The teachings of Ajahn Suchart
23 November 2023
“Vipassanā is to stop you from coming back and wanting to get a new body.”
Question: How to practise samādhi?
Than Ajahn: To practise samādhi, you must have mindfulness. You have to stop your mind from thinking. You need an object to stop your mind from thinking like reciting the name of the Buddha: Buddho Buddho Buddho. If you keep reciting the mantra, you cannot think about other things and when you sit down and close your eyes, your mind can become calm and peaceful and you can reach samādhi.
If you don’t like to recite the mantra Buddho, you can use your breath – watch your breathing (ānāpānasati).
When you are breathing in you know you are breathing in, when you are breathing out you know you are breathing out. Don’t think but just keep watching. The important thing is not to think.
…….
Question: How to practise vipassanā?
Than Ajahn: Vipassanā is to see the true nature of things. Right now you don’t see things as they are but you see things as what you want them to be. If things don’t turn out the way you want it to be, it will make you disappointed. So you must look at things as the way they are.
The Buddha said you should look at the body as aniccaṁ, dukkhaṁ, anatta. Aniccaṁ means the body is impermanent, it gets old, gets sick and die. The body is anatta, it doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to the four elements: the earth, water, fire and wind. When the body dies, it returns to its nature – the four elements.
If you are attached to your body and you don’t want the body to die, you will suffer. But if you know that the body is not you, the body doesn’t belong to you, it has to die, and if you can let it be, you will not suffer.
You are not the body, you are the mind – the one who thinks, the one who feels, the one who knows. You are the spirit. When the body dies, you become a spirit.
After this body dies, you go to get a new body. The same way with how you get this body, before you get this body, you had another body. So you keep changing from one body to another as long as you still have the desire to have a body. If you get sick of getting sick, getting old and die, you should stop your desire for wanting to get a new body.
This is vipassanā – to know that birth, aging, sickness and death is caused by your own desire to have a body.
When you can stop using your body then you won’t need the body, you don’t have to get a new body when you die.
Vipassanā is to stop you from coming back and wanting to get a new body.
Having a new body is not good for you because you have to feed the body, and the body will have to get sick and die again and again.
By Ajaan Suchart Abhijāto
Youtube: Dhamma in English
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