So is life just human conscious experience? This is a question, a conundrum, something to contemplate. And death, what is that? What is that in terms of the experience we have? What is then liberty? Freedom? In terms of experience now. We can hold to our ideas of freedom, liberty and fight for that, and manage to even kill other people in order to fight for our freedom, and later when we have that freedom, we're in a state of bondage to our fears, to our biases, to our memories. Liberty and freedom comes with the ability to really relax in the present; to have that sense of being at ease and content can only come through understanding the Dharma, or the way things really are. We can't make a world where we create freedom and equality, trying to make everyone happy. We're taught often that it is in these kinds of very grasping ideas that can end up being very tyrannical. As I impose my idea upon you, because that's what I think is good for you and will make you happy, the actual movement, the actual thing that I'm doing is probably tyrannizing you.

I remember getting angry with another monk one time. He was being very obstinate and very difficult over a long period of time. I got exasperated so I yelled at him in an angry tone of voice. I told him he shouldn't be the way he had been, that he should be different, and what I was saying was right. I was telling the truth; it was good advice, but what he actually felt at that moment was my anger. In spite of the profound teaching I was giving him, all he was really feeling was "Ajahn Sumedho hates me," and at that moment I probably did. This is probably where we need to realize the sensitive state that we're in, that even the most benevolent and kind words and greatest concepts imposed on us from above end up being some kind of tyranny.

The way to liberate human beings is not to impose on them, but to awaken them. This is the essence of Buddha's teaching, awakening. You awake them, you don't scare them to death. It's a gentle process, isn't it? I could shock you to wake you up, but you may be in a state of shock. That's not being awake. Being awake comes from a more subtle level, learning to trust in yourself, in the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, in the present moment, learning to be content, learning to open your mind and heart to the present out of trust, love, compassion rather than out of some imperative from some domineering person. This I found very much in my own experience in Thailand. For example, Ajahn Chah was someone who encouraged awakeness, not a tyrannical master who bullied me into behaving properly. He was stern and serious but also one felt a tremendous sense of openness, respect and love that I've never really felt from any other human being. In his presence, one felt trusting and opened up because he inspired that feeling, giving off that message not through anything he said, but through his very presence. That was something wonderful, as a personal experience.

When I first went to Thailand to train, I couldn't speak the language. If you've ever lived in a place where you don't understand what people are saying, you can get very paranoid. I've talked to many people who lived in places where they don't know what people are talking about, and almost everyone suffered from paranoia. Thai people like to laugh. They'll look at me and start to laugh but I don't know what they're laughing about and saying. I could get very offended and feel very put on or threatened by that. For the first few months I suffered a lot from this sense of paranoia. I didn't know quite what to make of these people-different culture, different climate, different food and language--and I was the only western person there. I was also the biggest one. Back then I was a new monk, so for photographs there'd be these nice little monks down here lined up, then all of a sudden this big white thing. You say, "Oh, that's Ajahn Sumedho!" It was a really horrid photograph of me. Paranoia is a state of mind where there's a lack of trust, a lack of understanding, where you can only distrust and suspect the worst of things around you. Living in a Buddhist monastery with Ajahn Chah in Thailand, that paranoia could be reflected in my conscious experience because there were no grounds for that kind of emotion. When I started to contemplate the situation I was in, looking more deeply than just an immediate reactivity, I saw the situation was very good. People were good; monks were nice; and the teacher was wise; the opportunity was excellent. Just by contemplating the reality of that situation, I began to feel a sense of trust. In that state of trust, I began to open myself, to be willing to relax into, to reflect what is actually coming up in my mind.

Also, living in a monastic community of men, there are various reactions that come up that I acquired from my own American background. I interpreted experience or reacted to body language, or the way someone would move, look, act or speak with certain tones of voice using my American upbringing. I began to realize how sensitive this state is; this human realm is the state of sensitivity. We were encourage; contemplate the state of our humanity. What is a human being anyway? Even though I could say what a human being was like, I had never really contemplated my own or anyone else's humanity. I knew the word, it's common enough, but what does that mean? In contemplating humanity, we wonder what makes a human being different from a gorilla or chimpanzee? We can say, "Well, we're more intelligent," because we're quite arrogant, aren't we? We're the smartest. Thus we can think that our humanity is that we have a better brain than a chimpanzee or a gorilla.

However, in terms of Dharma, we consider the humanity, the human gift is that we have this reflective ability, a reflective mind. We’re not just a more advanced computer than a chimpanzee; we actually have an ability to reflect on experiences. We can awaken through our own feelings. We can observe through our experience and consciousness. We can contemplate the impermanence of our own thoughts, feelings, emotions, changing conditions through sensory experience. The Buddha emphasized that this very reflective ability of the mind is the liberating ground. To be free from bondage to the conditioned realm, liberty, isn't really being able to do what you want, is it? Being able to learn from experiences is where liberty lies. Where you free yourself from the attachments, the shackles, the chains that we bind ourselves with, through our ignorance and our closed minds, or just being creatures following our habits, without understanding.

The human birth in Buddhist countries is considered a very fortunate one. This interested me, because when I joined Ajahn Chah, I was quite cynical because I thought being human was a bad thing. I couldn't see the point of being human; it seems an endless kind of confusion, an being sensitive like this is a plague. From the time that you're born until the time you die, you have this incessant, irritating impingement on your senses. Then we have a retentive mind that remembers those irritations. I can remember what I thought were terrible times, of things that were done to me forty, fifty years ago. Remembering them now, fifty years later, they're still terrible. So contemplating it is just like being tied to something that is an incessant irritant, like living in a realm where there's nothing but poison oak (like Abhayagiri), or mosquitoes or ticks; there are no escape from these things that are constantly after you when you are attached to the conditioned realm.  

~ To be continued