Being Dharma Page 9

  Yet having these things inherent within us even to this extent, we still do not see! It’s like with the skeleton we keep in the meditation hall. Folks will talk about it, but they really don’t see it. Some look at it and feel frightened. They flee the hall; they don’t want to look. These are people who do not see. If they really saw, they would know no fear. If you are afraid, where will you run? The skeleton is always right here with you. Think about it. Even if you run away, it is running with you. Wherever you go, it stays with you. What else is it that you are afraid of? The places of escape are exhausted.

  Recognizing this means you see. Then there is dispassion: “Oh! Things really are impermanent, suffering and not self!” When you see a skeleton, you know it is the same as yourself. Sitting there chewing your betel and smoking your tobacco, the skeleton is there. Coming and going, walking around, the skeleton is there. Chattering and gossiping, it is there. It is just like you. In the future you will be just like the skeleton in the hall. Everyone will become like this. Before, that skeleton was a living person, just like you. Later, we will become like it. Are you afraid? Is this true or not? Where can you run?

  So you look at one person, and you know he is the same as any other person, the same as yourself. When you see one person in this way, you understand all people in the universe. We are all the same. There is no substantial difference; for the greater part, we are all just the same.

  Please see the truth of this. Before, the skeleton was like us. Later, we will be just like it. The mind will change from this investigation. Keep up your investigation, and you will realize that things are not genuine or reliable. The only thing that is genuine is the accumulation of good or evil. In this life, good leads to good, bad leads to bad. Right thinking leads you in right paths, while wrong thinking leads you astray. This is occurring right now. This is the only thing that is real, and the results will always return to follow after you.

  Even our own skeleton cannot follow us. We certainly don’t need to consider family, friends, wealth, and possessions reliable; starting from our very own bones, there is nothing genuine. The only thing that is real is that which leads us to the various states of becoming and birth, meaning good and bad deeds of body, speech, and mind. Doing good brings good, and acting in unwholesome ways brings pain. This is what is really certain and true, and only this.

  So the Buddha wanted us to look into this matter. We don’t need to think about gaining anything in this life. Give up unwholesome ways and practice good while you are still living. Once you die, there is nothing you can do. The Buddha wanted us to see the urgency of the situation and hurry up and get to work. You still have eyes and ears that are functioning. Consciousness has not yet departed from your body, so you can understand things. Throw it away! If you throw it away while you are still living, it will bring lightness. What does throwing away mean? Strive to give up, to look, to investigate. When the consciousness departs and leaves a corpse behind, what can you accomplish? They will carry the body away to be cremated or buried, and that’s the end of the story.

  We have our traditions for honoring and supposedly helping the dead, and we employ all sorts of idioms in our language to describe how we gain merits from such practices. People may put out rice cakes, saying that the dearly departed will benefit. Then they sit there enjoying the cakes themselves; but where is the deceased at that time, and what benefit does he or she get?

  It’s better to train yourselves. The Buddha did not praise the dead. He praised the opportunity of this human birth. It’s important to practice while you are alive. If there is wrong in you, give it up now. If there is something good, practice it now. These are your two friends, your refuge. In the present this is your refuge, and throughout your future lives it will be your place of refuge. The various material possessions are only what they are. Isn’t that so? Do you see how young people fight over these things now, and how it leads them nowhere? We are old enough, so we should know to stop doing that and seek tranquility and relinquishment instead. We’ve done enough of the worldly business already—it’s time to stop now, isn’t it?

  Even though you are living in a house, you should contemplate these things. You are not ordained, but let the mind be ordained, investigating the truth. Worldly accomplishments and possessions only go so far. They really do not lead to any ultimate kind of benefit. They exist within their limits. They will flow away, so let them flow. The Buddha wanted us to meditate and see. If we contemplate in this way, it will be what the scriptures call the preliminary training, the first step. It will destroy the attachment to our own bodies. Destroy our bodies! What does this mean? Through seeing the impermanence, suffering, and lack of self there, we realize weariness and dispassion, and real faith will arise.

  Please contemplate this. The first result will be that, with the arising of world-weariness and dispassion, you will refrain from harmful actions. When you stop this, it is sila. If you don’t understand these things, you don’t know what is karma and what is wrongdoing. If you do know, you will stop. Whatever is not good or beautiful, you will stop doing by way of body and speech. That is morality. When you give up all wrongdoing, there is morality.

  Having given up wrongdoing, the mind is composed and can attain samadhi. When the mind is composed in samadhi thus, wisdom will be born. When the Buddha began teaching, some disciples became enlightened in their seats just by hearing his words. Some attained the arahant stage, the end of the path, right there on that single occasion. So when did they keep precepts? When were they practicing meditation and developing samadhi? They realized weariness with samsara and dispassionate detachment, and they were able to stop. That condition is sila. Then, with no wrongdoing in the heart, but only coolness and tranquility, there was samadhi. From this state of calm, the mind was able to contemplate things and know them as they are.

