"With the development of insight, you will be able to stop your anger from happening...”

The teachings of Ajahn Suchart.

"With the development of insight, you will be able to stop your anger from happening...”

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Question:  Currently, I’m alternating between ānāpānasati to develop samādhi and investigation on the body based on the 32 parts and the 4 elements. I see that both methods benefit each other and work well together. Should I continue on this way or would it be better to meditate for a long time only on ānāpānasati to develop consistent and strong level of stillness first?

Than Ajahn:  Practising ānāpānasati is probably the best way because you have to first develop a strong samādhi before you can go to the level of investigation or insight. You need a strong samādhi in order to have the strength to continuously contemplate or investigate on the true nature of things. At the same time, you also need the strength of mind to be able to resist your defilement when it comes up. If you don’t have strong enough samādhi, when your defilement comes up, you might not be able to stop it.

So, if you don’t have a strong base of samādhi yet, I recommend that you should concentrate more on developing samādhi to make your mind calm to the point where you can always stop your mind any time you want—any time when your defilement comes up, you can stop it right away; any time when you get angry, you can stop it right away. Then, you can go to the next level, the level of wisdom or insight. 

You need to develop insight because you need to get rid of your anger. With samādhi, you can stop it after it comes up but you still cannot stop it from happening. With the development of insight, you will be able to stop your anger from happening because your wisdom will tell you the cause of your anger—the cause of your anger is your desire or your craving. When you desire for things and you can’t get them, you become angry. But if you can stop your desire or craving for things, then you will not get angry because there is no reason for you to get angry.

So, this is what you need to do: first is to develop a strong base of samādhi—be proficient in entering samādhi, be able to enter calm any time you want, be able to stop your defilement any time you want; next, once you know how to stop your defilements, you want to go to the root cause of the defilements so that you can eliminate them completely. You can eliminate defilements completely only when you’ve developed wisdom or insight to see everything as it is—to see everything as impermanent, as hurtful, as no self, as not under your control. 

Everything is part of nature. Everything is part of natural process and you cannot control nature. Nature comes and goes. Like the rain and the sun: the rain comes and goes; the sun comes and goes. You cannot tell the sun or the rain when to come or when not to come. It’s the same thing with people and things. 

Sometimes you cannot stop them from doing something. 

Sometimes you cannot tell them to do something. So, the nature and the people or things are same. You should see that everything is aniccaṁ, dukkhaṁ, anattā. If you can see everything as aniccaṁ, dukkhaṁ, anatta—as the three characteristics—then you will not have any desire to manage it, to control it or to expect anything from it. 

“Dhamma in English, Nov 26, 2018.”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto

www.phrasuchart.com

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