The Last Teaching A talk given by Luang Por Baen of Wat Doi Dhammachedi 7 days before he passed away on 16 January 2020.

The Last Teaching
A talk given by Luang Por Baen of Wat Doi Dhammachedi 7 days  before he passed away on 16 January 2020.

 

I am not sure what benefit or purpose there is in the way we describe people in terms of ‘us’ or ‘them’. The truth is the same for everyone, even the Buddha. Everything is dukkha, including every mental formation and every physical formation. In summary, whether we say ‘us’ or ‘them’, in the end everything goes to emptiness, emptiness and emptiness. Whether one describes phenomena in terms of a person or not, or whether the breath is still going in-and-out or not, ultimately everything disappears. 

Today Mara* came to bother me and tried to cause a disturbance. We call it the Mara of the khandhas or the obstacle to us provided by the five aggregates. So I let it be just the problem of the khandhas. This kind of Mara is born from where there are no khandhas. This Mara is with us all the time. Every Buddha eradicated this Mara through the methods and established principles of Dhamma practice to reach the state of perfect peace and happiness. The proclamation of these principles and methods is called the Buddha’s dispensation or Buddhasasana.

So as your breath flows in-and-out you should have continuous mindfulness to contain your thinking and keep it bound to the Dhamma. 

Everyone has a body that is roughly one-fathom long and one hand-span wide. This is the Dhamma. Everyone has a right to use their body for that which is beneficial. One who cannot use this body to do skillful actions, only meets with harm.

Regardless of age and gender or whether one is viewed as modern or old-fashioned, if people don’t use their body properly they experience harm. 

How are they harmed? By not guarding their mind or practicing restraint, they allow their minds to follow the mental defilements. They allow the Mara of the mental defilements to pull their mind here and drag it there with the end result being that they are scorched by the fire of those defilements. As long as these defilements are unaddressed they afflict our minds and burn red hot endlessly without sparing a single person. They burn everyone, young or old, male or female, without exception. The defilements even teach young children to follow them as soon as they are old enough to learn things. 

The defilements are the most dangerous and destructive thing in society. To escape this danger the world has to focus on eradicating the Mara of the defilements. Don’t let them remain at large in the world. 

Once they are eradicated, true peace will immediately arise everywhere.

Restraint in the Dhamma

To be restrained in sila means one practices restraint in the heart. This is what is meant by one who is restrained in sila. 

Whether you visit the monastery temporarily or put on white clothes and ordain as a nun or brown robes and ordain as a monk, without restraint in the heart, there’s no sila. The colour of the cloth doesn’t cause you to have restraint in the heart. If cloth could give you sila then the cloth-weaving factory would just manufacture it for you. 

There would be no need to make the effort to keep sila or go through the difficulty of living in seclusion in the forest. 

The truth is that by training in sila we are looking after ourselves. We are not protecting ourselves with the letters of the word sila. The words describing sila in the books are just the convention of printed language. 

The letters and words we read in the books don’t know what is sila and what is not, but our citta knows whether we are restrained or not. We should recollect this quality and be mindful of it all the time.

To conclude, don’t lose your mindfulness. Establish mindfulness immediately from the time you first wake up. 

Wherever you go, whether to the bathroom, or picking up and carrying your bowl to walk on alms-round, you must establish mindfulness at each moment and with every step you take from the time you first get up in the morning. 

You won’t regret it.

Don’t spend time worrying about the degeneration of the Buddhist religion. Even if you are dressed in the robes of a monk or nun, if you are not mindful and restrained in the heart, it becomes the place where the practice of Buddhism really degenerates. 

No-one seeks out or wishes for failure.  Protecting Buddhism means protecting ourselves through keeping sila and keeping up the practice. 

By practicing the Dhamma we protect ourselves.

Don’t worry about other things that are not us or ours, you must cut them off from your mind. 

Whether you experience liking because you encounter a pleasant object, or disliking because you encounter an unpleasant object, whether your mood is pleasing or displeasing, let it all go. 

However extreme or real your moods appear, see them as like foam on water or a mirage in the sun and don’t take a strong interest in these things.

Luang Dta Maha Bua would often say that the mountain air here at Wat Doi Dhammachedi is very good. 

The later in the evening, the more refined the air becomes. 

Right now it’s not that late, so it’s not yet the time in the evening that is most comfortable or conducive to practice. But often you are already snoring by 8pm. Last night I asked you why you finished meditating so early. It was only 9pm and everyone was finished for the evening. 

