The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.
22 May 2024
“You have to have both requisites (for your physical part and mental part) in order to maintain a good life.”
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Question: I’m living in a small but materialistic country. Everybody is trying hard to make a living here.
Some who can’t take the stress in this country will either turn mad or work until their health turn bad. How can we get the balance?
Than Ajahn: Well, you have to first know where the balance is before you can get the balance.
You have to know that your existence is made up of two parts: the physical part and mental part. Right now, you only concentrate on your physical part, you are not paying any attention to your mental needs, so you have to strike a balance. Yesterday I gave a talk on how to handle the physical and mental parts. Your physical part needs the four requisites of living (food, clothing, shelter and medicine), so does your mental part.
Your mental part needs food, and it can get food by giving dāna, or by doing charity work.
For the clothing requisite for your mental part, it needs to have sīla (precepts). You have to have moral uprightness. You don’t want to live hurting other people because when you hurt other people, you are a disgrace to yourself, you are liken to someone who has no clothing. If you are someone who is morally upright, you maintain the precepts, then you become a respectable or a likeable person. A likeable person is liken to a person who puts on a good and nice clothing and people like to see people with nice clothing.
So, the clothing requisite for your mental part is to maintain good moral behaviors such as keeping the five precepts i.e. abstaining from killing, stealing, committing an unethical sexual act, lying and drinking alcohol.
The housing requisite for your mental part is to have a calm mind. When your mind is calm, you have a place where you can rest and be safe from all the problems that you might face in your daily life. It’s like you have a house where you can go and sleep, and be protected while you’re taking a rest. So, your mental house is meditation (samādhi).
And the medicine requisite for your mental part is paññā or wisdom of the Buddha. When you are not happy, the Buddha said that you’re being afflicted by the germs of your desires.
Your desires are the germs that cause illness to your mind. If you want to get rid of your mental illness, you have to get rid of your desires or your cravings.
So, these are the four requisites for the mental part that you need to have: dāna (charity), sīla (precepts), samādhi (meditation), and paññā (wisdom). Wisdom is to understand the Four Noble Truths, to understand that your mental suffering arises from your cravings. If you can get rid of your cravings, then you can get rid of your mental suffering.
So, you have to have both requisites (for your physical part and mental part) in order to maintain a good life.
You have to have the four living requisites for the body (food, clothing, housing and medicine) to keep your body well. For your mental health, you need the four requisites for the mental part:
(1) you need to give to charity;
(2) you need to be morally upright, to keep the five precepts;
(3) you have to know how to meditate to calm your mind. When your mind is restless or agitated, you just go into samādhi, or when your mind is tired, you rest the mind in samādhi;
(4) and if your mind is afflicted with illness, then you have to get rid of your cravings or your desires by using the wisdom of the Buddha, by thinking of the Four Noble Truths. The Buddha said that your mental stress or suffering arises from your desires or your cravings. If you can get rid of your cravings, then your mental stress and suffering will disappear.
“Dhamma in English, Nov 13, 2017.”
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
YouTube: Dhamma in English.
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