Extract from SMPLY THIS MOMENT!
by Ajahn Brahm
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7 DHAMMA PRACTICE
10th May 2000
I’ve been a monk for long time now and the whole purpose of my monastic life is not
to build monasteries or to go out and teach. It is to practise Dhamma.
Dhamma is something that we all need to have a feeling for. At the start we think we
know what Dhamma is and then with more faith and practice, we develop more
wisdom and understanding until finally full penetration of the Dhamma is achieved.
Dhamma is ehipassiko, it beckons us to ‘come and see’, and then it keeps leading
inwards. It keeps drawing us in. It’s one of the amazing qualities of the Dhamma that
the more you listen to it the more it draws you in, the more it takes hold of you as the
most important thing in life, the most important thing in many lives. You can’t resist
its invitation to come in, investigate, and get deeper into the Dhamma. That’s why
it’s also called opanayiko, it keeps leading us onwards.
The Goal of Dhamma
The more we practise the more we find out about the beauty of the Dhamma, and the
release that is in the Dhamma. I call it release because that’s how it feels at every step
of this path; with every progress that we make in this practice of Buddhism we feel
more release from difficulties and burdens. As far as the mind is concerned it gets
better and better. With our bodies it gets worse and worse, but we can’t do much
about that! But at least, if the mind is getting better and better, that gives us
something to look forward to in our practice. It’s an opanayiko practice. It’s leading
onwards. Where does it lead? It leads onwards into that beautiful peace, that
beautiful happiness, the freedom of the mind. It’s very important to know that the
goal of the Dhamma is freedom.
Often when people get upset and distressed, they come and talk to the monks about
their problems and difficulties in life. But with some people, you can see that it’s not
going to get any better, because they are not practising. They are not following a path
that leads to the freedom of the mind. In fact many people are walking a path that is
full of entanglements, a path that is going to lead to more problems and difficulties.
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You know it is going to happen that way because they are making more complications
and more attachments in the world. That’s the path that leads to suffering. When
people come to see the monks and they are suffering because their husband has died,
or their child has died, or they are very upset about something, it makes you question
why they have those attachments in the first place. You already have them in this
lifetime, but don’t do it again. You may want to get married or have relationships, but
isn’t it enough to look after this body and mind rather than trying to find fulfilment in
those things when there is always going to be separation at some stage?
When we understand the Dhamma we understand the practice of letting go, the
practice of renunciation. The practice of freeing the body and the mind from the
entanglements of the world is a path that is going to lead to more and more happiness,
more and more peace, more and more feeling of ease, and to more and more wisdom.
That is one of the other aspects of this Dhamma: it is to be seen by every wise person
for him or herself. That’s paccatta veditabbo viññūhī.
I sit up here and teach this Dhamma which you can agree with or not, You can accept
it or reject it, because either way it doesn’t really matter. The only thing a teacher can
ever do is show the way. Whether people want to listen to it or not that’s really up to
them. I can’t apply force. The point is that everyone has to find out for him or
herself. So my job is to point it out and encourage you to try it. I have to use as good
a sales pitch on jhāna, insight, and Enlightenment as I possibly can, because these
things are possible for human beings. I have to try and encourage everyone that it is
possible, that each one of you can achieve this. Once I convince people of that, then
people put forth the effort – that’s the ‘going onwards’. And it does create these
beautiful states of mind and feelings of freedom. It also creates wisdom. The more
one practises the more one understands this mind and this personality with all its
hang-ups: all it’s seeking for happiness, all its problems of ill will towards itself and
towards others. You see all of that as pure craziness. If you have a moment of ill will
towards anyone, towards yourself, or towards living, you are crazy. You are insane
because you are just hurting yourself; and you are creating misery for your own ‘self’.
Opening the Mind to Truth
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Adult people look after their own kamma. If we get angry at the weather, it’s not the
weather’s fault. If we get angry at the nail because it bends when we try to hammer it
into a piece of wood, it’s not the nails fault. That is life! Welcome to life. People
who argue with life are in denial – denial that things go wrong, denial that they are not
in control. People usually say that they are in control. They say life goes the way
they want it to go, but that’s not the truth of life. By that I mean the world outside, the
of weather, trees, nails, and books. That sort of world is completely beyond our
power and our control. Even though we have a little ability to manipulate the world,
don’t get sucked in and think that you are in control. If you do that it’s called
attachment.
