anymore. Even the rising and falling of the abdomen, like you cannot detect it anymore, everything has become so subtle. When this happen, don’t panic, - you should just silent your mind and continue to just relax further and allow it to be. If you do it long enough, until this passaddhi stabilise then you will come to realise that even the very refine breathing will start to become prominent again. Your this more refine Sati will have the ability to detect the breath again. Which means, the mind has develop the higher and more refine state of mindfulness, (it can be mindful of all the subtle movements). Then you will come to realise wherever you locate your mind or place your mind it will be able to detect all the fine vibration and movements there, like it has become very sensitive. This mind (that is already in Sati naturally) can be at whatever location you want it to be, and you can also feel clearly within, - whatever that is happening, along with the movements, the vibrations, and you can even detect your own heart beats, without the stethoscope. Then everything is like – become magnified, slowed down and very clear, and this is the meditative mind, the silent mind, the still, tranquil mind in passaddhi that can develop the understanding of meditation. That can understand how sense door consciousness arise and pass away. It can also be at the moment of its arising, sustainment and passing away. It can ‘see’ all the characteristics of nature within every phenomenon that arise and pass away. It can be even at the moment of feeling, moment of perception, activity of mind and consciousness, that’s why that silent mind is very different, - it is in Sati naturally, and there is Samādhi borne of a free mind. So you just have to train your mind until it is very stable, then all these you will start to understand, because you will experience them and then all of the Buddha’s essential teaching, you will start to witness them within your own form and mind. You only need to silent your mind. Okay, I will let you all continue the meditation on your own and I will ring the bell in about fifteen minutes time. Then we can start the second session. Okay?

4. Session 2

4.1 Reporting Of Meditation

Okay for those who still want to meditate you can continue and for those who have had enough you can slowly and mindfully come out of the meditation. Try to maintain whatever inner peace, inner calmness and inner awareness or mindfulness that you had developed. For those who had stabilized their Sati they will have to make use of this trained mind that is in Sati to cultivate the daily mindfulness meditation in daily life. That is to cultivate the noble 8-fold path and when you combine Sati or mindfulness with the cultivation of the Noble 8-fold path it become heedfulness or Appamada. So the Buddha’s advice before he passed away is – ‘Appamadena Sampadetha’ i.e. ‘To strive on with Heedfulness’ (and nothing else), which means to train your mind to be ever mindful to cultivate the meditation as taught by him which is the Noble 8-fold Path and if you do that you are destined for enlightenment. So if you understand the deep meaning of this advice you will come to understand that you only need to train your mind to be heedful then enlightenment in the here and the now is guaranteed. So technically it is not so difficult but when you start to do, it is a different thing (depending on your past cultivation). If you have your past cultivation to support you then this life it is very easy and you can move very fast. You can also understand very fast and there is an enhanced probability of realizing the enlightenment in the here and the now, in this era.

Okay now we can come to the 2nd part which is reporting of meditation followed by Q & A (questions and answers). If you got any meditative experience or problems you can report them and after that you can ask any questions that are related to the meditation, to the Buddha dhamma (or the teaching) and how you can apply what you had learnt here and the teaching to help you understand life so that you can overcome all of your life’s problems and situations. So now we start off with the reporting of meditation. Anybody wants to report their meditation? Nobody! - Luckily tonight we got some written questions already. I will go through the questions and they are quite relevant. Okay this one – the question goes like that “when I am in total relax mind during meditation, I always feel a huge vacuum and after a while, I will doze off and feeling like falling off. Thanks.”

So, what is the question? He just put there thanks! So, what is your question? No! No! This description is okay but do you have any question? This is what you have described and is it that you want to ask - is this right or wrong? Ha-ha…. so that is the question, Okay. You see the problem with meditation is …. - don’t try to ask right or wrong? Initially you can do that, because it’s not easy to understand, but after a while, it is not advisable because when you start to ask right or wrong, what does it mean? You are seeking an answer to the question that you don’t understand. Means you yourself don’t want to investigate, you yourself don’t want to understand, you just want people to tell you – what to do and then you believe the answer, and you try to apply that answer in your meditation. That is where a lot of ‘meditators’ get caught. Understand or not? That is why a lot of these so called meditators/cultivators cannot really develop the understanding themselves because after the question and after I had answered they will ask again: - “So Bro. Teoh, what must I do?” You just want an answer because you just want people to teach you what to do. How can you develop your meditation? I always said, - one very important essence of the cultivation is to develop the understanding of what is meditation? That is ‘you must meditate with understanding’…remember? That’s how you get yourself back on track, understand or not? Otherwise, if you continue to do this, you will find that it is very difficult for you all to progress in your meditation.

And the Buddha said, don’t believe even what he said; whatever he shared with you, or explained to you or proclaimed to you, you must investigate into it, like what he told the kalamas. You must find out and understand, and then you will know what to do. Otherwise, it is not your understanding. You only think you know because ‘the teacher says so’ or ‘somebody says so’, then you gullibly follow and do.

When people ask you why you do like that? You answer – ‘Bro Teoh said so’; or ‘the Buddha said so.’ It means you don’t understand, - so it is very difficult for you to progress. For when you do without understanding, you become gullible, you just follow instruction. So what is important is no need to know right or wrong, just ask yourself a very basic question and go back to the fundamentals and inquiry, “why am I here for?”

To develop the meditation – you must do with understanding and to do with understanding means what? I must understand what I do, right? So what you have done, the way you ask this question, shows very clearly you are curious about these states, and you want to know whether it is right or wrong. Means your focus is not on understanding what you are doing in the name of meditation. Ah! Most people are caught in this, -sometime they have very fantastic or unique meditative experiences, and they want to know is this something related to progress or something that they can feel very happy about. Or whether it’s right or wrong. So when you start to have that type of focus, it means you don’t understand why you are sitting here. You don’t understand the purpose of your cultivation here. And you don’t understand what meditation is? So you need to come back to that clear understanding of meditation i.e. what is meditation? - So that when you sit here and do, you know what you are doing in the name of meditation.

