The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.
”Triple Training is the path to happiness.”
Than Ajahn: What have you learned so far from your trip here? Nothing? What have you seen? Have you seen the way monks live? How do they make their living? Go on alms rounds in the morning and what do they do when they practice? Do you know the purpose of becoming a monk?
The purpose of becoming a monk is to study the teaching of the Buddha. Then, apply his teaching to our daily lives, through our practice. And if we can apply to our lives, we will make our lives better. Our lives will have less sadness, fewer problems. We will have more happiness.
So, this is the goal of Buddhism, to make us happier with less misery and sadness. And we achieve this by the Triple Training. The Triple Training is the path to happiness, the path to the cessation of all forms of sadness or suffering. We call ‘dāna,’ which means ‘charity’; ‘sīla’ means ‘morality’ and ‘bhāvanā’ means meditation or mind development. These are the three practices that will generate only happiness and eliminate all kinds of unhappiness in ourselves.
If you can practice these three practices, your mind will be pure, radiant, and happy all the time like the mind of the Buddha. This is the way the Buddha became the Buddha: by practicing charity. Like, he gave up all his money, his possessions. Before he was a prince, he lived in the palace with all the money, all the wealth of a prince. But he saw that living like that was only temporary, because eventually he would have to get old, get sick, and die. And then whatever happiness he had from being a prince would vanish, would disappear. So, he was afraid. He didn’t want to become old, become sick and die. He saw a monk and he found out that a monk was someone who looked for the path to escape from this sadness, this suffering of being old, being sick, and dying. So, one day he decided to leave the palace. Thus, he did the charity. He gave all his money, all his wealth.
So, if you want to eventually one day become a monk, follow the path of the Buddha, you have to learn to give, to practice charity. Only have enough just to keep you alive. Have enough money to maintain life.
You don’t need to be rich to be happy, because being rich is not being happy. This is because when you get old, get sick and die, no matter how much money you have, this money will not help you get rid of your suffering. So, it’s better not to have too much money. Try just to have enough money to live so that you can one day, when you’re ready, you can give up your possession, your wealth, your money and then you can go and become a monk like Ajahn Keng. Then, you will be able to practice the second and the third steps, starting with morality — keeping the precepts.
There are many different levels of precepts. The lowest level is the 5 precepts. Then, the next one is the 8 precepts. The next one is the 227 precepts kept by monks. You need these things to purify your mind to get rid of your suffering. So, you need to keep your precepts. You can start by keeping the 5 precepts and do some charity to prevent you from getting too rich, to prevent you from getting to have much money because once you have too much money, you become attached to money and you will not be able to go and practice meditation and practice sīla, morality, higher sīla, higher morality.
But if you keep giving money, sharing your money with other people, making other people happy, helping other people with your money, you will feel happy and you will find that you don’t need to have money to make you happy. In fact, giving money away will make you happy.
But taking money will not make you happy or make you want to have more money. It will drive you crazy.
The more money you have, the more money you want to have. Once you have it, you want to protect it.
You want to keep it. So, instead of being happy with money, you end up being miserable with having money. So, try not to let money fool you. Money is only to serve you. You are not supposed to serve your money. You are not supposed to protect your money.
Money is supposed to protect your life, maintain your life. That’s all it does.
So, if you have enough to maintain your life, then you shouldn’t have any more than that because it will turn to be a problem for you, having too much money. It’s because you will then not be able to go and practice meditation. You will spend all your time; you will be stuck with looking after your money, making more money. So, this is the reason why you should learn to give money away, to practice charity so that you will not have greed for money. You only have enough. You will only work for money just enough to maintain your life. Then, you will have more time to meditate and more time to keep the precepts. If you spend a lot of time spending all your effort going after money, you’ll find keeping the precepts difficult, hard to do. This is because sometimes you have to lie because you want to make money.
Sometimes you have to lie; sometimes you have to cheat. But if you don’t want to go after money, you don’t want to be rich, then you can find it easier for you to maintain, keep the 5 precepts.
So, this is the practice that supports one another. If you can give to charity, you’ll find it easier to maintain the 5 precepts. And once you can maintain the 5 precepts, then you can move from the 5 to the 8 precepts.
These precepts are important because they will make your mind become happier, have less problem, less trouble, less suffering. So, this is what you have to do.
You should budget some of your money for charity. Do it so that it becomes your habit and you’ll find that giving is much happier than taking. Then, you will reduce your greed for money.
You only go after money because you have to. If you make enough money to maintain life, then you will not have to do too much work. Then, you have more time to come and study Dhamma and practice Dhamma.
But if you keep going after money, no matter how much you get, you’ll find it’s not enough. You always want more. If you have 10,000, you want 100,000. If you have 100,000, you want 1,000,000. Just keep going, then you will never have time to keep the precepts, practice meditation, or study the teaching of the Buddha. You won’t have time. But if you don’t go after the money, you have plenty of time to relax. You don’t have to be stressed with working, with making money. Then, you’ll have time to study the Buddha’s teaching, to then practice the Buddha’s teaching by keeping the 5 precepts. Once you can keep the 5 precepts, then you can move up to the 8 precepts. These precepts are to stop your mind from going after something that is hurtful, not helpful. But our delusion makes us think that the things that we go after are good for us. But they are bad for us.
They are like (an) addiction. They are like drugs. Things that you go after, like things you see, things you hear, they can make you become addicted to them. Once you become addicted, when you cannot have them, you will become sad, you see. So, the Buddha said, ‘You should avoid or try to abstain from going after your sensual pleasure.’ Don’t go after the things that you get from seeing or hearing or smelling or touching. These are bad kinds of happiness. They are happiness but they are temporary. They come and go. And once they vanish, you’ll feel empty. So, you need to have more. Thus, you become like a drug addict. You have to keep having more sensual pleasure. And when you cannot have this sensual pleasure, like when you don’t have money or when you get sick, when you cannot go out, then you’ll feel sad.
You’ll have to stay alone, stay at home. But if you can keep the 8 precepts, then you’ll become used to being alone, not having to going out, not having to go after sensual pleasure. You can stay put, not having to go out, not having to see or hear, and not having to go see a movie or go to hear a concert.
So, this is the purpose of the 8 precepts; it is to stop you from going after the wrong kind of happiness. It’s the happiness like addiction that you get from being addicted to drugs. So, this is what the 8 precepts do.
They also provide you the time to come and meditate. Once you don’t have to go out, to go find happiness outside, then you can stay at home or you can stay at a monastery, and then you end up learning how to meditate.
The purpose of meditation is to calm your mind, to stop your mind from thinking, to stop your mind from desiring for this sensual pleasure. Once you can stop it, then your mind becomes peaceful, calm and happy without having to do anything. So, this is the goal. This is the real happiness. The real happiness is the happiness that you don’t have to rely on anything to make you happy. You can be happy by just sitting still, by keeping your mind still and the way to make your mind still is, you have to develop mindfulness.
“Dhamma in English, Dec 22, 2017.”
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
YouTube: Dhamma in English.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g
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