Inner Strength & Parting Gifts: Talks by Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo,

Inner Strength & Parting Gifts: Talks by Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo, 

The world has its highs and lows, its good and evil, and we’re just like the world. Our body—no matter how much we care for it to make it strong and healthy, beautiful and comfortable—will have to be good in some ways and to malfunction in others. What’s important is that we don’t let the mind malfunction. 

Don’t let it go branching out after its various preoccupations. 

If we let the mind go around thinking good and evil in line with its preoccupations, it won’t be able to advance to a higher level. So we have to make our tree have a single tip: We have to center the mind firmly in a single preoccupation. 

Don’t let your moods hold sway over the mind. We have to cut off the mind from its preoccupations with sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations, leaving only a single mental preoccupation. Let a preoccupation with what’s good and worthwhile arise in the mind. Don’t let any of the forms of mental corruption arise.

Mental corruption means: 

(1) greed for sights, sounds, smells, tastes, etc.; 

(2) ill will—focusing on this matter or that person as bad, and going from there to a desire for retribution, leading to a confrontation or to violence; 

(3) wrong views—seeing that doing good doesn’t lead to good results; for example, seeing that being generous, observing the precepts, or practicing meditation doesn’t make a person rich or happy, so that we stop doing good. 

We have to rid the heart of these three forms of mental corruption. When the heart is freed from corruption, it will have to enter mental rectitude, becoming a worthwhile mind, pursuing right action: in other words, meditation.

In practicing meditation, we really have to be true in our work if we want results. We have to be true in our body, true in our speech, true in our heart. Our body has to sit straight and unmoving in a half-lotus position. 

Our speech has to be silent, not saying a thing. Our heart has to be set straight and still, not flitting out after allusions to past or future. 

If we can be true in our work in this way, we’ll have to succeed and see results. If we’re slipshod and desultory, our work won’t succeed. 

This is why we’re taught,

anākulā ca kammantā etam-maṅgalam-uttamaṁ:

‘Activities not left unfinished are a supreme good omen.’

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Inner Strength & Parting Gifts: Talks by Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo, 

translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu

https://www.dhammatalks.org/ebook_index.html#inner_strength

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23 September 2023