The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.
9 April 2024“In order for the meditation practice to benefit you in your daily life, you need to develop wisdom.”
The Homework is to KNOW & the Examination is to APPLY it
Question: In the past ten years, I have been practising meditation in the Burmese tradition, the Pak-Auk Sayadaw’s method. I have gotten myself into jhāna, nāma-rūpa and also can see my past lives. But somehow it seems like I cannot translate the meditation practice I have attained into my daily life.
Than Ajahn: In order for the meditation practice to benefit you in your daily life, you need to develop wisdom. You have to look at everything as impermanent, suffering, and not-belonging to you. If you see everything as such, then you can let go of your attachment to everything, and you will find life a lot happier. Right now you are not happy, because you cling to things. You want things to be in a certain way and when they don’t go according to what you want them to be, you feel sad.
Look at life as part of nature. Everything that is happening is part of nature. You cannot always control or manage thing. Sometimes you can, sometimes you cannot. When you cannot control it, you have to accept it for what it is.
You have to see the three characteristics in everything: to see everything as impermanent, causing suffering and beyond your control.
You cannot always control or manage it. This way you will not be unhappy.
M: When I meditate, I can contemplate suffering and impermanence, but when I get out of meditation somehow I cannot apply it in my life.
Than Ajahn: Because you have not applied it.
M: When I meditate, I can contemplate suffering and impermanence, but when I get out of meditation somehow I cannot apply it in my life.
Than Ajahn: Because you have not applied it.
When you meditate, you are only teaching yourself to know – to know everything is impermanent, suffering and beyond your control. Once you come out from your meditation, you have to start applying it. First, you apply it to observe your body, by looking at your body and ask: ‘Is the body permanent or impermanent? Is it causing happiness or suffering? Does it belong to you? Is it going to be yours forever?’. Sooner or later the body will return to the earth. So you have to keep reminding yourself about this truth.
Next, you apply it to other people’s bodies, like your friend’s body, your father, mother, wife, children and the body of anyone that you know. You have to apply this to everybody’s bodies, so that you will be ready to accept the reality when they change or when they get old, get sick and die.
Question: Does it mean that I have to remind myself of this at all times?
Than Ajahn: Right. Every time you meet someone, you have to see the three characteristics in him or her right away. Then you will not cling to him or her, and you will not have any desire for him or her to be otherwise.
Male: I haven’t done that part.
Than Ajahn: Right. You have done your homework, but you have not used it in an examination. When you come out of meditation and face other people, you are taking an examination, and you have to apply what you have learnt in the classroom, in your meditation, to pass the examination.
For example, when you look at your parents, you have to think that they are going to get old, get sick and die. They are just dolls. They are not real. They are made up of the four elements. When they die, it is not them that dies. They don’t die because they are the mind.
Next, you apply it to other people’s bodies, like your friend’s body, your father, mother, wife, children and the body of anyone that you know. You have to apply this to everybody’s bodies, so that you will be ready to accept the reality when they change or when they get old, get sick and die.
Question: Does it mean that I have to remind myself of this at all times?
Than Ajahn: Right. Every time you meet someone, you have to see the three characteristics in him or her right away. Then you will not cling to him or her, and you will not have any desire for him or her to be otherwise.
Male: I haven’t done that part.
Than Ajahn: Right. You have done your homework, but you have not used it in an examination. When you come out of meditation and face other people, you are taking an examination, and you have to apply what you have learnt in the classroom, in your meditation, to pass the examination.
For example, when you look at your parents, you have to think that they are going to get old, get sick and die. They are just dolls. They are not real. They are made up of the four elements. When they die, it is not them that dies. They don’t die because they are the mind.
The mind never dies. They use the bodies to serve for them for various purposes. Once the body can no longer serve them, the bodies have to be discarded. The minds separate from the bodies and go to get new bodies. They get reborn again.
So nobody dies. Your father or your mother doesn’t die. What dies is not your father or your mother. It is just the body, the servant of your mother or your father, that dies. The body is our servant. They are not us.
By Ajaan Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com
Youtube: Dhamma in English
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g
So nobody dies. Your father or your mother doesn’t die. What dies is not your father or your mother. It is just the body, the servant of your mother or your father, that dies. The body is our servant. They are not us.
We are the master. The mind is the master. The mind tells the body what to do. The mind cannot keep holding on to the body forever because the body is impermanent, the body has to get sick, get old and die. If you cling to the body and want the body to not get sick, get old and die, you will suffer. But if you know that you cannot prevent the body from getting old, sick and die, if you can accept it, then you won’t feel anything when it happens.
By Ajaan Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com
Youtube: Dhamma in English
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g
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