THE END OF SLAVERY
"When the heart is a slave to its moods and defilements—greed, aversion, and delusion—it's like being a slave to poor people, troublemakers, and crooks, all of whom are people we shouldn’t be enslaved to. The ‘poor people’ here are greed: hunger, desire, never having enough. This feeling of ‘not enough’ is what it means to be poor.
As for aversion, this doesn’t necessarily mean out-and-out anger. It also means being grumpy or in a bad mood. If anyone annoys us or does something displeasing, we get irritated and resentful. This is called being a slave to troublemakers.
Delusion means seeing good as evil or evil as good, right as wrong or wrong as right, thinking you’re good when you’re evil, or evil when you’re good. This is called being a slave to crooks.
But if the mind becomes a slave to goodness, this is called being a slave to the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha, in which case we’re well-off because the Buddha is a kind person. He won’t make us work all hours of the day and instead will allow us time to rest and find peace of mind.
But still, as long as we’re slaves, we can’t say that it’s really good, because slaves have no freedom. They still have a price on their heads. Only when we gain release from slavery can we be fully free and happy.
So for this reason, be diligent in your work: Meditate a lot every day.
You’ll profit from it, get to buy yourself out of slavery to the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha, and gain Liberation. Don’t let there be anyone at all over you giving you orders. That’s when it’s really ideal...”
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“The Buddha never meant for us to take as our mainstay anything or anyone else aside from ourselves.
Even when we take refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha, he never praised it as being really ideal.
He wanted us to take ourselves as our refuge. ‘The self is its own mainstay:’ We don’t have to take our authority from anyone else. We can depend on ourselves and govern ourselves. We’re free and don’t have to fall back on anyone else. When we can reach this state, that’s when we’ll be released from slavery—and truly happy.”
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Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo
Excerpt from the e-Book “Food for Thought: Eighteen Talks
on the Training of the Heart,” Section “Free at Last”
Translated from the Thai by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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You can read the full talk here:
https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/FoodForThought/Section0021.html
1st December, 2022
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