§ A meditator in Singapore once wrote a letter to Ajaan Fuang, describing how
he applied the Buddha’s teachings to everyday life: Whatever his mind focused
on, he would try to see it as inconstant, stressful, and not self. Ajaan Fuang had
me write a letter in response, saying, “Do things ever say that they’re inconstant,
stressful, and not self? They never say it, so don’t go faulting them that way.
Focus on what labels them, for that’s where the fault lies.”

§ “Whatever you experience, simply be aware of it. You don’t have to take
after it. The primal heart has no characteristics. It’s aware of everything. But as
soon as things make contact, within or without, they cause a lapse in
mindfulness, so that we let go of awareness, forget awareness in and of itself, and
take on all the characteristics of the things that come later. Then we act out in line
with them—becoming happy, sad or whatever. The reason we’re this way is
because we take conventional truths and latch on to them tight. If we don’t want
to be under their influence, we’ll have to stay with primal awareness at all times.
This requires a great deal of mindfulness.”

§ One of Ajaan Fuang’s students was feeling mistreated by the world, and so
went to him for consolation. He told her, “What’s there to feel mistreated about?
You’re the one that’s swayed under the events that have hit you, that’s all.
Contemplate what’s happening and you’ll see that the mind is something
separate. Events come passing in and then go passing by. So why be influenced
by them? Keep your mind right at the simple awareness that these things come
and soon they’ll be gone, so why follow them?”

§ “Whenever anything hits you, let it go only as far as ‘aware’. Don’t let it go
all the way into the heart.”

§ “There’s no past here, and no future, only the present. No man, no woman,
no sign of any kind at all. There’s nothing, not even self. What self there is, is
only in a conventional sense.”

§ A woman complained to Ajaan Fuang that she had been meditating for a
long time but still couldn’t cut any of her defilements. He laughed and said,
“You don’t have to cut them. Do you think you can? The defilements were part
and parcel of this world long before you came. You were the one who came
looking for them. Whether or not you come, they exist on their own. And who
says that they’re defilements? Have they ever told you their names? They simply
go their own way. So try to get acquainted with them. See both their good and
their bad sides.”

§ “Right where there’s no one to be pained, no one to die. Right there. It’s in
each and every person. It’s as if your hand were palm-down, and you turn it
palm-up—but only people of discernment will be able to do it. If you’re dense,
you won’t see it, you won’t catch on to it, you won’t go beyond birth and death.”

This crisis left mindfulness and wisdom with no alternative but to dig down into the pain, searching for the exact spot where it felt most severe. Mindfulness and wisdom probed and investigated right where the pain was greatest, trying to isolate it so as to see it clearly. “Where does this pain originate? Who suffers the pain?” They asked these questions of each bodily part and found that each one of them remained in keeping with its own intrinsic nature. The skin was skin, the flesh was flesh, the tendons were tendons, and so forth. They had been so from the day of birth.

Pain, on the other hand, is something that comes and goes periodically; it’s not always there in the same way that flesh and skin
are. Ordinarily, the pain and the body appear to be all bound up together. But are they really? Focusing inward I could see that each part of the body was a physical reality. What is real stays that way. As I searched the mass of bodily pain, I saw that one point was more severe than all the others. If pain and body are one, and all parts of the body are equally real, then why was the pain stronger in one part than in another? So I tried to separate out and isolate each aspect.

At that point in the investigation, mindfulness and wisdom were indispensable. They had to sweep through the areas that hurt and then whirl around the most intense ones, always working to separate the feeling from the body. Having observed the body,
they quickly shifted their attention to the pain, then to the citta. These three: body, pain and citta, are the major principles in this
investigation.

Although the bodily pain was obviously very strong, I could see that the citta was calm and unafflicted. No matter how much
discomfort the body suffered, the citta was not distressed or agitated. This intrigued me. Normally the kilesas join forces with pain, and this alliance causes the citta to be disturbed by the body’s suffering. This prompted wisdom to probe into the nature of the body, the nature of pain and the nature of the citta until all three were perceived clearly as separate realities, each true in its own natural sphere.

I saw clearly that it was the citta that defined feeling as being painful and unpleasant. Otherwise, pain was merely a natural phenomenon that occurred. It was not an integral part of the body, nor was it intrinsic to the citta. As soon as this principle became absolutely clear, the pain vanished in an instant. At that moment, the body was simply the body—a separate reality on its own. Pain was simply feeling, and in a flash that feeling vanished straight into the citta. As soon as the pain vanished into the citta,the citta knew that the pain had disappeared. It just vanished without a trace.