The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.

The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.

8 July 2025

Attãhi attano nãtho, we are our own refuge is the central theme of Buddhist teaching. The Buddha teaches us to rely only on ourselves because we are the creator of good and evil, and the one who will reap their corresponding results of happiness and pain. 

The creating mechanism of good and evil, joy and sorrow, heaven and hell are inside our mind. Mind is the principal architect. 

The Buddha therefore concludes that the mind is the chief, the forerunner of all things. 

It is both a doer and a receiver of its own actions. The mind is the master who gives order to his servant, the body, to do and say things. 

There are three kinds of actions or kamma namely physical, verbal and mental. When we do good kamma, happiness, progress and heaven will be the results that follow. On the other hand when we do evil kamma, then pain, worry, anxiety and degradation will follow.

After death, the mind will go to one of the four states of deprivation (apāya-bhūmi) such as hell for example. 

Therefore, the Buddha insists that we must rely only on ourselves. 

We shouldn’t wait for someone else to create happiness and prosperity, heaven and nibbāna for us. We must do it ourselves. To pray to Buddha images or to ask monks for blessings of success and prosperity is not the Dhamma teaching of the Buddha because he can only point the way to peace, happiness, and prosperity, and the way to suffering and deterioration. 

His teaching can be summarized as follows: avoid doing evil, do good and cleanse the mind of all impurities.

Doing good kamma or making merits such as giving to charity is like depositing money in a bank. The more we deposit the more money we will have accumulated. 

The interest will also increase and soon we will be rich. 

On the other hand, doing evil kamma is like borrowing money from the bank in which we would have to pay back the loan plus the interest as well. It can become a heavy burden to bear. People in debt are always anxious and worried, unlike those who have money in the bank, who are always smiling because their money keeps growing all the time. 

It is the same with making merits. It gives us peace of mind; makes us feel happy and content. But when we do bad kamma, our mind would be set on fire. We become worried and restless. This we can see because it’s happening in our mind instantaneously, here and now, not in the next life.

Therefore, if we want to be happy and prosperous, to sleep well and suffer no pain, then we must do only good kamma and avoid doing bad kamma.

“Sensual Pleasures are Painful.”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto

www.phrasuchart.com

YouTube:  Dhamma in English.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g

The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.

The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.

7 July 2025

Q:  Sometimes I feel like I have an attachment to thinking, and I don’t feel like meditating or applying mindfulness to the breath. So at those times I let the mind to have a natural peacefulness by either doing asubha or mettā, and once there is a little bit of peace then watching the breath almost feels natural, is that possible? 

Phra Ajahn:  Yes, that’s possible if you can recite a sutta. Try to memorize a sutta and keep reciting the sutta (the discourse of the Buddha) or you can use the asubha or the 32 parts to the body. Just keep reciting the names of the 32 parts of the body such as hair of the head, hair of the body, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, bones, bone marrows - all these parts, in order to keep your mind busy and prevent it from thinking aimlessly then your mind can become calmer and then you might feel that you want to stop, then you can watch the breath. So you can do this. When you start, if you feel that you want to think, let it think with the Dhamma. Think with the 32 parts, the asubha, or think of the discourse of the Buddha. You can memorize it and then use it as your meditation object. 

Q:  Is it okay to think about Dhamma in a less rote way like thinking about the drawback of sensual pleasure, the anicca, dukkha, anattā? 

Phra Ajahn:  You can do this later when you’re not meditating. When you meditate, you don’t want to think intellectually. You want to use the recitation or the memorizing as a way of calming your mind so you don’t want to intellectualize it. You just want to recite, to keep your mind busy from thinking about something else. 

Q:  So I do it outside of sitting.

Phra Ajahn:  Yes, like right now. Right now you’re not meditating so you can think intellectually. You can think in terms of reality. 

Q:  So thinking intellectually can be a distraction when we sit down.

Phra Ajahn:  Right. If you want to calm your mind, stop your mind, you don’t want to think intellectually because if you do, you’ll keep thinking, you won’t stop thinking so you have to use rote thinking instead. 

Q:  When we have a degree of stillness, can we still do that?

Phra Ajahn:  You can stop and then switch to watching your breath. If you don’t want to think anymore then you just watch your breath instead. 

Q:  Once there is the concentration on the breath, is it ok to switch back to contemplation?

Phra Ajahn:  No, the goal is to be completely still by focusing on your breath. Once you become fully concentrated then your mind becomes peaceful and calm, and it will be inactive temporarily. You’ll just be aware with nothing to be aware of - that’s where you want to get to in your meditation because that’s where peace and happiness is. 

