WISDOM MEDITATION
A meditation method by Master Duy Tue
A meditation method by Master Duy Tue
A spiritual handbook for anyone who wishes to achieve peace, success and happiness in life!
Everyday, we have to perform many tasks, tackle unusual situations and face various problems
for which we cannot find a solution.
For example, your husband or wife says or does something to make you angry; children disobey their parents; your parents-in-law make you confused or upset; or your son or daughter-in-law breaks your heart. Even your sisters and brothers upset you. Eventually your friends or your sweetheart betrays you.
Economic and financial difficulties might cause hardship to you or your business and make you feel like an underdog. All of these circumstances can cause worry, fear, despair, anxiety, and stress, leading to all kinds of diseases such as tuberculosis, liver or kidney dysfunctions, high blood pressure, coronary thrombosis, cerebral vascular accidents, etc.
In other words, life-related circumstances adversely impact your mind, causing its inability to find a sound solution. As a result, negative emotions affect decision making and cause uneasiness, anxiety and suffering.
In addition to these environmental events, your mind is constantly disturbed by your thoughts that automatically come up and make you feel uneasy and unable to concentrate on your daily work, resulting low efficiency and even mistakes.
Or there may be other reasons that keep your complexion from being naturally fresh and unaffected. Eventually you have to rely on cosmetics or get help from beauty parlors. In the end, it becomes rather difficult for you to promote sympathy and love from the people around you.
These problems will lead you to a narrow and unfortunate life. Life itself often raises so many questions that are not readily resolvable: you are like a student who is trying to deal with a mathematical exercise but fails to solve the problem because your brain jumps from formula to formula. When you are about to find an answer to a question, your mind suddenly switches to another question!
As a matter of fact, the main issue to deal with is your mind. In order to tackle life’s constantly changing problems, you must concentrate first on solving problems in your brain, and then the problems themselves may find no grounds to exist!
In other words, life-related circumstances adversely impact your mind, causing its inability to find a sound solution. As a result, negative emotions affect decision making and cause uneasiness, anxiety and suffering.
In addition to these environmental events, your mind is constantly disturbed by your thoughts that automatically come up and make you feel uneasy and unable to concentrate on your daily work, resulting low efficiency and even mistakes.
Or there may be other reasons that keep your complexion from being naturally fresh and unaffected. Eventually you have to rely on cosmetics or get help from beauty parlors. In the end, it becomes rather difficult for you to promote sympathy and love from the people around you.
These problems will lead you to a narrow and unfortunate life. Life itself often raises so many questions that are not readily resolvable: you are like a student who is trying to deal with a mathematical exercise but fails to solve the problem because your brain jumps from formula to formula. When you are about to find an answer to a question, your mind suddenly switches to another question!
As a matter of fact, the main issue to deal with is your mind. In order to tackle life’s constantly changing problems, you must concentrate first on solving problems in your brain, and then the problems themselves may find no grounds to exist!
For more than ten years, in the course of studying and understanding the mind’s mechanism, I have shared different methods with people from various classes in society and most of them have achieved marvelous results both in their physical and spiritual lives. They have found true peace of mind; their physical life has improved and their behavior towards human relationships has been more successful.
I use the term “Wisdom Meditation” to refer to the method used to stabilize the mind and monitor the brain.
However, before introducing some techniques of Wisdom Meditation, I wish to share with you some background information about how I have come up with those techniques. I am not an exceptional case compared with others who have experienced and talked about meditation methods. It just happened that I accidentally fell into the state where enlightenment emerged and I started to clearly understand the mind’s mechanism.
From that big event on, I found myself totally changed. It looks as if I was a newly born person in the present era, but in the meantime I found myself out of history. And due to that miraculous change, I have encountered a boundless happy life, with a brain deprived of combustible supplies for the thinking mind to function.
From that point forward, I have clearly recognized people’s disappointment, despair, anger, puzzlement and even panic without any escape, regardless of whatever role a person occupies in life. Although many people have tried to find different ways to resolve these deadlocks, there has not been a practical and efficient way to enable human beings to achieve peace of mind.
At the same time, I have found a path for everyone to live a happy life, provided that he/she listens without prejudice to what I share!
How my enlightenment took place?
The following are some points I would like to share with you. After spending years plunging into the secrets of life, its meaning and the origin of suffering, I accidentally found myself in a state of total happiness when my brain was somehow locked up.
