Pa Auk: Recalling Past Lives
My interview with Beth Upton took place two years ago. This was long before the coup, and even before the pandemic. These two cataclysmic events dramatically changed the mission of our podcast platform, as we began to feel a responsibility to go beyond stories of the spiritual path, and bring awareness to a country and a people where many of these spiritual practices emerged from. We are now going back through our archive to release some of these earlier conversations, as we feel it is important that we balance the heavier stories coming out of Myanmar with reminders of just how much the country has offered for so many years. The positive response we’ve received from this interview with Beth is enormous, so people really resonated with her! Some have even decided to seek her out as a teacher, so inspired did they become with this talk. In the following excerpt, Beth and I discuss her practice at Pa Auk of discerning past lives.
“It’s no more difficult to go back a few moments further. And then you’re in the past life, you’re in the death time of the past life. ”
Host: So is looking into one's past lives part of the practice of Pa Auk?
Beth: Yeah, yeah.
Host: I think probably there's a lot of meditators who haven't had such a profound experience, or even know how something like that would be possible or how it would feel going into that. Can you say more about that?
Beth: Yeah, actually it's not that difficult. The difficult step would be to develop enough concentration. But once there's enough concentration, the first practice that we do is to look at recent past mentality. So the instruction would be something like, you would do something memorable with your mind, like you could make an offering to the Buddha or enter jhāna, and then you sit down and do your meditation. Then, you look at the mental processes that arise just before you started to meditate. So the mental processes might be you saw your meditation cushion, had the volition to sit, etc. Then you try to go back a little bit further and see if you can discern the mental processes of making that offering to the Buddha, or the mental process of that jhāna. And then go back a little bit further, like what were you doing in the moments before that? Can you see the mental process that heard that sound or saw that thing, and as you go back further and further, you can start to see the mentality of things that you didn't consciously remember. So you had made no memory of that in the normal way that memory functions, but yet, you can still discern that mentality. And then depending on the level of concentration, you can go back further and further, you can start to jump, like, ‘Okay, that's the mentality that was arising when I was five years old, this back into the mother's womb time…’
Host: Just ask one question, how does one know that's accurate? How do you know you're not superimposing something onto it? Or fabricating something new that that you're telling yourself was a memory from them? How do you how do you know that it's accurate or authentic?
Beth: We start by doing the one that we know is true with the recent past. Then what you can imagine is an image, and what you can superimpose or project is an image like in the normal way of memory. What you can't imagine is mind moments. It's not an image, it's not a concept. You could discern it wrong. Like it could be a moment of anger, and you mistake it as a moment of sadness. You could discern it wrong, but you couldn't imagine it. It's not an image. It's not coming from your perception. It's a mind moment.
Host: But you can't in the present moment, like fabricate or assign a certain kind of feeling to when you felt at a certain time?
Beth: If you did that, you would also be able to observe your present mind moment, seeing that fabrication doing that fabrication, so what you could create something in the present, like anger, for example. And then you could sort of move it in your perception back as if it were the path. But at that level of practice, there'd be too much awareness on that was what you were doing. It is possible to do in the way of image and concept, like, ‘Oh, I was a fish.’ At that time, it is possible to project your own wanting. People do make mistakes, because perception is so unreliable. That kind of conceptual perception is so unreliable, like dreaming. But when we're descending on the level of mentality and materiality, we can't imagine it wrong. The best we can do is badly discern it. Like, ‘Oh, I thought that was a first jhāna mental process. Actually, it was a second jhāna mental process. I missed a mental factor or two.’ We can barely discern if our wisdom isn't sharp, but we can't make it up, without awareness that that's what we're doing..
Host: Okay. So continue you said that you go to the earliest moments of this life, and then what?
Beth: Then it's no more difficult to just go back a few moments further. And then you're in the past life, you're in the death time of the past life. So there's no extra work needed to go back into the past life, back to this thing of concept. Sometimes when the concentration is strong, meditators will start to see concept and story at that time. ‘Oh, I was a diver, I was a soldier,’ whatever it might be. At that time, the instruction is to analyze those concepts down to the level of materiality and mentality so if they can do, it will be a real one. If they can't, it will be their hope or their wish or their projection. And then again to do many, many times, so we become familiar with it. There's a danger, though, and it's kind of interesting. Meditators will sometimes get stuck on this story level. So the teachers need a lot of skill, for they're not to let that happen. Because when we do that, actually, we just increase the realm of Self, and we have a greater field of things to identify with. So not only am I Beth, who grew up in London and became a nun, but I'm also this, whatever it might be in this world, and all that suffering is also mine. And all those achievements are also mine. So we can do that as a mistake, because the power of the practice of Dependent Origination is to make the perception of non-self much, much stronger through the understanding of Cause and Effect. When we use the practice in that way, it's a phenomenally powerful tool. The Buddha said, the one who understands Dependent Origination understands the Dhamma. And it's true, it's a destroyer of doubt! And so profound, so beautiful, so beautiful, right? That time, really understanding what an incredible mind the Buddha had!
Host: Are you able to share anything about your own observations of that practice? Or is this not allowed?
Beth: My personal past life? Sometimes I do. But depending on the case, and I don't know who your listenership is. But I'll say like briefly, we’re asked to discern the most recent five past lives in detail, which is standard for the method, so that we can have enough practice of seeing the Cause and Effect over multiple lives. And then also five lives into the future, if we have that many. But oftentimes, people practicing at that level, they're close to removing all their defilements and sometimes they only have one or two or or even no future lives. And then there's another practice that Pa Auk Sayadaw is now teaching. To see many, many thousands of past lives, but not in so much detail. Just to get this sense of the round of rebirth being so long, and really, a very deep sense of disenchantment with samsara. We can find that teaching in the suttas where the Buddha talks about the beings dying and being reborn, and again, and again and again and again. So that's a really powerful perception to have.