You need something to scare the mind ... - Ajahn Suchart
“You need something to scare the mind, to get the mind inside.”
Question: When doing walking meditation, one should focus only in the thought “Buddho” or should focus in the sensations of the feet and at the same time in the thought “Buddho, Buddho”?
Than Ajahn: Whichever method that can prevent you from thinking about other things, that’s the goal of meditation. To calm the mind you have to stop thinking you can use whichever method that can prevent you from thinking about other things. You can use the mantra or you can focus on the body while walking like looking at the feet: left foot, right foot, and just concentrate on that only. Don’t think about other things. When you don’t think, then your mind can become empty, peaceful and happy and when you sit, your mind can become fully still.
When you walk, your mind cannot become fully still because the mind still has to control the body so it cannot become still because it still has work to do. If you want the mind to become totally still, you have to sit down and close your eyes, then the mind can become still because there is nothing for the mind to do, it doesn’t have to control the body.
You need to sit down because the body has to be still before the mind can be still. If the body still moves then the mind cannot be still except on a very exceptional circumstances like when you walk and you run into a tiger where you might suddenly stop because you know you cannot move the body, then the mind can become fully absorbed. If the body moves, the mind has to do work, it has to control the body, it has to tell the body to move so it cannot be fully absorbed. If you want to be fully absorbed, you have to sit down.
If you want to be fully absorbed while you are walking, you have to walk in the jungle and hope to run into a tiger, like one of Luangpuu Mun’s disciples, he liked to walk at night and he used a lantern while walking. One night he ran into a tiger and his mind suddenly just stopped, it went into absorption right away. He didn’t know for how long he stood there, when he came out of absorption, the lantern that lid with the candle had been all burnt out and he still stood there at the same position just like before he went into full absorption, the body remained like a statue and the tiger didn’t know that it was a body and the tiger just left the body alone because it didn’t move. When the body doesn’t move, it is just like a tree and the tiger doesn’t attack a tree, a tiger only attacks something which runs. So he was safe because the tiger didn’t know that he was there, he stood there like a tree, like a statue. So you need something to scare the mind, to get the mind inside.
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