The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.
4 October 2023
Question: I would like to ask about your understanding on the teaching of the middle way and how should we put it into our present practice?
Than Ajahn: The middle way means whatever way that is appropriate for you. You have this much strength, which means you can only do so much and if you try to do more than what you can do, you will not be able to do it. If you do less than what you should do, then you’re not moving forward fast enough.
Like walking caṅkama, how many hours can you walk?
See, you can only walk for so long. Once you can no longer walk, then you should stop.
Don’t try to set up a standard that you cannot achieve yet.
This is what it means by the middle way: middle way according to your ability.
There is another meaning of middle way: middle way according to your defilement.
If your defilement comes up strong, you should react strongly. If your defilement comes up weak, then you react softly. You react appropriate to your defilement.
So, you have to keep adjusting your practice to suit your situation. Sometimes, you need to put in effort as much as possible and sometimes, you don’t need to push yourself so hard and you can take it easy.
But basically, the middle path means to stay with the ‘4 Dhamma,’ meaning mindfulness and exertion.
You should exert on developing mindfulness. Once you have strong enough mindfulness, you should sit and develop samādhi. When you’ve developed samādhi, when you’ve got jhāna, then you should develop wisdom by contemplating on the three characteristics of existence, contemplating on asubha, contemplating on the repulsive nature of food, to get rid of your desire.
This is what it means by the middle way: you don’t practise other things but to develop sati (mindfulness), samādhi and paññā and you develop them according to your ability, not too much and not too little. Do as much as you can.
The Buddha compares it to the stringing of a violin.
When you string a violin, if you string it too tight, it can break. If you don’t string it tight enough, it won’t make a good sound. So, you have to find the right amount of tension, how much tension you should stretch the string. Because sometimes if you try so hard and you cannot get the result, you can become discouraged so, you just have to say, ‘Right now, I have enough strength to achieve this result.’
You should be patient. You have to develop the thing that will make you get the result.
Maybe your mindfulness is not strong enough yet so you should go back to develop more mindfulness.
“Dhamma in English, Feb 14, 2019.”
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
Latest Dhamma talks on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g
No comments:
Post a Comment