Once you get there, you want to try to sustain it for as long as possible by preventing your mind from starting to think. When your mind starts to think, stop it. If you have strong mindfulness, you don’t need to use anything to stop it. Just use your mindfulness. Just tell yourself to stop thinking and it will stop. If it doesn’t stop then you have to use something like a mantra or a chant to prevent it from thinking. Then, you can continue with your concentration. 

In the beginning, you want to develop this stage of calm for as much as possible first because it will then serve you as the support for your contemplation later on. Because contemplation without calm cannot bring any result. You contemplate to see the harm in your defilement and you need a calm mind to resist your defilement. You need contemplation to tell you why you have to resist your defilement because your defilement can only bring you sorrow and pain. You don’t want that so you have to stop your defilement i.e. your greed, your hate, your delusion. But if you don’t have a calm mind, you won’t be able to stop your defilement. So, you first need to develop samādhi before you can go to the next level which we call ‘wisdom’ or ‘paññā.’  

Q:  And what is the support that we can have in daily life especially as lay practitioners that can help us be better at developing samādhi?

Phra Ajahn:  You need a quiet environment to be alone and have no distraction from the outside that can distract your concentration so try to find a quiet place and be alone. 

Don’t mingle with anybody and try to develop mindfulness all the time, from the time you get up to the time you go to sleep. Keep controlling your thought, stopping your thought. Only use it sparingly, only use it when you have to; when you don’t have the need to use your thought, then don’t use it. 

And when you don’t have to do anything, try to sit for as long as possible, as many time as possible. The more you do it, the more proficient you’ll become. It’s a training. The more you train, the more you will become acquainted with your practice. 

And if you have any questions, you can read books or talk to someone who have the experience and ask them for advice. You need people who know to advise you. 

You cannot practice alone without knowing exactly what you’re doing. 

Q:  And should these people who advise us be people we have confidence in to have at least some right understanding? 

Phra Ajahn:  Definitely, you have to trust the person you consult with. If you don’t trust them, then you don’t consult with them. You have to at least believe that they know something that you don’t know and they can help you. If they cannot help you, then you go look for someone else. 

Q:  Is it important that they are established on the path in order to help me?

Phra Ajahn:  Well, the more established they are, the more helpful they become. Different people have different levels of development. 

There are 4 levels of noble disciples: sotāpanna, sakadāgāmi, anāgāmī, arahant. 

These are people who are established on various levels of the path. Sometimes it depends on your luck, who you’re gonna run into. If you can run into the Buddha, then you’re the luckiest because the Buddha will be the one who knows almost everything that you want to know. With other noble disciples, they might not know as much as the Buddha knows, or they cannot do as much as the Buddha can do. You can always go to the Buddha by reading his discourses. 

If you don’t trust anybody, then just trust the discourses but you have to be intelligent enough to be able to understand what you’re reading. If you don’t understand, then it’s not useful. So you can try reading the discourses or you can look for different teachers. 

There are many teachers now which you can search for on the Internet and then you just go and meet them and try them out, like trying a new automobile. Before you buy a new car, you might want to visit different dealers to try different cars to see which car suits you best. 

Teachers are like that. Sometimes they are established in the path but their methods of teaching might not suit you. So you might have to look for someone else.

“Dhamma in English, Sep 3, 2019.”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto

www.phrasuchart.com

YouTube:  Dhamma in English.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g

The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.

The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.

5 July 2025

Q:  How can we let go our attachment to the world and have a strong motivation to begin practicing the Dhamma in every moment?

Than Ajahn:  By contemplating on death that life is impermanent, one day we’re going to lose everything. 

No matter how much we have, eventually we will have to give it all up. 

So if we know that we will be forced to give it up then it will be easy for us to give it up now because when we are not attached, we feel better. When we’re attached to things, we feel bad because we have to worry and we have to look after things that we are attached to.

So by contemplating on death, it will help you cut off your attachment to things and people then you will have the motivation to practice Dhamma. You need Dhamma to help you detach from everything. You cannot detach by just knowing that you will die. This is a way to initiate the practice and to start practicing Dhamma by developing mindfulness to get samādhi. 

Once you have samādhi then you will have the power to let go, the mind will be strong enough to be able to resist your attachment. 

Q:  Ajahn, I have some friends who are not Buddhists but they have interest in Buddhism. How can I explain to them about Buddhism and about meditation in a simple way? 

