Dhamma in English 2014 & 2015

Dhamma in English 2014 & 2015 A collection of Dhamma talks in English at the Chula-dhamma Sala on Khao Chi-On of Wat Yannasangwararam, Chonburi. by Phra Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto

Printed by Silpa Siam Packaging & Printing Co., Ltd. 61 Soi Phetkasem 69, Leabklong Phasricharoen Rd., (North), Nongkham, Bangkok, Thailand 10160 E-mail: [email protected] www.silpasiam.com A collection of Dhamma talks in English By Phra Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto Copyright © PhraSuchart 2018. All rights reserved. ISBN 978-616-474-433-2 August 2018 1,000 copies Wat Yannasangwararam 999 Moo 11 Huay Yai Bang Lamung Chonburi 20150 THAILAND E-mail: [email protected] Dhamma in English 2014 & 2015

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1. High school students, October 20th, 2014 1 2. American Layman, November 13rd, 2014 11 3. Laypeople from Singapore and Malaysia, November 14th, 2014 15 4. Laypeople from Malaysia, January 17th, 2015 37 5. Layperson from England, February 3rd, 2015 51 6. Australian Monks from Sydney, February 19th, 2015 55 7. Layperson from Canada, March 8th, 2015 71 8. Laypeople from Singapore, April 28th, 2015 75 9. Monks from Wat Pah Nanachaat, June 9th, 2015 91 10. Laypeople from Singapore, June 14th, 2015 111 11. Laypeople from Indonesia, June 23rd, 2015 117 12. Laypeople from Spain and Kazakhstan, June 30th, 2015 125 13. Layperson from Sydney, Australia, July 6th, 2015 133 14. Singapore via skype, August 9th, 2015 145 15. Laypeople from Singapore, August 24th, 2015 165 16. Seeing corpse for asubha contemplation 175 September 7th, 2015 17. Laypeople from Malaysia, November 5th, 2015 183 18. Laypeople from USA, November 17th, 2015 201 19. Laypeople from USA, November 26th, 2015 211 20. Laypeople from Scotland, November 26th, 2015 215 21. Laypeople from Malaysia, December 10th, 2015 227 22. Laypeople from Iraq, December 13rd, 2015 241 23. Laypeople from Finland, December 26th, 2015 243 Biography of Phra Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto 247 Daily Schedule 248 Alms Route 249 Table of Contents Youtube Video Title Page

— 1 — Than Ajahn: What do you want to study after you graduate? Student: Not sure. Than Ajahn: Study what you like. It is easy if you study what you like. If you study what you don’t like, you will find it difficult. Don’t force yourself to do something you don’t like, you won’t excel in that. You will excel in something that you are comfortable with, something that you enjoy. What do you think you enjoy doing? If you like cooking, you go to culinary school. Which subject do you find easy for you? Student: I like all of them. Than Ajahn: Eventually you have to decide whether you like mathematics, science or arts. You have two more years before you graduate. Whatever you decide, if you put your heart into it, you will succeed. It is all in yourself. If you can commit yourself to do something and if you push yourself towards that goal, you will get there. No one can push you, except yourself. Your parents can only support you, but if you don’t push yourself, you won’t be able to finish what you want to accomplish. It is all in yourself. High school students October 20th, 2014 1

— 2 — Dhamma in English 2014 & 2015 The Buddha said that you are your own refuge; you have to rely on yourself. Ultimately you are your own refuge. Right now you use your parents to support you, but eventually you have to rely on yourself. The way to be able to rely on yourself is that you have to be strong, and you have to push yourself. Don’t give up. No matter how difficult things are, just keep on pushing. If you have knowledge then it will be easier to push yourself. You have the tools to navigate your life. If you don’t have knowledge, things can become a lot more difficult, so right now try to study as much as you can. If you can get a PhD, do it. This is the best time for you to study as much as possible. Once you’ve grown up you will have other things to do and you won’t be able to concentrate on your study. The more knowledge you have, the more benefits you get. If you want to have a happy life, you should study some of the teachings of the Buddha because the Buddha is the master of this subject, ‘how to be happy’. According to the Buddha, you can be happy wherever you are, whatever you are. You don’t have to be smart, you don’t have to be rich, you can be happy. Happiness is being content. The way to find contentment is that you have to find peace of mind. The way to get peace of mind is to learn how to meditate. You sit down, close your eyes, and concentrate your mind on one single object, focus your mind, try to stop your mind from thinking. When you think, your mind can create all sorts of feelings, good or bad. Your feeling usually arises from your thoughts. If you think about a good thing, you feel good. If you think about a bad thing, you feel bad. If you stop thinking, both of these good and bad feelings will disappear. What is left is this emptiness. This emptiness is fulfilling. It makes you feel content. So if you have time, try to study Buddhist meditation. You can search on internet. There are many books and articles that explain to you how to meditate.

— 3 — 1 | High school students, October 20th, 2014 Meditation is controlling your thoughts. Right now you don’t know how to stop your thoughts. From the time you get up to the time you go to sleep you never stop thinking. When you think about good things, it is okay, there is no problem, but when you think about bad things, and you cannot stop it, you will keep creating bad feelings for yourself. If you know how to stop your bad thoughts, when you think about bad things, things that make you unhappy, you should stop them. If you don’t learn to meditate, you will not be able to stop them. You should try to study this subject. It is very important for your well-being because no matter how much you have, you can still be unhappy. So it doesn’t matter what you have or what you don’t have, it is what you think. First of all you want to stop your mind from thinking bad. You don’t want the mind to think and make you feel bad. Once you know how to stop this, the next thing is that you teach your mind to think in a way that will make you feel good all the time. In order to feel good all the time, you have to think in accordance with reality. Reality is something you have to study. It is about your life. What is your life? What is your future? What is going to happen to you? What is going to happen to your body? This is something that all of us have to experience sooner or later. If we can teach our mind to think according to reality, then our mind will not be feeling sad. For example, eventually everyone is going to get older, like your father or mother. The older they become, the easier they become sick and eventually all have to pass away. If we cannot accept this reality and we try to resist, it will only create a lot of bad feelings. If you can accept the reality, if you can meditate, you can discover something you haven’t known before, that you are not the body. The body is just an extension of something we use as a tool. The body is like a servant. We are the master.

