Heroic Effort Nurtured with Love

In this talk Ajahn describes some of the experience and process of sitting meditation for 400 hours in just 45 days, whilst at Bodhgaya, Bihar, India. Ajahn has done this repeatedly in order to fullfil a vow to sit meditation at 'The Seat of Enlightenment' for 3000 hours. This talk covers subjects such as nourishing Effort with qualities such as strong Faith, and Loving-Kindness inspired via Compassion. Although this talk was given to a group of junior monks, it may be relevant and useful to serious and sincere lay-practitioners as well.

Transcript

Ajahn Kevali So firstly,

Good morning everybody.

Ajahn Kevali has asked me to say some encouraging words.

Some of you know Ajahn Achlo,

Some of you don't know me yet.

I ordained one year before Ajahn Kevali.

We're good friends.

I live in a monastery in Petchabun,

About a nine hours drive away in the mountains.

I've been living there for seven years now.

Recently got back from a period of intensive meditation practice in Burkhaia.

And this is an interesting time to be asked to give a reflection.

I don't begin all of my talks with the statement that I have to be careful not to sound too impressive.

But on this occasion I have to be careful not to sound too impressive.

So I'll sound slightly impressive first and then I'll explain later.

So I made a vow.

I went to Burkhaia as a six pantha monk 16 years ago.

And I felt probably I'm a faith type I would say.

It's a little bit unusual among Western monks but very common for Thai monks.

And so I found I was very deeply moved by the place.

And I did have a very peaceful meditation there.

And for me it was as though you could feel,

Smell,

Taste,

Touch nibbana.

It's so close.

And how this affected my mind at the time was this desire to want to sit longer and sit longer.

Hoping of course to realize nibbana that didn't happen.

But at least feeling closer to it is encouraging isn't it?

So after my tenth pantha I had been living with Ajahn Anand for quite some time.

And I asked his permission to go and spend six weeks and try and explore this further.

And I went back again.

I think it was the beginning of building my monastery.

Just before receiving the invitation to build a monastery I realized that I was going to need some help.

Not just on the material level but building the monastery from scratch on top of a mountain.

And there was no water system,

Electrical system.

The road was impassable in the wet season.

So I knew I was going to need help.

And so I wanted to go and ask for the help of the devas.

Ajahn Anand shows someone who believes in devas.

Beings in parallel realms who have good will towards human beings.

Some of them have a lot of merit and sympathy towards Buddhist practitioners.

So go and ask for their help.

So around that time I realized that I was approaching 1000 hours of meditation under the Bodhi tree.

And I thought that that would be a good thing to work towards.

So I came back a couple of years later and I did finish off 1000 hours of formal meditation as an offering to the Buddha,

The Dhamma and the Sangha under the Bodhi tree.

Then in a moment of,

I mean that felt really good to be able to do that.

And,

But,

But Bhangra is a place which is very noisy.

There's a lot of people who are basically meditating in public all day.

And large crowds moving around behind you.

So it's,

It's hard work.

But because there is some special quality in the air there,

I want to talk a bit more about that later,

What that might be.

I find,

Many people find that it is possible for the mind to become peaceful despite the noise,

Despite the crowds,

If one has faith and if one keeps trying.

But I felt so pleased to have accomplished that 1000 hours that in a rapturous,

Blissful moment I made what might have been a foolish aspiration to sit 2000 more hours there.

1000 for the Buddha,

1000 for the Dhamma,

1000 for the Sangha.

And so I did keep going back once a year.

Usually would do,

I had to work up to this.

So at first I could only sit about 6.

5 hours in a day in Bokaya.

And I worked up to about 8 hours.

Getting from 8.

5 to 9 hours a day was,

I don't know why,

But it was just really hard to get past the inner resistance to just,

I think we all know we want to spend some periods of time in quiet and alone.

So there is a certain point when you are in a noisy,

Busy place where you have had enough.

And knee pain and back pain,

Those things.

So to get past the 8.

5 point was a bit of a struggle.

