The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.
Question: Are the Four Noble Truths already in the mind and we have to uncover them from the defilements?
Than Ajahn: That’s right. The Four Noble Truths are actually happening in our mind. But for most of us, it’s just the first two noble truths that are happening most of the time, the truth of dukkha and the truth of the causes of dukkha which are our cravings.
In the morning when you wake up, your cravings start to come up already, ‘Oh! I want to have some orange juice. I want to have a cup of coffee.’ If you can’t get it, you’ll get dukkha right away. If somehow the water boiler doesn’t work, and you can’t have hot water to make coffee, then you feel dukkha arises.
So, for most unenlightened people, they already experienced the first two truths: the truth of dukkha and the truth of the causes of our dukkha which are the cravings.
But normally you don’t look inside your mind. When you feel bad, you’ll have dukkha, right? Instead of finding out the cause of dukkha, you go get the things your mind wants to make you happy, to get rid of your dukkha, you go get the coffee, get the orange juice, or get anything that you want to have at that time.
If you study the Noble Truths, you’d say, ‘Oh! I don’t feel bad. Although I want to have a cup of coffee, but I can’t get it today, so what should I do? I just change my mind. Okay, no coffee today. I’ll have water instead, hot water or cold water.’ That’s it. Then, your dukkha will disappear. But usually, you’d say, ‘no,’ and you’d insist, ‘I have to go get a cup of coffee in order to get rid of my dukkha.’ So, you might have to go to your neighbor and ask for a loan of a cup of coffee—that’s not the way to deal with your dukkha.
The way to deal with your dukkha is to get rid of the causes of your dukkha which are your cravings. If you start to do this, then you will be generating the fourth truth: the magga (the path to the cessation of dukkha). So, you discover that your dukkha is caused by your cravings, and the way to get rid of your dukkha is to stop your cravings. You change your mind, instead of getting a cup of coffee which you know that you can’t get it today, you drink water, and then the dukkha disappears. Then, you’ll have the third truth appears in your mind: the cessation of dukkha, the dukkha disappears.
For most of us, we don’t solve our problems by getting rid of our cravings. We keep pushing it. When we want something, we just keep going until we get it, and sometimes we get it by using any tricks, or any means to get what we want, and we’re committing ourselves into more troubles that way. We might have to break the law or break the precepts to get what we want, and we’ll get more problems later on. If the authority discover that you’ve broken the law, they might have to put you in jail. So, this is not the right way to solve our problems. The way we do in this world is the wrong way because it’s creating more problems, creating more dukkha. The way to solve our problems is to stop our cravings. Every time when you feel bad, ask yourself, ‘What am I craving now?’ That should be the question you should ask yourself.
So, you have to watch the 3 cravings: (1) craving for the sensual objects; (2) craving for being, i.e. you want to be the president and when you can no longer become the president, what happens? You’ll suffer, you’ll feel sad and miserable, so you have to stop your desire to be something; (3) the desire not to be something—you also have to stop this, for instance, you don’t want to be an ordinary person, you want to be famous, you want to be big. When you cannot be famous, you become sad. So, you have to stop all these cravings in your mind. And the best way to do it is by meditation.
When you meditate, you get your mind to calm down and your cravings temporarily stopped. You have equanimity. You have peace of mind and happiness arising from this peace of mind.
So, you don’t need to go after things to make you happy.
But when you come out of meditation, if you are not careful, your cravings will come back again. And if you want to get rid of your cravings permanently, you’ll have to use the Noble Truths to fix it. You figure out that your suffering or your dukkha is caused by your cravings, and the way to solve the dukkha is to stop your cravings. In order to stop your cravings, you’ll have to see that everything that you crave for is impermanent. Sometime you can get it, sometimes you can’t get it; sometimes after you get it, then you lose it, and then you’ll feel sad because you lose the thing that makes you happy. Right? Like you became the president for 4 years so you want to be the president for another 4 years, right? When you cannot get another 4 years, you feel bad. You try by all means to get it. Even thought the truth is right in front of you, you still deny the truth because you still want it. You want to have the presidency for yourself. So, you try all sorts of tricks to get it, but eventually, the truth overwhelms your effort and you eventually have to give up, not because you want to give up, but because no one goes along with you anymore. But you still remain sad because you don’t get what you want. If you just change your mind and accept it, ‘Ok, this time I don’t get it so I should change my craving, stop my craving to become president because it’s impossible to become president,’ your sadness will disappear.
So, in order to stop your cravings, you have to see that the things you crave for are aniccaṁ, anattā. They are not something that you can always depend on. You cannot always say, ‘Ok, this time I’m going to be the president, and the next time, I’ll be the president again.’ You can’t do that because they are not under your control. If they are not under your control, it’s better not to crave for them, to be safe. Because you can be happy without having to be anything. Be a knower—that’s all you have to do. Be a knower. The mind is the knower. Just know. When you don’t have any cravings for anything, then you won’t have any dukkha in your mind.
“Dhamma in English, Jan 26, 2021.”
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
YouTube: Dhamma in English.
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