This experience happened over three years. During the first part of this experience, I enjoyed twice the state of wonderful happiness. The second stage occurred many times over subsequent years when I saw the tangible world with my entirely locked thinking ability. And at the third stage, my thinking mind was not locked but all the supplies needed for its operation somehow vanished completely. Each stage revealed to me a clue which I decided to adopt to stabilize my spiritual life.
The first truth is that a sort of energy of unconditional happiness permanently exists within us.
This is the most fanciful, perfect, magic, enduring, stable, widest, and deepest happiness while a regular life directed by the thinking mind can never help obtain this achievement. This state of invaluable and miraculous happiness only emerges when the thinking machine stops functioning; it is not by any means related to the activities of the thinking mind and obviously does not depend on the life with tangible manifestations. This kind of happiness is common to all lives on this planet as well as to all lives from other planets.
The second truth is that, while carefully observing what happens from inside the mind to the outside, we will find the true meaning of life and the living essence of human beings.
The more accurately you observe things, the happier your life will be. Observing action helps your mind become fresher and more at ease. This experience clearly points out to me that, with the thinking machine being locked, there emerges a more meaningful life. It is the life with cautious observation, not the life monitored by the thinking mind. This is a truly real and more stable life with its concrete meaning; the thinking mind is not by any means the true life. While this experience happened with the thinking machine locked, an individual with alert observation would be aware that the brain could not function and there was complete absence of the notion of his own name and/or of surrounding objects.
In this state of mind, everything seen through our eyes is merely unconnected images appearing before them. Our body weight becomes much lighter; all substantial things we normally see will appear as if they were completely new or without previous existence or bearing no names. In short, everything stops at the observing stage. And at that very moment, anything I touched or saw automatically responded an answer that could not be found from the mind.
The third truth is that, when all material for the thinking machine had gone, I clearly understood the causal sources of my own suffering – they were the mind’s thoughts! In addition to this finding, I also realized that the energy required for a person’s happy life and endless love was covered, controlled or even destroyed by thoughts.
This experience also indicated very clearly to me that the mind could only work properly in the state when there were not any stored materials inside it, namely: memories, knowledge gained in life, philosophy, religious beliefs, or political theories set up to build up a typical life for an individual or a family. There are no more model concepts for an individual, a family, a country’s community or a world.
Later on, I temporarily decided to live, work and love with an empty mind, not to follow any discipline. Through experience I soon realized that all ideologies, notions, knowledge, scripts, life concepts and acquired philosophy theories or doctrines could be voided for ever so as to provide an empty room in the brain for a better perception and that wisdom would illuminate and help identify the origin of suffering (eventually including physical suffering) which mankind has encountered in myriad incarnations: the culprit being obviously the mind. Along with prejudice, human beings do not see this truth but on the contrary they trust and stick to the resistance to disown it!
After going through three periods of this experience, I spent another two years enjoying the kind of happiness that I had never had before. It was like I found an ancient road, the road the Creator had laid for mankind at the very beginning of life , and that this road was still there, dustless and without the vestige of time; no silhouette of man existed on it, except myself! Though I felt really lonely, I was also filled with great joy when escaping from the notion of age, origin, form, skin color, language, knowledge, earnings as well as culture and civilization. I self-realized that this wonderful road for mankind was still hidden somewhere behind the mind. There seemed to be no entrance to this road but still, for a period of over 10 years, I had made a great effort to guide my noble disciples in joining me and to transfer the miracle of the road to them and to other people.
In other words, the three periods of the experience took my mind to a world that creates an unlimited path not only to stop suffering completely, but also to open an extensive and endless ability to create, love, work and fully enjoy a life that is always tough and constantly changing.
After encountering the aforementioned experience three times, I began gaining a habit of practicing some methods to hold fast to the WISDOM SPACE in my mind and I was truly happy! Up to the present moment, I often observe and keep track of all changes inside my mind. I observe my life’s cause; consider it a true life, a breath for the Wisdom’s mind: the disbelief in the thinking mind being my life’s target! And I have been truly happy.
To illustrate the three periods, I temporarily divide my life into 3 phases, of which the last phase I term as a truly happy phase. I have elaborated on these three phases of my life on Skype for a broader discussion, namely:
- the phase of childhood’s naive tear;
- the phase of pay-off tear in life when the secret of the brain has not been discovered; and
- the tear-reappearing phase of the return of naivety in an old brain.
The second phase is extremely important and essential! It is a sine-qua-non condition for the third phase, a must condition for love and wisdom to flourish. In the second phase, due to the pay-off in life that most people wish to stay away from life’s pressures and try to envisage a world from which they can runaway.