— 4 — Dhamma in English 2014 & 2015 Who are we? We are the ones who think. When you meditate, you will discover your true-self that you are not the body. When your mind becomes completely calm and still, having no thought, then you will discover there is another person besides your body. This person is the one who thinks, who knows, who is communicating right now between you and me. It is not the body that is communicating. The body is only a medium, the mind is communicating with the other mind. I speak, my voice goes to your ears, and the sound goes into your mind. It is the mind that acknowledges what I said, not the body. Eventually if you study, you will come to realise the true-self. This true-self is the one that goes on after the body passes away. If you know the truth then you will not be afraid of the passing away of the body, because it is not you, it is your servant. Your body is like your servant. You do not pass away with your body. If you don’t meditate and you don’t study this reality, you will think that you are the body, so whatever happens to your body, you will feel sad, or whatever happens to the body of the person that you love, like your parents, you will feel sad. You should realise that it is just a servant, it is not the mind itself. The mind itself still exists but without the servant. When the body passes away, the mind still exists. This mind that goes on, will take a new birth, a new body. Just like what you did 15 to 17 years ago when you came to this world, you left your old body behind. You came and found a new body in your mother’s womb. This is the cycle of rebirth that we all go through. When it is time to change a new body, we go through a lot of sadness. If we know about the truth, we won’t be sad because we know it is just a matter of changing a new body, like changing a new car. Your old car breaks down, you cannot drive it anymore, then you throw it away and you buy a new car. The driver doesn’t pass away with the car. This is something that you should learn and try to see it in your meditation. Seeing is more important than hearing. What you hear is not convincing as much as what you see. The only way you can see it,

— 5 — 1 | High school students, October 20th, 2014 is when you meditate. When you stop your mind from thinking, then your mind will temporarily be detached from your body. Sometimes your body will disappear from your consciousness. All that is left is your-self, you are the one who knows. The consciousness is the one who knows, the one who thinks. This is the mind. Sometimes we call it the spirit. When the body breaks down, the spirit goes on to the next body. On the way, you might have to go through good and bad experiences. It depends on what you have done while you are still alive. If you do bad things, if you kill, you steal, you commit sin, you will have bad experiences like bad dreams. When you don’t have the body, the mind is like in a dream-like state. It is like you are going through dreams, good dreams and bad dreams. If you do good kamma, like giving money to other people, helping other people, making other people happy, you will have good dreams before you wake up with a new body. When the body dies, it is like going to a long sleep. While you are sleeping, you have good and bad dreams until you get a new body. Sometimes you don’t get a human body, you get an animal body as a result of your bad kamma. Sometimes you might get a body of a cat, a bird or a dog, then you will have to wait until that cat or dog dies before you go and get a new body. Try not to do any bad kamma like killing, stealing, lying. These are the kamma that will make you go through the birth of an animal. If you want to come back as a human being you must try to keep the five precepts: abstaining from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct – sex outside marriage, lying and drinking alcohol. These are the bad actions that will send you into bad dreams and then you will be reborn with an animal body until you have paid off your bad kamma then you can come back and take birth as a human being. It is like before you were reborn into this body, you might have been an animal or something for a while, but you cannot remember it. If you have done good kamma, you might have been in a different environment, you might have been a different type of a spiritual being, we call it heavenly

— 6 — Dhamma in English 2014 & 2015 beings. Either this heavenly being or other beings, it eventually ends and comes back as a human again. You want to have a better future, you should avoid doing bad kamma, maintain the five precepts, do good kamma, like helping other people, making other people happy. Don’t hurt other people. Layperson: Why does one have nightmares sometimes? Than Ajahn: That’s because of his bad kamma. He has done something bad in the past and it sinks in his mind. When he sleeps, this thing comes up. It is in the sub-consciousness. Layperson: Can we fix that? Than Ajahn: You cannot fix it. The only way to handle it is to just know that it is just a dream, don’t try to get rid of it because it will make you more unhappy. Just accept it as it is. It is like when you don’t study, you get a bad grade. There is nothing you can do about it; you just have to accept it. If you don’t want to have a bad grade, try to study harder. If you don’t want to have bad dreams, try to be compassionate, be helpful, make other people happy, help other people. Don’t hurt other people. Whatever you do, sinks into your mind and when you go to sleep, this thing comes back in reverse. Whatever you did to other people, it will come back to you the other way, it is like looking into a mirror. When you smile, the image in the mirror will smile back at you. When you do something bad to other people, it will come back to you. The other people whom you do wrong, will do you wrong in return. Do good kamma. It means don’t hurt other people, make other people happy, help other people. If you see someone who needs help and you can help, do it. If you have more, you share it with other people. Don’t be attached to what you have, because when you die, you cannot take it with you anyway. If you share it,

— 7 — 1 | High school students, October 20th, 2014 it creates good feelings and good memories, and when you dream, you will dream a good dream. You will dream of people helping you, sharing things with you. In your real life, when you run into trouble, there will be people coming to help you. This is the work of kamma. Whatever you do, you’ll get it’s result. Do you understand? Buddhism is the most advanced knowledge. You can study all kinds of subjects, but these subjects cannot teach you how to live happily because they don’t understand the working nature of the mind. Only the Buddha has truly understood the working nature of the mind, how the mind can make you happy and how the mind can make you sad. No other knowledge or subject in this world teaches you how to treat this mind. You should consider yourself lucky to come across the teaching of the Buddha. We have people living in the West, when they have studied the teaching, they came here to further their study and to become a monk. Right now we have two foreigners studying and staying here. They are ready to become monks. One is from America, one is from France. They studied Buddhism abroad and they wanted to further their study. Studying is just part of the journey, the other part is to apply what they have studied. They want to become monks so that they can have all the time to meditate. You need a lot of time to meditate, eventually to stop the mind from thinking and to be able to discover your true-self, discover your spirit, your mind. Right now you don’t see your mind or your spirit, because you only keep looking at your body, so you think you are the body. When you meditate, the body disappears and then the mind appears. If you cannot yet meditate, you should at least believe what the Buddha said. You should believe this truth and try to do good kamma so that you can at least create good feelings, good dreams. If you do bad kamma, you will have bad feelings and when you dream, you will have bad dreams.

— 8 — Dhamma in English 2014 & 2015 Do you have any questions? Do you want to take a break and be a Buddhist nun for one year? You will learn a lot. Layperson: For those students who will complete this year, and participate in the horse competition, do you have advice for them? Than Ajahn: Whatever you do, try to focus and concentrate on what you do. Don’t let your mind think about other things. You will perform better if you focus on whatever activity you are doing at the moment. If you don’t focus, you can go wrong. If you are driving the horse and you think about what your mother told you this morning, you are not concentrating on what you are doing and things can go wrong. Try to focus your mind in the present, forget the past, forget the future, always be here and now. Then whatever you do, it will always be correct, nothing can go wrong. Things go wrong because you are not concentrating on what you are doing. For instance when you are driving and if you are day-dreaming and thinking about something else, and when someone crosses the road, you cannot stop your car in time. Always try to concentrate on whatever you are doing. Than Ajahn (asking a young boy, grade 3 student): What do you want to be when you grow up? Young student: I am not sure. Than Ajahn: Be a good boy. That’s all you have to be. Good boy does good kamma. Don’t hurt other people. Treat other people like the way you would like them to treat you. If you want people to be nice to you, you must be nice to them. End of Desanā.

