The teachings of Ajahn Suchart.

The teachings of Ajahn Suchart.

Question:  You said that what I should strive for is peace of mind because peace of mind is the real happiness. Does that come from self-love?

Than Ajahn:  No, that comes from stopping your mind from desiring—your mind keeps desiring and this desiring keeps your mind stressful.

When you desire for something, you are anticipating, ‘Will I get what I want? When I don’t get what I want, I’ll become sad.’ But when you get what you want, you’ll just be happy for a few days or a few hours then a new desire will come up again.

These desires will keep pushing you to go after things, go after people and go after whatever there is to go after; no matter how much you have acquired or achieved, these desires will keep coming back, keep pushing you on and on. 

So, the Buddha discovered which he called ‘enlightenment.’ He discovered that the cause of his stress, unhappiness and frustration was his own desire; he found that once he could get rid of his desire, he would find peace and happiness in the mind.

And the way to do it is to practice the three steps of mental development: first is to be charitable; second is to have morality—not to hurt other people by what you do, what you say or what you think; third is to calm your mind—to stop your mind from desiring. So, these are basically what would bring happiness to you.

When you do charity, you don’t have to compete with other people; you just give what you have or what you can afford to give. And when you give, you help other people—it makes you feel happy.

If you can maintain the precepts or have morality by maintaining the 5 precepts at the minimum—which are: abstain from killing, abstain from stealing, abstain from sexual misconduct, abstain from lying, and abstain from drinking alcohol or any kind of substance that can cause you to become uncontrollable— then your action will not hurt other people; you will find that people will like you. You’ll be loved and you’ll be liked by people because your action doesn’t hurt other people.

You should learn to meditate—to calm your mind, to stop your thought. Your thought is the one that keeps creating desire. 

When you think of something, then you’d want to have that thing. But if you stop thinking temporarily, your mind will become blank and all the desires that being created by your thoughts will subside—the mind will become peaceful. And you will find happiness.
        
A peaceful mind brings happiness and contentment.

Once you have peace, contentment and happiness, you don’t need anything—you don’t have to accomplish anything; you don’t have to do anything because you know that regardless of what you do in this world, everything will eventually be destroyed due to the impermanent nature of thing. You can build anything but, in a few years, it will fall apart so it’s useless to go after anything. It’s more important to come inside and stop your mind from chasing after things. Once you stop chasing after things, you’ll feel relaxed and you’ll feel comfortable.

There is nothing you have to chase after; there is nobody you have to impress; there is nothing you have to acquire.

All you have to do is just looking after your body—that’s all you have to do as far as things outside of your mind.

You just live simply: have a meal a day, have a simple place to live, have a few sets of clothes to wear and if you’re sick, have some medicine to cure your sickness. That’s about it.

You know that no matter how well you try to look after your body, eventually, it’s going to get old, get sick and die. So, there is no need to be so uptight about looking after your body because eventually, no matter how well you look after the body, it’s going to fall apart—the body is going to die. Therefore, you have to learn to relinquish your attachment to your body and to everything that you own because sooner or later, you’re going to have to leave everything behind—Just your spirit can go along with you; your mind is the spirit. Once there is no physical body, then we call the mind, ‘a spirit.’ And according to Buddhism, if the spirit still has desires, these desires will push the mind or the spirit to be reborn again—to go acquire a new body and to restart the whole cycle again

7i“Dhamma in English, Oct 31, 2018.”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com

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