Asking Yourself Questions

A talk from May 1978 about sankaras, the limitation of conceptual thinking and the wonder of awareness - leading to non-attachment and the nature of ignorance. Please note the audio is slightly muffled due to the age of the recording.

Transcript

Ask yourself the question,

What is the nature of existence?

Where is the universe?

Who am I?

Why was I born?

How should I live my life?

What happens when I die?

These are the ultimate questions.

And the answers,

All we can know is that in the present moment we get an answer to the question,

Who am I?

I am Simetabiku.

And we see that as a conceptualization.

It's a Nichatukannata.

You can see the movement of the mind.

You say,

Who am I?

And the answer comes,

I am Simetabiku.

Why was I born?

I was born to be in harmony with the ultimate truths,

To be one with nature.

Or whatever,

Whatever clever answers you can think of to the ultimate question.

But seeing the nature of existence as it really is,

When we talk about Sankaras,

Or compounded things,

Or phenomena,

They're all compounded things,

All Sankaras are impermanent.

They're imperfect,

They're not self.

They're not me,

They're not mine.

They're a Nichatukannata.

All compounded things,

What do we mean by that?

All things that begin and end,

Arise and fall,

Come and go,

Are born and die.

Such as our bodies,

Those Sankaras,

Everybody's body is Sankara.

When we look at our own body with our physical eye,

Eye consciousness is a Sankara.

The eye,

Organ of the eye is a Sankara,

And the body that we see with the eye is a Sankara.

And if we look at somebody else's body,

It's a Sankara.

Consciousness,

These are all compounded things.

Consciousness is Sankara.

Memory,

Perception,

Conception,

All thoughts,

Good and evil,

Eye and love,

Passive and active,

All the heavenly realms and all the hellish ones.

All the concepts we have,

England is a Sankara,

France,

Russia,

America,

These are all Sankaras,

Male and female,

Young and old,

Virudhamma is a Sankara,

We're all Sankaras,

All compounded,

We are all born and all die,

Begin and end,

Come and go,

Arise and fall.

So when we recognize the significance of this,

Understand Sankaras,

Carrying it to its furthest extremes,

All the stars in the skies,

When you look up at night and see the stars and the moon,

The eye that sees,

The consciousness that arises,

The objects themselves,

The stars and the moon,

Space,

All Sankaras.

So by knowing one Sankara we can know the nature of all Sankaras.

We know that this body is the Nitya Tukarnatha and the conditions that come and go,

The thoughts,

Perceptions,

Feelings,

Sensations,

Consciousness,

All these are Sankaras,

They have the characteristics of Nitya Tukarnatha.

Then we understand that the whole universe is a Sankara,

Concepts about the universe are Sankaras,

Concepts about anything and everything,

Knowing,

Not knowing,

Sense,

Nonsense,

Sanity,

Insanity.

The ultimate question is Sankaras.

So it leaves us nothing to depend on,

You see things just as they are,

Knowing the nature of one compounded thing,

We know the nature of all compounded things,

Like knowing one grain of sand,

We can know one million grains of sand alive.

So in our practice of meditation we observe this particular thing that we have with us,

This microcosmic universe we call body and mind,

Amarupa.

And through seeing that we can get beyond it.

We think of the universe as something outside,

Out there,

Like a scientist as an object,

That's another Sankara,

That's a thought,

Conception.

Memories,

All the memories we have,

All the perceptions we have,

Are there Sankaras?

Keep going on like this,

Seeing everything just in this way,

Simplification of all the complexities,

Seeing everything and nothing as anicca tukarnata,

Seeing your own conceptions about meditation,

About Buddhism,

About practice,

About methods,

About yourself,

About the people you live with.

Where is your mother right now?

In that very doubt,

That very image,

That very memory,

Perception that comes through the Sankara,

It's not your mother.

Then you go home and you look right directly at your mother with your physical eye,

You say,

Ah,

That's my mother,

You're my mother.

But that's also a Sankara,

It's consciousness of a physical object,

It's impermanent.

So you're a concept of mother,

And then you start thinking,

Mother means this,

That,

Mother did this,

Mother was this way,

That way,

On and on,

Like this memory of history,

Of past experience,

Pleasant,

Unpleasant.

We create mothers in our minds out of all these perceptions,

Imaginations.

In actuality,

All it is are the five khandhas and their natural state of changing.

We take all this complexity out of the universe by seeing it in a simple way.

When we see the universe as a simple thing,

Then suddenly it doesn't seem so hopeless.

Are there any exceptions to this rule?

Can we find anything that isn't a Sankara?

Think,

Think of something that isn't a Sankara,

That's not compounded.

In all the theories,

In all the thoughts,

In all the concepts that you might form,

Those are Sankaras.

So you begin to see the limitations of conceptualization.

All thinking,

All thought is not profound,

It's profound thoughts.

Great intellects,

Profound thoughts,

Usually mean complex theories about existence that nobody else can understand,

Making us try to think that they're somehow profound indeed.

But they're only thought,

Even the most profound,

Complex theory of philosophy of life,

That's only a superficial thing,

It's a Sankara,

It begins and ends.

It's the nature to Karnata,

It has no real substance,

No inner core.

