The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.
13 July 2023
Student: How does meditation reduce the number of rebirths?
Phra Ajahn: Meditation slows down your defilements. It reduces your defilements.
Instead of going to a movie, you spend time meditating, so your defilements cannot grow because you need to keep doing what your defilements want you to do in order for the defilements to grow. So you are like cutting the branches of the tree, not doing what your defilements want you to do.
When you want to watch a movie, eat something you don’t really have to eat, or drink something you don’t really have to drink, you meditate instead, to make you happy. You use meditation to replace your sensual pleasure happiness because your sensual pleasure happiness will generate more defilements, more rebirths. Your meditation practice reduces your defilements so it’s reducing the number of rebirths.
Student: So when we say ‘no’ to sensual pleasures and use meditation as the replacement, we actually cut down the rebirths.
Phra Ajahn: Cut down your defilements.
Defilement is the one that is creating more rebirths.
The creator of your rebirth is your craving and your defilements. The more you crave for something, the more you want to come back again. After you died this life, your craving still remains in your mind which will then push your mind to go look for a new body.
So do what every Buddha teaches us to do: avoid doing bad kamma, do only good kamma, and purify the mind by meditation practice.
The way to avoid doing bad kamma is to keep the 5 precepts which will prevent you from doing any bad kamma; and do charity work.
These are ways to do good kamma. And then go to a meditation retreat or meditate in your room, alone by yourself.
Student: You’re talking about the more defilement we have, the more rebirth we will get.
Phra Ajahn: That’s right. The defilement is the one that keep pushing the mind to go after sensual pleasures. In order to satisfy your sensual pleasures, you need to have a body, a human body or an animal body depending on your good or bad kamma. If you do bad kamma, you will get an animal body. If you don’t do any bad kamma, you will get a human body, eventually. But then, human body doesn’t last forever; your defilement lasts longer than your body. So when your body dies, your defilement is still strong so it pushes the mind to go look for another new body, and this has been going on for millions of bodies, and it will never stop until you come across the teachings of the Buddha.
The Buddha teaches us to eliminate our defilements, to purify the mind by meditation practice because you cannot use good kamma to purify your mind. Your good kamma will support your spiritual purification practice, but it cannot get rid of your defilements. You have to have vipassanā (wisdom level).
Even at samādhi level, you cannot get rid of your defilements.
Samādhi can make the defilements go slower, or less frequent because you spend more time in meditation.
Instead of watching YouTube, eating hamburgers, cakes or pies, you do meditation.
But when you come out of meditation, your defilements can still demand for more YouTubes, more cakes and more food.
So if you want to get rid of your defilements, you have to use vipassanā. You have to contemplate on the loathsome aspect of food.
Every time you think of food, cakes, or things to eat, think of them when they come out of your body. That’s all what we’re doing. Our body is like a factory creating excrement.
That’s what it is. There is an input side and there’s the output side. Look at it this way, then it might make you stop eating unnecessarily.
Eat only to maintain the body, not to eat for the pleasure of it. Not to eat or drink, or see or hear for pleasure. Do it out of necessity. Do it for the maintaining of life. Other than that, if you want happiness, you should meditate instead.
“Dhamma in English, Jul 5, 2022.”
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
YouTube: Dhamma in English.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g
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