Attachment is what we think we control. When we realise we don’t control anything,
then we are free from attachments. We can just float and flow rather than be
burdened by all these things; this is the wisdom that comes when we meditate. The
more we practise the Dhamma, the more we understand. There is a sense of the
opening up of the mind to truth. But with that opening of the mind to truth, we have
to be very careful because everyone thinks they are wise. So many people in this
world go around thinking that they are very knowledgeable and smart. Hardly anyone
admits that they are foolish.
That’s really strange isn’t it? Many people who come to the Buddhist Society in town
think that they are experts on Buddhism. That’s why they come and argue with us
sometimes. Maybe they’ve read a book and then they come and argue with a monk,
who has been living the life for thirty years. They really think that they can outwit a
monk! So this is it, everyone thinks that they are experts. Why? Because of illusion
or delusion. It is something that a person just cannot see; they think they’re wise.
That’s the reason this whole thing about wisdom – what it is and what it isn’t – is so
difficult to get a handle on.
I’ve always kept one of the beautiful sayings of the Buddha in mind. The Buddha
said to Venerable Upāli, and his foster mother Mahāpājapatī Gotamī, “Whatever
Dhammas you know lead to nibbidā...” This beautiful word nibbidā means revulsion
from the world, pushing us away from the things of the five senses. It leads to virāga;
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dispassion or fading away, which leads to nirodha, cessation, the ending of things,
which leads to upasama– this is perhaps the most beautiful term in the list – the peace
and tranquillity. This in turn leads to abhiññā, a really deep and profound knowledge,
which leads to sambodhi, enlightenment knowledge, which leads to Nibbāna. “If it
leads to those seven things;” the Buddha said, “Upāli, Mahāpājapatī Gotamī, you can
know for certain, and be absolutely sure that that is the Dhamma.”
That’s the teaching of the Buddha; that’s wisdom. I always check myself to see that
whether what I teach, what wisdom I think I have, produces the goods. Does it lead to
virāga, the fading away, to cessation, to deep peace, to profound knowledge,
Enlightenment, Nibbāna ? If it leads to those things it’s called wisdom. If it doesn’t
turn you away from the world, if it just creates more entanglements with the world
and you think that the world is a wonderful thing, then it’s not nibbidā. If you think
you can get rid of your attachments and cravings, and then live in this world and have
a jolly good time, that’s not nibbidā. Nibbidā is what sees the problem.
It’s not that life out there is suffering; it’s ‘me’ experiencing life as suffering. There is
also this dualism of subject and object, and it all comes together as dukkha, suffering,
the first noble truth. That’s how the Buddha became the Buddha, by seeing that truth,
seeing that there is no little corner of sa sāra where he could hang out and have a
good time. It’s rotten to the core. That is what the first noble truth means. That truth
leads us to nibbidā. It leads to a complete turning away from the world. It does not
lead to turning away from part of the world and then cherishing another part but to
turning away from the whole world – turning away from the world outside and also
turning away from the world inside.
Once that happens, nibbidā automatically leads us to virāga, the dispassion towards
the things of the world: you don’t care what people say about you; you don’t care so
much about your body, its health or vigour, about the things that you eat, or whether
the coffee runs out. What’s the big deal? There is always some tea, there is always
some water, there is always something to drink. Seeing this one understands virāga.
Wisdom leads to dispassion, it leads to the ending, the cessation of things. There are
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many people in the world who write big books about Buddhism and many write silly
books about Buddhism. There are also people who write the forewords to those books
and say what wonderful books they are. It’s just silly people supporting each other.
None of it seems to lead to virāga and nirodha, to that peacefulness of mind, the
upasama. Achieving those peaceful states of mind is a sure sign of wisdom.
Real Peace
If wisdom arises, its whole purpose, its whole job, its whole function, is to alleviate
suffering. It’s just like taking a pill. If it is the right pill, you take it and the ailment
goes or the pain lessens; that’s how you know if the pill is suitable for the ailment or
not. If it is wisdom and you can spout it around the coffee table, talk to your friends
about it, write books about it, but if it doesn’t make you peaceful, if it doesn’t liberate
you from suffering, what’s the point of it? In fact it’s not really wisdom at all. It’s
what we call papañca, proliferation. It’s just conceit. This is why the wisdom that
liberates one is the only wisdom that is worthwhile. This is what the Dhamma does to
you once you really become wise. It leads to peace and tranquillity; it takes you to
jhānas, to real peace.
People sometimes just don’t know what peace is. They think peace is when they can
get their own way and do whatever they want in this world. ‘Leave me in peace!’
