Introduction

‘CITTAVIVEKA’, the title of this book, is a word in the Pali language meaning ‘the mind of non-attachment’. A major theme of the Buddha’s teaching – known as the Dhamma – is that suffering is caused by attachment, and that the aim and result of the correct application of the teachings is a mind of non-attachment.

Actually, through the practice of Buddhist meditation, the very impression of a substantial permanent mind is understood as being a mirage, the result of attaching to a sequence of fleeting mental states. As long as that model of permanence is retained – even with the wish to have or be a permanently non-attached mind – it will give rise to further painful (if subtle) I attachment. So the ‘cittaviveka’ is not another fixed mental state, but a sensitive response in each moment, a non-grasping that Ajahn Sumedho frequently calls ‘letting go’. This practice of lightness or ‘enlightenment’ is not a matter of affirmation or rejection, but of a clear-minded investigation of what we can know through our senses. It is the method that underlies the teachings in this book and the way of life that evolves from these teachings […]

Excerpt From: Ajahn Sumedho. “Cittaviveka.”