“The goal is not to be reborn.”

The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.

2 August 2024

“The goal is not to be reborn.”

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Question: When we meditate to improve our well-being, is there any higher purpose to the meditation? If there is, what is it?

Tan Ajahn: The well-being that you are referring to is the well-being of the body and the well-being of the mind. Well-being of the body is, like I said, temporary, it is not permanent. 

What you want to have is well-being of the mind. The mind that is always peaceful and happy, having no stress, realizing the cessation of all forms of stress or suffering and the end of all rebirths. This is the goal of Buddhist meditation.

If you still have to be reborn, then you still have to get old, get sick and die. So the Buddha said the goal is not to be reborn. In order not to be reborn, you have to eliminate all forms of desire. The Buddha mentioned three forms of desire that are the cause of your rebirth. Kāma-taṇhā means the desire for sensual pleasure, bhava-taṇhā means the desire to become this or that, and vibhava-tanhā means the desire not to become this or that. So these are the three desires that you have to eliminate and you can do this with samatha-bhāvanā and vipassanā-bhāvanā, or in other words, samādhi and paññā that you are doing right now.

Right now you are developing paññā. Paññā can arise from listening to Dhamma talks. 

When you listen to Dhamma talks, you get to know the way to eliminate your desire. The next step is to remind yourself of what you have heard. That is because if you don’t remind yourself by contemplating what you have heard tonight, you will forget. Keep on repeating, reminding yourself what you have heard tonight, what you have understood, and then try to apply this knowledge that you have learned to your life.

When you become attached to something or someone, then you must use this knowledge to detach your mind from them. If you can detach your mind, then you don’t have any desire for them to be this or that because you know eventually they will be whatever they will be. If the body has to get old, get sick, or die, regardless of whatever you do, you cannot stop this process. So this is paññā. We call them the three levels of paññā.

The first level is the paññā that arises from listening to the Dhamma talk; in Pāli we call it suttamaya-paññā. 

Then you take this knowledge that you have heard from the Dhamma talk and repeat it in your mind, contemplating again and again, this is call cintamaya-paññā. 

Like tonight you have heard that you have to let go of everything because everything is aniccaṁ, dukkhaṁ, anattā.

If you take this knowledge and try to contemplate it in your daily life, whatever you do, try to keep in mind that everything is aniccaṁ, dukkhaṁ, anattā. 

You must not have any attachment to them. You must not have any desire for them to be this or that. If you can remind yourself of this all the time, when you have to interact with them, you will interact with them in a way that will not cause any stress.

“Dhamma for the Asking, Nov 4, 2014”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com

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