Craft of the Heart, by Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo, translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu.
“What benefits come from practicing concentration?”
A person who practices concentration benefits in the following ways:
a. The heart of a person who practices concentration is radiant, steady, and fearless. Whatever projects such a person may contemplate can succeed because the mind has a solid footing for its thinking. Whatever worldly work such a person may undertake will yield results that are substantial, worthwhile, and long lasting.
b. Whoever has trained the mind to be steady and firm in concentration will be solid from the standpoint both of the world and of the Dhamma.
A solid heart can be compared to a slab of rock: No matter whether the wind blows, the rain falls or the sun shines, rock doesn’t waver or flinch.
To put it briefly: the eight chains, i.e., the eight ways of the world (lokadhamma)—gain and loss, status and loss of status, praise and criticism, pleasure and pain—can’t shackle the heart of a person who has concentration.
The five weevils, i.e., the five hindrances (nīvaraṇa)—sensual desires, ill will, drowsiness, restlessness, and uncertainty—can’t bore into such a person’s heart.
c. A heart made firm in concentration is like a tree with solid heartwood—Indian rosewood or teak—which, once it has died, is of use to people of ingenuity.
The goodness of people who have trained their hearts in concentration can be of substantial use, even after they’ve died, both to themselves and to those surviving, an example being the Buddha who—even though he has nibbāna-ed—has set an example that people still follow today.
A person who practices concentration is like someone with a home and family; a person without concentration is like a vagrant with no place to sleep: Even though he may have belongings, he has nowhere to keep them.
A person with a mind made firm in concentration, though, has a place for his belongings. In other words, all major and minor acts of merit and skillfulness come together in a mind that has concentration.
A person without concentration is like a softwood tree with a hollow trunk: Poisonous animals, like cobras or crocodile birds, will come and make their nests in the hollow, laying their eggs and filling the hollow with their urine and dung. When such a tree dies, there’s no use for it as firewood.
In the same way, the heart of a person who hasn’t practiced concentration is a nest of defilements—greed, aversion, and delusion—which cause harm and pain for the body. When these people die, they are of no use except as food for worms or fuel for a pyre.
d. A person without concentration is like a boat without a dock or a train without a station: The passengers are put to all sorts of hardships.
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From Craft of the Heart, by Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo, translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu.
Read: https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/CraftHeart/Section0001.html
PDF: https://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writings/Ebooks/TheCraftoftheHeart_181215.pdf
17th December, 2022
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