When it comes to the third phase, which is similar to the first one, there seems to be no need of going anywhere after death: should you talk about Paradise to a baby? The baby is currently in the paradise of his/her own brain and of the surroundings. He/she does not need any notion of paradise.
The nature of the first phase is the transparent naivety of the brain where needs do not come from the thinking mind and it is also the characteristic of a truly grown-up person in terms of spirituality but he/she must reach the third phase to recognize it.
Speaking of happiness or maturity is speaking about the mind’s sublimation but not about knowledge, about political or economic power, much less world power or theological power!
World power does not exist in the domain of happiness or maturity.
In more than 10 years, despite severe misery and all tricks of jealousy from mankind’s selfishness, I kept maintaining my great pledge, enduring my goodwill to help people discover, build up and pave the path to peace of mind. From young fellows to senior people, when implementing the observation technique of respiration outlined in the method of wisdom meditation, the mind as well as emotions are improved greatly. Those people who achieve amazing changes are those who stay close to me listening and practicing what I have shared with them.
In order to reach the third phase of life, practice is essential, not the accumulation of knowledge.
I strongly recommend that the development of knowledge be avoided, since any knowledge will surely keep you drowned deeply in the pay-off phase of life.
Knowledge will not bring about the opposite-direction change to obtain happiness in the third phase.
The only prompt efficiency and most hopeful way is to doubt what you consider as gained knowledge and you should try to find all opportunity to contact and discuss with me. I will try to create some methods to help you make an approach to the old path.
From my own laborious training in taking the observation habit as my life’s cause, and from concrete successful results by numerous people who have learned with me in the past ten years, I have temporarily devised some implementation lessons to help people enjoy a much happier life!
We gradually set up research and application centers to bring Wisdom into present day life in many nations. Those centers shall be the right places for guiding interested people to seek for a more peaceful, successful and happy life.
The following are some implementation methods to help you stay away from the stream of thoughts and emotions.
Let’s look into the details of Wisdom Meditation
What is Wisdom meditation?
- It is a simple method to activate the boundless stillness of the brain for the purpose of observing any indication of phenomena in the mind’s operational mechanism such as thoughts, ideas, judgment, reasoning, deduction, greed, past memories, imagined events to come… While doing so, we can rejoin many comfortable peace spaces and wisely react in a natural and successful manner to suit any situation with the mind always being in its unaffected nature.
- This meditation technique aims at identifying negative emotions such as anxiety, discomfort, suffering, anger, despair, hopelessness, currently residing in the mind and along with the impact of the meditation, those emotions will disappear and the brain will regain calmness, ease, awareness and transparency in all life situations;
- This is a method of training to put an end to the belief or sticker-in-the-thoughts of the brain. A boundless awareness space will then emerge, bringing along required intelligence to come to existence with joy of peace and true happiness. The result of this way of life is that the brain always remains peaceful and a kind of love unaffected by any life condition will come true.This permanent and everlasting love is the utmost beauty of mankind! It will bring about unlimited happiness through experiencing a true love, not the kind of love generated from thoughts, judgment or reasoning.
- This is the key to open and truly enjoy the happiness inside our mind.
The ultimate aim of Wisdom Meditation is to open the boundless space in the brain.
It can be divided into two levels - basic and advanced. Meditating at the basic level is to relieve stress, the brain being calm due to the absence of thinking activity. This level is the borderline between the aforementioned phases two and three. It is transforming an individual’s suffering to the stage of non- suffering in order to become a more creative, happy and lovable person.
The advanced level of meditation has the goal to enter into the identification of the nature of the thinking process, aiming at minimizing its destructive impact on our spiritual and physical lives. At this level, the practitioner will enjoy the miracle of awareness and can almost split 99% of the thinking from awareness. At phase two, the practitioner will practice to enter phase three of life, the sublimation phase of the mind.
In this booklet, only the basic level will be discussed due to its practical aspect towards everyday life. The basic level includes meditation techniques while walking, standing, lying down, even while working or performing some activity like talking, by observing the thoughts coming to mind. Hundreds and even thousands of techniques of meditation, observation and listening could be envisaged to achieve awareness and to master the mind, but here I wish to present only some of the most popular ones. When you get used to them, you can devise a technique that most suits your situation.
Whatever method you use, it would be of the utmost importance to share with me in the first implementation stage as “an egg needs heat to develop when being hatched”.