What do they mean by ‘leave me in peace’? Is it so that they can watch their
television, so they can have relationships, and make a lot of money? That’s not peace
in the world. Real peace is not the peace outside but the peace inside the mind. It is
the mind that can be tranquil, that can be silent. It is the beautiful peace in the mind.
Sometimes we can hear that peace outside, especially in a quiet monastery like this,
on an evening when there is no wind, no rain, when words seem to echo in the silence.
That’s the beautiful peace that Dhamma leads towards. It’s wonderful to be able to
turn to the peace of nature, to the quietness of a monastery such as this.
I often turn to the memory of the quietness I experienced in some of the deep caves in
which I have meditated, because they really meant something to me in my life as a
monk. I have been fortunate to go to places in Thailand where there are forest
monasteries up in the hills that have deep caves. I was able to spend hours in those
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caves, so dark, so silent, just having wonderful meditations there. That external
silence seems to remind me of what I’m supposed to be doing. It seems to be pointing
in the direction of the inner silence. That’s the reason I taught at the weekend that one
of the ways to help one’s meditation is to recall, at the very beginning of each
meditation, the places or times when one was very quiet. Bring those places and
times of tranquillity into the minds eye by using the function of memory. Dwell upon
that time when you were tranquil, when the outside world was very still and peaceful.
If you can dwell on such a memory you will find that your inner mind will also
become tranquil. It’s a way of reminding yourself what the goal of all this is. It’s
about wise peace, the freedom of the mind from all this noise, all this doing, grasping
and craving. Once you can bring that into your minds eye at the very beginning of the
meditation, it sets the tone and it becomes much easier for you to find your way
through the meditation. It makes it easier to find a way through the hindrances and
achieve the goal: the great peaceful, blissful states of meditation.
Whenever you get stuck or lose your way in your meditation just remind yourself to
bring into the mind the times when you were peaceful, and that will stop the
restlessness of the mind. It will stop the doubt; it will stop the wandering mind. As
you recall the goal, you remember that the whole purpose of this monastic life, the
whole reason behind it, is to see that Dhamma which releases you. This brings that
tranquillity, that freedom, which brings peace.
Even though a person may not be Enlightened, or even a Stream Winner yet, there is
still something about Enlightenment, the peace of Enlightenment, that they can
understand and that gives the whole path a direction. I always remember what this
path is all about. What are we here for? We are not here to build the best monastery
in the world. We are not here to make beautiful huts. We are not here to have good
friends. We are not here to write books. We are not here to become famous as the
best Buddhist teacher in Serpentine. We are not here just to make good kamma. We
are here to become liberated, to be free from sa sāra, to find what the Buddha found.
There is a thing called wisdom, there is a thing called truth, there is a thing called
Enlightenment, and that’s on offer in this monastery for whoever has the courage to
take it up.
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What if you make that your goal, and keep it in mind? You know that the goal
embraces peace, silence, tranquillity, and freedom. These are all descriptions of
Nibbāna. You may not be able to describe Nibbāna in words but you can feel some of
its qualities intuitively. Sometimes you just need to rely upon that. It’s something
inside you that knows what Enlightenment is all about. There is something inside you
that even knows what jhānas are all about, because most of you have been monks and
nuns many times before. It is reminding you and, once you can bring that goal to
mind, it shows you what the Dhamma truly is. It is something that the Buddha said
was sandi hika, that which can be experienced in this very life. Not to rely on a
belief of what’s going to happen in our next life but to experience it now. It’s akālika,
or timeless, that’s why we don’t need to change the teachings to fit into modern
Western culture, whatever that is. The Dhamma of the Buddha, the heart of it all, is
literally timeless. It is eternal and for anybody, in any age, in any era, presented
clearly and accurately. It will always resonate with people because it’s talking about
the mind and the body. They might change depending on their genes, the culture
might change, but the mind, the heart, doesn’t change that much, it’s basically the
same.
Essentially it’s the problem of the ‘doer’ and the ‘knower’. Once one sees this and
understands, one understands why the Buddha’s teaching is so timeless. One
understands how the Dhamma reaches across twenty-five centuries, from ancient
India – that strange culture, so different from ours – to our modern society. There is
some commonality, something which strikes us, resonates with us as being important,
and that’s this Dhamma quality. The meaning of the word Dhamma – as the
Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi so beautifully put it in one of his books (The Great
Discourse on Causation published by the Buddhist Publication Society) – is looking
to the heart of the matter where everything comes from, the source, the essence, the
ultimate, the law, the rule behind everything. The atthā, the meaning, on the other
hand is the consequences of that Dhamma, how that Dhamma works out in the world.