— 11 — Buddhism is a mental science, based on cause and effect relationships that can be proven. The Buddha was the first person to prove them. We are made up of the mind and the body. They are like twins: the mind is eternal, but the body is temporary. The mind comes from previous lives and takes possession of the body at conception. After the cessation of the body the mind goes on to another body. It is as simple as that. At one level all religions are similar: they all teach you to do good and abstain from hurting others. They are based on cause and effect. Happiness or good feelings arise from doing good; suffering or bad feelings arise from doing bad. There are three principal actions: action by thought (mental action), action by speech, and action by body. The results of these actions all come back to the mind which is the primary actor. The mouth and body are secondary actors. To restrain them we need to have a “breaking system”. This breaking system is “mindfulness”. With mindfulness we’ll know whether we’re American Layman November 13rd, 2014 2

— 12 — Dhamma in English 2014 & 2015 thinking good or thinking bad. Thinking bad means harming yourself. But sometimes we do not know what is bad for us because we’re deluded, like when we take drugs. So we need the truth to stop our delusion. We have to study the truth from people who already know the truth, such as the Buddha or his enlightened disciples. People who have not proven the truth will have to learn from people who have already proven the truth. The knowledge we gain from university does not teach us what is good and what is bad. It is delusional knowledge. Layperson: What can you do with people who have delusion? Than Ajahn: If they cannot be taught, you must leave them alone. Buddhism does not seek to convert people. If they are willing to listen, then you can teach them. We consider things logically in Buddhism. We have to educate the mind to know what is right and what is wrong, and then refrain from bad actions and do only good actions. We have to exercise restraint in acquiring things, because we usually acquire more than what we need. Greed that comes from delusion begets hatred. When you don’t get what you want, you become angry. If you have experienced the calming power of your mind, you will be content. You’ll not want anything other than the four requisites of life: food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. The body gets old, gets sick and dies, but the mind doesn’t. The mind is eternal and does not dissolve like the body. The mind goes from one existence to another because of the desire for a new body. Kamma will decide what kind of body you will have in the next life. The mind can exist by itself without having a body. We all have a body because we still have sensual desires. We need the body to experience the five sensual objects: sights, sounds, smells,

— 13 — 2 | American Layman, November 13rd, 2014 tastes, and tactile objects. If we practice meditation we can eliminate these desires, and then there is no need to have a body. Therefore there is no rebirth. To do this successfully we have to live like a monk – a life without sensual pleasures. Layperson: Can we still meditate without becoming monks? Than Ajahn: Yes, I started meditating as a Layperson and became addicted to meditation. To be able to practice all day I had to quit my job and became a monk. When you become a monk, you don’t have to work since everything is paid for by the lay devotees. You’ll be happy and content when you meditate. When you meditate you’re exchanging your old way of life for a new one. Eventually you’ll make a complete switch. At the moment we have two westerners waiting to be ordained next month. One is from Atlanta, Georgia, the other is from Coutras, France. I have been here 27 years, and have been a monk for 39 years. Next February (2015) it will be 40 years. I spent nine years in northeastern Thailand studying meditation, and then I moved here to be near my home in Pattaya. People become monks because lay life is full of problems. As a monk I have to be frugal and austere, taking things as they come, with no running water, no electricity, and no amenities. I have only one set of robes.

— 15 — Than Ajahn: In Buddhism we have two levels of practice: the merit-maker level and the meditator level. If you are a merit maker then you make dāna and keep the five-precepts. If you are a meditator, you keep eight-precepts and you meditate, you develop samatha-bhāvanā and vipassanā-bhāvanā. If you are a meditator you should stay in one place, stay put, don’t go around because your mind cannot be quiet, cannot become still if you move around. If you go to different monasteries to make merits, to give dāna, then you cannot develop meditation efficiently. You have to decide what you want to be. If you still want to make dāna then you have to accept the fact that you will not be able to develop meditation effectively. If you want to be a meditator then you have to forget about going to different monasteries to give dāna, you have to stay in a secluded place, be alone and concentrate on your development of mindfulness. Because if you have no mindfulness you will never get any results from your meditation. You can sit for hours and you get nothing because your mind keeps thinking about this and that. Laypeople from Singapore and Malaysia November 14th, 2014 3

— 16 — Dhamma in English 2014 & 2015 If you want to calm your mind, make your mind peaceful and happy, you have to focus your mind on one object. You cannot think about this and that aimlessly. You have to recite the Buddha’s name: ‘Buddho, Buddho, Buddho’ all the time, not only when you sit down but you have to develop it from the time you get up to the time you go to sleep. So when you wake up, when you open your eyes, you have to start developing mindfulness right away. You have to start reciting the name of the Buddha: Buddho, Buddho mentally, right away. While you go about doing your business, start from the time when you open your eyes, you start to recite the name of the Buddha: Buddho, Buddho. As you get up and go to the bathroom to clean up, to take a shower, to get dressed, you have to recite Buddho, Buddho all the time. This is what you have to do if you want to have mindfulness, if you want to be successful in your meditation. The goal of meditation is to stop your mind from thinking. When you stop your mind from thinking, your mind will converge, it becomes one and you will become peaceful and happy. You will discover your true self, the mind, which is not the body. When the mind stops thinking you will see the true mind, the one who knows. If you keep thinking, you will not see the one who knows, instead you will see your thoughts, just like when you want to see the television screen, you have to turn off the television then you can see the screen where there are no images on the screen. If you turn on the television, you cannot see the screen because the images will be superimposed on the screen, and you don’t know what the screen looks like. It is the same way with the mind. You will not see the mind in its true form if you keep thinking. You will see your thoughts instead of the mind, and you don’t know what the mind really is. When you meditate, and when you stop your mind from thinking then you will get to know the mind, the one who knows, the knower. This is where you will learn to be the mind instead of being in

— 17 — 3 | Laypeople from Singapore and Malaysia, November 14th, 2014 your thoughts. You should be the mind because your thoughts are just illusions, they are not real. We think we are somebody. We think we are men, women, Singaporeans, Thais, but these are all illusions, they are not real. The real thing is that we are all the one who knows, we are the knower. The mind is the knower. If we all know that we are the same, then there won’t be any problems. The problem is that we think we are different and then we start quarrelling because we have different thoughts. We think like this and they think like that, and when the different thoughts collide, it creates problems. But if we all know that we are the same, we are the knower and we need the same thing and that is peace of mind. We don’t need wealth, money, status, things, or other people. These things don’t make us happy, they make us sad because they are temporary and impermanent. When we get them, we are happy. When someone gives us money, we are happy, but when we lose that money, we become sad. And sooner or later, no matter how much money we have, one day we have to lose it all because life is temporary, our bodies are temporary. When you lose your body, you lose everything that you have acquired. So these things are not real happiness. The real happiness is when the mind is in its peaceful state. You have to make the mind peaceful, stop thinking. When you have come to that point, you don’t have to have money, status, a husband or wife, you don’t have to have anything. So what meditation does is to find your true self, to find your true requirement, the thing that is really good for you. When you meditate, when your mind becomes peaceful and calm, you discover peace of mind. You find real happiness from peace of mind. This real happiness, this peace of mind is not temporary; it lasts forever because it stays with the mind and the mind lasts forever. The mind is not the same like the body.

