The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart
2 April 2023
Layperson 1: What is the best way for one to control one’s words when he or she is upset?
Than Ajahn: Upset to yourself or upset to other people?
Layperson 1: Upset to other people.
Than Ajahn: Well, you have to be mindful. You have to think before you say anything. You have to know what you’re thinking at the moment. And the way to be able to watch your thought is by developing mindfulness. If you have mindfulness, you will be aware of what you’re thinking, so before you speak what you are thinking, you can first decide whether it’s worthwhile to say it or it isn’t worthwhile to do so.
If it’s harmful, it’s better that you don’t say it. You can stop it.
So, what you need is to have mindfulness.
Normally, you don’t have mindfulness, and you just let out what you think right away.
If you have mindfulness, you will be watching your three actions: your thoughts, your speech and your bodily actions.
The way to develop mindfulness is by constantly focusing on your bodily actions, by keep watching your body and concentrating on what you’re doing at the moment.
Don’t let your mind drift away and think about other things. If your mind goes to think about other things while you’re doing something, then you should bring it back by reciting a mantra.
You can recite: Buddho, Buddho, or Buddha, Buddha. When you do this, you will stop your mind from wandering around and bring it back to where the action is, to the bodily action.
Focus on your bodily action from the time you get up. As soon as you open your eyes, you start developing mindfulness right away. Be mindful with what you do with your body by not thinking about other things and by focusing only on what you do. Like when you’re brushing your teeth, just concentrate on brushing your teeth, don’t think about work, don’t think about play. Don’t think about anything. If your mind is stubborn and wants to think, then you have to use a mantra to stop it. Recite a mantra: Buddho, Buddho or Jesus, Jesus, or whatever word you want to recite that can keep the mind away from thinking about other things: this is the way to develop mindfulness.
Eventually, your mind will stay put and won’t be wandering around. It will stay in the present most of the time, and it will know what the body is doing.
When you know what the body is doing, you will also know what your thought is thinking because you’re watching it. You want to stop your thought from thinking aimlessly. You’re in the process of controlling your thoughts. When you can control your thoughts, when you think and want to say or do something, you can decide first, whether it’s good to do or say it or it isn’t good to do or say it. If it isn’t good to do or to say it, you can stop it.
Mindfulness is very important.
It’s the mind’s controller. The only thing that controls the mind is mindfulness. So, you need to develop it and to have it all the time. Right now, sometimes you are mindful and sometimes you are not mindful.
When you are mindful, thing seems to work well, everything is going okay. As soon as you lose mindfulness, when you let your emotion takes over, you start doing things that you will regret afterwards. So, you need to develop more mindfulness.
The goal is to be constantly mindful, to have continuous mindfulness so that you are able to control your thoughts and your actions.
Your action is what your thought commands the body to do or say. When you have mindfulness, you are able to direct the mind to think and direct the body to do or say things that you think is good, things that don’t hurt other people or hurt yourself.
If you don’t know what kind of action is good or bad, then you have to study ‘the law of kamma’. The law of kamma is the law that tells you what kind of action is good and what kind of action is bad. Bad action is the action that you do through your body or speech that will hurt or harm other people. Bad action will bring problems back to you, sooner or later. Good action (good kamma) is to do things that benefit other people and make other people happy.
Good action will bring benefits back to you, it will make you happy.
This is what you should know about the law of kamma. When you know the law of kamma, then you’ll know whether what you think and what you want to say or do is a good or bad kamma. When you know it is a bad kamma, you stop doing it.
When you know it is a good kamma, you do it. This is what we try to achieve in our practice, in Buddhism: try to control our mind, our speech and our bodily actions. If we can control them, we will be behaving correctly. We will bring no harm to other people and to ourselves.
Dhamma in English, Jan 12, 2019.
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
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