But here we are looking at the Dhamma, the heart, the source; this is what wisdom is
about. It is about the core, finding that wisdom given by the Buddha. The Buddha
gave us a practical path to find this out, he gave instructions, and it’s always the case
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that if you follow those instructions, they’re going to lead to the goal.
Less Choice – More Freedom
The Satipa hāna Sutta says this path leads in one direction only; if we continue
walking this path we will have to arrive at the goal. It’s just a matter of time! That’s
a powerful saying, a wonderful teaching. The trouble is though, we sometimes get off
the path. We don’t keep going because we haven’t got enough faith, we haven’t got
enough confidence. However, we should remember that if we keep walking just a
little bit further then we find a little bit more happiness. That’s the beauty of the path:
it’s a happy path. At every stage of the path we get a prize, we get more happiness,
more peace, and more understanding. That’s what makes it a gradual path that leads
us on and on and on, opanayiko. It doesn’t lead us on because we think we
understand more; it leads us on because we get more happiness, more peace, more
freedom, more joy, and more bliss. This is the great thing about the Dhamma: you
don’t need to look so far into the distance to gain some benefit or to get a taste of
Nibbāna.
How can I make myself more peaceful and happy today? How can I let go of more
and keep my virtuous conduct pure? Don’t break any of the rules or precepts, be
more restrained, keep the monastic rules of getting up early in the morning to
meditate. Even if you are tired just meditate; it’s better than falling asleep. At least
by getting up you are doing something, you are creating energy. If you are going to
get up, you might as well do it properly by meditating. In the beginning, keeping the
monastic rules means giving up so much of what we want to do.
People sometimes ask me, “Why are these rules the way they are?” The purpose of
the rules is to stop you having to think. If you had to make up the rules for yourself
then there would be more thinking, thinking, thinking. ‘We should do this’ or ‘We
shouldn’t do that’. The more rules there are, the less choice there is for us. The less
choice there is for us, the more freedom we have. The more freedom we have, the
more peace we have. Those of you who have to go to the hardware stores now and
again to get things for the monastery know what it’s like if you have to get different
types of nails or different types of screws. When there is too much choice it makes
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things really complicated. It’s so easy when there is only one thing you have to get.
I really feel for people who live in the world. If they want to get a toothbrush there
are a hundred different types to choose from: different styles and different types of
bristle or handles. Goodness knows how difficult it is to make choices in this world
now, and because there are so many choices, there’s less freedom. So it’s wonderful
when there’s not much choice. You know you just have to get up in the morning and
that’s it. You don’t have to think about it. You know you only have to eat what’s
there. You choose from what’s there and that’s it. If you had a menu, imagine what it
would be like. If instead of having dāna we had a supporter who owned a couple of
restaurants and they sent the menu out every morning so we could order up whatever
we wanted – imagine if I gave you the menu every morning and you had to choose
what to eat. It would be terrible having all those choices and decisions to make.
It’s very wonderful not having to make decisions. It’s nice being on retreat: you
don’t even put the food into your own bowl; someone else does it for you. I’ve
noticed when I’ve been on retreat – especially during the rains retreat – how I actually
enjoy my food much more because someone else has put it into the bowl for me. I
think it is because I don’t have to go through all the hassle of choosing. Someone
brings the bowl up and I just eat what’s there. That’s choicelessness. It means more
freedom, more happiness, and more peace.
One of the reasons we have all these rules is to give us freedom from having to make
decisions and to avoid arguing about what we should do. It’s already been arranged
and decided, and that makes life so much easier, so much freer. We can use our mind
for more important things than deciding what to eat or deciding how to do things.
That’s also the happiness of hierarchy. When someone else tells you what to do it
makes it easier; you don’t have to think about it, you just do it. You know what it’s
like when you get into that complaining mind, ‘I don’t want to do this. Why does
Ajahn Brahm always ask me to clean the toilets? Why can’t I do something else?’
‘Doesn’t he think I can hammer a nail into a piece of wood like anyone else?’ ‘I only
want the really nice jobs.’
It’s really strange, but one of the jobs that I really wanted to do once I became a monk
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was to dig the earth, to get a spade and just dig into the earth. As soon as I became a
novice I couldn’t wait to become a monk so that I could stop digging and doing all
that sort of stuff! It’s was very strange, but I realised that it was because I couldn’t do
it that I wanted to do it, it was just the perversity of desire. As a monk you don’t have
to do those things, because it’s already decided what you can and can’t do, and that’s
it. That gives a certain sense of peace, a certain sense of happiness, the happiness of
the purity of one’s precepts. One is letting go of the ‘doer’, this person who always
wants to control and manipulate, who wants to decide what’s right and what’s wrong,
what should be done and what shouldn’t be done, blah, blah, blah.
