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An article by
Sayadaw U Ottamasara
Edited by Florian Dobson
Education
in human society is only temporary. If you don’t
keep studying, what you put in your memory will soon
be forgotten. Meditation is the real education because
the truth we come to understand is eternal. To practice
we do nothing, and by doing nothing the peace comes
naturally, the freedom comes naturally. By knowing nothing,
wisdom appears naturally, never to disappear again.
Because it came from nature automatically, it is permanent.
By meditating, wisdom will appear more and more fully,
[always increasing]. If you read a book written about
4 noble truths or if you listen to my teachings, you
will understand only while you are listening. After
some time, your understanding will disappear; it is
impermanent. If you meditate, the understanding through
wisdom that appears in you does not depend on me or
on you - it doesn’t depend on what is impermanent
so it doesn’t disappear.
This
wisdom will begin to appear only when you can abandon
your effort – in other words, your ego. Doing
without effort is doing without ‘I’, which
means accepting and surrendering to nature. We are breaking
the limitation of 'I' by staying simply with the emptiness
of nature. On the other hand, doing with ‘I’
is going against nature – it is breaking the natural
law of emptiness of self. So, by taking ourselves to
be ‘I’, we are breaking the natural law
and we suffer because of it. We lose our freedom and
take on the endless responsibilities of a man. A man
has everything to like, dislike, worry and think about.
The idea of a man is only a creation of mind (not an
eternal God), everything mind creates is only an illusion.
So meditation is destroying the false creations of mind,
destroying the limitations caused by accepting the mind
as ‘mine’. In reality, there is no mine
in mind, knowing this is wisdom.
The
wisdom, which understands there is no I ,will appear
in whoever follows this method exactly. It’s only
cause and effect, if you make the right cause, the desired
effect will surely appear, it can't go wrong. If there
is no effect, you are making the wrong cause; which
means you are not following the method exactly. It has
nothing to do with who you are, how old you are, or
which religion you believe in. The appearance of wisdom
will be the benefit for whoever makes the right cause.
I made many causes to change my life and that’s
why my life changed forever. If you are in doubt you
are making the wrong cause, if you are hoping for the
result you are making the wrong cause. Thinking and
being interested are also the wrong causes - which result
in suffering instead of wisdom. [Ironically] the only
right cause is trying to make no other cause than to
do and know nothing. This means, not accepting anything
that appears, which is the result of the wrong causes
we have made previously. So, practically, we must accept
ourselves as nothing (empty of ‘I’) and
let our mind rest in the moment, moment after moment
after moment. This is stopping the mind’s work,
or, protecting the mind to be free of action/doing.
In this way, our mind can live without making the wrong
causes of thinking, hoping for the future, revisiting
the past, and being busy in present. Mind will become
mind only.
“If
you accept knowing something [it is making the wrong
cause]; the effect will be something to know will appear
endlessly. And along with it, there will be a person
[‘I’] who misunderstands that something
to exist. In this way, ‘I’ will always be
suffering, always being busy with the non-stop [appearance
of] endless things to do and thing to know. On the other
hand, knowing of nothing is removing the cause of all
suffering, because for nothing there is nothing to do
or know, it is complete in itself.
Not
accepting anything is the cause we have to make, and
as a result, the wisdom of emptiness will appear. The
appearing of this wisdom is the cause of freedom, the
cause of purity of mind, of a peace of mind that can
never be imagined by the ego – or ‘I’.
The liberation we get by meditating depends on nothing
that’s why it is permanent, because nothing can
only be nothing. That is why the happiness, freedom,
and liberation we get from knowing nothing is permanent.
We have nothing to take care of; nothing to do to protect
our peace of mind.
“With [the misunderstanding of] 'I', there are
endless to do, endless things to think about, to be
seen and heard. Because of this misunderstanding, we
are always busy; busy with nonsense. Because of non-enlightenment,
people will never get freedom, they will always be busy
misunderstanding 'I' to be real. So we must practice
meditation with the idea of nothing … because
freedom appears when knowing nothing is happening
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