“If you’re aiming for liberation and enlightenment, then you shouldn’t visit those realms because you’ll become attached to them and end up wasting your time.

The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.

14 May 2024

“If you’re aiming for liberation and enlightenment, then you shouldn’t visit those realms because you’ll become attached to them and end up wasting your time.”

When you aim for liberation and enlightenment through your practice, you’ll have to rein in your mind to keep it inwards and calm. Once you withdraw from that calm state, you should then reflect on the three marks of existence (tilakkhaṇa) as well as forms (rūpa), feelings (vedanā), memories (saññā), thoughts (saṅkhāra), and consciousness (viññāṇa).

When you’re free—after you’ve developed wisdom (vipassanā), and your mind has accumulated enough merit and perfections—you’ll be able to visit the heavenly realms, just as the Buddha did to see his mother. Luangpu Mun also had visits from and conversations with heavenly beings. It shows that your mind can have access to all of the three realms (tibhava).

However, if you’re aiming for liberation and enlightenment, then you shouldn’t visit those realms because you’ll become attached to them and end up wasting your time. When you start meditating, and you happen to have a visit from a heavenly being or your mind wanders to other realms, don’t get carried away. 

You only need to let it happen, or experience it, once just so that you know it exists and how it is.

You shouldn’t get carried away with it to the extent that it becomes a habit. You should focus on your body. 

Contemplate the thirty-two body parts and their foulness to discern the body’s decomposition and impermanence. Reflect on it until you can let go of your body and become detached from it—you’re no longer concerned with death. This is where you need to reach when practising for liberation and enlightenment.

When you no longer have any work left to do, you may then wander off to wherever you like. 

There will be no one to stop you, nor will any harm come to the mind that is liberated. Your wandering won’t be because of delusion or out of desire. You can let you mind wander when you’re free and there won’t be any harm, but you have to finish your work first. 

You have to complete all of your work before having fun.

By Ajaan Suchart Abhijāto

www.phrasuchart.com

Youtube: Dhamma in English

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g