The Art of Disappearing

Buddha's Path to Lasting Joy

Brahm

• Publisher: Wisdom Publications
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780861716685
• eBook ISBN: 9780861718610
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Eastern Philosophy

Whether mere bumps in the road or genuine crises, we live in a world of unwanted events that no willpower can prevent. In The Art of Disappearing, Ajahn Brahm helps us learn to abandon the headwind of false expectations and follow instead the Buddha's path of understanding. Releasing our attachment to past and future, to self and other, we can directly experience the natural state of serenity underlying all our thoughts and discover the bliss of the present moment. In that space, we learn what it is to disappear. Ajahn Brahm, an unparalleled guide to the bliss of meditation, makes the journey as fun as it is rewarding. The Art of Disappearing, comprised of a series of teachings Ajahn Brahm gave to the monks of Bodhinyana Monastery, where he serves as abbot, offers a unique glimpse into the mind of one of contemporary Buddhism's most engaging figures.

1

The Big Picture

WHEREVER YOU LIVE—in a monastery, in a city, or on a quiet tree-lined street—you will always experience problems and difficulties from time to time. This is just the nature of life. So when you have problems with your health you shouldn’t say, “Doctor, there is something wrong with me—I’m sick”; rather you should say, “There is something right with me—I’m sick today.” It’s the nature of the human body to be sick now and again. It’s also the nature of the septic system to need pumping out when you don’t expect it, and it’s the nature of the water heater to sometimes break down. It’s the nature of life to be this way. Even though we struggle as human beings to try to make life go smoothly for ourselves and others, nevertheless it’s impossible to ensure that happens.

Whenever you experience any pain or difficulty, always remember one of the deep meanings of the word suffering: asking the world for something it can never give you. We expect and ask impossible things from the world. We ask for the perfect home and job and that all the things we work hard to build and arrange run perfectly at the right time and place. Of course, that is asking for something that can never be given. We ask for profound meditation and enlightenment, right here and now. But that’s not the way this universe works. If you ask for something that the world can’t supply, you should understand that you’re asking for suffering.

So whether you work or meditate, please accept that things will go wrong from time to time. Your job is not to ask for things the world can’t give you. Your job is to observe. Your job is not to try to prod and push this world to make it just the way you would like it to be. Your job is to understand, accept, and let it go. The more you fight your body, your mind, your family, and the world, the more collateral damage you’ll cause and the more pain you’ll experience.

Sometimes, when we understand and stand back from our daily lives, we see the big picture. We see there’s nothing wrong with the monastery, nothing wrong with us, nothing wrong with life. We understand that it’s just the nature of the world to go “wrong”—that’s what the Buddha meant by the first noble truth of suffering. You work, struggle, and strive so hard to make your life just right—to make your home, your body, and your mind just right—and it all goes wrong anyway.

Understanding Suffering Is the Motivation for Practice

The contemplation of suffering, or dukkha, is an important part of true Buddhist practice. We don’t try to control suffering; rather, we try to understand it by investigating its causes. It’s an important point in our practice, because when most human beings experience suffering, they make the mistake of either running away from it or trying to change it. They blame the machinery for failing, but of course that’s just the nature of machinery. Things go wrong and we suffer. So we should change our attitude and stop fighting. When we stop fighting the world and start to understand the suffering, we get another response. It’s the response called nibbidā.

The response called nibbidā comes from understanding the nature of the body, the mind, and the world. You understand the nature of Buddhism, of setting up a monastery or a household, and of living together in a group. You know it’s going to be unsatisfactory and that there are going to be problems. You are wise enough to stop running away from those problems or trying to change them. You understand that problems are inherent in the fabric of saṃsāra. This was one of the great insights of the Buddha that prompted him to give his first teaching, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (SN 56:11).

When you realize that suffering is inherent in the fabric of saṃsāra, it changes your reaction. It’s like having a rotten apple and trying to cut out the rotten parts so you can eat the rest. When you have wisdom, you see that the whole of the apple is rotten and that the only possible response is nibbidā—the rejection of the whole apple, revulsion toward it, turning away from it, and just throwing it away. You see that you don’t need that apple; you can let it go. It’s important to understand the suffering in this world, and it’s important to see how absolute that suffering and unsatisfactoriness is. It will never be under your control or within your power to sort it out and get it right.

When we contemplate and understand this, it gives us the motivation and incentive for practicing the path. According to the suttas, when the Buddha saw people getting old, getting sick, and dying, that was enough to prompt him to seek a solution to suffering (MN 26.13). He realized that it was also his own nature to get old, get sick, and die, that he had not gone beyond these things. That gave him the motivation to set out in search of an end to these problems.

