How about strong longing desire to renounce the worldly life with motivation to practice to full enlightenment?

Question:  How about strong longing desire to renounce the worldly life with motivation to practice to full enlightenment?

Than Ajahn:  There are two types of desires, the desire that creates suffering or dukkha and the desire that causes the suffering to stop.

The desire to renounce the worldly life and to take up a holy life, to become a monk, are good desires because these desires will lead to cessation of suffering, so you have to know which desire is good and which one is bad.

The desire to follow the Buddha’s teaching is a good desire and the desire to go against the Buddha’s teaching is a bad desire.

Dhamma in English, Aug 30, 2016.

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Question:  What about the desire for enlightenment, or the desire to stop the mind itself?

Than Ajahn:  That’s the good desire. You can encourage it.

You need to have this desire to become enlightened. It’s like when you’re sick. The desire to take medicine is good. But the desire to go on a holiday or vacation is bad for a sick person. A sick person needs to stay in a hospital to get the body fixed. The mind is like a sick person.

It needs a hospital. It needs the temple. It needs a monastery to fix it, to calm it, to get rid of the cause of sickness which is its desire to have happiness through the body. When you said you have the desire to become enlightened, it means you have the desire to get rid of your dependence on your body. 

You want to rely on something else that doesn’t disappear, doesn’t leave you.

You want something permanent. And the only thing that is permanent is the mind that is peaceful and calm that you can develop through mindfulness and wisdom. So, what you need to develop is mindfulness and wisdom.

First, you need mindfulness to stop your thought, to calm your mind, to make your mind peaceful and happy. Then, you develop wisdom to protect, to preserve this happiness that you’ve realized from your calming the mind. The mind will lose its calm and peace when the desire comes up. So, the wisdom tells the mind that if you go and do what your desire asks you to do, you will be forever restless and agitated and will never find the happiness you think you’re looking for. The happiness that you’ve already had is your calm and peaceful mind. So, all you have to do is protect it. Don’t lose it.

And the only way to protect it is to use wisdom to counter your desire, to resist your desire. Nothing else can resist your desire, except wisdom.

Wisdom has many different aspects that you have to know. 

For example, if you still have sexual desire, the wisdom to counter this is to look at ugly parts of the body, the unpleasant parts of the body.

Look at the corpses. Look at the internal parts of the body, like dissecting the body and look at all the internal organs.

If you see the organs, the unpleasant parts of the body, then your sexual desire will disappear. Or if you want anything, look at the impermanence of the things that you want. You want something and you get it. One day you’ll lose it because you cannot have everything.

Everything is impermanent. So, this is wisdom.

You have to see the three characteristics of things. All things are impermanent. They are not your property, not your real possession. You can only possess them temporarily.

One day sooner or later, you will be separated from them.

Dhamma in English, Jan 9, 2017.

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com

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