Remember? I always remind you all that meditation has 2 parts:- First part is to train the mind to be aware and heedful, so the 1st inquiry or question should be - are you training your mind to be aware and heedful? If you are not training your minds to be aware and heedful then what are you doing? Second part is, after you had trained your mind in Sati, you must stabilize it. Remember, the mindfulness, and then use it to cultivate the Noble 8 Fold Path then no more question isn’t it? So if this way of questioning comes about, means what? - You are not sure of what is going on, right? And you want an answer. But no amount of answer will be relevant and if I am also gullible and just answer you, then you take my answer and said “Bro Teoh said so”- Then what happen? You don’t learn! And you don’t know what you are doing. That’s why I have to explain this to you all first. I can explain this based on my experience and what I observed and understand from my years of teaching and sharing. And sometimes, certain things that you experienced may be unique to you and different from others because everyone is unique and different and it has something to do with your past cultivation. It has something to do with the conditions you are now in this world. And there are other conditions that can lead to all these. So whatever I explained is based on my understanding. And because of my understanding I can explain it to you, - what are the probable causes of this experience, this mind state etc. But this is not the meditation, understand or not? This is just to allow you to understand what has gone on. Sometimes this type of description is good because it can bring about some conditions for me to tell you about your probable past cultivation. Because certain type of experience don’t just come by itself for no apparent reason. Which means when you have certain type of experience, it is okay for you to ask. But you must understand why you ask? You ask because you already know what meditation is – and then something else arises when you try to train your mind and do all these things during meditation, and then it becomes relevant. So I don’t want you to be caught in the first instance where everything you are curious of, you just ask because you want an answer. Then it defeats the purpose, then you don’t progress, you will get stuck. So now with this understanding, I can go into the question.

“When I’m in a total relaxed state…” - means according to him, he is totally relaxed. Means he doesn’t have a problem, no stress, no worries, no tension, the mind is peaceful and relaxed during meditation. Then what happens? He said he always feel a huge vacuum. And after awhile, he will doze off, - a feeling like falling off. So this is what is described through his experience. So when you have a mind that is relaxed, and you dozed off, means what? You roughly let me know. You all experienced this before, isn’t it? Let’s say, - after a tired day, you go back home, have a nice bath and relax, and then what happens? You feel sleepy isn’t it? That’s why you dozed off. When you said you are totally relaxed, you blank. Blank means what? - going to be unconscious and sleep. And this is something that is quite normal, isn’t it? But if you understand what meditation is, this thing won’t happen isn’t it? - Because this is sloth and torpor coming in already leading to sleepiness. It is just like you don’t know what your focus is. You don’t know why you are trying to develop this meditation and you don’t know the purpose of training this mind to be aware. So you lost that focus. You lost that understanding of why you are sitting here to develop. Because you are here to train your mind, so that training part is not there. Okay? Then the stabilizing of that mind that is already trained is also not there, and then you start to experience something. Then this something distracts you and takes you into that state - like a huge vacuum, then blank, and then you dozed off (like falling off). All these descriptions will come, - so the question is, you have to always bring back to focus this inquiry i.e. when you are sitting, you ask yourself, “what am I doing? Am I training my mind”, - first inquiry. Then if I am not training my mind, what must I do? Go back and train your mind, right? - Because meditation is not about relax and becoming peaceful only. Do you understand? Most people like to do that because it is something that makes you feel good. It makes you relaxed and peaceful and a lot of people actually find it very good and very important to be able to experience this state of relaxation with inner peace. Inner peace is one of the byproduct of meditation. When your mind develops inner peace, it will have inner well being too. For a peaceful mind, is a relaxed mind and this relaxed state of peace, without fear, worry and anxiety is very soothing and very calming. That is why there is inner well-being and you feel very good. As opposed to when you are restless, fearful, with a lot of anxiety, worry, tension and stress. These are negative mind states. So to develop the meditation through training the mind to be aware or mindful will lead the mind to inner peace and inner well being understand or not? Because when you start to relax and without thought, then the peace will come, but when that peace comes, you forgot about your focus. Your focus is what? To develop the training of the mind to be mindful and aware, right? If you had recalled or remembered that focus, then you will know what to do. Then you just relax and maintain awareness. Maintain awareness through what? – Through Anapanasati! Or awareness by having an object of meditation that can make you mindful via anchoring your awareness to it then maintains awareness to stabilise it. That is what you are supposed to do. Not asking me ‘Is this right or wrong and what must I do?’ That’s why, I want you to understand, and then you will know what to do. That is what precisely meditation is all about. If you understand then the question is no more and you will know what to do.

It’s like, I now tell you the reverse, “whatever question you have , if it is nothing related to training the mind, stabilizing it to be mindful and use it to meditate,” – then all these are the wrong questions. Don’t ask, just do it, investigate or find out for yourself the truth. Which means your sole purpose and intent is to understand that your mind is heedless because of the 5 mental hindrances. Then you should inquire – how can I train this heedless mind to be heedful? Via cultivating the 5 spiritual faculties of mind right? Then are my 5 spiritual faculties developed? If not, I will develop it, then I will have Saddhā, Viriya leading to Sati or mindfulness, and this is how you will train your mind to be mindful. Then after it is mindful, you only need to stabilise it for it to become Samādhi. Then when I have Sati & Samādhi, I will have clarity of mind because - No thought, and then I will be able to ‘see things as they are’ and Wisdom will arise.

