The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.
9 August 2024
Question: What is the best way to deal with emotional feelings triggered by jealousy, resentment and disappointment?
Than Ajahn: The way to deal with emotions is to understand the nature of emotion. The nature of emotion is impermanent, it’s changing; it’s not under your control—you cannot always control your emotions, sometimes you have good emotions, sometimes you have bad emotions. The way to deal with emotion is to train your mind to be calm and not react to your emotion. Merely know or acknowledge those emotions, good and bad. And the way to be able to calm your mind is to meditate.
You have to learn to meditate by using mindfulness as the tool to develop it. Without mindfulness, you cannot calm your mind, cannot make your mind still and not reacting. Right now, the mind will react to anything that it comes into contact with. When you have good emotion, it will react by having desire for more of it. When you have bad emotion, it will react by having the desire to get rid of the bad emotion.
When it cannot get rid of the bad emotion, it becomes stressful. If you train your mind to just acknowledge it and not react to the emotion, then whatever emotion that comes up will not affect your mind. Your mind will remain calm and undisturbed by whatever emotion that appears, good or bad emotion.
So, what you need to do is to train your mind to merely acknowledge it and not react to it. And the way to make the mind like that is to meditate, to use mindfulness to control your thoughts.
If you can stop your thoughts, then you can stop your mind from reacting. You should learn to develop mindfulness first. Mindfulness is to stop your mind from thinking aimlessly, and you can do it by using a mantra. You can use a mantra to stop your thoughts. If you start to think aimlessly, you can recite a mantra, then you won’t continue on thinking aimlessly. And if you keep focusing on your mantra, eventually, your aimless thoughts will disappear and your mind will become calm and empty. And if you sit still, your mind will be more still and calmer. And eventually, it will stop reacting.
Once you can train your mind to not react to anything, when you come across whatever kind of emotions, you can tell the mind to just be still, to not react, and to just to acknowledge it. Then, nothing can hurt the mind. No stress can happen.
Question: How can one reduce attachment to foods, drugs, tobaccos, coffee and sugar?
Than Ajahn: The way to reduce your attachment to these things is to see the harm in them.
You have to study the nature of those things and how they affect your mind and body. Eating too much food can cause you to become overweight and get all kinds of sickness. If you are addicted to drugs or alcohol, they will hurt your body and your mind because you will become dependent on those drugs or alcohol. Anytime when you can’t have them, your mind will be miserable. So, this is the first stage: to study the nature of those things whether they are beneficial or they are harmful to you.
Once you know that they are harmful to you, if you’ve never tried them, then you must stay away from them. Don’t try to go after them. But if you are already hooked on them, the only way you can do is to try to pull yourself away from them. Sometimes, you need to go to a rehab or a meditation center where you can be away from the things that are harmful to you. At that time, when your mind is craving for them, you will feel miserable, and the way to stop your mind from being miserable is to learn how to meditate.
When you meditate, if you’re successful, you can stop the misery that arises in the mind.
When the mind is calm, all miseries, and all bad feelings will disappear. So, this is basically what you should do: you have to learn to control your mind, to calm your mind and make your mind become still.
Then, your mind will be happy and contented, it will not desire or crave for things that are bad for the mind and the body.
“Dhamma in English, Jun 23, 2019.”
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
YouTube: Dhamma in English.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g
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