— 18 — Dhamma in English 2014 & 2015 When the body dies, what happens to the mind? The mind goes looking for a new body, it gets reborn. The mind doesn’t die with the body. But since the mind is still deluded, it goes after the false type of happiness, getting happiness by accumulating money, or having good status, and you need a body to acquire all these things. When the body dies your mind still wants to have the same kind of things that you used to have, so it will still look for a new body. That’s why we continue to get reborn all the time. When we lose this body, we will go and look for a new body but before we can get a new body, we first have to pay our kamma. If we have built up bad kamma, then we will be reborn as undesirable creatures such as animals or going to hell. If we do good kamma, we will go to heaven first before we come back down and be reborn as a human again. So this is what happens after the body dies. The mind has to repay whatever it has done, paying its kamma debt that is due. If you do bad kamma, you have to pay your debt. If you do good kamma, you go and receive your rewards. And when you have expired your kamma debts or kamma rewards, then you come back to become a human again. But if you can meditate and make your mind calm and peaceful, if you can eliminate your desire that causes you to be reborn again and again, then you don’t have to be reborn again, like the Buddha and his noble disciples. They don’t have to be reborn again. The state that they have is called Nibbāna. This is the goal of our mediation, to attain Nibbāna. Nibbāna is peaceful and permanent. It is long lasting and you don’t have to experience a single drop of suffering. But as long as you still get reborn, you will have to be subjected to all kinds of suffering. You suffer when you get old, get sick and die. We would not know these things without the teaching of the Buddha. If we have no Buddhism to teach us we will be doing the same things over and over again. We have been going after the

— 19 — 3 | Laypeople from Singapore and Malaysia, November 14th, 2014 false kind of happiness such as money, status, possessions, people and the pleasure that you get from seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. But these kinds of happiness are temporary, they never make you full, you will always be hungry for more. And this hunger will drive you to get reborn again when this body dies. When you meet the teaching of the Buddha, you have faith and follow his teaching by giving up the false happiness that you have been acquiring. This is because you know that happiness from the senses is not the real kind of happiness. If you want to develop the right kind of happiness, you will have to give up your money, possessions, status and become a meditator. That is the purpose of dāna. The real purpose of dāna is to give up all of your money, not to rely on your money to make you happy because it can’t. Instead of making you happy, it makes you unhappy because looking for money is not easy. You have to work hard to earn money and when you get the money you spend it quickly. The happiness you get from spending money is very brief. You spent it and it is gone and then there is no more money left, then you have to go back to work hard again to get the money. So this is not the right kind of happiness. To have the real kind of happiness, you have to meditate until your mind becomes peaceful and calm. You don’t have to have money to have this real kind of happiness. All you have to do is to have time to meditate. You need a quiet location to meditate, that’s all you need. Being a monk is the best way. When you become a monk, you have a quiet location to meditate. You don’t have to worry about paying for your food, rent, clothing, medicine because they are all provided by the Buddhist community, by people who like to make dāna but don’t like to meditate, like you. You like to give dāna to monks so monks

— 20 — Dhamma in English 2014 & 2015 can meditate, but eventually when you want to become a monk or a meditator, you have to stop giving dāna, you have to give away all the money that you don’t need so that you don’t have any worries. You don’t have to look after your money any more, then you will have a whole life to meditate. When you have the time and a quiet place to meditate, you will eventually make your mind peaceful, calm and become one. When your mind becomes one, you know how to take care of your mind, how to keep it peaceful and happy all the time. So this is what you have to do. When you first start as a Buddhist follower, it is like going to school. You have to start going to kindergarten level and then you move up to elementary, secondary and eventually to college and university. So when you first begin as a Buddhist, you are told to give dāna and to keep the five-precepts because keeping five-precepts is easier than keeping the eight-precepts and meditating. After you have given dāna and kept the five precepts, you then have developed the inner strength to go to the next level. If you can maintain the five-precepts and give generously, and you don’t want to spend money to buy happiness, then you don’t have to work a lot. You can work just enough to exist, you don’t want to work to be rich, to buy a big house, to buy a big car, or to go to places. Then you don’t have to work too hard. You just need to work enough for you to exist and keep the eight-precepts. If you meditate and succeed in getting some results, it will make you want to practise more and then you will want to become a monk, if you are a man or a maychee, if you are a woman, so that you can practise full time without having to worry about going to work, to make money to pay for your food, rent, and other expenses. You don’t have any expenses because your expenses are paid for by other Buddhist supporters. So this is what you should aim for, not just doing dāna year after year, year after year. You should try to keep eight-precepts on a weekly basis, such as on the observance day. This is the day when Buddhists

— 21 — 3 | Laypeople from Singapore and Malaysia, November 14th, 2014 will keep the eight-precepts instead of just the five-precepts. They will meditate instead of going out to find happiness outside of the mind. What you want is to bring the mind to find happiness inside itself. So this is what people normally do in Thailand. They will stay in temple for a day to keep the eight-precepts, to listen to Dhamma talks and to meditate, either by walking or sitting. Before you can meditate effectively you have to develop mindfulness. You have to constantly be mindful, by reciting the name of the Buddha, or be mindful of your bodily movements. Whatever your body is doing, focus on that action alone, and don’t let your mind think about other things. If you can maintain this, then when you sit in meditation, you will be able to maintain your focus on one object and your mind will become peaceful and calm. When you have peace and experience the happiness from having peace of mind, you will discover that this is the greatest kind of happiness, far better than any kind of happiness that you have ever experienced in your life. When you experience this, you want to have more. So instead of keeping the eight-precepts once a week, you may increase it to twice or three times a week. You will keep increasing and try to meditate more. You may reduce your working hours and eventually you stop working if you think you have enough money to support your practice. If you are a meditator you won’t spend too much money because you only need to spend on the necessities and not on the luxury items. All you need is just to eat once a day. You have enough clothing. You have a place to stay and you are not sick. So you don’t have to spend money. If you don’t have to spend money you don’t have to look for money, you don’t have to work to get money. Instead of spending time making money, you will spend your time creating peace of mind by developing mindfulness. You have to develop mindfulness all the time in whatever you do, from the time you get up to the time you go to sleep. When you

— 22 — Dhamma in English 2014 & 2015 have the time, you sit down and meditate. Try to sit as long as you can, as many times as you can because the more you do it, the more results you will get, the happier you become and eventually you will have happiness all the time. The happiness that you acquire from your meditation will last only when you are sitting in meditation, when your mind becomes concentrated and peaceful. However, when your mind withdraws from that state and returns to a normal state, it will start thinking and having desires again. When that happens, the peace of mind that you have acquired from your meditation disappears. If you want to protect that peace of mind, you must stop your desire, you must stop following what your desire wants you to do. In order to do this, you need to develop vipassanā or insight. If you cannot yet meditate, try to keep the five-precepts, try to give dāna first and try to give money that you don’t need. Instead of using money to buy things to make you happy, the Buddha said you should share it with other people. The happiness you get from sharing your money is far greater than the happiness you get from spending money to buy things for yourself. And when you have this happiness, you will be contented to a certain level and you can maintain the five-precepts easily. If you cannot give dāna and you want to make money and keep it for yourself, you will find it difficult to keep the five-precepts because when you work, sometimes you find that keeping the five-precepts can be an obstacle. But if you don’t need to spend money to buy things to make you happy then you don’t have to be fully occupied with making money. Then you can keep the five precepts. If you are so eager to acquire money the easy and fast way, you will find it easy to lie or to cheat others to get the money you want. But if you don’t need the money that badly, then you can keep the precepts. You will only work to earn money in such a way that you don’t have to cheat, to lie or to be dishonest.