Phra Ajahn:  Buddhism is like a subject you study in the university. When you go to a university you study science, mathematics, etc. Buddhism is another subject that people can study. The Buddha and his noble disciples are the teachers. So it doesn’t require you to be a Buddhist to study Buddhism and to practice Buddhism. It’s like when you go to a university, they don’t require you to be of a certain religion, you can be a Christian, you can be a Muslim and you can still study all the subjects. 

Buddhism is just another subject. It deals with looking after the mind, how to take care of the mind. Most subjects in the university teach you how to take care of your body. No subject teaches you how to take care of your mind. Only Buddhism teaches the knowledge of how to take care of your mind, to make your mind always happy and never sad. 

Tell your friends like this: it’s just another knowledge, another subject that they can study. They don’t have to be Muslim, they don’t have to be Buddhists, they don’t have to be anything. It’s just the knowledge like any other knowledge. The only difference is all the other knowledge deal with the physical things; only Buddhism deals with the mental or the psychic thing which is more important than the physical things. 

Our life is composed of 2 parts: physical part and mental (or psychic) part. We don’t know anything about the mental or the psychic part because we rarely come across somebody who knows and understands and teaches us on that. Now, you’re lucky because you run into the Buddha and his noble disciples. They are teachers that can teach you about your mind, how to look after your mind, how to make your mind happy, how to get rid of all the sadness of your mind. So this is what Buddhism is. It’s not a religion, really. It’s a form of knowledge.

Q:  I have been using rising and falling of stomach as the subject of my meditation. 

Recently I discovered that it's getting more and more difficult to note about the movements of the stomach. 

Most of the time I could only note about the rising but I lose track when it comes to the falling of the stomach.

When this occurs during meditation the thoughts of changing to other subject of meditation kicks in. I tried to subdue the thought by reasoning it in my head that if I were to switch, I will not reach either ends. 

Can Than Ajahn give advice?

Than Ajahn:  Well, if you cannot watch the rising, you can watch the falling. Just keep on watching the falling. 

You don’t need to watch both of them. If you can still watch either one of them then you can still continue on with your meditation. But if you find it not productive maybe the next time, not this time - this time try to stick with your method, you might want to switch to watching at the tip of your nose instead. You can watch the breath, watch at the entrance of the breath and the exit of the breath which is at the tip of your nose. You can watch that also. But if you find that it is not productive then maybe use another method like a mantra. But don't switch it in the middle of the race. It's like racing horses, when you race horse, you just stick to the same horse until you finish the race but the next time if you find this horse is not good enough for you then you can find a new horse. When you are meditating, try to stick with just the one that you choose.

“Dhamma in English, Sep 29, 2019.”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto

www.phrasuchart.com

YouTube:  Dhamma in English.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g

The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.

The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.

3 July 2025

Q:  Can a layperson in white practice at home able to achieve anāgāmī?

Than Ajahn:  It doesn't matter who you are, whether you are a layperson or a monk. What is important is the Dhamma inside your heart whether you have the Dhamma to accomplish the goal you want or not. For an anāgāmi you need to have strong samādhi to be able to stop your desire. Then you need to have the perception of what we call ‘the opposite of beauty.’ Not beautiful. If you can see the ugly parts of the body, the loathsome parts of the body then the images can eliminate your sexual desire. If you use samādhi, you can only do it temporarily; you can eliminate your sexual desire when you go into samādhi. But when you come out of samādhi, your mind will still think of beautiful body. In order for you to stop your sexual desire, when you come out of samādhi you must teach your mind to think of the ‘not beautiful body,’ think of corpses, think of the different parts of the body especially the inside parts or the parts under the skin. If you can see the body in that light then you can get rid of your sexual desire. If you can get rid of it entirely and permanently then you can become an anāgāmi.

“Dhamma in English, Sep 29, 2019.”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto

www.phrasuchart.com

YouTube:  Dhamma in English.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g

"Don't procrastinate"

The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.

1 July 2025

"Don't procrastinate"

Approaching this religion should not be to seek fame, power, or authority, not to become a manager or administrator of a temple or monastery, but to seek spiritual refuge, to seek the Dharma, not to seek fame, power, or authority, nor to seek happiness through the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, or body from Buddhism, because Buddhism is where the path to Nirvana is found, where liberation is found, and freedom from the cycle of rebirth and all suffering is found. Do not give importance to anything that is not related to studying and practicing the Dharma teachings of the Lord Buddha. 

Just be aware of it, and that will not lead you astray or lose focus.