When I have all these 5 spiritual faculties then all the opposite 5 mental hindrances will go. Take for example, Saddhā or faith - when you are very confident, very composed and very calm, and you have very strong faith, you got no more doubt isn’t it? The last hindrance which is doubt is no more, then when your mind is very confident, very composed, there is also no restlessness. When there is Samādhi, the mind is also not disturbed because this mind that has Samādhi is unwavering and collected, - hence sensual desires, ill-will also cannot come in. And when there is Sati or mindfulness there is no thought because Sati is just awareness before the knowing (or the arising of thought). No thought means what? - No fear, no worry, no anxiety, no restlessness. Of course when you have the last spiritual faculty which is wisdom or Pañña then all the 5 mental hindrances will be gone, because you understand already. Then the sloth and torpor, this one you can overcome if you have Viriya and your faith is very strong. When you are full of confidence, that confidence will drive you to develop the spiritual zeal or tenacity to cultivate, so how can you be sleepy and also because you see the importance of cultivating this meditation and you also see the importance of realising this dhamma, so that suffering need not be; so that your life can be taken care of; So that you don’t have to go through life the way other people go through; So that you don’t have to be entangled with life anymore; So that all of suffering related to delusion, heedlessness and ignorance will not arise in you anymore. So the spiritual faculties will take care of the hindrances and with the 5 spiritual faculties developed, you no need to ask me how to meditate, you will know how to meditate because this is the meditative mind that is perfect. When your faith or Saddhā, Viriya, Sati (mindfulness) and Samādhi are very stable, Pañña will arise and you will keep on understanding things. Wisdom or Pañña will keep on arising because that is the meditative mind. So that’s why when you use that meditative mind to cultivate the Noble 8 Fold Path, you will understand what right view is, especially Right view - with regard to the Laws that govern all of life and existence. And the Buddha has described the 3 spiritual laws that he termed as the right view – they are the law of karma (karma niyama), the law of the mind (citta niyama), then the order of dhamma niyama. These 3 great spiritual laws govern all of life and existence. And if you understand them, you will understand life, and you will know how to live life. So when you have right view cultivated, you will know how to arise the right thought, right speech, right action and right livelihood, and the right efforts to purify your thought. All these come about through what? - The right understanding with regards to the law of karma.

Law of karma said, “You are born of your karma, heir to your karma, conditioned and supported by your karma and you are what you are because of your karma.” So if karma plays such a great role in your life, what must you do? You must take care of karma, right? Take care of karma means you must follow the advice of the Buddha ‘to avoid all evils and do good.’ Otherwise, how can you take care of karma? Then how to avoid all evils, - what is the Buddha’s advice? Yes! Keep your 5 precepts. Apart from keeping your 5 precepts, you must also train your mind to be heedful or ever mindful and aware, otherwise, you cannot see your own mental intentions behind all your actions, speech and thought processes which will become karmic. So when you have mindfulness, you can see your mental intentions behind all of your actions, speech and thoughts. The Noble 8 Fold Path will then falls into place. That’s why right view will lead to right thought, right speech and right action, etc. Then the way you live your life will be in accordance with this right view/understanding leading to the right livelihood. Then you cultivate the 4 right efforts to purify your actions, speech and thought processes. Whenever the wrong thought arises, you must arise the right effort to abandon it. Similarly for wrong actions and wrong speeches including wrong livelihood you also do the same i.e. Right effort to abandon them. Then you also cultivate the right effort to prevent all those wrong thoughts, wrong action, wrong speech and wrong livelihood from arising. Then you develop the last 2 right efforts, which is the positive aspect. The right effort to cultivate the right thought that is still not in you; the right action, the right speech and the right livelihood - that are still not in you. The last one is the right effort to refine upon the right thought and perfect whatever wholesomeness and goodness that is already in you. That’s how you can develop all these so that the noble 8 fold path cultivation will transform you into a very different type of human being. Personality wise and character wise, you will be completely transformed to become a noble being. Noble being is an enlightened being because they are very noble in their understanding of life, very noble in the way they conduct themselves - through their noble action, speech and thought. Also very noble in the way they live their life. Very noble in the way they interact with people. They have love, they have wisdom and they have compassion because they are incapable of negativity. That’s why everything they do, - there is no negativity. They are all right thought, right speech, right action and right livelihood borne of right understanding. That’s how noble 8 fold path can free you. Then when you understand, how your mind functions and work through having right view with regards to the second spiritual law (citta niyama), your wisdom will arise. Especially so, when you can see how your mind arise and pass away following the law of dependent origination (12 links or Paticca Samuppada) as taught by the Buddha, then you will start to understand that every phenomenon that arise and pass away have the universal characteristics of impermanence. If you grasp and cling on to it deludedly, suffering will be the result. Then because dependent on conditions they arise and when conditions cease to be they pass away, - hence they are all conditions arising, causal phenomena that are impermanent and because of that there is no permanent unchanging entity within all these phenomena that we can call this is ‘Me”, this is ‘I’ and this can be ‘Mine’, hence it’s all not self and empty leading to the penetrative understanding of the Anatta characteristic. When you start to see this happening within your own form and mind and within all of phenomena (whether physical, mental or nature’s phenomena), then you will come to realize that everything is just the way it is. I.e. there is no such thing as permanent unchanging entity that you can call a soul, or a ‘me’ or an ‘I’ inside there. Then your self-delusion (or sakayaditthi) will be no more. Once you are able to actually root that out, you like suddenly wakes up. No more delusion and you will no longer be deluded by your 5 aggregates of form & mind, that deludes you to believe that the feelings is you, the body is you, the mind is you, that there is a thinker behind the thought, there is a person who thinks, who feels , who perceives and who arises the consciousness. All these delusions will dissolve. Then there is this mind that is liberated, that’s how you become enlightened. That’s how you are no longer gullible. You are no longer caught in the wheel of life, which they call saṃsāra - the CYCLE or wheel of birth and death. You don’t have to come anymore unless you choose to. And all these are within your ability to realize, if only you cultivate and train your mind to have the 5 spiritual faculties. And the most important spiritual faculties is Sati, - mindfulness. For without Sati, there is no life, and you cannot see anything, you are like blind.

That’s why mindfulness or Sati is the most important and it’s also the first factor of enlightenment. There are 7 factors of enlightenment that can make you enlightened, and the 1st one is Sati. That’s why without Sati, you cannot move on to the 2nd factor of enlightenment which is dhammavicaya or investigation of the dhamma. Investigate into everything that the Buddha teaches. All his teaching is called the dhamma. So when you investigate into his dhamma, then you realize that it stands up to investigation. You will have so much joy and confident in Him. Then your faith in Him becomes unshakeable. That’s why after you have Sati and you do the dhamma investigation, then it stands up to investigation, your faith will becomes so strong, then what happen? There is this joy, leading to the Viriya or spiritual zeal which is the 3rd factor of enlightenment arising. Immediately there is this strong passion and tenacity to go this way, that’s how the Viriya which is the 3rd factor of enlightenment comes to be.