Basic meditation techniques
The purpose of this meditation technique is to set up a perfect habit for the brain. Instead of leaving the brain free to think, we now bring the brain to a state of constant awareness through the habit of observation and listening: that habit is actually the only aim of the meditation technique. Happiness and joy, as well as other miraculous findings to be enjoyed by the practitioner, rest with this noble nature and perfect habit from which there are almost unlimited benefits.
The first beneficial gain of the technique is the efficient relief of stress and worry, the peaceful mind being able to control emotions generated by the thinking process and develop the habit of enjoying happiness when the brain rests in calmness.
Whatever method you use, it would be of the utmost importance to share with me in the first implementation stage as “an egg needs heat to develop when being hatched”.
Basic meditation techniques
The purpose of this meditation technique is to set up a perfect habit for the brain. Instead of leaving the brain free to think, we now bring the brain to a state of constant awareness through the habit of observation and listening: that habit is actually the only aim of the meditation technique. Happiness and joy, as well as other miraculous findings to be enjoyed by the practitioner, rest with this noble nature and perfect habit from which there are almost unlimited benefits.
The first beneficial gain of the technique is the efficient relief of stress and worry, the peaceful mind being able to control emotions generated by the thinking process and develop the habit of enjoying happiness when the brain rests in calmness.
1. Meditation in sitting posture
In various meditation techniques, the sitting meditation is basic and essential but we should not spend too much time during the day for meditation practice. We will consider the sitting meditation only as a special case which cannot be replaced by other techniques. In the sitting meditation, it is mandatory to note related facts, such as the time of the day for meditation, the duration of time for each session, the kind of clothing, the place and particularly the preparation of the mind’s state before the session.
As to the spirit of meditation: It is preferential to make a vow “I pledge to keep on training myself to gain a habit to live in the state of an aware mind, not allowing free thinking to destroy my spiritual life or to shadow my clairvoyant world of awareness. This habit is the great joy for me and even for mankind.”
As to clothing: Wear comfortable clothing that does not cause any discomfort while meditating.
As to place : any place but if possible it is recommended to practice in a quiet atmosphere in nature since the calmness of the nature will help the practitioner achieve 50% of the result! In fact, the basic characteristic of natural calmness and the awareness state are really the one thing indispensable for meditation.
As to the time of day for meditation: It is not necessary to fix a time because in so doing it would be contrary to the spirit of meditation which is natural and comfortable. Thus, if we set up a fixed time for meditation we could easily come up with formalism, which, in reality, is not to enjoy meditation. It should be kept in mind that, in practicing meditation, a pure and noble habit is being trained to enjoy the happiness inside when thinking does not freely flow in the mind. In brief, whenever we feel a need or an enthusiasm we can start meditating in a sitting posture. We can even enjoy a short meditation session in a sitting posture while working in the office!
As to duration of meditation: up to your choice with a minimum 5 minutes or longer, but not too long since we can drop ourselves into a state of neither thoughtlessness nor awareness!
As to sitting posture: any posture, lotus or semi-lotus or sitting in a chair; when sitting in a chair, both feet must rest on the floor. The back and head must be straight up to ease blood circulation and respiration; the lips should be closed with the tongue touching the upper part of the mouth to prevent saliva from getting dry. For a good start, it is preferential to give a gentle massage to the face, ears and eyes with both hands to release tension and promote comfort. In case we sit on a flat floor it is suggested to use a cushion.
The observation target while meditating in sitting posture: Using the respiration is the easiest and most efficient method! After preparation as above, slightly close the eyes (or open ¼), direct the eyes toward the nose and bring the attention to the in-out movements of the respiration. When breathing in, we follow the in-movement and when breathing out, we follow the out-movement. If this awareness is lacking, we cannot consider the respiration as a meditation practice: we normally breathe round the clock without paying attention to the respiration, and that is not meditation!
To render this awareness constantly permanent, the practitioner can follow the respiration by counting its cycles. A cycle of respiration in and out shall be counted as one. Count from 1 to 20 cycles and back to one again. This counting technique should last for at least 5 minutes for each meditation session.
How to breathe: breathe gently, the breath being a little longer than normal to allow more oxygen to get in, seeking better health after “working long hours without true respiration”. Many respiration alternatives can be envisaged but we ought not to forget to keep an eye on the respiration process in its in-out movements. For example, we can notice the respiration being short or long, its noise big or low; we can adjust the respiration so as to gradually diminish it for a better observation and attentive listening. An alarm clock can be used for timing the wanted meditation duration; but when we are used to it, the alarm clock will serve no purpose!