  Hearing Dharma, contemplating Dharma thus, pure morality and the rest arose, and this was the path. In that moment it happened. Now, people like us have a lot of doubt and uncertainty, and we think, Oh, they must have really had a lot of good karma behind them to do that. But it happens in the present also. It really can. If we listen and understand clearly, it can happen. The mind gives up; it lets go. If it can’t let go right now, it can do so tomorrow or the day after, at another sitting in the near future. Not knowing clearly today, it will know tomorrow; not realizing tomorrow, it will realize the day after tomorrow. It must know, if we really take an interest in the Dharma.

  When hearing the name of Dharma, don’t get the idea that it is anything other than nature. We have it; we are it. Whatever you practice, strive to make it genuine. Strive to make the mind see—see impermanence, see unsatisfactoriness, see the absence of a self. See that nothing is permanent or lasting throughout this world of ours. That is all.

  When your view is like this, whatever you look at becomes truth that makes you turn inward to see; external phenomena are no different from yourself. Keep turning inward continuously, and everything is Dharma. When you see animals, Dharma is there. Large creatures are Dharma; small creatures are Dharma. Even when you see rocks, earth, or grass, it is all Dharma, because all of this is nature.

  Seeing Dharma, you will practice Dharma accordingly. This is what the Buddha’s teaching is about. It is not something else that is distant from us. We are speaking about the source of the path. If you have faith and seek the Dharma, where will you look for it? Seeking in one monastery, searching it out in some other monastery, going to forests here and there, it just remains the way it is. In the forest, the Dharma is in yourself—right there in your body. If you go to learn in a monastery, it is pointed out the same way, right there within yourself.

  In listening to teachings, the principle is the same. It’s not necessary to hear a lot. You should listen in order to understand and know what it is all about. What are the important points? What should be investigated? How should you practice? How do you want to train the mind? You want to liberate the mind from suffering, to go
beyond conventional reality. Where is this conventional reality? Where is this suffering? How do you transcend it?

  Happiness and suffering are the great teacher. Love and hate are your great teacher. This is where the path is. If you are attached to feelings of love, they will lead you to pain. Look into this. These feelings very directly point out the path. If you are attached to any of them, that is a mistake. Looking into this, you can really come to know.

  Why is it that we are told to transcend the feelings of love and attachment? Take a good look. In your lives, at home or elsewhere, when you are very attached to someone, loving them more than others, it leads you to suffering. Think about it if you are skeptical. You have to know what this affection is about. Don’t throw yourself away; don’t fall asleep! Don’t let your mind slumber. Love for people, attachment to possessions, these only bring suffering. Remember this! If it won’t stick in your mind, write it down! Look at it! It is really the truth.

  When you have feelings of love and hate, you need to look into them. They are teaching you, showing you not to fall into extreme ways. Impulses are trying to lead you into the left-or right-hand paths of indulgence or suppression. The teachings talk of the extremes of indulgence in sensual pleasure and self-torment. When the Buddha was first enlightened to the Dharma, this was what he taught about. These things were true in the Buddha’s time, and they are true for us now.

  Where can you look to understand the truth of this? Just in your own mind. The tendency we have is that when we love someone, we want to be with them all the time, and when we feel hatred toward someone, we don’t even want to be near them. Do any of you have these feelings? Please look and teach yourselves. Do you see how they lead you to suffer? This is talking about the Noble Truths, suffering and its origin, which is love and attachment. You can see the fact of this if you look at your lives. Are your attachments and anxieties something good and beneficial? Don’t let your minds get caught in unreasonable attachment. It’s as if you eat a banana and toss the peel away, but when the chickens and other animals want to eat it, you still feel possessive and concerned over it, unable to relinquish attachment. With gain, you are elated. With loss, you are depressed. This is just what the Buddha talked about when he said to avoid the two extremes. Talk to your mind to make it capable of avoidance.

  Therefore practitioners of Dharma, having heard the teachings, need to investigate these feelings of attachment and aversion toward people as they occur and continuously make efforts to train their minds. Looking at this and avoiding extreme reactions will support the mind and support the path. Don’t fall in the ditch! Love is a ditch. Hatred is a ditch.

  The Buddha really understood these things. Through his practice and enlightenment, he saw that they are truly impermanent, full of suffering, and without self-essence. When love comes, put it aside. When hatred comes, put it aside. If you are not able to put them down, train the mind to do so. These things by themselves are not going to bring peace to the mind.

  This is the Dharma. This is what the Buddha’s dispensation is. You have to look right here. You have to seek peace here. This is the path to nirvana. “You want to go running after those things? You’ll fall into the lower realms.” Tell your mind that. Don’t get attached and give meaning to such things.

  Don’t you go to work in the fields? You know how to shout at the buffalo so it will obey you and go where you want it to. So why can’t you shout at yourself and get some control of where your mind goes?

  We are talking about reaching the place where there are no causes, where causes are exhausted. If there is love or hate, it means causes exist. If there is a cause, there will be a result. If there is birth, there will be death. This is how it is for us. When there is love and attachment, there is going to be hatred and aversion. If we go to heavenly states, we will also end up going to hell. Going to hell, we then go to heaven. It’s like this, the realm of becoming and birth. So the Buddha wanted us to investigate. It is not something that only applies to certain people; these principles are universally true. So where should you practice your samadhi? What will you meditate on? When you see, you let go immediately.

