Recollection of Virtue in Starting Out Small:
A Collection of Talks for Beginning Meditators,
by Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo
One of the things that defiles the mind is gaṇa-palibodha: concern over the group. You’re entangled with the group, or with the individuals in the group. This is called gaṇa-palibodha. Your mind isn’t at peace, and when the mind isn’t at peace, it gains no happiness or ease. It’s not conducive for sitting in concentration.
The things that make concentration difficult are of two sorts:
1) We know that something is an enemy of concentration, but we can’t withstand it because the current of defilement is great. This is one reason why the mind can’t settle down.
2) We don’t know, we’re not aware, we practice in a way that’s not circumspect. This is a cause that gives rise to defilement. This sort of defilement can stand in the way of the paths and the fruitions.
It’s a magg’āvaraṇa—an obstacle that prevents people from walking in line with the path.
The obstacles that prevent us from walking in line with the path can arise from our lack of knowledge—and they can cause harm. This is why we have to study and practice in a way that’s circumspect. And this is why we have Dhamma talks every day, so that we can do away with this lack of knowledge and give rise to knowledge in its place. In this way, we can practice correctly. The heart will tend toward stillness.
There are two areas that have to be dealt with. The first is what I mentioned just now: We know that something is an enemy, but we can’t withstand it.
Sometimes we know, sometimes we forget, sometimes we have a lapse of mindfulness through the pressure of defilements. This is one sort of thing that can prevent the paths and fruitions.
The second area concerns the things we don’t know at all. We don’t know that they’re wrong; we don’t know when we do something wrong. This can give rise to defilement.
Most of the areas where we don’t know have to do with our precepts and virtue. When we know that something’s wrong or that it creates a disturbance in the mind—we don’t want it to happen, we’re aware, but we can’t resist it—that’s usually an affair of concentration. When our virtues are defiled, our concentration gets defiled, and that in turn becomes a magg’āvaraṇa, an obstacle to following the path and gaining results.
When this is the case, you don’t have any path to follow. And that means that you’re walking all over the place. You’re guided just by your feet and knees, which simply go wherever they like. You keep on wading through the jungle, going uphill and down, sometimes through clearings, sometimes through the bush, stepping on thorns and stumps. Sometimes you step into mud and get all splattered, like a person with no path to follow.
But still you don’t die. You can keep going and you don’t die, but it irritates people who know the path.
It’s hard to travel with someone who doesn’t know the path. It’s like traveling together with a blind person. When you tell a blind person, “Come here, come here,” it’s hard. Even though you point with your hands, the blind person doesn’t understand. If the blind person is deaf too, that’s it. It’s really difficult. It’s really hard to travel together with the deaf and the blind. So what can you do? You don’t have to travel together. You first have to find medicine to put into their eyes so that they can at least see something.
That’s all there is to it. And you have to cure their ears. When their eyes and ears start to recover, then you can travel together.
To cure your ears means taking an interest in instructions and criticism, the teachings that point out the path of defilement and tell you that that’s a way you shouldn’t follow. If you take an interest, then your deafness will gradually disappear, bit by bit. If you don’t take an interest, you’ll keep on being deaf.
The same with your eyes: You have to put drops in them. It’s too much to ask others to put drops in your eyes for you. You have to learn how to help yourself. How do you help yourself? You have to observe and take note of things. Whether other people explain things or not, you have to observe and take note: When they act in that way, what are they getting at? When they use this sort of behavior, what are they getting at? That’s when you can understand what’s going on. When you understand in this way, it means that you can put drops in your own eyes.
With some people, even if you use a stick to pry open their eyelids, they still won’t open. That’s when they’re impossible. But if your eyes aren’t very dark, you don’t have to look at a lot of things. You see something once, and that’s all you need. You can take it as a standard that you can keep putting into practice. You don’t need lots of examples. Otherwise, you won’t be able to set yourself up in business. If you’re not intelligent, you won’t be able to set yourself up in business at all. Think of shoemakers or tailors: They need only one example, and they can make hundreds of shoes or pieces of clothing.
They can succeed in setting themselves up in business.
It’s the same with people of discernment. Even if you see only one example, you can take it as a warning to train yourself and to keep on practicing. When this is the case, it lightens the task of making your eyes better.
The same with cleaning out your ears: Most of us want other people to put drops in our ears, but we have to treat our own ears. The duty of the teacher is simply to give you the medicine that you then put in your ears yourself. What this means is that when you’re criticized, you don’t throw it away or shrug it off. You take it to contemplate the reason behind it. Don’t abandon your responsibility.
Wherever you go: Even when the teacher says something only once, you can put it to use for the rest of your life. That’s what it means to have good ears.
The same with good eyes: You see an example only once and you can take it as a standard by which you keep on practicing. When this is the case, you begin to recover. With some people, though, the teacher can set hundreds and thousands of examples, but they can’t master even one of them. They can’t look after themselves. They can’t depend on themselves. It’s hard for them to give rise to purity.
So if we’re not circumspect in both of these areas, our virtue gets defiled. This is called having virtue that’s not pure. Virtue that’s not pure is a magg’āvaraṇa. The results that would arise from purity of virtue can’t arise. The mind isn’t at peace; it has no concentration. When your virtue isn’t pure, practicing concentration is hard.
So now I’d like to talk about virtue so as to improve the situation, so that you’ll have knowledge and understanding. That way you can practice cleansing your virtue to make it pure. As it’s explained in the texts on the 40 topics of meditation, recollection of virtue is one of the topics for tranquility meditation.
There are two ways of recollecting and reflecting on your virtue.
1) You recollect the purity of your virtue—this is called parisuddha-sīla.
2) You examine where your virtue isn’t pure. You take stock of where it’s lacking, or dusīla.
You have to look at both sides. If you look and see that you have some suspicions that your virtue isn’t pure, try to make up the lack and make it more pure. Don’t let yourself have any worries about your behavior or your precepts. That’s when your precepts will lead to stillness of mind—in line with the fact that recollection of virtue counts as a theme for tranquility meditation.
Only when you reflect on your virtue and your mind can come to stillness, does it count as recollection of virtue. If, when you reflect, you see that your virtue isn’t pure, how will the mind come to stillness? When you reflect on the purity of your virtue and can see it clearly, the mind lets go of the matter. It’s like taking an inventory of things in your house: This isn’t missing; that isn’t missing. When nothing’s missing, you can fall asleep easily. But if you take an inventory and find that something’s missing, you can’t get any sleep at all.
When you examine your precepts and see that they’re pure and impeccable in every way, then the mind can immediately grow calm and still. This purity leads to stillness of the heart. For this reason, don’t be heedless or careless. The training of the mind involves your manners and behavior. It involves your virtue and precepts. So don’t be heedless and careless. Don’t see virtue and the precepts as minor matters or low.
We have to make the mind into Dhamma, and it’s hard to make it Dhamma when there’s no virtue. As long as the mind isn’t steady, it’s not Dhamma. And when the mind isn’t Dhamma, it’s defiled. Its virtue isn’t pure.
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From Recollection of Virtue in Starting Out Small: A Collection of Talks for Beginning Meditators, by Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo
https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/StartingOutSmall/Section0034.html
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