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Noticing Space
by Ajahn Sumedho
in 11 Dec 2006
 (...previous)  We know how things are, rather than always trying to create things the way we might want them to be.
Now apply this to the mind. Use the 'I' consciousness to see space as an object to the 'I'. We can see that mentally there are the thoughts, emotions the mental conditions that arise and cease. Usually we are dazzled, repelled or just bound by the thoughts and emotions; we go from one thing to another trying to get rid of them or reacting, controlling and manipulating them. So we never have any perspective in our lives, we just become obsessed with repression and indulgence; we are caught in those two extremes.
With meditation we have the opportunity to contemplate the mind. The silence of the mind is like the space in the room; it is always there, but it is subtle. It doesn't stand out, it doesn't grab your attention. It has no extreme quality which would stimulate and grasp your attention, so you have to pay attention, you have to be attentive. Now one can use the sound of silence (or the primordial sound, sound of the mind, or whatever you want to call it) very skilfully, by bringing it up, paying attention to it. By concentrating your attention on that for a while, it becomes something that you can really begin to know. It is the mode of knowing in which one can reflect. It's not a concentrated state you absorb into, it's not a suppressive kind of concentration. The mind is concentrated in a state of balance and openness, rather than absorbed into an object, so that one can actually think and use that as a way of seeing things in perspective letting things go.
Now I really want you to investigate this so that you begin to see how to let go of things rather than just have the idea that you should let go of things. You might come away from this retreat with the idea that you should let go of things. Then, when you can't let go of things, you'd start thinking, "I can't let go of things," but that is another ego problem that you have created. "Only others can let go, but I can't let go. I should let go - Venerable Sumedho said everybody should let go." But that very simple thing is another "I am", isn't it?
Now you can take that simple thing and begin to notice, reflect and contemplate the space around those two words; rather than looking for something else, you just sustain attention on the space around those two words. It's like looking at the space in this room; you don't go looking for the space, do you? 'Where is the space in this room?' thinking, 'I am looking for the space in this room, have you seen it?' What do you do? You look at it; you are open to it because it is here all the time. It is not anything you are going to find in the cupboard or in the next room or under the floor. It is right here now so you open, you begin to notice.
If you are still concentrated on the curtains, or the window or the people, you don't notice the space. But actually you don't have to get rid of all those things to notice the space; instead you begin just to open to the space, to notice it. Rather than focusing your attention on one thing, you are opening the mind completely; you are not choosing an object a conditioned object but the space where the conditioned objects are.
It's the same with the mind, you can apply that inwardly. When your eyes are closed, you are not looking at something, but it is like listening to the inner voices that go on those things that say, 'I am this, I should not be like that'... you use those for taking you to the space, rather than making a big problem about the obsessions and fears that go on in your mind. In this way, even the devil, or an evil thought, can take you to emptiness.
This is very skilful, because it is no longer a battle where we are trying to get rid of evil and kill off the devil. It is letting the devil have his due. The devil is an impermanent thing it rises and ceases in the mind so you don't have to making anything out of it. Devil or angels they are all the same really.
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