Each of these three problems is your inheritance too. This is what awaits you in the future. This is something that’s certain: you will get old, get sick, and die. There’s nothing you can do about that. These are the facts of your existence, your human body, and also all other things. Everything will get old, disintegrate, and die—everything goes wrong and breaks down. The Buddha-to-be was wise enough to know that even with all his spiritual qualities and accumulated merit, he could not avoid that suffering. A different response was needed: to fully understand it.

Disengagement

In the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta it is said that the first noble truth of suffering should be thoroughly understood (SN 56:11). In other words, you don’t try to overcome suffering, you don’t try to change it, you don’t try to make it all better or escape from it; you understand it. Difficult times are wonderful opportunities to sit down and face suffering, to understand it fully and not take the easy option of always running away.

It’s the nature of most human beings that whenever suffering or problems arise, they have their escape routes: getting lost in fantasies, watching movies, surfing the internet, reading, chatting, having cups of tea or coffee, or just going for walks. What are we really walking away from? What are we going into those fantasies for? It’s our habitual response to the problem of things not being good enough, not being satisfactory. If you really want to get somewhere in life, monastic or otherwise, to become wise and free, the Buddha said you should understand suffering.

When you start to investigate you realize that we all experience suffering. In the Therīgāthā there’s the famous story of Kisāgotamī (Thī. 213–23). The Buddha’s strategy for moving Kisāgotamī away from the grief and suffering caused by the death of her son was to make it quite plain to her that other people die as well: the death of her son was not a solitary event in this universe but was connected to every other death. The Buddha wanted Kisāgotamī to understand the suffering called death. Death is natural; it is part of the fabric of things. It’s everywhere; you can’t escape it. So instead of trying to solve the problem by bringing her son back to life, the Buddha taught Kisāgotamī to understand the universality of the problem.

When we understand, we don’t just accept things, because that’s not good enough either. To think, “Just let it be, this is the way things are, so what!” is not the right response. When we really understand the problem of suffering, what we’re in for, what life is truly like, there’s only one natural response. It’s neither trying to escape nor accepting whatever comes; it’s nibbidā.

Nibbidā means disengaging. We turn away from this thing we call life. Trying to change things just gets you more involved in life, and accepting things also keeps you involved. Disengaging is the right response. Disengaging means you leave these things alone and you’re not concerned or worried about them. You just sit there and you don’t involve yourself in what you’re experiencing. By not involving yourself in what you’re experiencing, you stand back from life. It’s almost like rejecting it, the sort of rejection that makes things disappear.

You read in the suttas that the Buddha, out of compassion, knew how to dismiss people (MN 122.6). Sometimes people will engage in conversation because they have nothing better to do. I don’t like sitting around and answering questions hour after hour, particularly during a retreat. In any case, you don’t get answers about real Dhamma by asking questions. You get those answers by sitting still and stopping your thinking, not by encouraging it further. So when someone asks me a question, I try to make the answer as brief as possible. In this way I try to help people disengage from chitchat.

You should disengage from the things of the world in the very same way. Why be involved in all these things? Look at them and realize they just cause you suffering; they just make you tired and upset. Through nib-bidā all these sensory objects fade in importance.

“Not My Business”

When you contemplate life you come to realize that it’s completely out of control. And whatever is out of control is none of your business. That’s a wonderful little saying that I’ve used in my meditation and that I encourage other people to use as well. Whatever you are experiencing, in the monastery or elsewhere, say to it, “Not my business.” Whatever happens to the water supply, to people coming and going, to the food that is offered, to the weather, say to it, “It’s not my business.” It’s not your business to worry about what anyone else does or says to you; it’s their business, their kamma, nothing to do with you.

If you’re sensitive to other people’s words and allow them to hurt or bully you, you should remember the Buddha’s advice to his son Rahula—to be like the earth (MN 62.13). People urinate and defecate on the earth; they vomit on it and burn it. All sorts of rubbish gets tossed on the earth, but the earth never complains; it just accepts everything. People also do some beautiful things on the earth. They plant gardens or, even better, they build monasteries. But the earth doesn’t react no matter what happens to it.

So be like the earth. Whatever people say or do, be immoveable. If they praise you or blame you, it’s their business. There’s no need to be affected by another person’s speech, whether good or bad. When you have the attitude of “None of my business,” it will never upset you.

It’s the same with the aches and pains in the body and with sickness. When you meditate, remind yourself they’re none of your business; they’re the body’s business—let the body look after them. Thinking like that is actually a powerful way of keeping the body healthy. It’s a strange thing that sometimes the more you worry about this body, the worse it gets. If you disengage from the body, sit still, and just allow the body to disappear, it tends to heal itself. It seems oftentimes when you try to control and organize things they only get worse, and it’s the same with your body. Sometimes, when you let it go and just relax, the body becomes so at ease that it heals itself. So just let go and forget about it.