An End to Coming and Going
That ‘doer’ inside of us creates this critical mind – the judgemental mind, the
faultfinding mind – it creates so many problems and difficulties for us. Because of
this ‘doer’ we even judge beautiful people and create enemies out of them. Even the
great Ariyas, we can hate them and have ill will towards them, criticise them and put
them down. It’s bad kamma to criticise Ariyas. Nevertheless because of stupidity, or
rather because of the judgemental mind, the mind that is always under the control of
this ‘doer’, we can even criticise the Buddha, even curse the Buddha. That’s because
this doing mind hasn’t really been seen for what it is. It is just a tyrant and a stupid
tyrant at that.
The more one meditates and practises restraint through the precepts, restraint of the
senses, restraint of the inner commentary, the more one gets into the peaceful states of
mind. Then one can see what this thinking mind is all about. After a while you just
don’t believe it any more. This is the way it goes: it can criticise your best friends, it
can love people who are fools, it can praise idiots and find fault with the wise; that is
the perversity of the thinking mind. That’s why I don’t trust it any more. Once you
see it for what it is you realise how much trouble it has caused you. So just shut up
and be quiet!
In this monastery, people often think that they want to go here or go there, but
wherever you go you take ‘you’ with you. You’ll go from one place to another but
you will find out that whatever habits and character traits you have here, you’ll still
have them somewhere else. Whatever obstacles you find here you’ll find elsewhere.
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‘The monks here, or the teacher, are stupid, and you know they are not really up to
scratch’. You’ll go somewhere else and they’ll be the same. That’s because you have
the same defilements. It’s not because of the teacher, it’s because of the way you see
the teacher. It’s not the other monks but the way you see the other monks. It’s not the
place, it’s the way you see that place. You will take this wherever you go until you
can be free from all of that.
When I was the second monk in Thailand, many years ago, if people came to me and
said they wanted to leave, I would say, “Well if you really want to go, now is not the
best time. Because if you really want to leave and you are just following craving, that
desire, and those attachments, what you should really do is stay. This is a really great
time for gaining wisdom; you can really make a lot of progress towards
Enlightenment”. When you really want to go that’s the time to stay, because when
you stay you are going against the stream of the mind – you really want to go but
instead you stay and call the mind’s bluff. Then you actually win; you have a great
victory. It’s only a matter of days or weeks or months, it doesn’t take that long, and
then the desire to go has completely disappeared. You don’t want to go any more,
and if you don’t want to go there’s not much point in going. That’s the way I tried to
keep people in the monastery for long periods of time. It’s not a joke, because there is
a lot of truth in it. The only time you should go is if you don’t really care if you go or
not. That’s the right time to go because then you are not following your critical,
thinking mind. That’s attā, that’s self, that’s ego. If you believe in that, that’s
attachment to all those ideas.
There is a great sense of peace when you surrender, give up, let go, and renounce.
Just go according to the Eightfold Path, the path that leads one in the right direction,
to Nibbāna. Just surrender, give up to it, and patiently wait. If you do that you’ll find
out it’s the right path. You don’t have to believe because the more you surrender the
more freedom you feel and the more peaceful you feel inside.
Sometimes it feels as if there is a raging tyrant inside, pushing you from pillar to post.
How many times have you run away? How many times have you followed that stupid
thinking mind? How many times has it led you by the nose, as if you were a stupid
cow? Many, many times! And then sometimes you just say, “That’s enough, I’m not
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going to be led by you, I’ll be led by the Dhamma instead, led by the Eightfold path.
That is what I’m going to do. That’s it!”
I made a determination when I was a young monk that I would never leave any
monastery unless I was asked to go somewhere else or because of my conduct, I was
asked to get out. I have never asked to leave or go anywhere. I’ve kept that
resolution for all these years, and I’ve been a monk now for over twenty-five years. I
only came to Australia because I was sent over here by my teacher and I only ever go
anywhere because I am asked to go. I recommend that practise to any of you who
have got the courage to keep it. It’s a hard practice; it takes a lot of trust, a lot of
confidence, a lot of courage.
