"One can’t deny the results of one’s good and bad actions; it is only a matter of time. Don’t be discouraged. Don’t think that Hb you have gained nothing from your effort and cultivation.”
When you sit and listen to a Dhamma talk by any respectable teacher, you should remain in one posture until he finishes his talk. If you really pay attention to the talk and your mind is focussed on listening, then the pain won’t be intolerable.
But if you don’t stay focussed on listening and instead pay attention to the pain, it will worsen. Your mind will proliferate and the pain will increase just like enlarging an image. When your mind is aversive to it, the pain will intensify. But if your mind is at ease, like listening to music or playing cards, you can sit all night and won’t feel a thing because you enjoy it.
I was lucky that I didn’t have a lot of questions or problems with my practice. Listening to Luangta Mahā Boowa’s Dhamma talks was enough for me to get by. At the time, he would give Dhamma talks quite often. Every four or five days he would call a meeting to give us a lecture on Dhamma. So I tried to learn and make the most from his talks.
He’d usually make his Dhamma talk into two sessions. In the first session, he’d discuss things in general. In the second session, he’d talk about his practice: how he managed to sit in meditation all night, how he fought his own fear, and how he managed to resolve issues at the time. He’d just sit and talk to us while chewing on his betel nut.
You’d gain knowledge on Dhamma or get answers to your questions mostly while giving him a massage. If you got a chance to serve him, such as being his attendant, you’d get a lot of opportunities. Being around him and attending to his needs is like being in a boxing ring—your opponent constantly seeks to attack you and so you have to always be on guard. It requires you to be mindful and sharp at all times.
But if you’re not around him to attend to his needs, then you’re playing the audience role, i.e., just watching and observing. You won’t have him to help push you in terms of the Dhamma and its practice. If you’re able to practise on your own, then you won’t need to rely on him to push you. But if you get a chance to be around him, then it is a good opportunity just like Venerable Ananda, who got to be the Buddha’s close attendant and managed to learn a lot from it. But this wasn’t the case for everyone since there was only one Buddha with lots of disciples. So it depended on whom he would consider and give a chance to.
It is, however, not necessary that all the disciples have to be around their teachers or become their attendants. There are those who weren’t around or close to the Buddha and other respectable teachers and still managed to become enlightened.
There was a lay person who approached the Buddha during his alms round and asked for a Dhamma talk. The Buddha told him that it wasn’t appropriate to do so then, but he insisted and pleaded with the Buddha. So the Buddha just briefly told him: reflect on the voidness of everything—that there is no essence to anything. The lay person took the Buddha’s teaching into consideration and felt compelled to ordain. So he prepared his monk’s requisites, but he was killed by a bull on his way. The Buddha’s instruction to build a stupa to contain his ashes after his cremation shows that he was enlightened.
We all have accumulated varying amounts of merit (puñña) and perfections (pāramı) in the past. Some were always around the Buddha but didn’t become enlightened. Some even turned into the Buddha’s enemies, such as Devadatta. Devadatta was conceited—after gaining special abilities through concentration, he stopped developing his wisdom. He let his defilements take charge of himself and became consumed in his own abilities and self-importance, causing him to want to take over the Buddha’s role.
Devadatta got upset and angry from the Buddha’s rejection, and so he committed some bad deeds. He tried to kill the Buddha three times but didn’t succeed, and he fell into a sink hole in the end. Due to the large amount of merit and virtue he had done, the Buddha predicted that Devadatta would become a paccekabuddha, or a solitarily enlightened one, after having paid for all his bad deeds in hell.
Therefore, all the merit Devadatta had done didn’t disappear, even if he didn’t get to benefit from it during his lifetime. The fact that he was ordained by the Buddha and learnt about and practised the Dhamma was a result of his perfections, which were thwarted by his bad deeds. So he had to repay for his bad deeds first before he could reap his merit and rest in peace.
One can’t deny the results of one’s good and bad actions; it is only a matter of time. Don’t be discouraged. Don’t think that you have gained nothing from your effort and cultivation. It may be that the merit you’ve done is still not quite enough or it is not yet the right time to yield its results. It may be due to timing that the bad deeds you have done still outweigh the good deeds. So it seems that you always end up with mishaps. You just have to accept that they may be due to your past actions.
By Ajaan Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com
Youtube: Dhamma in English
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g
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