“Once you've found happiness inside your mind, then you would know that you don’t need anything. That's why the Buddha never went back to his palace. He lived as a mendicant. He lived as an ascetic.”

The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.

16 May 2023

“Once you've found happiness inside your mind, then you would know that you don’t need anything. That's why the Buddha never went back to his palace. He lived as a mendicant. He lived as an ascetic.”

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Question (M1): "When you feel that blissful feeling, if you have said to yourself that you would meditate for 15 minutes and the blissful feeling appears in the 14th minutes, should you stop or should you carry on?"

Than Ajahn: "I don’t think you will want to stop once you’ve found the blissful feeling. It’s like when you planned to stay at a place for one week, then you found that the place is good for you, and so you might end up staying there for 10 years. This is the same way. If you ever got to that point of happiness, then you wouldn’t want to go anywhere else. It’s because you’ve found the whole purpose of life – finding happiness. And there is no other happiness that is as good as the happiness from your meditation. 

Once you are there, you don’t want to go anywhere. You have found your destination. So, don’t worry. If you get to that point, you can give up everything, even your life because you know that you don’t have to depend on your body to be happy. 

Your mind and your body are two separate entities. Modern science cannot differentiate them. 

They think the mind and the body are together. The ancient wisdom through the meditation practice can show that the mind and the body are two separate entities and the mind can be happy without having to have the body. In fact, as far as the mind is concerned, having the body is more of a burden than not having one.

Once the mind knows how to meditate and get to that point of happiness, then it no longer needs the body. 

One doesn’t need a wife/husband. One doesn’t need money. One doesn’t need anything. For you, you still need all these things because you have to look after the body, and you have desire for happiness outside of your mind. But once you've found happiness inside your mind, then you would know that you don’t need anything. 

That’s why the Buddha never went back to his palace, right? He lived as a mendicant. He lived as an ascetic, and he was happy. He was happier than when he was in the palace. What happened to his body doesn’t bother him. The body can get old, get sick or die. It wouldn’t have any effect on his mind because his mind doesn’t rely or depend on the body anymore. 

For you, you still rely on your body. What happen to your mind when something happen to your body? 

You feel terrible, right? You feel bad. But if you know how to meditate, you know how to get to that point of happiness, then you know that you don’t need the body. And whatever happens to the body will not bother you. It will not affect your happiness.

This is the whole goal of meditation. You need to practice meditation. Before you can meditate, you have to keep the precepts. You have to abstain from sensual gratification, for instance abstaining from all kinds of sexual activities. And before you can do that, you have to be charitable. Instead of spending your money on sensual pleasures, spend it on charity instead. 

Then, you can stop your attachment to the sensual gratification. 

So, every time when you want to spend money on sensual gratification, you should give the money away to charity. You stop sensual gratification. It’s like kicking a habit. When you want to stop smoking, what do you do? You don’t smoke. Every time you want to smoke, you restrain it. 

You do something else like go chew a gum. This is the same way. Every time you want to spend money on sensual gratification, you give away the money to charity. Why? Because in this way, you can eventually stop using money for sensual gratification. And when you no longer have to spend money for sensual gratification, you don’t have to work." 

Youtube video: “Dhamma in English, Aug 15, 2018.”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto

www.phrasuchart.com

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