— 23 — 3 | Laypeople from Singapore and Malaysia, November 14th, 2014 So dāna is the first level that will help you to go to the next level, to keep the five-precepts. If you are generous and kind, instead of acquiring money for yourself, you will share it with others. This gives you a sense of kindness, a sense of responsibility. Whatever you do, you don’t want to hurt other people. If you want to make money, you want to ensure that this money is clean, is not tainted and is not hurting other people. So by giving dāna, it makes your mind compassionate, kind and have consideration for other people. Then you will be able to keep the five-precepts. When you can maintain the five-precepts, you can move up to keep the eight-precepts. First you do it once a week, on a special day such as on Buddha’s Day (wan phra). Once a week Buddhists will stop working, stop making money and use that day to share the money they have earned. They will come to temple to listen to Dhamma talks and to meditate. When you stay in the temple you have an appropriate surrounding that is free from distractions. If you try to meditate at home, you might find it difficult. You might encounter distractions such as people eating in the evening, watching television, turning on the radio, playing music, and it will be difficult for you to meditate in such surroundings. But if you come to stay at the temple, or in a forest monastery like this mountain hill, you will not have much distraction. In this mountain hill we don’t even have electricity. The reason that we don’t want any electricity here is that we want to cut off the source of distractions. If you have electricity you can have television and all kinds of gadgets that can generate distractions. So this is what the temple is for, a place to meditate, to find peace of mind because the happiness that arises from peace of mind is the greatest thing that you will experience. If you have ever experienced the happiness that arises from peace of mind, you will not want any other kinds of happiness, for example if you are used to having happiness from living with your spouse, you would want to leave them; if you had happiness

— 24 — Dhamma in English 2014 & 2015 from spending money and buying things, you would want to stop it. Because they are not as good as the happiness you get from this peace of mind. That is why for those who have discovered this kind of happiness, they want to leave the livelihood of a householder and become a monk. They want to become a professional meditator because they want to have this kind of happiness all the time. And you can only do this when you become a monk. Because when you become a monk you don’t have to do all other kinds of activities. You can meditate all day long from the time you get up to the time you go to sleep and so you will have this happiness all the time. So you have to understand that your work as a Buddhist is not simply just giving dāna and keeping just the five-precepts. This is just the starting point. First you have to go to temple to give dāna so you can listen to Dhamma talks or receive Dhamma books. When you read Dhamma books or you listen to Dhamma talks, you will get a better understanding of what you should be doing such as keeping the eight-precepts, developing mindfulness, sitting in meditation, doing walking meditation in order to calm your mind. After you have calmed your mind, when you come out of your meditation and your mind starts to think again, you have to try to prevent it from desiring for something that is not necessary such as watching television, or going out for seeing things, hearing music, etc. You should stop it, because you might get happiness briefly but you can get addicted to it, and you will want to do it again and again. If you have this desire and you follow this desire, then you will have a conflict. On one hand you want to go out and on the other hand you want to meditate. So you have to develop insight or vipassanā. Vipassanā is to teach you that the happiness gained from following you desire is brief and is harmful to you because when you cannot acquire that kind of happiness when you want it, you will become unhappy and miserable. If you can resists your desire and do not follow your desires, your desires will eventually disappear. They

— 25 — 3 | Laypeople from Singapore and Malaysia, November 14th, 2014 won’t come back and bother you. And the way to eliminate your desire is to resist your desire. Every time your desire wants you to do something that is not necessary, that has nothing to do with maintaining your existence, don’t do it because it is a trap. It is like people who start smoking a cigarette or start drinking. Once they start smoking or drinking they cannot stop. They have to keep on doing it. And when they have to stop, they will experience bad feelings, but this is what you have to do if you want to be cured. If you want to be cured of your desire, you have to resist your desire. When your desire comes up, and if you don’t have any peace of mind, you will find it very difficult to resist your desire. But if your mind is peaceful, your mind will be strong enough to resist your desire and your mind will not experience any pain. You have to remind your mind not to follow your desire, not to do what your desire wants you to do because whatever you do, it is impermanent. Everything you get is impermanent. When you get it you are happy, but when you lose it you become unhappy. For example, when you get a boyfriend or a girlfriend, you become happy, but when you lose him or her you become sad. So it is better not to have any boyfriend or girlfriend from the start. It is better to meditate and have this peace of mind instead. When you have desire and when you cannot resist it by reasoning with it, then you just have to go back to meditate, go back to calm your mind. When your mind is calm your desire will disappear. So this is what you have to do after you come out from your meditation. You want to protect your peace of mind by resisting your desire. If you have the wisdom, you see that your desire is the cause of your mental suffering. In the Four Noble Truths, the Buddha said that your mental suffering arises from your desire. When you start wanting something, your mind becomes nervous and agitated, and when you don’t get what you want you become upset, you become angry. If you don’t have any desire then there will be no suffering.

— 26 — Dhamma in English 2014 & 2015 So when you have the desire, you have to reason with it. Whatever you want, is only temporary. It is only good for a while and you have to get more of it in order to make you happy again. Like smoking a cigarette, when you smoke a cigarette you are happy but after a while you want to smoke another cigarette to make you happy again and if you don’t smoke then you become unhappy. It is better to become unhappy by resisting your desire to smoke because after resisting it for a few times, your desire will disappear then you will not have any problems with smoking anymore. This is what you have to do after you come out of your meditation. The goal of Buddhist practice is to eliminate your desire, mainly the three groups of desire. One is the desire for sensual objects such as desire for sights, sounds, odors, tastes and tactile sensations. It is called kama-taṇhā: the desire for sensual objects. Two is the desire to be something, to be somebody, to be rich, to be famous. This is called bhava-taṇhā: the desire to become, to have. Three is to have the desire not to become, not to have: don’t want to get old, don’t want to get sick, don’t want to die, don’t want to be poor and don’t want to go through hardship. But sometimes in life, you cannot choose. They come and you can face them by eliminating your desire that does not want to face them. If you can stop your desire from not wanting to face them, if you can face them peacefully, then it will not affect your mind at all. So these are the three types of desire that the Buddha said you have to eliminate. Smoking cigarettes falls into the first group of desire, the desire for sensual objects because when you smoke, you touch the cigarette, you taste the cigarette, you smell the cigarette and you become happy by that process but it makes you addicted to it and then you want to have another cigarette again later on and you have to keep on having more and more of it. Then when your body gets sickness from smoking, you have to stop smoking because

