“If you keep pursuing things outside to make you happy, you will never find it because things tend to slip out of your hands as soon as you get them.”

The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart 

“If you keep pursuing things outside to make you happy, you will never find it because things tend to slip out of your hands as soon as you get them.”

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Question:  When a person has the Western psychological study and wants to learn about Buddhist psychology, should he start with Abhidhamma?

Than Ajahn:  No, he should empty his mind. Like if you want to get a new cup of coffee, you have to throw away the old coffee in your cup because if you still have the old coffee and you mix it with the new coffee, it won’t taste good. If you want to have a new hot and good cup of coffee, you have to throw away the old coffee first.

Similarly, he has to empty his mind first, and be open-minded, but he doesn’t need to study the Abhidhamma. I think it is more useful if he studies the discourses of the Buddha.

There are a few important discourses that he has to study:

The first one is called ‘The First Discourse,’ where the Buddha talked about the Noble Eightfold Path; 

the second one is the four ‘Foundations of Mindfulness’; 

the third one is ‘Mangala Sutta,’ the 38 ways of making a person happy which tells you how to conduct yourself in life in order to bring happiness to yourself.

These are the 3 important discourses that the Buddha gave.

Once you have a clear picture of what the Buddha’s teachings are about, you can search for more details about each subject that he mentioned. But basically, he taught us to make ourselves happy. And the way to make us find the real happiness is by looking inside ourselves, not outside. If you keep pursuing things outside to make you happy, you will never find it because things tend to slip out of your hands as soon as you get them. As soon as you get the thing you want and feel happy for a few days, then it’s gone and you’ll have to get something else, something new—this is the kind of happiness that we shouldn’t be pursuing. We should be pursuing the happiness that arises from peace of mind through meditation and through the development of mindfulness. If you have mindfulness, you can stop your thoughts. When your thoughts become still, your mind becomes peaceful, relax and happy. Then, you don’t need to have anything to make you happy.

“Dhamma in English, Jan 12, 2019.”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com

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