Our point is to seek the Dharma and freedom from the cycle of rebirth and all suffering, so we must focus on the Dharma teachings of the Lord Buddha. Our goal is to study the Dharma teachings of the Lord Buddha and then apply the teachings with diligence, determination, and the four bases of influence that will push the practice for the path to Nirvana and the results of liberation from the cycle of rebirth and all suffering to be successful. Without the four bases of influence, the path to Nirvana cannot be reached. This is the point that should be given importance, which is to study and practice the Buddha's teachings by listening to sermons and Dhamma regularly, as we have been doing regularly for the past 7-8 years, so that it will be a light leading to liberation. 

The most important teaching is the final teaching of the Buddha, which teaches that all conditioned things are impermanent, that birth, aging, illness and death are the nature of things. Therefore, we should seek the benefit of ourselves and others with diligence. This is a summary of the Buddha's teachings, that the importance lies in being diligent, not procrastinating, and having to hurry and strive to complete the tasks that need to be done before time runs out. It is like when we enter an exam room, we cannot sit and chat, we must hurry to finish the exam within the specified time. If we chat and play, we will not be able to complete the exam completely, we will not get the full score, and the results will not be as desired. 

Therefore, the Buddha taught us to constantly practice mindfulness of death, that all conditioned things are impermanent, that birth, aging, illness and death are the nature of things. We should always think that once we are born, we will grow old, get sick and die. No one can guarantee when we will get sick or die. It is better to think that you may get sick or die today or tomorrow. If you think like this, you will not be careless because there is little time left. If you know that you will die today, tomorrow or in 3 months, you will not have the heart to do things as you used to do, which is to earn a living, to find wealth, property, money, gold, fame, praise, and happiness through the eyes, ears, nose, tongue and body. If you go to the doctor and the doctor diagnoses you with a serious illness that will make you die within 3 months, will you still have the heart to seek fame, praise, and happiness through the eyes, ears, nose, tongue and body? 

You will not want it anymore because you know that it is not a refuge for the mind, it is only a refuge for the body. When the body will cease to function within 3 months, you will focus on the Dhamma only because the Dhamma is a refuge for the mind. There is nothing in this world that can extinguish the suffering of the mind except the Dhamma teachings of the Lord Buddha. If you know that you will die within 3 months, you will have diligence, determination and determination to create merit and virtue because it is the only thing that the mind can rely on, both while you are still alive and after you die. Therefore, you should think about death all the time. Do not think that it is something far away. Think that it is something close to you because death can come in many forms. If you do not die from old age or from illness, you will die from various disasters. If you think like this, you will have the diligence to study and practice the teachings of the Lord Buddha with full diligence. You will study and practice, walk and meditate all the time.

By Ajaan Suchart Abhijāto

www.phrasuchart.com

Youtube: Dhamma in English

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g

Phra Ajahn Suchart Aphichato

The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.

The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.

30 June 2025

Q:  It scares me that one day I will become old and I am getting close to it. Sometimes I think I don’t want to become old because I don’t want my kids to take care of me when I can no longer take care of myself. How should I think about this?

Than Ajahn:  You can take care of yourself until the day you die if you learn how to take care of yourself now. So don't worry, when you no longer can take care of yourself then just let it be. If other people want to help take care of your body, it is their business, it's their charity. If it makes them happy to help you, let them help you but if nobody wants to help you then you just prepare yourself for death. 

If you don't eat for a few days, you will die. So there's no need to worry as long as you try to take care of yourself until you're unable to do it. You don't expect anybody to help you. You are ready to let things happen to your body. If you cannot eat, ‘Okay, don't eat.’ If you cannot find food, ‘Okay, don’t eat.’ But if people want to help you, find food for you, let them do it as long as you don't go and ask for their help. If their help comes up because of their own compassion or their love then let them do it. 

So you shouldn’t worry about when you get old and you have to let other people take care of you. As long as you don’t rely on other people, as long as you are willing to starve to death, you are willing to die if nobody helps you, then there is nothing to worry about. 

As long as you know how to take care of your body now, you will be able to take care of your body later on. 

When you no longer can take care of your body then just leave it up to whoever wants to do it. If nobody wants to do it, the body will eventually die. If other people want to help, let them help. If nobody helps, don’t worry about it, just let the body exist until it no longer can exist. 

“Dhamma in English, Sep 29. 2019”

- - - - -

Q:  Preparation for death. 

Than Ajahn:  It’s like getting ready to travel. When you die, you move on to the next world so you have to prepare your suitcases, your Visa, exchange your money, bring your credit card with you. If you don't, then you go like a refugee. This is what dāna is. Dāna is the wealth you can take with you - the money, the credit card. Without it you'll be like a refugee, they won't let you enter the country, they let you stay at the border and stay in the refugee camp.

Q:  If dāna is like credit card, how about those people who are meditators?