— 27 — 3 | Laypeople from Singapore and Malaysia, November 14th, 2014 the doctor said if you keep on smoking you will die or you will get lung cancer and then the doctor has to remove your lungs. So it is better to use common sense, to use vipassanā to see what is good or bad for you. Stop doing things that are bad for you. The Buddha said that all the three desires are bad for you. Don’t have any desire for any sensual objects. Don’t have any desire to be rich, to be famous, to be beautiful or to be handsome. Just let the body be. As long as you have everything you need for you to exist, that is enough. If you have enough food to eat, a place to stay, that is enough, that’s all you need. You don’t need any more than that. If you have more than what you need, it will cause you to suffer and be unhappy. The same way with the desire for not to be. Once you are born, you have to get old, get sick and die. There is nothing you can do to stop these from happening. If you don’t have the desire not to get old, get sick or die, then you can live with it. You can face it without any problems. The desire is the problem, not the state of getting sick, getting old or dying. If you have no desire, you will be peaceful. When you are old, you will be peaceful. When you are sick, you will be peaceful. When you die, you will be peaceful. That is the mind of the Buddha and all his noble disciples because they have eliminated all kinds of desires from their minds. The goal of the Buddhist practice is to eliminate harmful desire from the mind. Once you have done that, your mind will be peaceful all the time, and being peaceful all the time is called Nibbāna. You can have Nibbāna before you die. Nibbāna does not happen when you die, or after you die. It happens right now. Here and now. The moment you can eliminate all your desires from your mind you have achieved Nibbāna. That is what happened to the Buddha under the Bodhi tree. On the sixth month of the lunar calendar, on a full moon night, he achieved the elimination of all desires from his mind. From that moment on, he has no

— 28 — Dhamma in English 2014 & 2015 suffering, no stress, no unhappiness, no sadness, no worry, no anxiety, no fear, nothing. All he has is peace and happiness forever. The mind of the Buddha is like this, even until today, and it will be like this forever. Your mind and my mind will be the same if we can develop this meditation practice and eliminate all the desires from our mind. So this is what you are supposed to do, not just to go to this temple and that temple and forget about everything else. This is just a starting point. You go to the temple so that you can listen to the Dhamma talk, to give dāna so you can share your money, and be happy by sharing your money which is a better kind of happiness than having the happiness to spend money just for yourself alone. In that process you eliminate some of your desire. When you want to buy a new bag or a new pair of shoes, and you say to yourself that you have enough bags and shoes. Why do you need to spend more money buying something that you already have? Maybe you should give the money to people who need it. When you give the money to the people who really need it, you feel a sense of happiness, you feel that you have given happiness to other people. You see that other people become happy by your actions, by your sacrifice, then your mind becomes peaceful and happy. Then the next time you want to spend your money in the same manner, you do the same thing again. Then eventually you will not buy anything that will make you happy just for a few days. It is better to be happy many days afterwards because the dāna that you do even if it happened many months ago, if you think about it, it can still make you happy. But the bag or the thing that you bought a few months ago, when you think of it, it will not make you happy, it makes you want to buy another new bag in order to make you happy again. So this is what the purpose of dāna is. It also helps you to be kind, generous and compassionate. This will enable you to keep the five-precepts.

— 29 — 3 | Laypeople from Singapore and Malaysia, November 14th, 2014 Once you can keep the five-precepts you will find the benefit of keeping the five-precepts because your mind will become peaceful and at ease. You don’t have to worry. When you break the five-precepts you will feel bad, and feel afraid that you might have to pay for what you have done. For example, when you steal from others or you cheat on your wife or your husband, you feel bad right away. But if you can maintain the five-precepts you will not have this bad feeling. You have peace of mind. You will find that keeping the five-precepts is beneficial for you and then you will want to keep the eight-precepts because you find that you will be happier and more peaceful. If you can keep the eight-precepts and you can meditate, you can go to stay in the temple, because you don’t have to watch television, you don’t have to go outside to party, to sightsee, to go to nightclubs, pubs and bar. You can stay in the temple and meditate, and you can achieve a higher kind of happiness. So this is what you should do. Try to move up the ladder, not just to stay at the first level. Every year you come back here and give dāna, but if you don’t keep the five-precepts, if you don’t go to temple and meditate, you will never go forward, you will be stuck in one place. That’s not the goal of Buddhism. The goal of Buddhism is to move forward, to become a noble disciple, eventually. I think I have said enough. I hope you all can meditate and become enlightened one day.

— 30 — Dhamma in English 2014 & 2015 Layperson: If we want to meditate, can we come here and meditate? Than Ajahn: We have places for women, but you have to make reservation, which has quite a long queue. I think it is about a few months of waiting time for now. The place is like a kuti, which is not far from here, in the same area here and you can stay for 7 days at one time. This is where you come and do your own meditation. There is no group sitting, nothing. You are supposed to isolate yourself and stay in your place. You can order food. There will be a cook who will cook and deliver food for you. You eat once a day, or if you like, you can fast. Many people come here and fast. They like to fast because it will solve the hindrance problem. If you eat, sometimes you feel sleepy, but if you fast, you feel alert. So many people like to fast when they come here to meditate. Layperson: How about place for laymen? Than Ajahn: We have some platforms with a walking path in the forest here. It is a very basic facility. There is no running water, Question and Answer

— 31 — 3 | Laypeople from Singapore and Malaysia, November 14th, 2014 no electricity. He has to bring his own sleeping gear like a mosquito net, etc. And we only want people to come alone, because if they come together, they tend to disrupt the meditation. If he wants, he can talk to the monks who will come down here after 4pm. Layperson: If I have bad thoughts which are against the precepts, and I did not act on it, what should I do with those thoughts? Do I teach the mind that this is not me? Than Ajahn: If you haven’t done any action yet, you have not done anything wrong. You can use the mantra to stop it. When you start thinking about bad things, you keep repeating the mantra, Buddho Buddho Buddho. Eventually the bad thought will lose its strength. You don’t have to tell the mind that it is not you, because it will not listen to you anyway. If you keep on talking to it, it will argue with you. It’s better to use a mantra and forget about it. Just Buddho Buddho Buddho and eventually it will disappear. Layperson: Today’s sermon was the best I have listened to. The sermon was very clear and easy to understand. I had a better sitting meditation after you taught us how to meditate and used mantra recitation mentally, and I used Arahang. Than Ajahn: You can use anything. You need something to control your thoughts. You have to keep doing it, make it continuous. The mantra is like a break, to stop your mind from thinking, because usually you never stop your mind from thinking. But your mind will not converge into one, and be totally still until you sit down. You have to sit down. Your body has to be still first before your mind can become still because it is the mind that directs the body. As long as the mind still has to direct the body, it cannot be still. When the body is still then the mind can

— 32 — Dhamma in English 2014 & 2015 leave the body alone and the mind itself can become totally still. When you have achieved that, you have achieved maximum peace of mind, the maximum happiness. You have to try. It is not something that you can do overnight. For some people it takes years, not just days. But at least you have some feel of it. So this is the right direction, this is where you want to go, but somehow you just couldn’t get to that yet. When you meditate you want to be alone so you can concentrate on your meditation object and don’t let the mind wander. You can meditate at home. You don’t have to come to the temple because sometimes the temple is not as quiet as your own house. In the temple you might have some other people coming at entry level, so they are subjected to group meditation or group chanting and it may not be conducive for an advanced level meditator. If you are at an advanced level, you have to be alone. That’s why I have these houses built for the more advanced meditators, who want to be alone, and concentrate on their practice. They don’t have to go for group chanting or group meditation. Layperson: According to your teaching today, one can reach Nibbāna, if one tries. Than Ajahn: Yes, if you practise. It is not whether you are a man or a woman or whether you are a monk or not a monk. It is not important. If you practise the noble eightfold path, you can become an Arahant. That’s the cause and effect. If you have this, you will get this. If you don’t have this, you don’t get this. That’s all. Most people don’t have this, so they don’t get this. For people who have this, they get this. Like all the teachers we pay respect to, they have the noble eightfold path, so they became Arahants, as simple as that.