Then when Viriya arise, Sati will follow. That’s how the mind will develop the calmness and the peace leading to the spiritual joy or pīti which is the 4th factor of enlightenment. Then you will feel a lot of pīti in your mind because the Viriya will drive you to develop the mindfulness and when you are continuously mindful (without thought), this pīti or spiritual joy/rapture will arise naturally. Then you will go on to experience sukha, which is spiritual bliss. If you don’t cling and attach to this sukha, then it will become passaddhi, which is tranquility or stillness of mind (the 5th factor of enlightenment). Then when your passaddhi becomes very stable it will cumulate into Samādhi which is the 6th enlightenment factor. A mind with Samādhi is collected and unwavering. And when you have Sati and Samādhi, you will see things as they are because there is clarity, then wisdom will arise. When you have wisdom, you are no longer gullible and you will no longer react to what you see, what you hear, what you smell, what you taste, what you tactilely feel and think. And because of that, your mind has equanimity or uppekha, which is the last factor of enlightenment. This is how you develop the 7 factors of enlightenment leading to the enlightenment.

So this is how you can develop the understanding and that’s why questions are very important. If you don’t ask, there are no conditions for me to explain. I realize after a period of sharing that it is like some form of understanding is missing….. - except for a few who have developed the diligence and consistency to cultivate, the rest don’t seem to know what is going on because once a week you come, then you go back, you forgot and you become heedless again, then you come back, listen again, it’s like it doesn’t go in. Because you never investigate and you never take it serious enough to find out on your own what is it that you call meditation. What is it that the Buddha is trying to teach you and share with you out of love and compassion for you so that you don’t have to entangle your life anymore; So that suffering in this world need not be and Enlightenment in the here and the now can be realized. That’s why this understanding is very important to you because it is your life; you really have to see this clearly. And if you miss this window, it’s going to be very difficult because this is a very good window and a very rare condition to come by.

4.2 Questions And Answers

Okay, we have one more question which was sent to Bro. Swee Aun through what’s app. It’s a very good question.

Qs:    i) Why still got so much craving after listening to so much dharma?

ii) Do we really comprehend what was spoken? (This is not a question but more of a doubt.)

The 3rd part is the best:-

iii) Guarding the sense door needs tremendous effort.

Answer: Agree or not? If you agree, means you don’t understand the Buddha dharma. Effort alone cannot free you. The 4 Right Efforts are mainly applied at the thought level to deal with the thought. 1st Right Effort is to abandon the wrong thoughts that had arisen. Then the 2nd Right Effort is to prevent the arising of any wrong action, speech or thought. The 3rd Right Effort is to cultivate the right and wholesome action, speech and thought that are still not in you. This is followed by the 4th Right Effort which is to refine upon and perfect the wholesome action, speech and thought that are already in you. Effort is only used when it’s related to thought. What frees you is only wisdom. Please remember that. That’s why guarding sense door, if you use effort, you are actually suppressing it and you are trying to control your emotion from stirring via delusion. The Buddha uses this word - Be vigilant. Do you know what is vigilant? It means be Heedful. Always be attentive and ever mindful to cultivate the Noble 8-fold path (or meditation as taught by the Buddha) so that delusion does not arise to delude you into negativities. So that the evil roots will not arise to condition your evil action, speech and thought processes. Vigilance means ever mindful and ever heedful so that the wisdom can protect you. Hence vigilance is not an effort. When you don’t have wisdom, you cannot deal with defilement. All of your efforts will be of no meaning. You try to ‘cut’ here (at the feeling), ‘cut’ there, or say “let go and don’t attach” – all these has got no meaning because it doesn’t work and cultivation is no like that. For they never inquire –“who is letting go?” The person with delusion tries to let go, you ask yourself, - can this be done? If you don’t understand, you cannot let go! You will grasps and cling via delusion. Once wisdom or wise attention (yoniso manasikara) is there, you are no longer deluded hence you won’t hold or grasp anymore, right? So there is no need to let go. Only those who hold need to let go but without wisdom it cannot be done.

Like I told Eddie just now, the kid, if you have nothing for him to do or play, the kid will go all round and create havoc. But if you have a toy for him, he will stay quiet and not disturb you. So what happens is, this kid is like your mind, you must let it do something also. Otherwise it will be like this kid, it will go all round and create havoc via heedlessness (I.e. constantly loss in thoughts and seldom mindful or heedful.) Since your consciousness or mind is trapped inside your physical body and the senses are all there, - so upon contact, it’s automatic just like the physics experiment of the battery, bulb and switch, it will automatically light up or become conscious. That’s why it’s all automatic following natures’ law, each and every phenomena (May it be mental, physical or nature’s) is all dependent originating and conditions arising. Anything perceivable by the mind is a phenomenon. We can perceive our physical, mental and nature’s phenomena via our mental perception.

Upon contact of mind with our senses, you become conscious, then you start to perceive, think and react thereby stirring the mind to cause mental hindrances like sensual desire and ill-will to arise. And because of these mental hindrances, you become heedless. Then it is just like you tell the kid, “I am going to control you, and don’t let you play”. You think the kid will listen to you? You may also say “train him when he is young” or you try to tell him “Sit down, do meditation, and be mindfulness” - the kid will give you hell, right? Unless he understands, he will not listen to you. So you need to make them understand why they must do all these and because it is their life, we have to let them decide and as parent we can only advise. ‘For your good, for your future this is what I can share with you. I will only advise you. But your life, you still decide. You find out for yourself whether this is going to help you or not?’ So if you do that, you do not create trouble for him.

Since he is born of his karma, heir to his karma, conditions and supported by his karma and he is what he is because of his karma, so why do you want to interfere? You only play your role as a parent, who has a duty towards their upbringing, towards advising them, guiding them, that’s all. Do not force them to do anything that they don’t like. Do not pressure them to do anything. So meditation is the same….. Guarding the sense door, you do not need effort. They confuse effort with what is going on in daily life, like when you keep your precepts. What is the 4th precept? Abstain from telling lies and false speech. This is so difficult. So you ask, “How to keep that one”, especially so for salesman. They keep on complaining to me. It’s not how to keep? If you don’t see the importance, you will try to justify. Then it is like very difficult to keep that precept. Why? - Because the desire and craving to lie, via your own selfishness - you cannot ‘see’, and that’s why you lie. Otherwise, why do you lie? You lie because you want to conceal the fact so that you won’t get into trouble. Especially those who cheated upon their spouse, and they lied because they don’t want to be caught. Even the small kid knows how to lie. “Did you do it? No! Daddy No!” Actually he did it but because he is scare of the cane so he lied. But certain kid they are by nature honest and sincere and they will not lie. So you have to understand your kid.

