“If you have the right view, you will think that getting sick, getting old and die is the nature of the body. The body is not you.”

The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.

29 May 2024

“If you have the right view, you will think that getting sick, getting old and die is the nature of the body. The body is not you.”

Question:  It's described in the Sutta that attainment can be obtained by eradicating 

(1) self views, 

(2) clinging to rites and rituals,

 (3) skeptical doubt in the Buddha/ Dharma. 

Will Venerable Ajahn be able to expound each of these 3 conditions, and to what level of eradication before stream entry is attained?

Than Ajahn:  Basically, first you have to have jhāna or samādhi because if you don’t have samādhi, you don’t have the strength to eradicate your defilements. Without jhāna, the defilements will be too strong. So first of all you need to have jhāna.

Once you have jhāna, you can contemplate so that you have the right view, the right understanding of the nature of the body. The body is such that it is impermanent, it is subjected to getting sick, getting old and die. And the body is not yourself. The body is just a composition of the 32 parts, it is built from the four elements. 

When the body stops to function, it dies and disintegrates because the four element that built up the body disintegrate and go on their separate ways. The fire element goes away, the water element goes one way, the air element goes to another way and the earth element goes to the other way.

If you contemplate and investigate the nature of the body, you will see that the body is just made up of the four elements, and the body is not you. You are the one who thinks, the one who knows, you are not the body. You want to separate yourself from the body. Once you know that the body is not you, then you can let go of the body and accept the truth about the body, that the body has to get sick, get old and die. When you accept this truth, your mind will not be hurt by the sickness, by the aging and by the death of the body. 

If you can do this, it means that you have let go of your attachment of having wrong view. Having wrong view means that you think the body is me, the body is myself, the body will not get sick, will not get old, and will not die. When you have this wrong view, you cling to the body and you have the desire for the body not to get sick, get old and die. So when the body gets sick, gets old and dies, you become sad because you have the desire for it not to get sick, get old and die.

If you have the right view, you will think that getting sick, getting old and die is the nature of the body. 

The body is not you. You don’t have to worry about it, you just let it be. You let the body gets sick, gets old and dies, then you will not be hurt by the body’s sickness or death. You will also come to see that your suffering or stress arises from your own desire – your desire for the body to last, not to get sick, not to get old and die.

If you want to get rid of your stress that arises from your desire for the body not to get sick, get old and die, then you have to see clearly that the body will have to get old, get sick and die and there is nothing you can do about it. The proper thing you can do is to accept this truth. Once you accept this truth, then you will eliminate the stress in your mind because you stop your desire for the body not to get sick, get old and die.

Once you have seen the Four Noble Truth, you will have no doubt in the Buddha because the Four Noble Truth was taught by the Buddha. So if the teaching was taught by him, then he must be the teacher, and there must be a Buddha. It is not something that people created out of nothing. It is the truth that there was a Buddha and this Buddha taught the Dhamma which is the Four Noble Truth. The person who realised the Four Noble Truth is the noble disciple, the one who can get rid of his wrong view, get rid of his attachment to the body, get rid of the desire for the body not to get sick, get old and die. And he becomes enlighten on the first level – on the level of the body and of the feeling. He can let go of the five khandhas – he becomes a Sotapañña. Once he knows that all the stress, all the problems arise from his own desire, then he will not use rites and rituals to cure his problems.

Sometimes when people have problems, they think they have to go and do something to allay it with some forces or spirits to make their problems disappear, but the problem arises from their desire. Suffering arises from our desire to have things going according to our way. Once things don’t go according to our way, we become troubled and we try to fix the problems in some forms of rituals like killing a sheep to make things better. But once you have seen the Noble Truth, then you know that the problem is in your own desire: the desire to be, the desire not to be or the desire for sensual gratification. When you could not fulfil these desires you can become sad or unhappy so you want to cure this sadness by trying to fix it which will still make you sad. You don’t know that these problems are not the root of the problems. The root of the problems are your desires for wanting them to go  according to what you want them to be and when things don’t go according to what you want them to be, you become sad.

If you want to be happy then you just have to leave everything alone. Don’t have any desire for anything. 

Don’t depend on anything to make you happy. So when you don’t get it, you will not be sad because you do not rely on it to make you happy. This is basically what will happen once you contemplate the nature of the body until you see that the stress in your mind is arisen from your desire towards the body and towards other things. 

They cannot behave according to your desire because the truth is that everything rises and ceases. All things come and go.

Once they come, our desire wants them to be with us all the time, we don’t want them to be separated from us. But once can we see that this is not possible then we can stop our desire for them to last forever. 

We accept the impermanence of them, that one day they are going to have to dissolve. Like the body, one day it is going to die. Once you accept it then there will be no stress in your mind, you will feel nothing towards the death of the body. This is basically the practice on the contemplation of the body, on the five khandhas, to let go of them, then you will be free from stress and suffering.

By Ajaan Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com

Youtube: Dhamma in English
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g