Question: Practicing as a layman, how realistic is it to expect Sotāpanna level?
Than Ajahn: Everybody is entitled to become a Sotāpanna, if he has the right quality for it. He has to have sīla, samādhi and paññā. So one just has to develop sīla, samādhi and paññā. To be more precise, he has to be able to develop paññā in order for him to be able to see that the body is just the composition of the 32 parts or the four elements, and that there is no body in the ‘self’; there is no ‘self’ in the body.
The body is just a body. It is like a car whose driver is not the car itself. The one who drives the body is the mind and the mind is not the body but due to the delusion, the mind thinks that it is the body itself and it becomes attached to the body and when anything happens to the body, like when the body gets sick or dies, the mind gets hurt.
A Sotāpanna can eliminate this hurtfulness because he sees that the body is not him. It is like seeing someone else’s body. When someone else’s body die we don’t cry, we don’t feel anything because we know that they are not us. In the same way, when we look at our own body, we should look at the body as if it were not us, not ours, not ourselves. If the body is going to die: let it die. If it is going to get sick or painful: let it be. If you can do this, you can become a Sotāpanna.
To be able to withstand the pain, try to sit down and see whether you can remain still and let the pain arise and cease by itself. If you can do that it means you have enough samādhi, because you need samādhi to let go of the pain, to leave the pain alone, to leave death alone. When you face death, you should still be calm as if nothing has happened. So you need that kind of samādhi and then you can let go of the body. Try to sit and let it become painful and don’t move your body.
Dhamma in English, Aug 2, 2016.
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
Latest Dhamma talks on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g
No comments:
Post a Comment