The teachings of Ajahn Suchart.
21 March 2024
“As a Dhamma practitioner, you are taught to live simply.”
Certain people like to use expensive things; instead of buying a bar of soap that costs 10 baht, they prefer buying one that costs 100 baht. They’re both soap and would do the job. Some people even prefer certain brands or those made in France. If you spend less money on things, you’ll have more money to make merit. It will bring more happiness to your mind and further reduce your urge to spend money. It will help you develop your peace of mind even more.
If you want real happiness, you need to make a lot of merit. Do not seek happiness through physical pleasures and worldly pursuits. We should only seek what is necessary.
As a Dhamma practitioner, you are taught to live simply. You can make do with just two sets of clothes by alternating them; you wear one while washing the other. You can sleep on a wooden floor with just a thin mattress.
You can simply survive with just two meals a day. A 50 baht meal can make you full just as much as a 5,000 baht meal would. Both give you a sense of fullness, which eventually disappears.
But the happiness of someone who eats a 50 baht meal is greater than the other, because they don’t feel the pressure to earn 5,000 baht to feed themselves.
The exception might be those of you with good merits, who were born with a fortune and have wealthy parents, so you’re used to eating such food.
But it can be something that holds you back because if you want to seek spiritual happiness, you have to live simply. If you’ve never done it, you may not be able to do it.
There are those who have come across Buddhism in this lifetime, and yet still are unable to benefit from it.
Having been born as a millionaire, they become attached to their wealth and worldly pleasures that they’ve accumulated.
However, there are exceptional few, like the Buddha who had accumulated so much good merit to the extent that he was no longer attached to his wealth and royal status.
Is there a king these days who would abdicate his throne to become a monk?
There isn’t, because none of them have as much merit and spiritual perfections as the Buddha did. So they still cling to worldly pleasures, of which they already have so much.
However, the Buddha didn’t care about or regret those things because he gained concentration (samādhi) very early on. According to his biography, his mind first entered a state of calm on the day of the Royal Ploughing Ceremony, while he was sitting alone under a tree as others were carrying out the rituals.
This happened because of the past merit he had accumulated. He was very happy; the happiness he experienced outdid the kind obtained from drinking and eating, and through all the senses. That’s why he could easily abandon worldly pleasures to become a monk and live the life of a beggar without any regret.
He went from living in a palace to being a beggar.
Think about it: he went from having 100 baht to only 1 baht and still could live with it.
By Ajaan Suchart Abhijāto
Youtube: Dhamma in English
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g
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