Remembering Past Lives at Pa Auk
Now a meditation in high demand, I knew Beth Upton years ago, as a serious nun practitioner under Pa Auk Sayadaw. Long before the pandemic and the coup, we caught up in Yangon to record a podcast, where she spoke about her life story and her practice. In the following passage, she responds to the Pa Auk practice of remembering past lives.
“By focusing on authentic observation and deepening our understanding of mentality and materiality, we can gain insight into the workings of our mind and experience a deeper level of awareness.”
“Yeah, actually, it's not that difficult [to remember past lives]. The challenging step would be to develop enough concentration. But once you have enough concentration, the first practice is to observe the mentality of the recent past. The instruction would be something like this: Engage in a memorable mental activity, such as making an offering to the Buddha or entering a state of deep concentration, and then proceed with your meditation. Next, observe the mental processes that arose just before you started meditating. These processes might include seeing your meditation cushion and having the intention to sit. Then, go back a little further and try to discern the mental processes involved in making the offering to the Buddha or experiencing jhana. Continue going back in time, observing what you were doing in the moments preceding that. Can you perceive the mental process of hearing a sound or seeing something? As you go further back, you may even start to perceive mental processes that you don't consciously remember in the usual way memory functions. Even though you haven't retained those memories consciously, you can still discern the underlying mentality. Depending on your level of concentration, you can go further and further back, even recalling mental processes from early childhood or even before birth.
Now, regarding the question of accuracy and authenticity, we begin by focusing on what we know to be true—the recent past. Then, when it comes to imagining or projecting an image, that is something we can consciously superimpose or fabricate, similar to how memory works. However, we cannot imagine or fabricate mind moments. Mind moments are not images or concepts; they are authentic experiences. While we might make mistakes in discerning them accurately, we cannot create them or assign certain feelings to specific moments in the past.
If we were to fabricate or assign feelings to past moments, our present mind would be aware of that fabrication. We could create something in the present, like anger, and then try to project it as a past experience. However, at the level of practice we are discussing, there would be a heightened awareness that we are engaging in such fabrication. We cannot fabricate mind moments in the same way we can imagine images or concepts. We cannot project our own desires onto past experiences. People do make mistakes in discerning mental processes because perception can be unreliable, much like in dreams. However, when we observe the level of mentality and materiality, we cannot imagine it incorrectly. The best we can do is to discern it poorly. For example, we might mistake a second jhana mental process for a first jhana mental process and miss some mental factors. Our ability to discern accurately depends on the sharpness of our wisdom, but we cannot invent or imagine mind moments without being aware that we are doing so.
So, in conclusion, the practice involves developing concentration and then observing the mental processes of the recent past and gradually going further back in time. While there is a possibility of making mistakes in discernment, we cannot fabricate or imagine mind moments in the same way we can create images or concepts. Our awareness prevents us from falsely assigning feelings or fabricating experiences. We can poorly discern the subtleties of past mental processes, but we cannot create them without being aware of the fabrication.
By focusing on authentic observation and deepening our understanding of mentality and materiality, we can gain insight into the workings of our mind and experience a deeper level of awareness. This practice requires diligence, patience, and a sharpness of wisdom.”