When one is serious about the practice and one is full of determination, the time of the day or night is no longer important. But when one one loses one’s determination to practice the Dhamma and one becomes obsessed with the time, it’s like another kind of Mara has come to take you over. Mara controls all the elements that comprise the world. No one is greater than him in this. Only the Buddha and his awakened disciples are above Mara and he is unable to do anything to them.

Many Venerable monks have come here to stay and practice, and their efforts have contributed to making the atmosphere of this forest peaceful and secluded. If all those many monks hadn’t strived for inner peace and seclusion through putting forth effort in their practice, this place would be full of bewilderment and confusion and not suitable for cutting off the defilements and expelling Mara.

Be mindful of every mouthful of food you eat. Place the food in your mouth, chew it thoroughly and mindfully. If you were to chew a mouthful of food and then spit it out would you be able to eat it again? 

Where has this body, from the top of the head down to the soles of the feet and from the soles of the feet up to the top of the head, come from? It came from this same food which is repulsive (patikula). The body is nothing amazing or special, it’s disgusting. Remember this well: it’s just repulsive and not the place of the path and the fruit (magga-phala).

Be mindful on alms-round. 

This means to practice mindfulness from the moment when you pick up your inner and outer robe and put them on. Be mindful when picking up your bowl, when carrying your bowl and when adjusting the bowl lid. When you walk be mindful of the walking.  

Whether walking out from the monastery or returning, be mindful. This is the true meaning of pindapata or walking on alms-round. If you are doing it without mindfulness or alertness then it becomes more like a cow or a water buffalo looking for grass to eat.

Many monks have come to live here and you should all practice so that you improve the place and create an atmosphere of peace and seclusion. Do you understand? 

You have to help each other and practice so that the place has a tangible and solid sense of peace and seclusion. This is how we preserve the Buddha’s teachings and the ways of practice we have been trained in. When we live together in a large community our defilements tend to feed us everything that is enticing and delicious. I tell you, this is the way that the Buddha’s dispensation deteriorates and disappears. Buddhism disappears as a result of the unskilful actions of the ordained monks and nuns. 

Those practitioners who have taken ordination and joined the Sangha have gone forth as a result of the purified heart of those who have realised the truth before them. The Buddha’s teachings will not disappear simply due to the passing of time. They won’t disappear because five thousand years have passed, or five hundred thousand years have passed, or five million years. Don’t think of the five thousand years. Right at this moment, what percentage of the Buddha’s teachings are present in your heart. Really ask yourself. 

How firm is your conviction in and practice of the true Dhamma? 

At this time I can’t see even half a percent of the the Dhamma in people hearts and minds. There only seems to be dirt and rubbish.

Yet you’re still satisfied with Buddhism as your religion. You even want it to be the national religion! 

Why is it that we are trying to impose the religion on the population and on the whole country? Are we really going to succeed in making the country, the society and each and every person living here Buddhist while we are still unable to practice it proficiently for ourselves? Even if we succeed in making Buddhism the national religion, what benefit is in that if we don’t practice it ourselves. Buddhism is not just the written or spoken word we store in books and statutes. It means training oneself, practicing the teachings and cultivating skillful actions. This has to arise in the hearts of each individual. So don’t look for trouble and create problems through disagreeing with each other over words, views and opinions.

Help people closest to you to awaken.

The Dhamma of the Buddha, including every teaching and every utterance he made, is the Dhamma to awaken us. 

Dhamma which lulls us to sleep is the Dhamma of the defilements. Are you comfortable? Happy? Having much fun? Is it really fun living in a pile of urine, excrement and other disgusting things. Are you happy?  

I don’t really know why you were born if you simply remain this ignorant of the truth. Do you understand? 

There is no damage done talking to people directly about these things. We just talk informally amongst ourselves about these issues. 

Such talk is to help us awaken to the truth. There’s no harm discussing the truth like this and it helps to awaken our minds and make us wiser.  

Phra Bhavanavisuddhinyanathera

(Luang Por Baen Dhanakaro)

Wat Doi Dhammachedi, Sakhon Nakhon, Thailand

Translated by the Sangha of Buddha Bodhivana Monastery, Melbourne, Australia (Copyright)

Mara is a word used to describe obstacles and dangers in the practice that arise from ignorance. It can refer to an external being, or one’s own set of five aggregates, or the obstruction caused by mental defilements.

The five khandhas are the five aggregates or groups of experience which include: form, feeling, perception, thought formations and sense consciousness.

Mental defilements or kilesa mean mental states rooted in greed, hatred and delusion that afflict the mind. They ripen in suffering.

Sila means the practice of restraint and the training in moral precepts.

Citta means the mind or that which knows things.