2. Meditation while observing the thought:
At the basic level, we can make use of the thinking process as the observation target that is to observe the inner world making it a habit to bring the vision or the attention to the inside of the brain.
Again, this technique of meditation can be implemented by various postures: sitting, lying, standing, walking, strolling or even while working. This can be performed in any circumstance while we are calm. This is an extremely marvelous habit which many practitioners have successfully achieved, and it has become an essential habit. As many youngsters have stated “while watching and observing the thinking process in any instant of the day we are enjoying a true life and working in a happy atmosphere, full of peace and contentment and if ever we happen to omit it for one day, we will feel uneasy and uncomfortable”.
This is in fact an enjoyable result of this technique of meditation through observing the thoughts.
Up to the present, most of those who have practiced this technique, ranging from as young as 13 years of age to as old as 77 years of age, in this country as well as overseas, have achieved great success. This is actually joyful news to everybody.
The technique of meditation by observing the thoughts consists of the following:
Only observe and clearly “know” whether or not any thought comes up in the mind! If meditating in a sitting posture, we loosely close our eyes and concentrate toward the midpoint between brows, then observe as if we are searching for a certain image in a “black hole”. We should be aware that we are observing something or those we have already lost the observation action. If we have lost our observation we must come back to it. For a start, we will observe the thoughts at the midpoint between brows. If we notice the presence of any thought or any image, then we should be aware of their presence or their disappearance. A simple but essential keynote is that we must know whether there exists any thought or not: if it is present in the mind, we know its presence, and if it is not present we know its non existence. Should there be a presence of any thought, then we just pay attention to that thought or that image only, we will not do anything else. If there is not any thought present, then we just keep on observing this point, waiting for a thought or an image to appear, as if we were watching a dark screen : if any picture appears we will watch the picture but if nothing appears, then just watch the black screen!
Constantly identify the appearance of any thought and keep our attention on the present moment.
In other meditation postures such as meditation while working, studying, reading, talking… we also pay attention to watch if there appears any thought or image. If so, then we know clearly its presence and draw our attention back to the work we are doing, to the current reality.
Before going to sleep, we close our eyes and check if there exists a thought or any image in our mind.
If so, then just watch it as if we were watching a movie of thoughts, since any thought is just a shadow of the past that persists in the mind due to our silent acceptance ; it is like we are, or another person is doing an important and sustained activity in reality . In other words we cannot tell the difference between life and awareness. Awareness is an invisible, ever existing entity, while life is a continuous stream, with no beginning or end, of all forms including thoughts, notions, writings, meanings, philosophy value…. We should not therefore count on that streamline since we truly own the invisible, everlasting and omnipresent existence of awareness.
3. Meditation while working
We can even apply this meditation while working. When working we should clearly realize we are doing a particular task and should bring full attention to this work. During which time, if any thought arises we should “know” that the thought is now drawing our attention to its side. Upon noticing that, we again bring our attention from the thought to the current job. For example, when we are doing manicurist work for a customer but a certain thought comes to our mind; we must realize it and draw the attention to the manicurist work without getting drowned in the thinking stream. This is actually our attention struggling between the thinking mechanism and awareness. In so practicing we will train ourselves to gain the habit of 100% mindfulness on the work being done: we must know we are concentrating on the work.
When we lose attention due to the arising of a certain thought, then we will realize that the attention to the work has been lost and we must get the attention back. We will gain the habit to observe, to concentrate and we will gradually be able to master our attention. In a short period of time, this habit will supply us with indescribable joy and happiness!
4. Meditation while doing physical exercises, leisurely walking
Meditating while leisurely walking is to be aware of the way we are walking. While strolling around, we bring our attention to the steps (clearly aware that we are observing the steps), then switch the attention from the steps to the attention to the breath, noticing the breath being long or short, light or heavy. Then we switch again our attention to the surrounding area.
In so practicing we will gain the habit to monitor actively the observation in the state of awareness that is to know what is going on.
5. Meditation while speaking in public
This meditation technique is also based on observation, listening and clearly knowing what we and the other partner are speaking. Carefully listen with no judgment to our partner’s statements; Do not judge ourselves or our partner, either. We should be constantly aware and watching if any thought arises to bring the attention back to the conversation; that is, during speech, we must know if any thought arises to shift 100% of the attention back to the subject being discussed or to the reality of the speech.
If we do not do so, the thought will lead us out of the subject, out of the reality and we will be embarrassed before the audience. If we can keep our awareness, our speech will automatically be fluent and eloquent. Remember that contentedly satisfied eloquence comes from awareness, not from thinking. The awareness will supply us with adequate eloquence which can conquer the audience who will gain interest while listening to our speech.