But I did,

I was able to work up to sitting 10 hours a day in Bokaya.

And I think the reason this was possible is because of the strong faith that I have in Buddhas and the gratitude that I have for Lord Buddha.

And then we think of the particular vow Lord Buddha made there.

When he sat down and he said,

Let my blood dry up,

Let my sinews fall off,

Something like that.

I am not moving from this place until I have realized the deathless.

And he did.

So it is an incredible affirmation about the potential that we have,

That Lord Buddha fulfilled and realized.

So you get a bit fed up in Bokaya and you open your eyes and you see the Bodhi tree and you look at the Vajrasana and you can remind yourself Lord Buddha was enlightened here.

So it is quite a powerful,

Skillful means.

It offers a lot of encouragement.

And so I was able to work up to that once.

Working up to 10 hours a day I would try to do that for at least a month.

So earlier trips I was doing 200 hours in a month.

Later trips I was trying to do 300 hours in 33 days.

Most recently I have been doing 400 hours in 45 days.

I have done that three times.

And so I did just five days ago complete that vow.

I have now sat in meditation for 3000 hours under the Bodhi tree in Bokaya.

And I am relieved.

I don't have to keep doing that to myself anymore.

But it is not really about,

It was never about getting to a certain number.

It was about using that place as a source of inspiration that inspired more practice.

So basically what we are all involved in is cultivating the five spiritual powers.

Faith,

Energy,

Mindfulness,

Concentration,

Wisdom.

So Lord Buddha after his enlightenment when he was reviewing what it was that actually made it possible for him to realize what he realized.

He was able to come up with this quite beautiful small succinct list.

These five qualities when cultivated made much of,

Lead to the deathless,

Emerge in the deathless.

So Arjun Sumedho when he was a young monk he used to use this as a bit of a mantra.

Sat Tawiriya Sati Samadhipanya.

He had the intuition,

The correct intuition that all of these qualities need to be strong and they need to be balanced.

And so he was checking in his practice which ones are strong and which ones are weak.

I think this is very valuable.

So with regards to faith,

Sometimes we have faith in the Buddha.

We have faith in the Arahants.

Many modern people don't have faith in their ultimate potential.

Many people have a withholding of loving kindness towards themselves.

A kind of a deep seated self aversion which manifests as a kind of a sneering at oneself internally.

Judging everything you do,

Whatever you do is not quite good enough.

And we understand the Buddhas are enlightened.

We understand the Arahants are enlightened.

We understand the teaching and we understand what we are supposed to do to get it.

We read Lampur Mun's biography,

Lampur Tate's biography and we want to do that.

And then I think many people start judging themselves and compared to this example.

And modern people aren't very patient.

So what starts as very virtuous,

Having faith,

Finding the teachings,

Doing the correct practices,

Can get infected by negative qualities.

And because it's culturally so pervasive I think many people don't recognize it.

And this kind of judging your own efforts and kind of sneering at yourself,

Having ill will aimed at the self view is something that saps away energy and decreases your chances of realizing the mind's potential.

So a practice that I personally feel all modern people need to do to kind of remove this curse from their minds is they need to commit to metta practice.

And metta practice starts with one's own conventional self.

Something I found in practicing in Vogaya is not to become irritated.

You have to practice a lot of metta because metta has many benefits.

One of the benefits of metta is it allows you to accept things the way they are.

When you have a lot of good will,

When you wish well,

It's not a critical,

Rejecting,

Discriminating kind of equality.

It's a loving,

Accepting,

Embracing quality,

A soft quality.

So I had to practice probably,

I'd say,

At least 30% of the time in Vogaya,

Loving kindness,

So that's at least three hours a day of metta meditation.

And that's what makes it possible not to be irritated when a Cambodian group comes around with a very,

Very loud speaker,

With reverb and echo and chanting very,

Very loudly right behind you.

And then the Vietnamese group does the same thing five meters away,

And the Sri Lankan group 15 meters away.

And sometimes body leaves fall on you there,

But sometimes birds come and shit on you also.

