I have been reading Thanissaro Bhikkhu recently - first time I have really read his stuff (Katy's recent post with an interview gave me a taster). He has a newish book out, which is about breath meditation
Each and every breath (available for free and backed up by a wealth of related resources). So I really liked the book, and wanted to summarise the bits I thought were important, and thought I would share that here. So this is a condensation of his condensation of the/a Buddhist path.
If you end up saying the same thing over and over again in different ways, you become very good at refining that message. TB is a scholar of the sutta's, and writes in a way that is both seemingly authentic and definitive about the "core teachings of the Buddha". The 4 noble truths are integral to the approach, and so it feels like real Buddhism. As I understand it though, his interpretation of Buddhism is his interpretation. It is idiosyncratic and individual to him but it has strength as a unified and coherent approach.
I didn't get that much value from the "meditation and daily life" and "finding a teacher" chapters. Here he is banging his monk's drum. But the introduction, the chapters on concentration with the breath, and advanced practice, are really excellent. Relatively short, yet jam packed with wisdom and good practice. He is able to take advanced topics, for example, the formless realms, and writes about with great clarity, at a level for both beginners and advanced practitioners. And in a few chapters he outlines a complete systematic approach which can take you all the way to stream entry, in theory.
His approach is based on the Thai Forest tradition, and his teacher, and the teacher of his teacher, Ajaan Lee's guide to meditation ("method 2") http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/lee/inmind.html, which is based on apanapasanati (and contains it all) and in this approach there is no distinction between Samatha and Vipassana, as sometimes found in commentarial traditions. Rather, they are intrinsically linked. And the breath is the key to the whole approach. He outlines many reasons why using the breath is advantageous. One that struck a cord with me was finding the pleasure in the breath, which makes the idea of meditation more fun and interesting, which could seep into everyday life as working with the breath becomes an off-cushion tool And a core idea was using the refinement of pleasure then to find increasingly subtle levels of stress. TB uses the term stress where others would use "suffering", and in the contexts he uses it in it I prefer that term. Jhanas turn out to be crucial, in allowing that refinement to see stress more clearly. Jhanas are described but the approach involves not deliberately learning them, but discovering and exploring these states organically.
The whole approach is based on discovery, exploration, experimentation and learning about the breath. Treating meditation as your laboratory. See what works, what doesn't, what relaxes, what causes stress, where is stress, what proceeds, and what follows stress. Manipulate, play, learn. And the act of trying to become concentrated (and relaxed) leads to a process of insight; the more concentrated you become the clearer the insight becomes. This rings true in my own experience as a pre-path practitioner, and I tend to assume that unless you are very advanced, insight and concentration practice always go hand in hand.
TB has a section on "release" which I took to mean STREAM ENTRY, which he describes as a taste of the deathless. He doesn't go into details, as he worries that too much description could cloud the experience and the necessary steps to get there. He instead discusses some of the lessons learnt from it. He stresses that this is just a taste, and for testing the truth of that release you need to know what you did to get there, so you can have a "mundane breakthrough", and warns of complacency.
An important concept is that of "becoming" - the construction of mental worlds. Becoming is a process of fabrication. Insight is used to see fabrication, but the path itself involves fabrication - fabrication of skilful states. So this is contrast to an approach like zen, in that the aim is to deliberately produce skilful states of mind, to fabricate experience in a certain way (such as with Jhanas - though eventually go beyond that - see below).
He points out the Buddha refused to answer whether we have a self or not. TB notes that we can see the construction of a self through becoming, and can recognise if this is skilful or not. And integral to the TB approach is the idea that the path involves not seeing "no-self", but instead seeing "self" and becoming disenfranchised with it, which leads to dis-identification. This is the ultimate goal - once you see clearly enough how becoming causes stress, you can decide that you don't want to live your life like that any more. Through "discernment" (his term for "wisdom") you see that, and through virtue (sila/morality) you act in skilful (virtuous) ways.
He explicitly points out the path does not involve finding your "true self". He makes continual use of the metaphor as the mind as a committee, which matches well the view of the mind of modern science, and analyses the 5 aggregates as being built around different kinds of desire (he uses the metaphor of desire as "feeding"). And what I particularly liked was how made very concrete and clear a strategy of seeing and experiencing anatta, and how that leads to stream entry (though he doesn't use that word)
A few key quotes on that topic:
"Look for any rise or fall in the level of stress within that experience. Then look for the activity of the mind that accompanies that rise and fall. When you see the activity in action, drop it. This is called contemplating inconstancy and the stress in inconstancy. When you see the stress, ask yourself if anything inconstant and stressful is worth claiming as you or yours. When you realize that the answer is No, this is called contemplating not-self. You’re not taking a stance on whether or not there is a self. You’re simply asking whether you want to identify with the parts of the committee creating the stress."
"As long as you hold to these identities and these worlds as having solid unity, it’s hard
to go beyond them. It’s hard to let go of them. This is why the Buddha’s strategy is to
sidestep this sense of solid unity by regarding the building blocks of identity as actions, for
actions are easier to let go of than a solid sense of who you are."
"The sense of disenchantment—which in most cases reaches maturity only after you’ve approached these contemplations from many angles—is the crucial turning point in this process."
"When you pursue these contemplations until they reach a point of disenchantment, the
mind inclines toward something outside of space and time, something that wouldn’t be
subject to the drawbacks of these activities. At this point, it wants nothing to do with any
of the committee members of the mind, even the ones observing and directing its
concentration, or the underlying ones that keep asking and demanding an answer to the
questions of hunger: “What’s next? Where next? What to do next?” The mind sees that
even the choice of staying in place or moving forward to another state of concentration—
even though it’s a choice between two relatively skillful alternatives—is a choice between
nothing but two stressful alternatives, for both are fabrications. At this point it’s poised for
something that doesn’t involve either alternative, something that involves no fabrication.
When it sees the opening in that poise, it lets go and experiences the deathless. That’s the
first stage in experiencing release. In this way, the mind dis-identifies with all becomings without even thinking about “self” or “worlds.” It looks simply at actions as actions. It sees them as stressful,
unnecessary, and not worth the effort. That’s what enables it to let go. "
What I didn't like: he talks about "ultimate happiness" (and paraphrases of that), and whenever anyone uses the word "ultimate" I smell bullshit. And it is pretty crucial to the whole thing. I presume this is linked to assumptions based on concepts of reincarnation and karma - and why one should act skilfully. But even if you don't buy into that, being "skilful" seems sensible for its own sake. And this "ultimate" is linked to the great emphasis on the "deathless" and it being unconditioned, "
It’s an experience of total, unalloyed freedom and happiness…where suffering and stress all end." And if it comes from the same brain that produces all our other mind states it can't be unconditioned, in at least how understand the term.