— 33 — 3 | Laypeople from Singapore and Malaysia, November 14th, 2014 There is nothing to prevent you from becoming an Arahant, except your own actions and attitude. If you think that you cannot become an Arahant, you have already prevented yourself from becoming one. But if you think that if somebody else can do it, you can also do it, then you will become one eventually, because we are all the same. There is no difference. Layperson: Your teaching is in simple English and easy to understand. Sometimes, some teachers teach in Pāli language which is hard to understand. Than Ajahn: That’s the point of teaching. You want to make it clear and precise and easy to understand, so I avoid all Pāli words because for me, when I studied, I didn’t study in Pāli, I only studied the translated text. Layperson: I usually recite kesa, loma, nakha, danta, taco all the time until I get some peace. I call it the five kammaṭṭhāna. Is this the correct way? Than Ajahn: If it can eliminate your desire then it is correct. If it cannot eliminate your desire then it is still not correct. The purpose is to eliminate your desire for not wanting to get old. When you look at your hair, you see that eventually it is going to turn white and you are going to lose hair, you might become bald headed eventually. When you look at the skin, you might think that the skin is not like this all the time. Eventually it will be wrinkled and when you die, they will put you into the incinerator and you will be burnt. This is how you should look at the body to see that this is what will happen and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Think that you are not the body, you are just the one who possesses the body temporarily. You are not the true possessor of the body. You cannot possess the body forever. At one point the body will not let you possess it. It wants to return back to the four elements. So this is how you should look at the body which is impermanent.

— 34 — Dhamma in English 2014 & 2015 Anattā means there is no self in the body, it is just elements or it is just the 32 parts. And where do these 32 parts come from? They come from the food that you eat, from the air that you breathe in, from the water that you drink, so they are all elements. There is nothing to identify that it is you in this body. It is your delusion. The mind is deluded and claims ‘I’ as myself and it is this delusion that causes you to have attachment and to have desire for the body not to disappear, not to get sick, not to get old, not to die. When you have this desire, you create stress in your mind, you create suffering in your mind. But if you can see with true clarity that it is not you and there is nothing that can stop the body from getting sick, old and die, then you just stop resisting, stop having desire not to become. When you don’t have any desire then your mind will become peaceful. It is like when you look at somebody else’s body, somebody that you don’t know. How do you feel, when someone else’s body gets sick, you don’t feel anything, right? Because you don’t have any relationship towards that body, you don’t have attachment, you don’t have claim towards that body. But you have claim to this body, that’s the problem. So, you must de-claim it. You have to decouple the mind from this body. You look at your body like a rented car which you rent at the airport, and when you finish your journey, you return the car to the rental company. The body is like that, it is like a car which you rent. It takes you to restaurants, to movie houses, to do all kinds of activities, but eventually this body will deteriorate and it will no longer serve you. When it cannot serve you, you return it to the original owner, return it to the four elements. But you won’t be able to see this until you meditate. When your mind converges into one, it will separate from the body temporarily. When the mind becomes converged, the knowledge of the body will disappear from the mind, so you know that the mind and the body are not together. They are only together when the mind

— 35 — 3 | Laypeople from Singapore and Malaysia, November 14th, 2014 comes out of meditation. But when the mind becomes concentrated, becomes one, the mind is detached from the body. You then know that there is no problem of giving up the body. You think that if you give up the body, you might experience all sorts of sadness or misery, but in fact when you give up the body, you have peace of mind. You let go of something that you have to worry about, to look after, and once you let it go, you still exist and you are happy without it. So when you know this, you can easily be detached from the body when you have to. You must meditate to get this samatha, this appanā or the fourth jhāna, that’s where you want the mind to go to, because in that state of mind, the mind is detached from everything. It has no claim on anything. However, this state is only temporary. You can stay in that state for a while and afterwards you have to return and withdraw back to the body. When you withdraw back to the body, you have to constantly remind yourself that this body is not you, it is just your servant. You look after it as best as you can, but when you cannot do this anymore, you let it go, because one day you have to let it go. If you are willing to let it go, you will not suffer any pain or any mental stress. The mental stress happens because you resist it, you don’t want to let it go, you cling to it. You have to eliminate this clinging, destroy this desire for the body. You can do it. If you keep on teaching your mind, eventually you can see the difference between attaching and detaching. You will find that you get peace of mind when you are detached from it, and you will find that you get stress when you are attached to it. So which one do you choose, stress or peace of mind? I think it’s enough for today. I will let you all leave. End of Desanā.

— 37 — You know about dāna, sīla, samatha-bhāvanā and vipassanābhāvanā. These are the main activities that Buddhists should concentrate on if they want to eliminate defilements (kilesas) – the cause of their anxiety, stress, restlessness and all bad feelings. This is the way to real happiness. The happiness that we acquire from having money, being able to do anything, to buy anything is only temporary and it can turn into sadness when you can no longer do what you want to do, because this type of happiness depends on many things, for instance, a healthy body and having a lot of money. If you run out of money or if your health deteriorates, you will not be able to do what you like to do. When you cannot do what you want to do, then you will have sadness. However, if you know how to build the other kind of happiness, happiness which doesn’t rely on having money, or having a strong and healthy body, then even when you don’t have money or when your body is not strong or healthy, you can still be happy. This is the happiness of the heart or mind, which arises from the practice of meditation (bhāvanā). There are two levels of meditation. The first level is to calm the mind, the second level is to teach the mind to become Laypeople from Malaysia January 17th, 2015 4

— 38 — Dhamma in English 2014 & 2015 enlightened, or vipassanā. Before we can enlighten the mind, the mind must first be peaceful and calm, so the first step is to calm the mind, to bring happiness to the mind. When the mind is calm and peaceful, the mind is happy and this happiness doesn’t rely on the body or money. You can be happy without having money. You can be happy even if your body is sick or not healthy. So you must try to achieve this goal first, that is to keep your mind peaceful and calm. The way to do it is to have mindfulness. Mindfulness can direct the mind to become calm and peaceful. Mindfulness is to focus on one mental object, such as the mantra, ‘Buddho’. If you can recite mentally ‘Buddho’ ‘Buddho’ all the time from the time you get up to the time you go to sleep, and only pause when you have to think about something important, like when you have to work, then you stop your mantra, but when you don’t have any work or thinking to do, then you should not let the mind think aimlessly. When you think aimlessly, you tend to go to the way of the kilesas, wanting to become richer, to be happier and to have this and that. When you have this kind of thinking it will start to create restlessness and anxiety. Your mind will not be peaceful, calm and happy. To refrain your mind from thinking like that, keep thinking of the mantra ‘Buddho’ ‘Buddho’. Then the mind will not be able to think in the way of kilesas , then the mind will not be restless or agitated. The mind will be peaceful, calm and happy, and when you sit in meditation, your mind can become easily concentrated, become one, enter into jhāna, enter into samādhi where you will find happiness that arises from being peaceful and calm. You will then know that there is no other kind of happiness in the world that is equal to this kind of happiness. You will know that you can get rid of the attachment to your money, to your body. In the past, you need them to make you happy, but now you have another kind of happiness that doesn’t need the body or money, then you don’t have to worry about your body health, and your financial health. It doesn’t matter whether you are rich or poor. It doesn’t matter if you are sick or healthy. You can always create this happiness