But it’s a beautiful practise to do. What it means is that instead of following your
own mind you’re surrendering, renouncing, giving up, letting go. You will find
meditation becomes easy because that’s the very thing that creates meditation: the
letting go of the thinking mind, the letting go of the controlling, and the letting go of
the manipulating. Isn’t that what happens in meditation? You’re in one place and
you want to go somewhere else. You’re with the breath and you want to get to a
nimmitta or you’re with ‘present moment awareness’ and you want to get something
else. There’s always that movement, that wanting something else, that wanting to be
somewhere else. It’s the coming and going called restlessness.
One of the stories that I remember from Zen Buddhism was when Lin-Chi, the
founder of the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism, had just been to another monastery and
returned to pay his respects to his teacher. The teacher replied by punching him in the
stomach, so you are very lucky this is not a Zen monastery. I remember the teacher
said to Lin-Chi, “When is there going to be an end to all this coming and going?” If
you’ve just come back from another monastery, when is there going to be an end to all
this coming and going? What is coming and going? Coming and going, going and
coming – you should be fed up with it after a while.
So, it’s nice to be able to make an end to all the coming and going in the mind –
coming from this state of mind to another state of mind. Just shut up, give up, let go
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and surrender to the path. Surrender to watching the breath; surrender to ānāpānasati.
“Too hot, too cold!” “Too early, too late!” “I’ve been working all day, I’m too
tired!” Shut up! Just watch the breath. I love doing that because I’ve got a rebellious
nature inside me. It must be from growing up in the sixties.
It’s amazing what happens when you rebel against what should be happening, against
being too tired, too hot, too cold, or too sick. You’ll prove to yourself that you can do
meditation whenever you want. In the middle of the night when you wake up and
you’ve only had an hour’s sleep, you can get up and meditate and get into a nice
meditation even though you thought you wouldn’t be able to. You’ve been working
all day – sit down and get into a jhāna. You’re really sick with a fever, even lying on
your side – watch the breath and get into a jhāna. You can do that. When that
happens it proves you cannot trust the seeking mind but that you can trust the Buddha,
the Dhamma, and the Ariya Sa$gha. This is what we mean by going for refuge to the
Triple Gem. It means we find that we can let go whenever we want. That’s what
meditation is: abandoning, letting go of the controller, letting go of the doer, being
content, and allowing peacefulness to grow in the mind.
We’ll never get peaceful by coming and going, we only get peaceful by staying still.
‘Staying still’, ‘not coming and going’, that’s a metaphor for not doing so many
things. Simplify your life, make it as simple as possible, so that you don’t have much
to look after. See if you can unburden the mind, simplify the mind so that you don’t
have much to think about. Just stay with the breath; make it your friend and just be
with it until it becomes so peaceful and beautiful. When it’s peaceful and beautiful
you know that is wisdom. It’s wisdom that leads to things like upasama, calmness
and tranquillity. The Buddha told Upāli and Mahāpājapatī Gotamī, that if something
leads to upasama, then that is the Dhamma.
That’s the teaching of all the Buddha’s. So if it leads to peace you know you are on
the right track. If it leads to restlessness, if it leads to irritation, if it leads to ill will, or
to a fault finding mind, then you know you’re going in the wrong direction. Don’t
follow that direction; it’s going to lead to more suffering for you, stopping you from
enjoying the fruits of the path. So understand that the Dhamma is that which leads to
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wisdom. And you know it’s wisdom if it leads to peace. You know it’s peace
because it shuts up the doing, thinking mind, and there is contentment. That’s the
reason this path leads to more and more contentment. If you follow the path, if you
follow virtue, it leads to contentment.
Freedom
You are so content keeping eight precepts, and then all the precepts of a novice or a
monk. You’re so content having no money, not having to deal with that any more.
So content not having a wife, children, or parents. So content just being alone, free
from all those burdens. So content just with the precepts of a monk, content to be
free, because these beautiful rules free you from all of those entanglements. Free
because this mind has completely let go of this world, with all its problems and
difficulties. Free because you can dwell in the present moment whenever you like.
You can drop everything. Free because you can drop the body and dwell in the
jhānas. Free because you know that life, sa sāra, is limited.
These are the freedoms of the Buddha. These are the freedoms available to each one
of you, the peace and the wisdom that gives you great joy and happiness. That’s what
this monastic life is all about, that’s what Buddhism is all about. So please remember
what the path is, what the goal is, and just check yourself to see if you’re following a
wrong path that is creating attachments, ill will, irritation, and activity or whatever. If
you know you are walking in the wrong direction, change. It’s really up to you.
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