The teachings of Ajahn Suchart
11 August 2024
“Dāna itself is already a blessing in itself.”
Question: Sometimes I see monks giving blessing using water, writing mantra or giving out amulets.
What do these actions symbolise? Can our luck be improved or our bad kamma be reduced by the blessing of the monks in such ways?
Than Ajahn: Nothing. It is just psychological because people still need support so the monks gave something tangible, it is like when you give dāna and the monks give you anumodāna. The anumodāna is not a blessing, it is a teaching which tells you the result you will get from giving dāna.
You don’t need to have a monk to chant for you once you have given dāna, because dāna itself is already a blessing in itself. You don’t need a monk to give you amulet or anything to make you think that you have acquired the blessing, because the act of giving dāna itself is already a blessing in itself so you don’t need a monk to bless you for that.
Question: How can we diminish our bad kamma?
Than Ajahn: You can diminish your bad kamma by keeping the precepts. By stop doing bad kamma, once all your past bad kamma expire, the bad kamma will disappear and you will not experience any new bad kamma.
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Question: There are different opinions about wearing amulets and believing in magic. Have I been misled for wearing it and believing in it?
Than Ajahn: They (the amulets) are not worth anything. You can throw them away. It doesn’t make any difference to your life whether you wear it or you don’t wear it. It is psychological. If you believe it and then you wear it, then you feel good. If you don’t believe it, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t help you, it doesn’t hurt you.
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Question: One time I became so frightened that I could not even recite a simple chant. I was confused, frightened, and didn’t know what was happening. Yet it wouldn’t be quite right to say I had no mindfulness either.
Tan Ajahn: Yes, you should try to train yourself to have greater mindfulness and peace of mind. Because there is a cause-and-effect relationship, you should cultivate mindfulness and practise meditation a lot.
These are the most important aspects of the practice.
Do not believe in amulets or magic. They don’t work, because if they did, they would be used all the time.
We would just cast some spell on whoever we disliked, but it doesn’t work that way.
It fools us because we’re gullible and easily alarmed, just like the rabbit who believed the sky was falling down merely after hearing a piece of fruit hit the ground. The rabbit was sleeping under a palm tree when a palm fruit fell, and he thought that it was a landslide and that the end of the world was coming.
Believing so, he started running away. When other animals saw him running and asked him what was wrong, the rabbit told them that the end of the world was coming. They were alarmed and believed what he said.
They all ran along until they met the lion king who asked them what they were running away from. Once they told him, the lion king asked to be taken to that spot. The lion king was a Bodhisatta (Buddha-to-be) empowered with mindfulness and wisdom and so was not easily swayed by the stories of the day. He would not believe what he heard until he had fully examined things. So he went to investigate, to prove it for himself, compelling the rabbit to lead the way to the spot where the landslide occurred. Once there, he saw the palm fruit under the tree. “Oh! It’s here where theso-called ‘landslide’ happened, right where a palm fruit fell.”
Therefore, there is no need to fear black magic or whatever else people believe in these days. No one can harm us except for our own confusion, our own panicked reactions. If we are not foolish or easily scared, there is nothing that can harm us.
Do not be alarmed or panicked by the things you hear.
If we have mindfulness and wisdom, we will know that whatever happens does not change the fact that we will definitely have to die. So, we need not worry or be alarmed whether the world will be destroyed or not; we have to die just the same. We cannot escape death, and anyway that which dies is not us. The mind is not the body.
By Ajaan Suchart Abhijāto
Youtube: Dhamma in English
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g
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