— 39 — 4 | Laypeople from Malaysia, January 17th, 2015 that arises from having mindfulness. It is very important to develop mindfulness at all times. The Buddha taught Venerable Ananda, his disciple and caretaker, “Ananda, you should be mindful of death all the time (maraṇānussati)”. If you can think about death all the time it will make your mind peaceful and calm. Because when you think of death, you will not have any desire to be rich or to have anything. You know that you cannot take anything with you when you die. All you want is peace of mind. Try to reflect on that from time to time, if not all the time. You need a strong mind to be able to reflect on death, because death is something that the mind opposes. The defilement do not like the mind to think of death, but death is a strong medicine that can cure the mind from kilesas. It can kill kilesas. If your mind is not strong enough, you should use mindfulness, use the mantra ‘Buddho’, to make your mind peaceful and calm first. Once your mind is peaceful and calm and when you come out of samādhi, you can use that mind that is free of kilesas – not in the sense that kilesas have been destroyed, but they have been weakened, so it doesn’t oppose the mind from seeing the truth. Normally the kilesas do not like to see the truth of the Ti–lakkhaṇa, the three characteristics of existence namely annicaṁ, dukkhaṁ, anattā. Everything in this world is aniccaṁ – they are temporary, dukkhaṁ – they keep on changing, and anattā – they are beyond your control. You cannot tell them to be with you all the time or to be good to you all the time. They change according to the nature. You must be aware of these three characteristics. If you are aware of them, you will not rely on them to give you happiness. Look at your body as having the three characteristics. The body is aniccaṁ, it will get sick, get old and die. Just keep thinking like this, so you can stop relying on your body. Over time, you can replace your mindfulness with samādhi. If you have samādhi you will have happiness that does not rely on the body. When you

— 40 — Dhamma in English 2014 & 2015 don’t rely on the body then when the body gets sick, gets old and dies, it will not bother you. This is what you should do in your practice. The first step is to develop mindfulness. This is like having the key to your car. Before you can drive the car, you need to get into the car first, right? You need the key to unlock the door. Once you have the key, then you can put the key into the ignition switch and then start the car and drive the car to wherever you want to go. It is the same with driving your mind to Nibbāna. You need mindfulness which is the key to open the door to samādhi. Once you have samādhi, then you can develop wisdom or paññā. Once you have paññā, you can eliminate the desire which is the cause of your mental suffering. When you have eliminated all your desires, then there will be no mental suffering left in your mind, then your mind will be pure and peaceful forever. The mind is permanent. It is not temporary like the body. When the body dies, the mind doesn’t die with the body. If the mind still has a desire for a new body, it will take up a new body. If you can eliminate the desire to have a new body, you don’t have to come back and be born again. If you are not born, then you will not get sick, get old and die, or get separated from the one that you love or the things that you love. So there would be no more suffering for you. This is basically what the Buddha taught us to do. Do dāna. You stop using money as a means of buying happiness. Instead of buying things to make you happy, you give money away, helping other people, making other people happy and you will have a better kind of happiness, happiness (of heart) that arises from helping other people, making other people happy. You can then stop using money to buy happiness, which is only a temporary kind of happiness. You buy something you are happy for a few days, then that happiness disappears, then you have a new desire to buy more things. If you give money away to charity, you eliminate the desire to buy things to make you happy, and when you don’t have money to buy anything,

— 41 — 4 | Laypeople from Malaysia, January 17th, 2015 you won’t be affected. You don’t have any desire to buy anything. If you keep buying things then you have to keep buying on and on, buying more and more until the point when you are unable to buy anything. You become sad and unhappy. Use your money wisely. The best way to use it is to give it to charity. You will have mettā (loving kindness) and compassion for other human beings, then it will be easier for you to keep the five-precepts. If you don’t do charity it means you are selfish. You want to make more money, and create more happiness just for yourself, and whatever you do, you don’t care if other people get hurt by what you do because all you want is to make yourself happy. If you help other people, you make other people happy, then whatever you do, even when you have to work to acquire money, to maintain your life, you will consider whether your actions will affect other people. If what you do will hurt other people, you will not do it because you have mettā (loving kindness), you have karuṇā (compassion) that arises from giving dāna. Dāna will help you to develop mettā and karuṇā and will enable you to be able to keep the five-precepts. If you can keep the five-precepts, your mind can be a lot more peaceful because if you are not doing anything bad, your mind will not feel bad. When you do bad deeds your mind will feel bad. So this is the way to avoid creating bad feelings in the mind and to keep the mind peaceful and happy by keeping the five-precepts. Once you can keep the five precepts, then you can move up to the eightprecepts. The eight-precepts is necessary for your practice of bhāvanā because you have to restrain your desire to look outside of your mind to find happiness. If you keep the eight-precepts, you cannot go to a party, cannot go to a movie, cannot go outside but have to stay at a place without all these kinds of activities, such as in a temple. You cannot sleep with your husband or wife. You cannot eat after mid-day. All these things are activities which are going to disrupt your meditation practice. If you can stop these activities then you will have the time to focus on your meditation

— 42 — Dhamma in English 2014 & 2015 and then you will be able to achieve the result from your meditation. This is the step by step way that the Buddha taught us, starting from dāna to sīla, from sīla to bhāvanā. Once you have gone through all these steps, the result will be the magga, phala, Nibbāna. That will be the eventual result. This is my message for you today and hope you pick it up and do as much as you can.

— 43 — 4 | Laypeople from Malaysia, January 17th, 2015 Question (M): Instead of using ‘Buddho’, can we be mindful of our breath? Than Ajahn: Yes. There are some 40 subjects of meditation. You just choose one that is suitable for you. To suit your daily activities, you can switch from one subject to another subject. If you are using the breath as the subject of your meditation, when you are performing your daily activities you might find it difficult to focus on your breathing. You might have to focus on your physical activities instead, such as your body movement. It all depends on your ability to focus on the object. Some people like to use mantra as a subject, so they just keep using the mantra. For others, they may like to focus or watch the body, so they keep on watching the body. Every movement of the body is being watched to keep your mind from wandering to other things. Any method that you find useful to bring your mind to the present, to be here and now, and not to think about other things, is the one suitable for you. Question (F): When we recite the mantra ‘Buddho’, do I focus on its sound? Question and Answer