THE EYES, EARS AND NOSE ARE CAUSAL CONDITIONS January 16th, 2525 (1982)

THE EYES, EARS AND NOSE ARE CAUSAL CONDITIONS 
January 16th, 2525 (1982)

Meditation – focus your heart. If you have been able to focus your heart, you will thus know ‘Buddho’ as the Path for the heart. If in meditation you still can’t focus your mind, you will lose out to defilement – defilement is there first. 

You need to have recollection (sati) safeguarding the heart for it to be good. If you don’t have recollection (sati), the mind will go clinging and sticking to that or this, all over the place, leading it into delusion.

When you are deluded – like when you are deluded with something – lift it up and contend with it using investigation. The body, for example – focus on breaking the parts of the body apart, piece by piece. It’s full of things that are unclean, flowing in and out of it all the time, every moment. 

Investigating and breaking it down until you see that it is unattractive is not easy when the mind is pushed around and shaken up, looking for preoccupations. 

We have to rely on putting forth effort, and enduring patience. When the mind has strength, it will thus be peaceful. If we’re caught up in laziness, the mind is no use. The substance of this lethargy and laziness is the substance that lets things go to rot – it’s the substance of defilement. When we sit, we’re quickly yawning, yawning... This is just defilement. If our efforts are complete, we will thus gain strength. If it’s incomplete, there will be no strength. 

That physical body of ours – the one we see as attractive – is because of unclean things filling its stomach and intestines. If there were nothing in the stomach, nothing in the intestines, have a look – would it be attractive? If the contents of the stomach and intestines all came flowing out, the body would be dried and withered – leaving just skin wrapped around the bones. 

If we speak in accordance with truth, the whole body is completely filled with rotten things. And even though it’s like that, we’re still deluded into thinking it’s something beautiful and attractive. 

But the heart doesn’t tell us that it’s filled with unclean things, you know. We have to meditate, investigating backwards and forwards, doubling over and doubling back. We’re deluded over something unattractive – we grab onto that and contend with this – and actually see it as attractive until we’re caught and deluded. 

Meditating – if we lie down to meditate it just becomes ‘sleeping meditation’.^1 In eating, if we eat too much, when we meditate we sit and go to sleep. There are many issues and many complications. If anything is too much, the mind won’t be peaceful. We try to stop it but it doesn’t listen – all the food blots us out. 

All of us have lain in our mother’s womb for nine months, ten months, before we could escape and cry – “Wahhh!” If we were happy, we’d have laughed – but we cried with distress... 

This sensuality – we’ve been caught in it for an uncountable, endless time. 

The Buddha accelerated his effort until he knew clearly and saw truly. Sensuality is the single substance that makes beings die. Kāma-taṇhā (craving for sensuality), bhava-taṇhā (craving for becoming/being) and vibhava-taṇhā (craving for not becoming/annihilation) enter in and become kāma-tan-naa, bhava-tan-daa, and vibhava-tan-jai.^2 

When sensuality comes in and clogs everything up – our face, our eyes, our hearts – then delusion arises. Love, hate and satisfaction arise because of that sensuality. Dissatisfaction is because of sensuality – it arises with the heart.

The eyes are causal conditions. The ears are causal conditions. The nose is a causal condition. They are causal conditions for love and hate. 

The eyes are causal conditions when we have seen a beautiful sight, an attractive sight, or an ugly, detestable sight. The ears are causal conditions – we hear a symphony or beautiful singing, or, really irritating sounds. The nose and the heart are the same – if something is good, we find it adorable and we’re caught in it and deluded. If it’s the opposite, we bristle at it and hate it. Thus, these things are causal conditions. 

Killing each other is because of sensuality. Love is because of sensuality. The entire sky, land and sea is filled with sensuality. Sensuality clogging our faces, being clogging our eyes, and annihilation clogging our hearts. If I were to expand on this, there would be no end at all to sensuality, because satisfaction and dissatisfaction both arise from sensuality, full stop. 

Investigate this really well. However it is, you’ve been thus deluded about it until you’ve been turned into its servant boy.

^1. An untranslatable play-on-words: “If we ‘non bhāvanā’, it just becomes ‘bhāvanon’.” 

[Admin: 'non' (Thai: นอน) means 'sleep' in Thai while 'bhavana' (Thai: phawana ภาวนา) means meditation.]

^2. Another untranslatable play-on-words: “Sensual craving, craving for being and craving for annihilation enter in and become ‘sensuality clogging our face’, ‘being clogging our eyes’ and ‘annihilation clogging our hearts’.” 

[Admin:  To put into context the translation, 'tan' (ตัน) that shares the same sound as the first syllable of 'taṇhā' ('ตัณ' in 'ตัณ-หา' craving) can mean 'clog'. Sensual craving (kāma-taṇhā) becomes kāma-tan-naa [กาม-ตัน-หน้า where naa (หน้า) means face], craving for being (bhava-taṇhā) becomes bhava-tan-daa [ภว-ตัน-ตา where daa (ตา) means eye] and craving for annihilation (vibhava-taṇhā) becomes vibhava-tan-jai [วิภว-ตัน-ใจ where jai (ใจ) means heart].

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

From The Life and Teachings of Luang Pu Waen Suciṇṇo, translated by Hāsapañño Bhikkhu.

The Life and Teachings of Luang Pu Waen Suciṇṇo

PDF: https://sites.google.com/site/wideanglewilderness/downloads/LifeandTeachingsWEB.pdf?attredirects=0 

About Luang Pu Waen:

Luang Pu Waen was one of Luang Pu Mun's early disciples who followed him up into the north of Thailand. Many of Luang Pu Mun's disciples became great monks, but only a handful of them became legendary in their own right. Luang Pu Waen was one of them. 

Reclusive and unworldly by nature, he was the most famous monk in Thailand when he died and was King Bhumiphol's (Rāma IX) favourite Ajaan. Although he was a monk who spoke little, his fame in the last years of his life meant that many of the teachings he did give were recorded. His talks were regarded by monks as extremely profound and absolutely right to the point.