And so in order to be able to work with this interesting range,

Variety of phenomena,

Various things that fall on one and around one,

Metta is very helpful.

I have a lot of experience with that.

What makes it possible to be able to sit under the Bodhi tree for 10 hours a day when it's hot,

When it's cold,

When you're sick?

Faith in the Buddha and metta,

A capacity to be with things as they are.

This is very,

Very important.

So I always like to encourage the Wat Nanachar community to please give good energy to your metta pavana.

And may all beings be well,

May all beings be happy,

Is where we'd like to be able to take it.

But that loving-kindness towards all beings,

It has to be radiated from the center of this conventional being.

So if you can't yet hold really profound,

Beautiful,

Deeply nourishing loving-kindness in the core of this being,

There's no way you're going to be able to radiate it profoundly to other beings.

So this is something that has to be done.

This is something that has to be accomplished.

And so you shouldn't think it's selfish or self-indulgent or vain to wish yourself well and try to fill your own heart with loving-kindness to the utmost of your ability.

This is a unnegotiable,

Fundamentally important,

Something that you have to be able to do.

It only becomes self-indulgent if you don't move on from there.

If you do move on from there,

As the traditional training encourages,

To include more beings that you find it easy to have loving-kindness towards,

And then larger numbers of beings that you feel neutral towards,

And then finally beings that you have aversion towards,

Then it might be vain and selfish if you don't cultivate it further.

But in terms of the initial stages,

You have to.

You have to be able to hold a genuine quality of unconditional love,

Loving-acceptance,

Goodwill,

Which isn't judging and rejecting and pushing away,

Kind of shooting yourself in the foot.

So please try to feel confident in the value of that.

And if you feel a lot of resistance to it,

Then you have to have metta for that.

So compassion works with the metta.

And I find a good way to get a compassionate response going is just to ask yourself,

If you're feeling a lot of resistance to metta practice,

That's a kind of a suffering.

So you put your awareness in your heart area,

Ask yourself,

Is there suffering?

Is this suffering?

And if you can feel that it is suffering,

That there is suffering,

Then you ask yourself,

Can I respond to this with kindness?

So with compassion,

In terms of meditation,

You don't have to do anything in terms of physically or with your speech,

But in terms of responding with your heart,

It's just without wish.

May I be free from suffering?

And so you become aware of the suffering,

And then you just soften,

And you just make the kind wish.

May this be able to be resolved.

May I be able to go beyond this.

May I be free from suffering.

And if you can get some compassion for the conventional being that suffers,

I mean,

That's why we're here.

I don't think you'd be coming and maintaining precepts regarding to celibacy,

And all of the things that you have to give up if you didn't have some suffering.

And if you didn't believe that there was a way to go beyond suffering,

That's what brings us here.

So having kindness,

Not judgmentalness,

Towards your own suffering is something that will be very nurturing.

And it's very important because I'm 21 panzas,

And I've seen many,

Many monks disrobe.

Just noticing about half of the community here are very new people,

People coming to the training,

And so.

.

.

Many people around 10 panzas,

12 panzas,

14 panzas,

Very good monks.

And they get a bit fed up because they wanted more results than the results that they got.

And there's something in them that's judging this lack of result.

And they decide to leave the training.

And I've met many of these people after they've disrobed,

And you ask them,

OK,

So do you feel that you've developed further since disrobing?

I've never met a single person who said they had.

Do you feel good about disrobing?

I think I met one.

Of all the people that disrobe,

One person felt that they were in a better state.

Most people feel that things degenerated.

So we have to be careful if you're really interested in doing this for a lifetime.

I could never commit to it when I first came to the training.

I could only get through one panza and then commit to another panza.

When I got to five panzas,

I committed to ten panzas.

When I got to ten panzas,

I committed to 20.

Now I'm intending to be a bhikkhu until I die.

But one has to work up to that kind of resolute determination,

And stretch one's capacity.

But if you do really have faith in this training,

There's really not much point in going backwards.

And so one of the qualities that help people to stay is whether or not you've cultivated these brahmoviharas.

