The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.
26th June, 2022
Layperson: Than Ajahn, I heard you talked about 10 ways to make merits.
Than Ajahn: 10 ways of making yourself happy are:
1. Give to charity (dāna). When you give dāna, you’ll feel happy especially when you give dāna for a good cause, like helping someone to have a better life, helping someone to alleviate one’s hardship. This will make you feel good. You will feel happy when you do it.
2. Keep the precepts will also make you happy because when you keep the precepts, you know that you don’t hurt anybody.
3. Practise bhāvanā (meditation) will make you happy.
4. Sharing merits. After you’ve made merits from giving dāna, then you can dedicate part of the merits to the deceased, to spiritual beings e.g. sharing merits to the people you love like your parents who have passed away. Since you can’t give them money because they are gone, you can, at least, give them merits that you’ve made.
5. Appreciate other people’s good actions (anumodanā). When people do good things, you are joyful for their good actions, then you will also feel good. Rather than say, ‘Oh! That person is just showing off to the world about what he/she has done’, you should say, ‘Ok, he/she is very generous, I appreciate his/her action.’
Then you’d feel happy with him/her. Or, when you see any organisation like the Red Cross helping people during the war, you’d say, ’Oh yes, I really appreciate what the organisation does.’ And you are also happy with its action, or you may want to contribute by donating some money to the organisation. This is also one of the ways to make yourself happy.
6. Be humble. When you are humble, you don’t have to show how good or how rich you are. Just be humble. You don’t have to prove anything to anybody. This can also make you happy. If you want to prove that ‘I’m great, I’m smart’, when people don’t appreciate what you are trying to prove, instead of being happy, you can get angry. So it’s better to just be humble, to practise humility. Also, being humble will not hurt other people. People don’t like arrogant people. People like humble people because humble people don’t create any bad feelings for other people.
7. To serve others. You might not have money to give to other people, but you might be able to give your time to serve the community, do a public service, for instance. Or, just help someone next door. For example, you help an old lady who needs to go to the hospital, or help mowing the lawn for her. Serving others is also a way to make yourself happy.
8. To have Right View (sammādiṭṭhi).
Right View is having the right view of how to make yourself happy. Giving dāna, keeping the precepts are considered to be having Right View. Some people have the wrong view.
They think in order to be happy, they have to buy a new car, new clothes, new house, or a yacht. If they do this, they would be happy for a few days, and then they would have problems because they have to look after the things they’ve bought. If anything goes wrong with the things they own, it would cause them a headache. So if you have Right View, you won’t go buy all those things. You will give your money to charity instead, in order to make yourself really happy, have no dukkha.
Because once you give away your money, then that’s it. Right? But if you buy something, then you have to look after the things you’ve bought.
So having Right View is one of the ways to make yourself happy.
9. If you don’t have Right View now, then you have to study the teachings of the Buddha, listen to Dhamma talks so that you can have Right View.
Listen to Dhamma talks is also a way of making yourself happy because when you listen to Dhamma talks, you know what’s good and what’s bad, what’s right and wrong, and then you can stop doing the wrong things and start doing the right things. This is the ninth way of making yourself happy: to listen to Dhamma talks, to study the teachings of the Buddha.
10. To share the Dhamma that you’ve learned. You’d say, ‘Oh! I feel happy because I am keeping the precepts’ then you’d tell other people, ‘If you want to be happy, keep the precepts!’
This is sharing of Dhamma.
These are the 10 ways of making yourself happy according to the Buddha’s teachings.
The way to make yourself happy is not by having a husband or wife, buying a new condo or going on a holiday.
Having a husband or wife, buying condo, and going on a holiday are the examples of having the fake kinds of happiness, which will only last briefly, and after the happiness disappear, they are followed by all sort of problems. This type of ways of making yourself happy will also cause you to be addicted to them.
When you don’t have them, you’ll feel miserable or depressed.
But the 10 ways of making yourself happy according to the Buddha’s teachings will not cause any depression or sadness when you can’t do them. When you can’t give dāna, it’s ok. So, what? You can’t afford to give dāna now, no problem. You won’t be addicted to it when you can’t do it.
You won’t feel that you are lacking something when you don’t do it.
Layperson: That’s so good Ajahn. It’s really a good explanation. You can remember all of them well.
Than Ajahn: You don’t memorise them. Once you understand how to make yourself happy, it stays in your mind. If you memorise it, you can forget. But once you understand it, it will always stay in your mind. So the study of the Dhamma is not by memorising them, but by understanding the teachings. Once you understand them, you will never forget them. If you memorise the Dhamma, you can forget the teachings if you stop thinking about them for a while. So you have to understand them.
And the only way to understand them is to do the practice yourself. You have to do all 10 of them and then you can appreciate the result from doing the actions. You can feel the happiness arising in your mind, then you understand, ‘Oh ya! That’s why I have to do these things!’ Because it makes you happy. Right now, you are still listening to and memorising what I said. You have to do it. Once you’ve done it, then you’d say, ’I see, I see. I understand what you mean’.
Layperson: Right now, I am experiencing no. 9.
Than Ajahn: Okay. Good.
Question: When we experienced it, is this sandiṭṭhiko?
Than Ajahn: Yes, sandiṭṭhiko, then you’ll never forget. That’s why you have to practice them all, not just to study them. Study doesn’t make impression in the mind. By only studying the teachings, they will stay in your mind briefly, and then they can disappear from your mind. But if you apply them in your life, if you do the actions, then they will stay with you because you can see both, the cause and the effect, i.e. the actions and the result arising from these actions.
Layperson: Thank you, Than Ajahn.
“Dhamma in English, Mar 1, 2022.”
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
YouTube: Dhamma in English.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g
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