Meditation is the same….. – When it comes to cultivation it is always wisdom and if you don’t have wisdom your mind cannot free. Now coming back to the 1st part of the question regarding craving:

Qs: i) “Why still got so much craving after listening to so much dhamma?”

Answer: So what is your answer? What is the meaning of craving? Cravings – according to the Buddha there are 3 types of craving. 1st one is sensual craving or kama tanha; then there is ‘craving to be’ or bhava tanha followed by ‘craving not to be’ or vibhava tanha. You must understand the difference between craving and wisdom. Craving is always associated with evil roots, like attachment and desire whereas wisdom is free of evil roots. When you have wisdom then you can love but without attachment and you can also have the good food but without craving/attachment. That is important, otherwise you become gullible and believed what others said, like the statement - “If you are spiritual, then you cannot have good food because that is craving”. What do you think of this statement? You agree? If that is your answer then I don’t think you understand the Buddha dhamma because during the Buddha’s time he was also invited to the palace and the rich man’s home where he was also offered good food and he rejoiced and still eats them. The important point is the Buddha ate but he doesn’t have attachment to what he ate. If there is condition to eat he eats otherwise he is also alright. Even lousy food when he goes pindapata (if allowable) he still eats because he has got no craving and if he has craving means what? He will have these thoughts that says “I don’t want to go there and pindapat because the food there is not so good.” Then that is attachment or craving, desire and selfishness. When there is no desire or attachment then there is no craving. When you don’t understand the meaning of craving as per the dhamma taught by the Buddha you become gullible.

The common misconception is people generally belief that a spiritual person must not have craving so good food is not allowed because that is craving according to their understanding. The Buddha never teaches like that. The Buddha said, ‘you can eat but don’t attach, don’t cling, don’t grasp and don’t deludedly hold and belief that there is a permanent unchanging entity inside because this will lead to sakkayaditthi or self-delusion.’ That’s how the whole dhamma is being misunderstood. They like to have those good foods but outwardly when they try to live their life with such misconception then they will have to suppress their desire or craving for good food hence the expression, “Guarding the sense door need tremendous effort.” The craving is so strong inside and if you don’t have mindfulness you cannot see it and you will have the idea of enlightenment as – “being spiritual I cannot have craving which means I must not have good food, I must not stay in a very nice place and I have to renounce everything.” The Buddha never said that because the Buddha said for lay people you only need to keep the 5 precepts and you can own things and you can have things but don’t attach to them. The lay person can also experience 4 types of happiness: the first one is happiness of possession. When you had acquired wealth via righteous means or right livelihood then there is a sense of well being and happiness. That joy and happiness is this happiness of possession. Then if you know how to use this wealth or possession for the happiness of yourself and others (your loved ones, relatives, friends, etc) then it will constituent the 2nd type of happiness. You use it for wholesomeness. The 3rd type of happiness is to be free from debts. Those who borrowed from loan sharks will look forward to having this type of happiness. Then the last type of happiness is to live a blameless life so that the wise one will not blame you. When you already have the means and can afford you should be more generous to help people and don’t be so stingy, petty or calculative anymore. Instead you should have goodness, kindness and generosity to help others in need. So these are the dhammas that can help you develop the right understanding to practice the right dhamma leading to the 4 types of happiness realizable by a lay person.

When you listen to the dhamma the most important focus is to develop the right view (which is very important) to straighten your earlier wrong view so that you are no longer deluded then you will know how to go about developing the cultivation with right understanding. When your view is right, ignorant (or avijja)  will be reduced then the 1st two links of the Paticca Samuppada (or 12 links) which is avijja (ignorant) paccaya saṅkhāra will be weakened leading to less saṅkhāra (or mental activities) and this will in turn lead to clarity of mind hence less heedlessness and more mindfulness and heedfulness. After you had straightened your view then avijja which is ignorant will be weakened and dependent on this weakened avijja, saṅkhāra which is your mental activities, your thinking, your emotions, your reactions and your heedlessness will also weakened. So saṅkhāra which is your mental thinking or activities, mental volitions, mental states, mental formation and mental reactions, etc will slow down. Then as you continue to straighten your views until your wrong views no more, avijja paccaya saṅkhāra will cease to be. That is how you don’t think anymore. This is also the reason why the enlightened one is always heedful and they don’t need to think anymore. They only use thoughts when they need to. That’s why I always tell you all “you don’t have to think” but for most of you it is so difficult because of the mental hindrances and the avijja (mainly self-delusion) which is still there, so saṅkhāra keep on arising following the 1st two link of the law of dependent origination. That’s why the Buddha said, “Sabbe saṅkhāra aniccaṃ” (all of saṅkhāra – everything that your mind can do like your thinking, volition, etc are impermanent and they come and they go. Then why do you hold and cling?); and “Sabbe saṅkhāra dukkhaṃ” or all of Saṅkhāra brings about suffering. You attached and hold deludedly hence suffering is the result. This is the reason why the Buddha taught the 3 universal characteristics of impermanence, suffering and non-self/empty nature. He always used the word “Saṅkhāra”. As saṅkhāra is inclusive of your feeling and perception aggregates, hence it is also termed, the content of consciousness i.e. it includes all mental activities within that consciousness. So when you understand that, you must listen with understanding to develop the right view to straighten your wrong view. When you have more right view you will become less deluded then you will know how to live life and craving will gradually slow down. Then finally when you no longer deluded, craving will be rooted out and no more craving. Craving is a desire that comes from ignorant – which is mainly your sakkayaditthi or self-delusion that condition you to be greedy. That conditioned you to grasp, cling and hold because you think you exist. The ‘Me’ and the ‘I’, the ‘personality’, the ‘EGO’, the ‘self’ or the ‘atta’ created the selfishness, created the ‘person’ who try to own things and have things. That’s how you have greed, selfish, desire, craving and lust, etc – all come from the ‘EGO’. Without the ‘I’ and the ‘Me’ there is nobody to be greedy, selfish etc. Things are just the way they are, not what you think. That’s why wisdom frees because it can root out all these delusion. Without wisdom it is very difficult to cultivate. So always remember guarding the sense door need wisdom and not effort. Then when listening to dhamma, you must also reflect, contemplate and later on cultivate to develop all the 3 turnings wisdom of Suttamaya Pañña , Cintamaya Pañña and Bhavanamaya Pañña.

