The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.
27th October, 2022“The truth is your past lives are the same with what your life is now.”
Question: Can lower beings remember past lives?
Than Ajahn: In order to remember past lives you have to practise upacara samadhi, not appana samadhi.
But this also doesn’t guarantee that you can recollect your past lives. Recollecting past lives is something that you might have developed in your past lives. If you haven’t learnt it before, you probably won’t be able to do it. So not every meditator can recollect past lives, some can and some can’t. However, this is not a pre-requisite for enlightenment.
It is not important to know your past lives. You don’t have to know what your past lives were. The truth is your past lives are the same with what your life is now. What you used to do in your past lives, you are doing it again in this life, so it is pretty much the same things, so there is no need to recollect past lives.
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Question: Are all things pre-destined and if yes, how much is pre-destined and how much is our efforts in this life?
Than Ajahn: Your personality and your habits are predestined. If you are right-handed person that’s because you used to use your right hand all the time so you become right-handed. If you like green colour that’s because you used to like green colour in your past lives, so these things are pre-destined, what you like and what hate, but you can change them. For example if you know that liking green colour is harmful to you then you can force yourself not to like green colour. If you like to watch tv and if you find that it is bad for you then you can force yourself stop watching tv, and if you find that meditation is good for you then you can force yourself to meditate and change your personality, change your inclination, change your habits.
Right now all you the habits that you have are predestined, they are brought forward from your previous lives and previous days. In this life, if you have done something all the time, you become used to it, and if you want to change it, you can do it. You have to realise that doing something like this is not good for you, so you can force yourself to change, but if you think that doing certain habits like this is good for you, then you won’t change it.
You might also have to be forced by certain circumstances, for example if you used to be right-handed but you lose your right arm, what would you do? You will be forced to use your left arm instead. You have to learn how to use your left hand and eventually you will become left-handed and maybe next life you can use both hands because you used to know how to use your right hand and now you learn to use your left hand. Some people can use both hands.
By Ajaan Suchart Abhijāto
Youtube: Dhamma in English
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