  Make your efforts here. Train the mind with skillful means to make it pliable, just as a blacksmith heats metal to soften it and can then shape it into any useful tool he desires. Just so, we soften our minds with training in precepts, with restraint, with the practice of meditation, and with investigation. Our minds will then soften and surrender to become peaceful.

  3

  PRACTICING DHARMA

  The Path to Peace

  OUR PRACTICE IS TO WORK AT removing desire, aversion, and delusion, the mental afflictions that can be found within each and every one of us. They are what hold us in the round of becoming and birth and prevent us from achieving peace of mind.

  Realizing peace involves working not only with the mind, but with the body and speech as well. Before you can practice with your body and speech, you must be practicing with your mind; but if you only practice with your mind and neglect your body and speech, that won’t work either. Practicing with the mind until it’s smooth, refined, and beautiful is similar to producing a finished wooden pillar or plank. Before you can have an attractive varnished pillar, you must first cut a tree. Then you cut off the rough parts—the roots and branches—before you split it, saw it, and work it. Practicing with the mind is the same. You have to work with the coarse things first; you work through the rough to reach the smooth.

  In Dharma practice you aim to pacify and purify the mind, but it’s difficult to do. So you have to begin with externals, body and speech, working your way inward until you reach that which is smooth and resplendent. You can compare it with a finished piece of furniture, such as a chair or a table. They may be attractive now, but once they were just rough bits of wood with branches and leaves that had to be planed and worked. This is the way you obtain furniture that is beautiful or a mind that is perfect and pure.

  Therefore the right path to peace, the way the Buddha showed for attaining true happiness, is sila (morality), samadhi (meditative concentration), and wisdom. This is the path of practice. It is the way to complete abandonment of craving attachment, aversion, and confusion. This path involves going against our habitual tendencies of taking it easy and wanting enjoyment and comfort, so we have to be ready to endure some difficulty and put forth effort.

  The Buddha taught that this is the way the practice is for all of us. All of his disciples who finished their work and became fully enlightened had previously been ordinary worldly beings like us. They had arms and legs, eyes and ears, greed and anger, just like us. They didn’t have any special characteristics that made them particularly different from us. They practiced and brought forth enlightenment from the unenlightened, beauty from ugliness, and great benefit from that which was useless. You must understand that you have the same potential. You are made up of the five aggregates, just as they were. You have a body, pleasant and unpleasant feelings, memory and perception, thought formations and consciousness, as well as a wandering and proliferating mind. You can be aware of good and evil. Everything’s the same. Those who became enlightened in the Buddha’s time were no different from us. They all started out as ordinary, unenlightened beings. Some had even been gangsters and murderers. The Buddha inspired them to practice for the attainment of path and fruition, and these days, in similar fashion, people like you are inspired to take up the practice of morality, meditation, and wisdom.

  Photographer unknown

  Ajahn Chah, circa 1975.

  If the mind is able to look after itself, it is not so difficult to guard speech and bodily actions, since they are motivated and supervised by the mind. Mind is where the intentions for all your actions originate. You learn to look after yourself with mindfulness, the one who knows, who is the same one who formerly motivated you to perform unrestrained and harmful actions. Then, through restraint and caution, your speech and actions become graceful and pleasing to the eye and ear, whil
e you yourself remain comfortable and at ease within this restraint.

  Continuous restraint, where you consistently take care with your actions and speech and take responsibility for your behavior, is sila. Being unwavering in the practice of mindfulness and restraint is samadhi. This is samadhi as an external factor in the practice, used in keeping sila. However, it also has an inner, deeper side.

  Once the mind is intent in the practice and sila and samadhi are firmly established, you will be able to investigate and reflect on your experience of different inner and outer phenomena. When the mind makes contact with different sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, or ideas, the one who knows will arise and establish awareness of like and dislike, happiness and suffering, and the different kinds of mental objects and conditions that you experience.

  If you are mindful, you will see the objects that pass into the mind and your reactions to them. The one who knows will automatically take them up as objects of contemplation. That aspect of discerning the good from the bad and the right from the wrong from among all the phenomena in your field of awareness is wisdom. This is wisdom in its initial stages, and it matures as the practice progresses. This is the way morality, meditation, and wisdom are practiced in the beginning.

  As you continue the practice, fresh attachments and new kinds of delusion begin to arise in the mind. This means you start clinging to that which is good or wholesome. You become fearful of any blemishes or faults in the mind, anxious that your samadhi will be harmed by them. At the same time, you begin to be diligent and hardworking, and to love and nurture the practice. Whenever the mind makes contact with phenomena you become fearful and tense. You become aware of other people’s faults as well, down to the slightest things they seem to be doing wrong. This is because you are concerned for your practice. This is practicing on one level, based on having established your views in accord with the essential foundations of practice taught by the Buddha.