Temporary conclusion
Some years ago, many people told me: “We became vegetarian and practiced meditation for many years, at least ten years with different masters, we understand what Buddha nature is and keep longing for the true spiritual experience, but in vain. However we have committed ourselves to a spiritual cultivation and waited for enlightenment but many times we become discontented.”
Particularly a 16-year-old student practitioner Nguyễn đức Luận with Buddhist name Duy Nguyện, together with his parents, who had come to the USA to learn how to meditate with me, raised this question: “When we practice this meditation, how long will it take to experience the enlightenment? If it takes a long time, then youngsters like us can not follow!”
I answered: “As a matter of fact, there is nothing to experience in terms of enlightenment. The purpose of meditation is not to prove a noble aim. The important truth in practicing meditation is to achieve the only practical aim: gaining the habit that is totally beneficial both in our physical and spiritual lives. Thus, it is essential to do the meditation exercise frequently in order that the habit becomes refined, and with this purely holy habit, the practitioner will enjoy a stable and endless happiness inside. This habit will develop a perfect life of wisdom. It will also bring you luck and peace of mind”.
Duy Nguyện then shouted merrily since he had now realized that the question became rather easy: shift the meditation aim to get enlightenment to a much simpler purpose to gain a good habit promoting human positiveness to develop. Duy Nguyện has decided to make the effort to practice meditation, since it will bring about an immediate result, the formation of the awareness habit, and will wash away the thinking habit, “this is in fact the habit I like because it is beneficial to my current life and my academic study!”
In brief, the meditation method outlined here has no aim to attain enlightenment but merely to formulate a habit to promote and master the awareness in the brain/mind whose mechanism is to freely conduct the thinking process, without causing disturbance and mental suffering. From this habit, the practitioner shall have all joy, true happiness and a more stable morale.
Some supplementary methods to widen and deepen into wisdom space.
What does wisdom space mean?
It is difficult to define exactly what wisdom space is but in my terms, it is mainly for you to obtain true happiness. All definitions or concepts that I have used are just to help you approach the truly happy world with abundant love, energy and enjoy; a satisfactory human life on this planet.
Just imagine that your brain is composed of various “drawers” to store everything you have seen, heard, studied and researched. For example, one drawer contains knowledge, experience and images of the past; while others keep in stock all desire, selfishness, altruism, conditional love energy, imagination, clear and practical visions, assessment, innocence, prejudice, arrogance, modesty, jealousy, anger, suffering, mistakes, regret and fear. And another drawer stores patience, true love, etc. Those drawers can be easily recognized and you can open them to make use of the accumulated contents in everyday activities but it is rather difficult. There is, however, a very special, perfect and miraculous drawer whose function is to solve any impasse of a human being. If we have a belief in an Omnipotent Almighty God or in Buddha with the ability to comprehend all matters and possess a mysterious and invisible power to create everything, then this “drawer” will be exactly the typical one. This drawer is empty but overwhelmed with miraculous power to supply you with whatever you want. I call it in my own terms the Wisdom Drawer. And implementing the Wisdom Meditation is to practice methods aiming at activating this miraculously invaluable drawer.
To bring you enthusiasm in practicing and gaining this habit for your spiritual cultivation, I offer herewith an extra addendum of humorous suggestions as follows:
Keep your personal ideas in a locker
As you know, it is very difficult for anybody to give up personal opinions or judgment, even toward people we love or respect the most. This fact deeply affects our meditation as well as our spiritual habits.
For example, a couple truly loves each other but often get into hot debates; their family is by far not happy. This incidental event has happened repeatedly for many years. The husband and wife wish to stop quarreling but instead of sitting down to discuss and find out the reason for their frequent quarrels, the wife secretly went to a fortuneteller to seek advice.
I answered: “As a matter of fact, there is nothing to experience in terms of enlightenment. The purpose of meditation is not to prove a noble aim. The important truth in practicing meditation is to achieve the only practical aim: gaining the habit that is totally beneficial both in our physical and spiritual lives. Thus, it is essential to do the meditation exercise frequently in order that the habit becomes refined, and with this purely holy habit, the practitioner will enjoy a stable and endless happiness inside. This habit will develop a perfect life of wisdom. It will also bring you luck and peace of mind”.