Than Ajahn:  Meditators go to a higher realm, they go to the realm with more happiness. 

The result is still like giving dāna, but with more happiness. 

When they come back to become human, they don’t bring anything with them except the way to get more jhāna. They will be practising meditation whichever way they used to do. They will come back and continue to do it again because that’s the way it makes them happy. 

If you are happy giving dāna, when you come back to become human, you will continue to give dāna. If you are happy doing meditation, when you come back, you will continue to meditate. So that’s why some people ordain and some people don’t ordain. Some people give dāna, some people meditate. It becomes a habit. If you used to drink a certain type of drink, you’ll always come back and order it again, right? If you like Coke, you’ll always order Coke, you never order other drink. 

Some people keep changing because it’s their habit, they have the habit of wanting to keep changing. That’s why people are different because people have different preferences. 

“Dhamma in English, Dec 12, 2023.”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto

www.phrasuchart.com

YouTube:  Dhamma in English.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g

The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.

The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.

29 June 2025

Q:  If we know that we did something bad and regretted it, what should we do?

Phra Ajahn:  You should use it as a lesson to teach you not to do it again. What you have done, you cannot go back and erase it but you can use it as a reminder that ‘I should not do that again because if I do, I will regret it and I will feel bad again.’ So this is the only thing you can do with what you had done. 

- - - - -

Q:  Peace and happiness are hard to find but do you think they are something you can find and hold for a long time?

Phra Ajahn:  Yes, this is the goal of Buddhism - to find peace and happiness that is truly lasting but it is within yourself. It is not the peace and happiness that you find from outside of yourself. The happiness from outside yourself are not true happiness. They are temporary happiness because they are impermanent.

The true and lasting happiness is to be found within yourself by the practice of meditation, mindfulness meditation and insight meditation. These meditations will eventually make your mind become peaceful and content and then you will have peace and happiness forever. Even long after your body dies, your mind doesn’t die with your body. 

Your mind is the one who finds peace within itself. And then it will no longer need to be reborn again. So, this is what you want. 

And what you need to do is to follow the teaching of the Buddha which teaches us to practice 3 steps. 

(1) The first step is to practice charity if you can afford it. If you have lots of money, you shouldn’t spend it on yourself, you should spend it on helping other people. It will make you start realizing the first level of internal peace and happiness. 

(2) Then you want to keep the precepts, the 5 precepts. And once you can keep the 5 precepts, if you want to move up to the third level, you need to change the 5 precepts to the 8 precepts. 

(3) Then you will have time to meditate. First, you meditate to calm your mind. You will get this peace and happiness temporarily when you meditate but after you withdraw from your meditation, this peace and happiness can disappear. If you want to make it lasting, you have to practice the next level which we call ‘insight meditation,’ it’s to teach your mind to see the truth, to see what makes your mind unhappy.

The Buddha said what makes your mind unhappy are the 3 cravings: craving for sensual pleasure, craving to be and craving not to be. You can get rid of these 3 cravings by looking at the truth of things, that the things you crave for are impermanent, they cannot bring you true happiness, then you can stop your craving for these things. Once you have stopped your craving then your mind becomes completely peaceful and happy forever. So this is what you need to practice. 

- - - - -

Q:  I want to ask regarding the difference between samādhi and jhāna. Is samādhi the knowing mind? 

Phra Ajahn:  They are the same. Samādhi and jhāna are the same things. Samādhi means the calm of the mind; and jhāna means the concentration of the mind. When you concentrate, the mind becomes calm, becomes samādhi. You have different levels of concentration, different levels of jhāna. 

You have the 1st jhāna, 2nd jhāna, 3rd jhāna, 4th jhāna until the 8th jhāna. They are the different intensity of your concentration. The more you can concentrate, the more your mind becomes calmer. 

What you should worry is mindfulness or sati. 

This is the tool that will make your mind concentrated. 

You have to be mindful. Let your mind be mindful of only one object such as a mantra ‘Budho Budho Budho.’ This is the way to build up concentration of your mind. 

Just concentrate on ‘Budho Budho Budho.’ 

No matter what you do, don’t let your mind go think about some other things. Bring it back with ‘Budho Budho Budho’ then your mind will stop thinking and become fully concentrated and your mind will become samādhi. When the mind becomes still, then it’s called, ‘samādhi.’ If it’s still for a brief duration, we call it ‘khanika-samādhi.’ If it’s still for a long duration, we call it ‘appanā-samādhi.’

“Dhamma in English, Sep 29, 2019.”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto

www.phrasuchart.com

YouTube:  Dhamma in English.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g