The 2nd question is rather straight forward – “Do we comprehend?” If you comprehend means you got no more craving but most people don’t quite comprehend the dhamma because they don’t reflect, they don’t contemplate, investigate and inquire with mindfulness leading to heedfulness and these are the reasons why they cannot ‘see’ and they cannot understand. The moment you understand that you only need to develop the 5 spiritual faculties (especially your mindfulness which you need to stabilize to become heedful) then all of the teachings will become like very clear and very easy to understand. Then there will be no more questions.

Ok? No more written questions? So now we can open it up to the ‘floor’. Yah, yes!…. Eng Bee.

Qs: Last time I used to have this wrong understanding that Samādhi can only be developed during a formal sitting meditation posture. But last Sunday during the Heart Sutta Class, based on your explanation, I suddenly realised that Samādhi can also be developed during (training of) daily mindfulness, Right?

Bro Teoh : Yes! It can be developed.

Qs : Bro Teoh, I’d like to ask how can we develop Samādhi during daily mindfulness (practice)?

Answer: Ok Eng Bee has asked a very good question, because she had developed some form of cultivation already. Earlier on she thought, Samādhi can only be developed during formal meditation when the mind is much calmer and stable, understand or not? This can happen because your senses are mostly down or less active during formal meditation. Also during formal meditation the conditions and setting are usually more conducive. But when you come out to live life, you are in an active mode, understand or not? Your seeing consciousness, your hearing, smelling, taste, tactile and thought consciousness are all actively functioning because you got to act, got to move and you got to be aware of so many things and your thoughts keep on arising. And sometimes the mental hindrances are there. So in the active state of daily life, Samādhi is very difficult, understand or not? That’s why it needs to be trained. Samādhi in daily life can only come about when your daily mindfulness is very stable.

There are 2 very different types of cultivation namely formal meditation and daily mindfulness. The formal meditation to me, (if you ask me personally) is not enough; it’s not the real meditation as yet. The real meditation only starts when you have stabilised that mindfulness and go into daily life, to cultivate the daily mindfulness leading to heedfulness. That is when the real meditation (starts). That’s why I always tell you all - not until you’ve stabilised that mindfulness, and go into daily life to cultivate the Sati Sampajāna (mindfulness and clear comprehension of all actions and all movements within the present moment) as taught by the Buddha under kāyānupassanā, the real meditation has not started as yet.

(Important recap of the 6 categories of cultivation under Kāyānupassanā.)

They are Mindfulness of the:

1. In and out breath or Anapanasati;

2. 4 postures;

3. Sati Sampajāna practices;

4. 4 Elements of the body;

5. 32 Parts of the body;

6. 9 stages of cemetery decomposition of the body.

And even after you have done that, that is only the initial wisdom because you still got the other 3 Foundations of Mindfulness to go through, namely vedanānupassanā, cittānupassanā and dhammānupassanā. Moreover, Kāyānupassanā got 6 categories of practices - starting with Anapanasati leading to the 4 postures and the Sati Sampajāna cultivation, and then you still need to contemplate and reflect on the 4 Elements, the 32 Parts of the body and the 9 stages of cemetery decomposition of the body. Then you go into mindfulness of Feeling (Vedanānupassanā), followed by mindfulness of the citta/Content of Consciousness (Cittānupassanā), then you go into mindfulness of Dhammā, the final one, (Dhammānupassanā).

There are 5 categories of cultivation under Dhammānupassanā. The 1st category of practice is Mindfulness of the 5 mental Hindrances, and then the 2nd category of practice is Mindfulness of the 5 Aggregates of Form and Mind. So that you’re not gullible, not deluded, so that you don’t cling on to this 5 Aggregates of Form and Mind (which is what you think you are), - the human being and all those ‘images’ OR ‘concepts’ that you identified yourself with. I am an Engineer, I am Chinese, I am a Buddhist etc. After that, it teaches you to be mindful of the 6 Internal Sense Bases and 6 External Sense Bases and the 18 sense realms to develop the wisdom via tracing the origination factors for the stirring of the mind then retrospectively reverse it. This is the 3rd category of cultivation of Dhammānupassanā. Then you move into the 4th category of practice which is mindfulness of the 7 Factors of Enlightenment that I talked about just now. Then the last or 5th category of practice is the cultivation on mindfulness of the 4 Noble Truths (which are truths that can make you noble ones or enlightened ones). That’s why the real meditation is still within the 4 Noble Truths, especially the 4th Noble Truth, which is the Noble 8-Fold Path. This Noble 8-Fold Path practices is the meditation because it can lead to the end or cessation of all sufferings.

(Important recap on the 5 categories of cultivation under Dhammānupassanā.)

They are Mindfulness of the:

1. 5 Mental Hindrances;

2. 5 Aggregates of Form and Mind;

3. 6 Internal Sense Bases and 6 External Sense Bases and the 18 sense realms;

4. 7 Factors of Enlightenment;

5. 4 Noble Truths.

So coming back to your question, in the formal meditation, most people can develop the calmness of mind more easily because the environment and settings are more conducive. If you diligently train yourself in whatever field of expertise you can become skilful, just like badminton or everything else, understand or not? So after you become very skilful, your strokes and movements on the badminton court will be like very grateful and you can decide where you want to return your shots to. You want to serve low it goes low and if you want to return to base line it will be able to do just that. It is like you have complete control over what you want to do on the court.