Duy Nguyện then shouted merrily since he had now realized that the question became rather easy: shift the meditation aim to get enlightenment to a much simpler purpose to gain a good habit promoting human positiveness to develop. Duy Nguyện has decided to make the effort to practice meditation, since it will bring about an immediate result, the formation of the awareness habit, and will wash away the thinking habit, “this is in fact the habit I like because it is beneficial to my current life and my academic study!”
In brief, the meditation method outlined here has no aim to attain enlightenment but merely to formulate a habit to promote and master the awareness in the brain/mind whose mechanism is to freely conduct the thinking process, without causing disturbance and mental suffering. From this habit, the practitioner shall have all joy, true happiness and a more stable morale.
Some supplementary methods to widen and deepen into wisdom space.
What does wisdom space mean?
It is difficult to define exactly what wisdom space is but in my terms, it is mainly for you to obtain true happiness. All definitions or concepts that I have used are just to help you approach the truly happy world with abundant love, energy and enjoy; a satisfactory human life on this planet.
Just imagine that your brain is composed of various “drawers” to store everything you have seen, heard, studied and researched. For example, one drawer contains knowledge, experience and images of the past; while others keep in stock all desire, selfishness, altruism, conditional love energy, imagination, clear and practical visions, assessment, innocence, prejudice, arrogance, modesty, jealousy, anger, suffering, mistakes, regret and fear. And another drawer stores patience, true love, etc. Those drawers can be easily recognized and you can open them to make use of the accumulated contents in everyday activities but it is rather difficult. There is, however, a very special, perfect and miraculous drawer whose function is to solve any impasse of a human being. If we have a belief in an Omnipotent Almighty God or in Buddha with the ability to comprehend all matters and possess a mysterious and invisible power to create everything, then this “drawer” will be exactly the typical one. This drawer is empty but overwhelmed with miraculous power to supply you with whatever you want. I call it in my own terms the Wisdom Drawer. And implementing the Wisdom Meditation is to practice methods aiming at activating this miraculously invaluable drawer.
To bring you enthusiasm in practicing and gaining this habit for your spiritual cultivation, I offer herewith an extra addendum of humorous suggestions as follows:
Keep your personal ideas in a locker
As you know, it is very difficult for anybody to give up personal opinions or judgment, even toward people we love or respect the most. This fact deeply affects our meditation as well as our spiritual habits.
For example, a couple truly loves each other but often get into hot debates; their family is by far not happy. This incidental event has happened repeatedly for many years. The husband and wife wish to stop quarreling but instead of sitting down to discuss and find out the reason for their frequent quarrels, the wife secretly went to a fortuneteller to seek advice.
The good-hearted fortuneteller suggested that they start their spiritual cultivation to promote happiness. With such a belief, the wife requested her husband to come to a pagoda asking for the know-how from a monk to lead a religious life. The husband, not believing in monks, did not agree with the idea and guessed that the quarreling was actually due to his wife’s talkative and obstinate character. The wife always wanted her husband to follow her opinions in teaching their children, in their relationship with friends and even in his routine doings.
Despite the husband’s discontent, the wife continued visiting the pagoda and then the monk taught her the magic mantra “Om Mani Pad Me Hum” which Tibetan Buddhists read everyday expecting a better life in their coming reincarnation. The monk insisted that those magic words were very effective and that if she kept reading them patiently, her husband would change his attitude. The wife followed the monk’s suggestion and murmured those words day in day out!
The husband grew more and more angry and often yelled at his wife for her stupid mumbling like a mentally ill person.
The wife became so sad but still believed she was on the right track of her religious path. She supposed that her husband kept scolding her because he did not accept the path. Upon someone’s suggestion, she decided to go to Tibet to meet Tibetan monks so as to learn the right way of saying the magic words more accurately. Of course the couple ended up in divorce because the husband could not accept his wife’s behavior and thought that she was stubbornly ignorant and misled by the monks!
I guarantee that, if the couple change themselves and put aside from their minds their prejudged ideas, then happiness would immediately rein in the family.
My observation also reveals many conflicts in the life of the husband and wife because each person always sticks to his or her own ideas and this fact cause happiness to fly away! Many times I have shared a way to effectively resolve problems, by looking further inside the brain to identify the cause of dispute leading to misfortune. Once the cause is found, everything can be easily solved.
