The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.
4 April 2024
“Sounds are just simply sounds.”
“In order to keep your mind calm and at ease, you must first maintain your mindfulness. Your mindfulness is what controls your mind from going astray to thinking about other things, which are unnecessary to your well-being. If you are to think, you’ll only think about things that are necessary: what’s on today’s to-do list? Once you know them, you’ll stop thinking and then turn your attention to the present, that is, focussing your mind on your body and the movement of your body. You need to be mindful of all the changes in your postures: standing, walking, sitting, and lying down.
You need to constantly observe your body. You also need to continually watch your mental proliferations, or your thoughts: what is it that you are thinking about? If you’re thinking about unskilful things, you can stop it by focussing your mind on your mental state with the use of a meditation subject that you’re used to. If you’re used to reciting ‘Buddho’, then just keep reciting it in whichever posture—be it standing, walking, sitting, or lying down—and with whatever you do. Just keep on reciting ‘Buddho’ if there’s no need for you to think. Your mind won’t proliferate as much if you do so. It won’t conjure all the various emotions. All sorts of discontents or emotions that occur in your mind are due to your mental fabrication.
If you let your mind wander with things that you come across, it will waver. When you see something not to your liking, you’ll then be irritated. When you see something pleasing, you’ll get happy and excited, giving rise to craving. With craving, you’ll become anxious and obsessed with obtaining whatever it is that you want. Once you have it, you’ll continue being anxious and struggle to hold onto it. So there’s no room for your mind to be calm and at ease, because your mind is constantly dealing with things that come through all the five senses.
However, with mindfulness, when you come into contact with sensual stimuli—when forms come into contact with your eyes or when sounds come into contact with your ears—they will quickly dissipate.
Being mindful will allow your mind to simply acknowledge these stimuli for what they are. Your mind will be aware that these stimuli are not permanent: they come and go. Sounds come into contact with your ears and then they dissipate; no emotions need to be conjured up. It has nothing to do with the sounds, be they good or bad. It all comes down to your mind, which lets them affect you. The same sound may come across as melodious to one person, but piercing to another.
For instance, a parent’s compliment to a child may bring joy to the one getting the compliment, but tears to the one not getting it. Two people can hear the same thing and feel completely different about it and have very different reactions. This is all due to the lack of mindfulness while listening— to listen without the guidance of wisdom, but under the influence of emotions, delusions and the sense of self (attā). When someone else gets a compliment and you don’t, you feel slighted and hurt.
But if you listen to it with mindfulness, you’ll realise that it is simply sounds that are being uttered by someone else. How can they possibly make you a good or a bad person? Goodness or evil is not a result of someone else’s utterance but your own actions. If you do good deeds, you’re a good person with or without someone else’s praise. If you do bad deeds, someone else’s compliment or praise will not make you a good person in any way, although you might get excited and carried away, forgetting that you’ve just done a bad deed.
This is an indication of a mind that is without mindfulness—being carried away by craving, pleasure, passion, and aversion. You get happy and excited when you hear something to your liking. And when it is not, you get upset, frustrated, and unhappy.
But if you learn about the Dhamma and practise according to the Buddha’s teaching, you can be sure that your mind will remain equanimous with whatever you hear. Your mind will not react to either praise or criticism. To listen with mindfulness, under the guidance of wisdom, you’ll see it for what it is—sounds are just simply sounds.
If you don’t make anything out of it—to interpret it, to burden yourself with it, and to hold onto it—then it will just be uttered sounds that shall pass. When you don’t cling onto it and let it concern you, then there’s no worry. For example, when people swear and curse while you happen to be present, if you hear it but don’t think that it is directed at you, then you won’t feel anything. But you’ll get upset if you think that it has to do with you.”
For instance, a parent’s compliment to a child may bring joy to the one getting the compliment, but tears to the one not getting it. Two people can hear the same thing and feel completely different about it and have very different reactions. This is all due to the lack of mindfulness while listening— to listen without the guidance of wisdom, but under the influence of emotions, delusions and the sense of self (attā). When someone else gets a compliment and you don’t, you feel slighted and hurt.
But if you listen to it with mindfulness, you’ll realise that it is simply sounds that are being uttered by someone else. How can they possibly make you a good or a bad person? Goodness or evil is not a result of someone else’s utterance but your own actions. If you do good deeds, you’re a good person with or without someone else’s praise. If you do bad deeds, someone else’s compliment or praise will not make you a good person in any way, although you might get excited and carried away, forgetting that you’ve just done a bad deed.
This is an indication of a mind that is without mindfulness—being carried away by craving, pleasure, passion, and aversion. You get happy and excited when you hear something to your liking. And when it is not, you get upset, frustrated, and unhappy.
But if you learn about the Dhamma and practise according to the Buddha’s teaching, you can be sure that your mind will remain equanimous with whatever you hear. Your mind will not react to either praise or criticism. To listen with mindfulness, under the guidance of wisdom, you’ll see it for what it is—sounds are just simply sounds.
If you don’t make anything out of it—to interpret it, to burden yourself with it, and to hold onto it—then it will just be uttered sounds that shall pass. When you don’t cling onto it and let it concern you, then there’s no worry. For example, when people swear and curse while you happen to be present, if you hear it but don’t think that it is directed at you, then you won’t feel anything. But you’ll get upset if you think that it has to do with you.”
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