I’ve known a lot of monks whose health problems disappeared through the power of their meditation. The first time I saw that was with Ajahn Tate. When I first went to Thailand in 1974, he was in the hospital with incurable cancer. They gave him the best possible treatment, but nothing would work, so they sent him back to his monastery to die. He died twenty-five years later. That’s one example of what happens when monks “go back to their monastery to die.” They go back and then live a long time. So you disengage from things—nibbidā arises—and the mind turns away. It’s had enough, it doesn’t even want to look at them anymore, and you find that they fade away.

This is the process you read about in the suttas, nibbidā leading to virāga, the fading away of things. When you regard something as none of your business, it fades away from your world. Consciousness doesn’t engage with it anymore; it doesn’t see, hear, feel, or know it. The way this works is as follows. Whatever you engage with is what takes hold in the mind—it’s where consciousness finds a footing and grows. You are building mental edifices. It’s very clear to me as a meditator that we create our own world. But when you disengage, you have no business there, and because you’re not interested in it, the whole thing just disappears from your consciousness. When you have nibbidā you’re really “un-creating” your world.

Solving the Problem

How many times have you tried to solve “the problem”? You’ll be trying to solve it not just until you die but for many more lifetimes. Instead, understand that this world is just the play of the senses. It’s the five khandhas doing their thing; it has nothing to do with you. It’s just people being people, the world being the world.

Sometimes at our monastery you can see large flocks of cockatoos. They are very noisy. Some people say they don’t like the sound of cockatoos, but whether you like them or not, they still make the same noise, so why not disengage?

As a meditator I used to ask myself, “Why does noise disturb me?” Whether it’s the sound of a bird outside or somebody coughing or slamming the door in the main hall, why do I hear that? Why can’t I do the same as I do with my eyes, find some “lids” and shut my ears? Through contemplating sound and understanding how it works, it became quite clear that the only reason I heard it was because I went out to listen to it. There was an active engagement with the world of sound. That’s why it was disturbing. Ajahn Chah used to say that it’s not the sound that disturbs you; it’s you who disturbs the sound. That was a very profound saying, and it meant a lot to me. I used that to understand the nature of sound and why it’s so disturbing.

When someone calls you a pig, an idiot, or whatever, you don’t need to listen to it. We hear it because we’re interested in it; we engage with and are attached to the world of sound. But when we realize that sounds just come according to their nature, we get nibbidā. There are nice sounds, crazy sounds, and the sounds of the birds. Some birds sound sweet and some birds, like crows, sound terrible. But it’s not the fault of the crows; it’s just their nature. It’s the same in the monastery: some anagārikas are like crows and some are like nightingales; some monks speak beautifully, some speak terribly. It’s their nature, that’s all. It has nothing to do with us, and therefore we should disengage.

When we disengage from these things through nibbidā, they fade away. Suffering fades away when the cause of the suffering fades away. The sense world starts to disappear when we’re not so concerned with changing it. When we disengage from it with nibbidā, we’re repelled by it and reject it. This is because nibbidā comes from seeing the world as it actually is. With it, we move in a different direction from the rest of the world.

The Messengers of Truth

Another way to look at this disengagement from the world is to regard it as a movement into the mind, our silent center. Sometimes you can see how the world of your home, the world of your friends, or even of Buddhism, can pull you out of your center. You can feel the pull. You’ve been pulled out like that your entire life, and what has it ever done for you? When people leave the monastery, it’s usually because of the opposite sex. Is that going to make them happy? Many years ago the title of the main feature of Punch magazine was “Advice for those about to be married.” The two center pages were blank except for the four letters “DON’T.” They had understood the suffering of marriage. Don’t think that you’re different, that you can escape the suffering because you’re special or wiser than others. It’s the arrogance of the ego to think that you’re better, that you can avoid the difficulties and problems that everyone else faces in life.

When I was young I too used to have fantasies. I learned to stop them from grabbing hold of me by following them to their logical conclusion. I would think, “Then what? Then what?” and I wouldn’t stop until I had the full picture. With fantasies such as falling in love, getting married, and riding off into the sunset, the “then what” took all the fun out of it, because the “then what” was just empty. There was no color, brightness, joy, or happiness anymore, because the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise
• Title
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 - The Big Picture
• 2 - Bringing the Mind into the Present
• 3 - Developing Mindfulness
• 4 - Medicines for the Mind
• 5 - Wisdom Power
• 6 - Pacification and the Insights that Follow
• 7 - Appreciating the Bliss
• 8 - Recognizing True Wisdom
• 9 - Happiness Comes from Disappearing
• 10 - Make This the Last Time
• 11 - Climbing the Pyramid of Samādhi
• Abbreviations
• Glossary
• Index
• About the Author
• About Wisdom
• Copyright