The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.
21st November, 2022
Question: Ajahn mentioned that the way to get rid of the dukkha is to get rid of the cause of it which is the cravings. If we start to do this, we start to generate the magga (the fourth truth). For example, when we want coffee and we can’t get it, then we’ll have dukkha. Usually, we’ll try to push it to get the coffee. If I can see that this is a craving that’s causing the dukkha and I can stop it and just drink water, then the dukkha is gone. Is this the start of generating magga?
Than Ajahn: You change your mind. Once you change your mind, you stop your craving, ‘Well, if I can’t have coffee, then forget about it. I’ll have something else.’ Because you know you can’t have it anyway, right? So, why try to insist on it? Sometimes people insist on getting what they want. If they don’t have it, they will go outside of the house and buy one. But this will give them restlessness and agitation all the time, wanting to get the coffee. So, just change your mind, it means you stop your craving. When you change your mind, you automatically stop your craving.
Question: Is changing my mind the start of generating magga?
Than Ajahn: No, the seeing that there is no coffee. So, why suffer? It’s aniccā. Coffee is impermanent.
Sometimes, you can have coffee; sometimes, you don’t have coffee. If there is no coffee, accept it. Accept the truth, ‘Ok, there is no coffee.’ So, you change your mind from the desire to have coffee to, ‘Ok, not having coffee.’
Question: I’m trying to understand the last part, Ajahn, generating the magga.
Than Ajahn: Wisdom. Wisdom. You look at coffee as being aniccaṁ, dukkhaṁ, anattā, and mindfulness and upekkhā. You have to have enough upekkhā when wisdom tells you that coffee is aniccā and it’s happening in real time. It’s gone, there is no coffee for you to drink. If you insist on having it, you’ll get dukkha, right? But if you see that your dukkha arises from your insistence on having coffee, then you just stop your mind from insisting to have that coffee, because it’s not there anymore for you to have.
You keep insisting on the things that have already gone. Like when you lost your loved ones, you still want them to come back or you’re mourning, ‘Why did they have to die? Why did they have to go?’ This is not accepting the truth of aniccā. If you accept the truth of aniccā, then you wouldn’t complain about and you wouldn’t deny it. You just accept it, ‘No coffee? Ok. No desire for it then. If there’s no coffee to drink, then I’d have no desire to drink the coffee.’ When there is no desire to drink the coffee, dukkha disappears. But if the desire for coffee is still there, the dukkha would drive you crazy, right?
Sometimes, if you couldn’t endure the dukkha, you’d have to run around to look for coffee, and then you would run into the next cycle when you run out of coffee again. But once you stop your desire for drinking coffee, then you stop your problem once and for all, then you don’t need to have coffee. So, you have to stop your desire for coffee. You shouldn’t maintain your desire for coffee, shouldn’t satisfy your desire for coffee by providing more coffee for your desire, because if you do so, you’ll have to keep on getting more coffee all the time. And sooner or later, you won’t be able to drink coffee, then what happens? You’ll have dukkha. So, you have to see aniccaṁ, dukkhaṁ, anattā in the coffee, and in all things that you desire for.
Eventually, sooner or later, you won’t be able to get what you want, and when that happens, you will feel miserable.
Like nowadays, people have mental issues because they cannot get out of the house to do the things they used to do. But if they just change their minds, ‘Ok, if I cannot go out, I’ll stay in the house and be happy staying in the house,’ then there will be no problem. Just stop the desire to get out of the house, that’s all.
But they cannot stop their desire because they don’t have mindfulness, they don’t have upekkhā to stop it.
If they know how to meditate, then there’ll be no problem. When they cannot get out of the house, just meditate and use mindfulness to stop the desires.
When the mind becomes calm, the desire stops, then you’ll have peace and happiness. And you’d say, ‘Eh! I can be happy without having to go outside of the house. I can be happy being locked up in the house.’ But people don’t realize that. They only think that happiness is outside of the house, and when they couldn’t get out of the house, they’d feel miserable: this is dukkha arising from their desire to get out of the house. But if they know how to meditate, they can stop the desire, and they can calm the mind.
Once the mind is calm, the dukkha and the misery disappear. Replacing them are happiness, peace, upekkhā. This is magga. When we’re talking about magga, we’re talking about mindfulness, wisdom, upekkhā, samādhi: these are all the tools. Magga is the tool that we have to have in order to stop our cravings, our desires.
Without these tools, we don’t have the strength to stop our cravings. People have mental issues because they don’t have these tools to deal with their cravings, or desires. If they have these tools, then they’d never have mental problems, no dukkha. When we talk about mental problems, it’s dukkha, right? The bad feelings inside the mind.
So, you need to develop magga. Before you can have wisdom, you need to have samādhi to support it.
Before you can have samādhi, you have to have sīla (precepts) to support your practice of samādhi. Before you can practice samādhi, you have to be charitable, not greedy for money. If you’re greedy for money, you won’t have time to keep the precepts and to meditate. But if you’re charitable, you are not greedy for money, you’re happy to just have enough to eat, have enough to exist, then you’d have more time to keep the precepts and practice meditation.
So, this is the magga. You have to start from scratch, which is to stop your greed for money. You want money so that you can buy things to please your defilements, and then you won’t have time to go and meditate, to keep the 8 precepts. But if you say, ‘I just want to earn enough money to live, just to pay for my rent, pay for my food,’ then you don’t have to work too much. And if you have extra money, if you don’t need it, give it to other people, help other people. It will make you feel good. It will also stop your greed for money. So, you need to practice charity to get rid of your greed for money, your attachment to money or your dependence on using money to make you happy. Once you can get rid of your greed for money or your dependence on your money by giving your money away, then try to live by using as little money as possible, and then, you don’t have to work too much and you’ll have spare time to practice, to meditate. If you’re still involved in getting more money and spending money, then you won’t have time to go meditate.
“Dhamma in English, Jun 15, 2021.”
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
YouTube: Dhamma in English.
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