Similarly going to retreat to cultivate formal meditation is just like you go to a very conducive place to train your mind, understand or not? Like you go to the gym, you train. When you are skilful already, what happen? If you don’t come out to life to test your skill, to compete with people of different back ground and understanding, you will never know whether you have perfected your skill or not, understand or not?

That is why you need to go into life and interact with people. That’s why you have to use what you have learned and trained to come out into life. You go for competition but that’s (for) games. What we are interested in now is about understanding life, the spiritual life. Spiritual life is to be lived. When you live life you need to interact with people. Then only you encounter all those harsh realities that the Buddha talked about under the 1st Noble Truth, - i.e. the 8 realities of life and existence. Which are birth, old age, sickness and death, when you are with people whom you don’t like, when you cannot get what you want, when things don’t go your way and when there is separation between loved ones and the things or possessions that you hold on to dearly. Like your wealth, your possession, your business, your career, etc. (everything that you think you owned). But when your loved ones and prized possessions start to separate from you then you can check whether you really have wisdom or not? Without the requisite dhamma wisdom, you will be afflicted by them. You will have fear, worry, anxiety, insecurity, sorrow and lamentation leading to severe grief, misery, depression and unhappiness. Otherwise you can be gullible, - sitting in a formal meditation, getting fantastic meditative experiences, then you equate it as, this is what Ñāna, what Jhāna and then you think you are already enlightened. But when you come out into life, and you still get entangled with separation from loved ones and your prized possessions, you then realised you can still become afflicted, emotional, angry and sad. Then what type of enlightenment is that?

So to stabilise the Samādhi in daily life, you need a stable daily mindfulness. That’s why I always tell you all, when you are in a retreat or in a formal meditation, don’t just sit without any understanding, not much point, understand or not? There are times to sit, to realise the cessation. You can also lie down (during) the formal meditation; then to understand clearly what is going on, you may have to go deep into consciousness and then just let things be and silent your mind. All these can be done and formal meditation will help. But that one (in the formal meditation) you cannot live life, understand or not? Yet you need some of those experiences to go deep into the consciousness (deep inside), so that the wisdom can be developed. Because when it comes to cessation, leading to the realisation of Nibbāna, it is a totally different understanding, and you need a formal meditation to go in. Unless it’s just only a glimpse or a momentarily one, - in daily life it can happen. That’s why the realisation of sainthood is just after one moment of pure cessation of consciousness. I.e. the form and mind can realised that glimpse of Nibbāna, and it is an entire cessation of form and mind within that moment too.

So when you go into daily mindfulness, you have to start from mindfulness of the 4 postures meditation..... - That’s why you alternate between walking and sitting in a formal meditation, and because walking is more active, when you can do that you develop daily mindfulness. Similar for bowing, it can also develop daily mindfulness. Contemplation, reflection is also daily mindfulness, understand or not? That’s the reason why we have a lot of contemplative meditation as taught by the Buddha, - like Marananussati, which is contemplation on death; followed by Buddhānussati (buddha + anussati) which is contemplation on the 9 great virtues of the Buddha; Dhammanussati and Sanghānussati etc. All these are anussati meant to develop the contemplative wisdom, understand or not?

Whereas passanā is to insight into, understand or not? So Vipassanā means, to insight into ‘Vi’ which is the 3 universal characteristics of nature, namely impermanent (anicca), suffering (dukkha) and non-self/empty nature (anatta). Hence vipassana means a type of meditation that can enable you to insight into these 3 universal characteristics of nature. Then we had Kāyānupassanā, - here nupassanā is different again. Kāyā means the body, and then you develop mindfulness over this body, to contemplate and insight into the 3 universal characteristics of nature. That’s why it is term Kāyānupassanā mean you develop this mindfulness over the ‘Kāyā’ to contemplate and insight into. Hence anussati and nupassanā are different and the Pali words are very distinct, and when you understand, you will know how to develop the appropriate cultivation, to move on.

So for a stable Samādhi, you need a stable mindfulness, until throughout the day you are most of the time mindful. It doesn’t come overnight, understand or not? Initially it’s like more and more moments of awareness/mindfulness and less and less moments of heedlessness, and this can only come about when your wisdom had started to arise, when your right view has become more and more stable. When you have more and more right view, then avijjā which is ignorance will start to weaken, and then you will have less and less Sankhāra (content of consciousness or mental activities). When you have less and less Sankhāra, it’s like you have less and less thinking, less and less thoughts, less and less mental hindrances. Then from heedless living, slowly it transform into heedful living. The moment you are heedful and aware, you are no longer heedless, - means what? The heedless thinking and the hindrances of mind had started to slow down and become less and less until one day no more. That’s how you become heedful - which means “ever mindful to cultivate the noble 8-fold path or the meditation as taught by the Buddha”. When you are heedful, you are most of the time aware with a lot of clarity because there is practically no thought at all. You only arise thoughts when you need to use them to live life.

In order to be in that state, your spiritual faculties must be very stable already; otherwise you cannot reach that state. To reach that state, the wisdom must also arise. So that’s why the focus is finally still on wisdom only. Even with Samādhi, let’s say you hold on to the continuous mindfulness, (some people do that) - they develop Ānāpānasati until so stable that they can carry their Jhāna for 24 hours. I got one teacher who can do that, during his younger days; he can hold on to his Jhāna and maintain continuous mindfulness for 24 hours, because his Ānāpānasati is very stable and very strong.