In the brahmoviharas,

The Buddha describes as a pleasant abiding here and now.

So it's like if you genuinely have metta for yourself,

Meditating isn't a painful experience.

You can just be kind to yourself.

And contentment isn't difficult to attain.

But if there's something inside you that's saying it's not good enough yet,

It should be better than this,

Why aren't you,

Why don't you have the jhanas,

Why don't you have the jhanas,

You should be a sotapanna by now.

Then that's really painful.

And Ajahn Chah says,

You can water the tree,

And then you have to wait for the sun,

And you can fertilize it.

But with regards to when the fruit comes,

We don't have control over that.

And this is actually kind of a Futra.

But you will explore this secret right now.

That what the Bible says,

In the Torah it says,

In the Biology they say,

You will�� trabajar down down down down down down and mana.

This is self-view that thinks it knows when the fruit should come.

And that's not what you should be listening to.

That's delusion.

And trust the Kripa Rajas,

Trust the path and trust that it will ripen in its own time.

But with regards really,

I mean,

I've seen many,

Many monks do this.

So somehow I'm at 21 punts and intending to continue.

So one of the things I look at that I cultivated that many of my friends didn't is I have been more diligent with the Brahma Vihara's practice.

And so I do think it's very helpful.

But talking about faith in the Buddha,

In the path,

In the Kripa Rajas,

In the teachings,

Then in your ability,

It's very important.

It's not possible that the nature of one being is different to the nature of another being.

So the fact that the Buddha could become a Buddha,

He didn't start as a special being.

He started as an ordinary being with greed,

Hatred and delusion.

At one point,

He probably had more greed,

Hatred and delusion than we all have right now,

At some point in his karmic history.

But he kept training himself and he didn't give up.

And in terms of having a willingness to be patient with the process,

You think about the Buddha spending four asankhya and a hundred thousand eons to build the qualities and the virtue to be a Buddha.

An eon is like the time since the Big Bang and the universe expanding and then the universe contracting and burning up again.

That's one eon.

So a hundred thousand eons,

That's the small part at the end.

After the four asankhya,

The incalculable,

Only a Buddha can measure that sheer amount of time.

So I think it's good to challenge our impatience sometimes and it's good to challenge our expectation of quick results.

If you really surrender to this training and to this process,

It doesn't matter when the results come.

That's the present moment,

Dhamma.

It is how it is now and you keep practicing and at some point there's going to be a moment where things change significantly.

And until then you do have small insights which become bigger insights,

Which become deeper insights,

Which become universe exploding,

Liberating insights.

So checking in your practice.

Faith gives rise to energy,

One of the reasons I wanted to talk about it.

So check your levels of faith.

Sometimes we want to have faith in a place and that's only one of the things you need to have faith in.

No single place is going to be perfect.

No single place is going to inspire you a lot.

It will for a little while.

When you come from your worldly life and you come to what Nanachar is very inspiring and you stay here for six months is less inspiring.

And then you have to maintain a perspective.

One of the other good things about going to India is seeing a lot of very poorly behaved monks and not trained monks,

Fake monks even,

Robbers in robes,

Selling Bodhi leaves under the Bodhi tree.

And you come back to a place like Nanachar and it's like,

Well,

I know a lot of some people might be feeling now that it's not so inspiring but take it from me,

It's very inspiring.

You have to have enough faith in the place where you're training.

You don't have to have great faith.

What you need to have great faith in is the Buddha.

And you need to have great faith in the Kripa Rajans.

You need to have enough faith that the place where you're practicing is good enough.

And then you need to have faith in your ability.

And the other thing I want to suggest that you need to have faith in is effort.

And no one else can do this for you.

This is something we have to give attention to.

So,

For great effort,

Part of the Bodhi Paki Atamas,

We have to put forth the effort.

This is a karmic path.

The Eight-Four Path is a set of karmic conditions that lead to a state beyond karma.

So we have to use the conditions.

We have to cultivate certain qualities,

Generate certain types of merit.

