The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.
3 February 2023
Question: Do you have any feelings about the US pulling out of Afghanistan? I am happy but it is a difficult time for the people living there. Also, my son and his family recently tested positive for COVID. Please keep them in your thoughts.
Than Ajahn: I look at everything as anicca (impermanent); everything changes from good to bad, from bad to good. Everything is all anattā, it is not under your control. There is not much for you to do or react, really! It doesn’t change anything. The most important thing for you or for me to do is to take care of your mind or my mind. Look after the mind to make it peaceful, calm, and undisturbed by the event that is happening. All things have their own places. They come and go. They rise and cease. They are something that you cannot change. If you cannot change them, then you just have to let them be. If you can do something about it, go ahead and do it. When you cannot do anything about it, then you just let it be.
Don’t get yourself consumed by the events that are happening around you because it doesn’t do your mind any good. Protect your mind with mindfulness and wisdom.
“Dhamma in English, Aug 22, 2021.”
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Question: A few hours ago there was a terrorists attack in Paris and such attacks are happening in many other countries as well. I would like to know from a Buddhist perspective, how can we deal with it?
Than Ajahn: You have to look at the total picture. There are many other people who also died but not from terror attacks. Death from terror attack is very small. For example, three people died yesterday. But many die from natural causes: thousands or tens or hundreds of thousands every day but it never gets into the news, that’s all. You have to consider the big picture.
Don’t look at the news only. News only highlights some of the events and it may look terrible, but the news does not really report how many people have died in the world. How many people have died in Africa from famine and sickness? Many people die every day. We ourselves make it look worse. Just let it be natural. Two policemen died, one terrorist died. Three people died.
Compare this to the twenty thousand that died today. What then is the difference of the death of the three people? We tend to react to something that is magnified, when such incident is just as normal as apple pie.
People die every day. People die from automobile accidents more than they die from being shot down by a terrorist.
Laypeople: I mean this violence and terror are committed freely in the name of religion.
Than Ajahn: People die in the name of religion, country and race or are killed for various reasons. If you were to look at the big picture, people will still die anyway from natural or unnatural causes. We all die anyway. We try to magnify something normal to become abnormal.
Instead of leaving it naturally, we make it worst by our reactions. For example: “If they kill three of us, we will bomb 300 of them.”
I do not wish to go into the causes that resulted in this current situation. There are causes that lead people into such actions. We only look on our side, we don’t look on the other side who are hurt by our actions.
We have our justification for killing them, so they also have their justifications for killing us. They say, “Since you kill us, we also have the right to kill you.”
That is why the Buddha said that:
Hatred can never be appeased by hatred. Hatred can only be appeased by love and forgiveness. So we just have to forgive them and look at it as a natural thing. People are born and die but whatever causes this doesn’t matter. We all die anyway when the time comes for us to die. Seeing in this way will prevent us from taking revenge or creating more bad actions.
Laypeople: So, we have to see the big picture and must not let this incident overshadow it.
Than Ajahn: Yes. Everybody dies. How many people are there in France? Eighty million? They are all going to die. How many people are there in Thailand? Seventy million? They too are all going to die. So what’s the big deal of 3 death yesterday or today? There are more people died due to drinking alcohol.
Laypeople: But it is how they die that matters, right?
Than Ajahn: That’s what I mean; you look from the wrong perspective. I see from the perspective of just death and not how they die. If you choose to see how they die, you can get angry. But if you choose to see death as the end result of life, regardless of how we die we are all going to die. So why should you do anything about it? If a person dies, let him die. Instead of seeing things in this way, we take revenge. If you try to kill me, I will kill your father and his son will come and kill you. Back and forth and it’s never ending. So instead of living together peacefully, you live in hatred and violence.
If you contemplate on the nature of the body, you will see that death is just part of the body’s nature.
Regardless of how it dies, it doesn’t really matter. Maybe, there are more people killed by their own loved ones, such as husband and wife. I suppose if you are to look at the statistics, you are more likely to be killed by your spouse than terrorists. You make your wife angry and she can kill you!
So, in Buddhism, it teaches us to just be ready to die. Just accept it. We know who dies and who doesn’t die, so death doesn’t mean anything to a Buddhist because what dies isn’t us. The body is like our servant.
The body is like a robot. Right now, we are developing a robot to do things for us. If your robot ‘dies’, would you get mad or angry? Would you get sad? It’s OK! The body is a (just) biological robot and not a mechanical one. That’s all it is. It is not you or me. It’s just your robot or my robot. So why get so upset when your robot dies? You just get a new one.
Reborn again, you get a new robot.
“Dhamma in English, Apr 21, 2017.”
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
YouTube: Dhamma in English.
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