In this way we can empty out the accumulations of years of conceptualization,

Bias,

Prejudice,

Opinion,

Fear,

Worry,

Doubt,

All our hangups,

Neuroses.

We can just see rather than as deep-seated problems that wait for years of psychoanalysis to be able to shed,

We can see as superficial clouds,

Phantoms,

Soap bubbles,

Things of no real importance,

They have no real essence,

Surface.

A most sacred and cherished image of ourselves as being a deep,

Sensitive person,

Gifted or whatever.

If we like ourselves,

If we don't like ourselves,

We think of ourselves as negative images,

Hopelessly incapable,

Failures,

Can't do anything right.

These books,

Sankara's superficial,

Of no real importance,

No essence,

No core.

So you see people suffering,

You look around you,

Look at people in their state of agony,

Their state of anguish and despair,

And you see it's only because they're ignorant that they're suffering.

Because they're superficial,

They identify with the surface,

With the floating clouds,

The phantoms,

The mists,

They clutch it,

Foam,

The bubble,

People taking themselves seriously,

All their desires,

Wonderful,

Well analyzed conceptions of themselves,

Their problems,

And they go endlessly on about how they're this way because of this and that way because of that.

But in the state of awareness,

What is there?

A passing cloud,

A Sankara just floating by,

One needing to attach to it,

One needing to reject it,

Just like the clouds in the sky,

You can watch them float by without getting involved in their movement.

The same with all your thoughts,

Views,

Opinions,

The body you have.

Consciousness comes and goes to the eye,

The ear,

The nose,

The tongue,

The body,

The mind,

Memories changing.

And through this practice of seeing things just as they are,

You become non-attached,

Or you're one who does not attach to any of these superficial,

Unimportant Sankaras.

Being wise means that you know the nature of ignorance and you're not identified with it anymore.

There's no more doubt.

Is this ignorant thing my real soul?

Is this great fear,

This great ultimate terror,

This great profound whatever it is that you think is your ultimate real self?

It's only a conception.

It's a Sankara floating by.

Well,

How do you explain human suffering in this way?

What about all the people that have been murdered or brutally treated,

Victims of circumstances,

All kinds of human misery one can see around oneself,

One can remember all kinds of things that have happened in the past,

Wars,

Persecutions.

These are also Sankaras.

It moves on and on and on,

Changing,

Sometimes high,

Sometimes low,

Good and bad,

More and peace.

But with awareness we get beyond these dualisms.

Mindfulness is the path to immortality.

And that you can't conceive.

Immortality,

In the moment you try to conceive it,

You're creating another concept,

Another silk bubble,

Another phantom arises in your mind.

But if you can just watch that movement with a calm,

Composed mind,

Heart,

Then you're being wise right now.

The minute you indulge in your doubts,

Your joys,

Your fears,

Then you're going to get pulled back into the Sankara and suffer some kind of disappointment,

Despair,

Anguish,

Lamentation,

Sorrow.

The question,

You mean my mother is only a silk bubble?

You're trying to say that my mother doesn't really exist?

And that's a thinking.

Conceptualization.

But surely how can you just dismiss the whole universe as a silk bubble?

And that's doubting,

Not being sure,

Feeling angry,

Worried or fearful,

Feeling aversion,

Whatever you want to call it.

So that one brings this awareness,

Or is aware,

In the present moment,

From one moment to the next.

We'd like some,

Maybe some comforting answers about the explain that,

Well our mothers really do exist in this sense,

But in another they don't,

And get on into intellectual explanations of mothers and the universe and what not.

And that's just thinking again,

Trying to make ourselves understand and feel comfortable because we want to understand through our symbols,

Rather than let go of all symbolization and well in that state of unbounded,

Unrestricted freedom,

Balanced sanity.

We cherish certain concepts about the universe,

About mothers and fathers,

About ourselves,

About husbands and wives,

The nature of existence.

And when those concepts are threatened,

Somebody says it's only a delusion we feel upset,

But that feeling upset is a sankara,

Fear,

Doubt.

Just keep that constant reflection,

Looking at it closely,

Rather than trying to figure out and rationalize,

Justify,

Explain.

Doubting,

Uncertainty is a sankara.

Certainty is a sankara.

**cut** **CC – English Translators Rachini has taught us a bit ** **CC – English Translators Rachini has taught us a big** **CC – English Translators Rachini has taught us a good** **CC – English Translators Rachini has taught us a good feature** **CC – English Translators Rachini has taught us a lot** **CC – English Translators Rachini has taught us a lot** **CC – English Translators Rachini has taught us a good feature** And don't die,

Die,

Die,

Die.

Reviews

Fantastic. The repetition was beginning to irritate me until something clicked and I realised that feeling was a Saṅkhāra and that thought was a Saṅkhāra and so on then the talk started be more clearly understood.

Ajahn Sumedho is an Arahant for me and his reflections on Samskaras are necessary to recollect the three characteristics of existence, every day. Thank you, Luang Por Sumedho.

I’m Buddhist by birth and just a beginner in practicing Buddhist. Luang Por Sumedho has explained lots of things that I’m not quite understand when I’m in Thailand but when I’m in the USA and have time to quiet my mind and have different circumstances happen in my life then everything is start to make sense especially the Sankara. Thank you.

So nice to have a talk on the true basics. Well worth listening and reflecting.