And then realizing the unconditioned is the result.

But we have to work with these conditions and we have to put really a lot of effort into it.

Motivated from compassion,

Motivated with faith.

This is very different from being motivated by willpower.

If you can get some good energy from a correct quality of faith,

Take away the,

Drop away some of the things that sap energy,

Then you'll find that when you put forth an effort,

Good energy arises.

And this is what we then have to invest into our consistent mindfulness.

And if you're mindful consistently throughout the day and you meditate morning,

Afternoon,

Evening,

Every day,

Then there will be a development of more samadhi and there will be seeing things more clearly according to their characteristics.

That's what wisdom is.

Wisdom is seeing things according to their real characteristics,

Not according to delusion or misinterpretation.

In terms of wanting profound results this lifetime,

I think it's wholesome.

But it has to be held in a certain way.

It can't be held with expecting them.

But it's good to be determined to sow the causes,

But without the time frame.

And that's the tricky part.

So 21 puntsers,

Middle-aged grey-haired man now.

I'm not reducing my efforts.

I don't want to be one of these monks that gets to 20,

30 puntsers and looks back when I was a young monk and thinks that I was really inspired and I practiced hard as a young monk.

I want to be the kind of monk that gets more senior and thinks,

Because actually I wasn't very impressive as a young monk.

I complained a lot,

Cried quite a bit at my kuti and bitched and moaned about various things.

So I wasn't impressive as a young bhikkhu,

But I did have a strong quality of faith.

And I did have courage and determination,

As well as a lot of complaining.

But what I have faith in is slowly increasing your efforts over time and not giving up.

And if you do that,

Then you become capable of doing more than you thought you could do.

And you do get some good results as a result of your practice.

I thought I would read something because I kept a bit of a journal when I was in India.

And I'm just going to read a few paragraphs because I think it captures some of what we were practicing with.

So I wrote this when I'd reached the.

.

.

This was day 42 out of 45 days of intensive retreat.

And it was the day that I reached 99% of my goal,

2,

970 hours of 3,

000.

This was the day when I really allowed myself to feel truly confident that I was actually going to make it to the total of 3,

000 hours.

I have never allowed myself to feel this since making the vow after completing 1,

000 hours that I would complete 2,

000 more here.

I was committed and determined,

But not complacent because I knew it could simply not be taken for granted.

There was a lot of hard work before me and infinite potential for obstructions.

The bomb scare the month before we arrived could have led to greater restrictions where sitting all day may not have been possible.

Or a bomb could actually have exploded.

The sharp knee pain on the first day in my left knee that I'd never had before could have gotten worse.

The food poisoning,

The chest infection might have been minor illnesses compared to a more serious one that followed.

And then there is the slow buildup of fatigue and exhaustion.

There could have been more and more weddings,

Late night weddings with loud music keeping us from sleep.

The physical and mental energy just might not be there to carry me through.

And tripping up the staircase and falling over might have been truly debilitating rather than just leaving an apple-sized bruise in beautiful shades of purple,

Red and blue.

And yet,

Day 42 of 45 has come and gone.

Having gotten to the 99% point of my goal today,

Then anticipating commencing the first of the final three days tomorrow that will comprise the last 1% was a true watershed moment.

An enormous pressure fell away from my heart and there were quiet tears of joy and relief.

By mid-afternoon I could feel that the end of the meditation marathon was truly very close.

In a way,

I think that today has been the day where I actually felt the true accomplishment of this task and felt relieved of the enormous burden too.

Goodness,

Those bittersweet yet delicious tears of joy and relief on the cushion this afternoon were hard won.

Sheer exhaustion as the weeks progress shrink your world a great deal and you just have to try and get through the day,

One day at a time.

Sometimes it feels like you won't make it to the end of the day and so you simply don't have the energy to think of the future at all.

So much so that I had not anticipated this wonderful moment.

It really caught me by surprise.

It is astonishing to think that just yesterday I'd felt such tremendous resistance in the morning meditation.

Now,

Just 30 or so hours later it all seems so close.

