Day Nine: 15 January 2006

8.43
One more week to practice. Must remain calm, focused and mindful. During the interview, the sayadaw reminded me the importance to follow the mind; to know and watch the mind wherever it goes, whatever it does. Only in knowing all the mental and physical processes can we be free from suffering.

Why is there agitation? Because the mind is constantly clinging, constantly wanting. The mind is always changing from one moment to the next: happiness, depression, joy, frustration—all temporary states of the mind.

Realise the impermanence of all beings and states, realise their unsatisfactory nature, and realise that they come and go, and that they are not part of the person you are.

The mind is very flighty: it wants to be free to wander and to wonder. But you must follow it, observe it and all its forms. Don’t try to control the mind, but tame it so that it is less wild.

And when the agitation or frustration is intense, do metta meditation. You will be happier, more serene, less troubled and less hot. And the mind too will calm down. Only with calm and in calm can you see mental and bodily processes. Only then can you see the nature of all processes and states as impermanent, suffering and non-self. Experience for yourself, realise the nature of all beings, and set yourself free.

Try.

17.30
After a week and only now do I realise the importance of slowing down, of being mindful of all your bodily actions!

While walking earlier, I noticed how we normally are so quick to take a step forward. But actually that one step is made up of hundreds, if not thousands of actions: the lifting of the heel; the sligt raising of the whole feet; the pushing of the feet forward; the dropping of the feet; the touch of the heel, then the touch of the toes; the pressing down of the whole feet; then the momentary standing action before another step is taken. And in between each step, so many muscles, tendons, molecules and nerves are working. And in between each step lies an intention, a process which rises in the mind before the body rises into action.

Slow down, and you will see it all. Even as I write now, the movement of the hands, tension in the fingers, the sliding back and forth of the arm, the blinking of the eyes, the shifting of the entire body…and all the time, the mind races on to capture, note, signal and deliver the next word which completes this thought and sentence. Miraculous!

And now do I realise the meaning of non-self (sort of). these two processes of mind (intention) and body (movement) continually rise and continually fall. There is not just the one process of ‘walking’, or just the one process of ‘writing’, or ‘eating’, or ‘desiring’. They are each so many different and separate processes, each so many and separate physical (body) and mental (mind) phenomenon rising and falling.

So where is the self? Where is the I, the he, the she, the it we claim to be, and claim to attach to? Just natural processes, nothing more, nothing less.