So if you depend on that Samādhi borne of energy field like Jhana (not wisdom) to become peaceful, then those Anusaya (or latent tendencies) are suppressed and you don’t know. That’s why in the strong jhanic state (which is a conditioned state of appana Samādhi), you have to release it out to normal awareness with upacara Samādhi so that it is not too strong. If it’s too strong, it is not a free mind but a conditioned state, understand or not? It doesn’t reflect the real state. It doesn’t reflect whether you have wisdom or not because you are using this appana Samādhi borne of a concentrated mind to suppress whatever defilement/anusaya, and then it’s like you are enlightened, because you cannot get angry in those strong jhanic states. You are very peaceful, you are also like full of Mettā, and all those states can arise. But when you start to get old, when you become weaker, as age catches up, you lose your ability to enter Jhāna, to develop the energy field that you need to maintain this type of Jhānic experiences, then when they realise that, they start to have suffering. They start to become miserable, via asking question like, oh! What happened? Because when they compare, - last time with the Jhāna, it was so beautiful, so perfect, so still, like enlightened, then after those things are gone, they want to get it back but they can’t get it. When they realise that they had become so weak and so fragile and like so useless, - they develop fear because finally old age, sickness and death can still threaten them. Because they don’t know what that form and mind is. They still think this is what they are, i.e. the form and mind is what they are - a human being, and this human being who is the ‘Me’ and the ‘I’ cultivate until enlightened. That’s why the Sakkāyaditthi is still there, they cannot break that self-delusion. So when you are doing all these concentration cultivation, or what they call one-pointedness meditation, or Samatha meditation, you still need to release your concentration or absorption to normal awareness to cultivate the daily mindfulness in daily life to realise the wisdom. When you cultivate Anapanasati wrongly it can also lead to continuous absorption or continuous mindfulness for you to cling or attach to. You also need to release it out; otherwise you will get trapped inside those states. So when you release it out and go into daily mindfulness, - the daily mindfulness must be stabilised, until it become very stable (like there is upacara Samādhi), understand or not? Then you use this heedful state to be aware of everything that is going on. When you use this heedful state to live your daily life and aware of everything that is going on, you will develop wisdom via seeing things as they are. After that you don’t need that type of stable collected and unwavering mind in appana and upacara Samādhi to help you remind peaceful anymore. They are only needed initially, for you to see things as they are to insight into the characteristics of nature to realise the wisdom.

Because without this Upacara Samādhi, your mindfulness is too weak, and you cannot see things as they are as yet, - which means you cannot insight into the characteristics of nature as yet because you cannot be with the moment of awareness without thought to ‘see’ via the direct seeing, the continuous arising, sustenance and passing away of all phenomena within the moment. This insight comes about without thought. You can only awaken to it via the direct seeing (without thought), when your mindfulness and Samādhi are very stable. That’s when you will see things as they are within that moment very clearly and your awareness can be with the phenomena during the moment of its arising, sustenance and passing away. You will start to see them very clearly and later on you will see them everywhere, that’s why I always say:

“Truth is everywhere in the midst of life and nature, why can’t you see? For those who see they always see.”

You can only do that when your mundane mind had already collapsed, and you have perfect mindfulness. Otherwise you cannot see because the mind without wisdom is always clouded by thoughts due to avijja pacaya saṅkhāra. The mundane mind always come out and clouds your true mind, and then it makes you heedless, - very fast you become heedless.

So that question is very important because by now you should know that formal meditation doesn’t bring about the real meditation because you still need to cultivate daily mindfulness, which is the most important. And you have to do it until throughout the day, and most of the time, (I won’t say all the time), but most of the time, you are just aware and silent. Body and mind just move as one. Your mind is always with the phenomena moving as one, either with the physical, the mental or nature’s phenomena. They are always one, together. When you are in that state, you will know, the form and mind will know. Then you start to see a lot of things, because when the mind is silent, there is awareness, and you will start to insight into a lot of things. Not only you are aware of your mental intention, the subtle defilement, the subtle suffering and delusion, the minor conceit, etc - everything else you will start to see them clearly. The mind is so different at that level, it’s totally different, and this one you have to go through the cultivation to understand, otherwise it is just what I’m sharing with you. Ok? Wah!, so fast, it is already 10.30pm.

So like today, you prepare your questions in writing – it will be good. You can also ask while you are here, just like what Eng Bee did. So your question is very important. I realise, with the question, at least I can explain it to you more clearly. If not clearly also clearer, and then you can actually develop the understanding faster because if you don’t ask, you know what will happen? Every time when I ask you all ‘got any question or not?’- Everybody just looks at the (floor) mat. Because you all are shy, understand or not? If you want to learn something, you must break free from that shyness. Inquire into it - Who is shy? The thought that perceives with that wrong view is shy. Not you because your nature is beautiful, understand or not? That’s why no need to hold on to the image of “who you are?” The ‘ego’ is shy. Shy of what? The ego is shy of itself. Break it, understand or not? Be ‘yourself’, be your natural being. Just relax and be ‘yourself’. Be with your true nature, don’t try to pretend and act like something else inside there, understand or not? When you are with your true nature, you are very relax and happy. You don’t have to suppress your feeling. You can just express it out because you got nothing to be shy. Nothing to worry about, - about what people say, because there is understanding already, and that you are being sincere. When you are sincere, honest and true, to ‘yourself’ you are beautiful. Then no more fear, no more emotion, no more shyness and those ‘ego’ things. That’s why all the shame, etc - everything is from your thoughts borne of delusion. When you understand, your mind is free, completely free. Then it is so beautiful, you can use it with so much clarity and understanding. And this form and mind is for you to use, understand or not? Karmic ally conditioned out, for you to use to live life, to experience all of the beauty and wonders of life but yet it is not you, understand or not? That’s why you can be the happiest person in this world. You can use it (the body) yet you don’t have to worry about it getting old, getting sick and die. And finally you don’t have to worry about Life anymore, you just live life. That is real wisdom leading to the understanding of what life is all about. Not to be deluded by this form and mind anymore, no more clinging to it, worrying about it and constantly creating all those unnecessarily fear, worry and anxiety, etc via attachment and craving. Ok, we have to end now, so let us do the sharing of merits, transferring of merits then you can make your aspiration.

5. Closing Pujā (both in Pāḷi and English)

Sharing of merits with the devas;

Transferring of merits to departed ones and those who can receive them;

Invoke the blessing for the nation;

Invoking Aspiration via power of merits.

(Time: 2:06:50 END)

Table of Contents

Biodata of Bro. Teoh Kian Koon

1. Introduction

2. Acknowledgement

3. Session 1

3.1 Pre-Puja [To cultivate the 5 spiritual faculties needed to counter the 5 mental hindrances]

3.2 Meditation Briefing And Instructions For Meditation

3.3 Meditation Proper

4. Session 2

4.1 Reporting Of Meditation

4.2 Questions And Answers

5. Closing Pujā (both in Pāḷi and English)