I have also offered a joyful yet useful suggestion that if you have arranged worship altars for ancestors, religious masters, Buddha, Jesus…. for the sake of getting help but received no results, then you should make one more multi-locker cabinet, made of precious wood if possible, otherwise a regular cupboard could be just as fine; label it as Opinions Storing Warehouse and keep it in the most solemn place. The number of lockers will suit the number of grown-up members in the family. Upon returning home, each member, regardless whether he or she is the President or a regular citizen, is supposed to put personal opinions into this cabinet. In such a way each member of the family will live with direct intuition without the interference of personal opinions causing discontent. And in addition, you should also arrange another cabinet in which visiting friends can keep their opinions!
At “wisdom centers” where I conduct the practice of Wisdom Meditation techniques and give lectures on how Wisdom can flourish, it is also recommended to arrange a big multi-locker cabinet to be installed at the central hall for use by every practitioner.
Lovable dogs
Almost all inhabitants on this planet, specifically those in developed countries of Western Europe, Northern Europe and North America, have suffered lots of stress for different reasons, particularly people in countries with a life tied to credit (where people’s life depends on their debt from banks). In such a situation, pet dogs may play an important role in terms of eradicating suffering ... Some people complained that they had not found happiness in any circumstance of their marriage life, without knowing the reasons why but admitting their destiny. A lot of middle-aged women have moaned about their husband’s unmindfulness, indifference and disloyalty. They asked me to help them find a way to receive better treatment from their husbands. I just tell them to learn why pet dogs are adored by most people; sometimes that adoration was indeed warmer than the love between two persons. Some billionaires even left billions of dollars for their pet dogs when they passed away.
In what way do pet dogs behave to win their masters’ heart? First of all, it is because dogs cannot say anything to hurt their masters. They never complain, make no mistakes and never betray their masters. Consequently, how on earth can a person say rude words to them? They deserve our care and protection. Furthermore, they just play around naively, evoking an innocent atmosphere inside their master’s mind. With no intention at all, pet dogs contribute to gradually bring their masters back to their original path. Pet dogs really deserve our love and special care!
A glance at durians
Looking at a durian, you will notice its thorny solid skin that can cause bleeding if you accidentally hit it. However, inside the tough and detestable skin is its sweet, delicious and nourishing pulp. You must use the right way to open up a durian that is by means of a dull but strong knife to split its skin along the outer protruding parts from bottom up, to get the pulp.
When you look at someone, you often see the surface outlook and the surface appearance usually manifests uncomfortable or non-attractive things according to your prejudice. Beneath those unpleasant things, there may be valuable aspects that are hard to see. If you want them to show their valuable and lovable personal features, you should look at the best things that they are often proud of. Only act upon those aspects with your most sincere attitude and honesty; then both you and the other partner will enjoy peace, joy and happiness.
Do not trust your mind
I have repeatedly told practitioners not to continue piling up knowledge but use factual stories to question ourselves or doubt our mind. Only by this method we can gain control of our thinking mind .This method will actually change us so that our souls can flourish and our minds remain peaceful.
Do not stick any label on ourselves
One early Autumn evening when strolling along Huntington Beach in California with two successful businessmen, I told them that “In order to open up the Wisdom Space you should not stick any label on yourselves. Do not consider yourselves to be successful at the moment, and then later on you will not face failure. Do not judge yourself better than other people, then later on you will not feel the underdog or disgraced. Do not think you are first class citizens, since this is only a false vision from the tricky mind. Consequently, you will live a much simpler and comfortable life and the real value of yourselves will emerge. Do not think yourselves rich, and you will never feel poor. If any of you encounters a misfortune, do not view it as a failure. Patiently wait for something better and a certain miracle is likely to come to resolve the difficulty encountered.”
At present, those two businessmen are laborious practitioners of Wisdom Meditation. They have achieved encouraging results: they have found their mind more at ease and their working efficiency has been much improved. They can do things that they never could before; they are ready to save part of their precious time to look after their own moral life and their family.
Do not think yourself to be moral
I have also told some practitioners that “Moral concepts are not truly virtues; they are merely conventions imposed by humans. Do not pretend yourself to be a moral person or a representative of any moral lifestyle, much less thinking you are in a process of cultivating a religious life, because it will mislead your mind to cheat yourself and you will cheat others. Not pretending to be a moral person, then the Wisdom Space in your mind will adequately adjust your lifestyle to suit different moral norms on this planet. Refusing to pretend to be a moral will surely open up the Wisdom Space and the light of your heart will shine everywhere.
Best wishes to all of you!
Duy Tuệ.
Translated by Duy Nhật Nhãn and Duy Minh Tri
Edited by Peter John Hack
Source: http://www.duytue.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=219:duytue-wisdom-meditation-method&catid=29:whats-duytue-wisdom-meditation-method&Itemid=93
