In June, when I attended the day of meditation with Ajahn Brahm at the Theosophical Society, I was struck by his description of Ajahn Chah’s mind. Ajahn Chah, the Thai meditation master who taught so many of our Western monks before his death in 1992, had a mind like “a still forest pool,” according to Jack Kornfield. In fact, there is a book by that title that talks about the meditation of Ajahn Chah.
What might the mind of a meditation master be like?
A product of insight meditation and mindfulness is a sort of removal from what is happening, a kind of detachment. It is assumed that someone who achieves this level of detachment is not swept away by emotion and dryly functions as an observer but not a participant in the world. On closer inspection, this idea of detachment resembles indifference or even aversion.
If you were to climb inside the mind of an awakened master, I suspect that you would find a stream of consciousness that is at once moving but also quite still. The stream itself would flow steadily but be undisturbed by turbulence, and not impeded or redirected by every obstruction. You would see emotions and feelings arise, but you would not see any blockages or clinging to them. You would feel both great calm and great confidence. You would be struck by the absence of doubt in the master’s mind. You would observe an alert, engaged, completely natural attitude without artifice or dissembling of any kind, a mind that is free of inner conflict and judgment.
How the master acts in the world is not dependent on convention, criticism, social demands, judgments, laws, or commandments. Instead, the mind that is free can spontaneously respond with wisdom and compassion to whatever presents itself moment by moment. This is possible because this mind is fully and effortlessly present and there is no separation between thinker and thought, no subject-object relationship.
This mind reflects the constant rising and falling away of the universe arranging and rearranging itself in an endless array of patterns, like a constantly changing kaleidoscope. It exists in perfect harmony with those shifting patterns–without clinging to past arrangements or future possibilities. This is what we strive for.
