The Dhamma of Ajaan Paññāvaddho-Part 2: Samadhi and Wisdom

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The way of Dhamma takes you steadily more and more inward. In body contemplation, you look at the skin on another person and then at your own skin and realize that both are of the same nature. So you take an external observation and bring it inward. You may see a bone while you’re eating some chicken and it occurs to you that you’ve got a bone like that as well. Again, that’s bringing an external object inside yourself for investigation. This is one way of examining things. If you're skilled at samãdhi meditation, looking inward can be done either from what one thinks of as the level of the eye or from that inner place where one knows. It can occur either way. It depends on the citta of the person. If you tell two people to focus on the heart and look at it, each will do it in a different way. Each finds out how to do it in their own way; and for that person it is probably the right way. Each person will do it in their own natural way. Some people may go out here and look back. Another person my go down and look from that position. Another person looks from up here downward. Another may go to the back and look forward. There are all sorts of ways of doing this. Do you mean to go inside and look from the inside to the outside? Look inside to something that is inside. It varies with each person and each person has to do what they understand is the right way of doing it, because there isn’t one standard way. If you focus outwardly to contemplate something external – a person, an animal, a situation, a dead body, something loathsome – you first think of it externally. Then you apply that to yourself by seeing the similarity between that and your own body. That brings it home. If you're focusing inwardly in the body contemplation, you focus on the internal body parts like the bones, the kidney, the heart, the liver, the lungs and so on. All these are internal objects that you investigate by focusing inward. When one deals with people and doesn’t want to break the meditation… Mindfulness is the thing that is important there. If you are mindful, you won’t forget yourself. Not forgetting yourself means that you talk to the person from inside yourself, from your own position. You don’t forget yourself and put all your attention out there.


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