Peaceful Mind
In the collection of his talks entitled Food for the Heart (Massachusetts, 2002), Ajahn Chah says, “The serene and peaceful mind is the true epitome of human achievement” (p. 64).
I read these words soon after I began studying Buddhism years ago. I wondered, just how does one achieve a serene and peaceful mind? Continuing to read Ajahn Chah’s talks, I found that the chief method that he urged on his disciples was to observe their own minds, which was to observe the operation of the skandhas within them. I began this practice.
In Buddhist philosophy, the skandhas are a group of five aggregates that are said to constitute the entirety of a human being. They are form, which means all bodily sensations of sight, sound, movement, smell, and taste; liking and disliking; perception, which means awareness of bodily sensations and of emotions; mental formations, meaning thoughts and emotions; and consciousness.
When I began observing my mind, I followed Ajahn Chah’s advice to note that I had no control over the skandhas at all. I could see that this was true of bodily sensations: if there was something in front of my eyes, I saw it, if there was a sound near me, I heard it, without willing any of this at all. I could see that lack of control was also true of other skandhas. I could not prevent myself from preferring one person or thing over another; I could not prevent the welter of thoughts that streamed through my mind daily, nor prevent myself from feeling sad or happy or becoming angry.
Eventually it occurred to me that since I had no control over the skandhas, there may have been no I or me in my system. At this point, consciousness of self lessened. What the Buddha, in the Bahiya Sutta, said would happen, in part did happen. He said that when the “I” or “you” was no longer part of consciousness, stress vanished.
Ajahn Chah’s “serene and peaceful mind,” to a degree, did come about.
This left the question, if I wasn’t “I,” then who or what was I? Ajahn Chah called it Original Mind, but he thought it pointless to name it. For myself, without consciousness of “I” continually pressing on me, I couldn’t identify who I was except to say it was deeply joyful and I was very grateful for it.