The days have gone by one after another and finally it's truly within reach.

Of course this meditation vow has never actually been about reaching a certain number.

I have been clear about this from the beginning.

Setting this goal was actually about forcing myself to commit even more deeply to a transformative process,

One that I am already deeply committed to anyway.

It was about stretching spiritual capacities and abilities and increasing the chances of experiencing true insight and deep peace,

About taking several steps further along a journey towards final liberation.

And doing this in the very place where the Buddhas in this universe reached their final goal after thousands of eons of cultivation.

In working out my abilities to sit longer here over a period of years,

Then stretching the time periods out for longer and in not allowing for days off except for illness during these retreats,

I have been deliberately working right at the very limit of my ability and stretching and stretching it further because it is possible to do more here if you have great faith when recollecting the example and efforts of the Buddha.

The five spiritual powers of faith,

Energy,

Mindfulness,

Concentration and wisdom that Lord Buddha explained as being qualities which lead to enlightenment,

Get developed a great deal in meditation retreats.

Perhaps especially in this place where there is so much faith and spiritual energy.

Meditating in Bodhgaya with all of its noisy,

Chaotic,

Crazy charm requires a development of mindfulness and skillful means as well as wisdom.

And you couldn't or wouldn't do it without great faith.

The faith is then deepened further in the process.

But it has not just been struggle.

The commitment,

Consistency,

Effort and struggle create a container which is very rich in spiritual potential.

Although I have not yet attained a higher stage of enlightenment,

There has been development.

There have been many wonderful moments of deep peace,

Of seeing the mind let go of things which cause suffering and then experiencing the mind at peace through having let go.

There have been experiences of extremely deep faith and gratitude towards the Buddhas and this path.

There have been periods where the loving kindness meditation became so vast that I could not have imagined it possible to feel such love.

Similarly,

I have been able to experience profound equanimity towards the most extraordinary impingement that I had never have considered possible a few years ago.

There were other special experiences too,

But our monastic rules forbid me from describing them further.

Suffice to say though,

That these times of practice of the Mahabodhi temple,

As well as being quite difficult,

Have also been deeply encouraging and rewarding.

I just want to point to,

If you had told me 10 years ago that I would meditate 10 hours a day in Bodh Gaya for a month and a half and that I would do that repeatedly,

I don't think I would have believed it actually.

And so I just want to suggest to people that if you're willing to have a longer time frame than most people have,

What we want to achieve within this month,

One year,

Two years,

Five years,

If you're willing to think about what you might be able to do after a couple of decades and within one lifetime and a few more lifetimes,

Then I think you'll probably be able to do much more than you ever imagined.

So I offer that as my reflection this morning.

Reviews

Lovely~

🙏🏽

Very interesting and inspirational talk. Ajahn is a wonderful storyteller. I appreciate and learn so much from him.

Very inspiring. Thanks for sharing 🙏

This talk was at once an inspiration and a pointing out of a pathway. It was a promise for motivation and of greater effort that we may believe ourselves to be capable of.

What a wonderful and inspiring talk. Thank you. I will be listening to the talk several times. 🙏💐

So inspiring in taking my practice one step further

Sādhu! Sādhu! Sādhu! 

This is a powerfully inspiring talk, and one that I have now listened to when I needed it most. Thank you. I am deeply grateful for this insight that I have received.

Hugely encouraging, thank you.

Well received 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

A wonderful talk. What's for a feeling. I wish you much power
Sahdhu 🙏 Sahdhu 🙏 Sahdhu 🙏

I really like the idea of using the lists as a mantra.

Once again, Ajahn Achalo speaks exactly what I needed to hear. I am profoundly grateful.

This for this ;) inspirational!! Hug

A story of unflinching faith. Truly inspirational. Thank you so much.

Thank You and Sadhu! Inspiring effort and faith 🙏🏼

So inspired by Ajahn's deep devotion and level of self sacrifice, grateful for his teaching's 🙇‍♀️💚🌺

Thank you for sharing this journey!