The teachings of Ajahn Sumedho ~ Peace is a Simple Step

The teachings of Ajahn Sumedho 
~ Peace is a Simple Step

We are prone to having blind attachments. For example, say you’re locked up in a foul, stinking prison cell, and the Buddha comes and says, ‘Here’s the key. All you have to do is take it and put it in the hole there underneath the door handle, turn it to the right, turn the handle, open the door, walk out and you’re free.’ 

But you might be so used to being locked up in prison that you don’t quite understand the directions, so you say, ‘Oh, the Lord has given me this key’, and you hang it on the wall and pray to it every day. 

That might make your stay in prison a little more happy, you might be able to endure all the hardships and the stench of your foul-smelling cell a little better; but you’re still in the cell because you haven’t understood that it wasn’t the key in itself that was going to save you. Due to lack of intelligence and understanding, you just grasped the key blindly. 

That’s what happens in all religion; we just grasp the key to worship it, pray to it, but we don’t actually learn to use it. 

So the next time the Buddha comes and says, ‘Here’s the key’, you might be disillusioned and say, ‘I don’t believe any of this. I’ve been praying for years to that key and not a thing has happened! 

That Buddha is a liar!’ And you take the key and throw it out of the window. That’s the other extreme. But you’re still in the prison cell – so that hasn’t solved the problem either. 

But a few years later the Buddha comes again and says, ‘Here’s the key’, and this time you’re a little wiser and recognize the possibility of using it effectively, so you listen a little more closely, do the right thing and get out.

The key is like religious convention, like Theravada Buddhism: it’s only a key, only a form; it’s not an end in itself. 

We have to consider, and to contemplate how to use it. What is it for? 

We also have to expend the energy to get up, walk over to the door, insert the key in the lock, turn it in the right direction, turn the knob, open the door and walk out. The key is not going to do that for us; it’s something we have to carry out for ourselves. 

The convention itself cannot do it because it’s not capable of making the effort; it doesn’t have the energy or anything of its own other than what you put into it, just as the key can’t do anything for itself. Its usefulness depends on your efforts and wisdom.

The practice of the dhamma is learning to take a particular key and use it to open the door and walk out. Once you’re out, you know. There’s no more doubt.

— Ajahn Sumedho, 

Peace is a Simple Step