The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.

The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.

12 March 2025

Q:  You’ve just redefined smartness and stupidity for me. We spent on other things which are less useful for ourselves.

Than Ajahn:  Yes. Everything you do in the world is useless. It’s worthless. Really! It doesn’t worth anything as far as your mind is concerned. It doesn’t make your mind happier. It doesn’t make your mind relieved from stress, from suffering. It doesn’t do that for your mind at all. So looking from the perspective of the mind, it’s useless. 

It's only useful from the perspective of the defilements. 

Defilements like to make money, spend money, be rich, be famous, be respected and so forth. These are all useful to the defilements but they are not useful to the mind. They don’t help you getting rid of the mental suffering of the mind at all. In fact, they increase more suffering, more stress and depression to the mind. 

But you don’t see that. You think that having more money is good, getting a higher position is good, being able to spend money on traveling, buying a new car, or buying a new condo is good. What does it do to your mind? Nothing. It just produces more craving for your mind. It creates more hunger. There is no contentment arising from those things. 

No peace. No contentment. Just restlessness, agitation, hunger and more craving. Have you reached the point where you’d say, ‘I have had enough yet?’ Just for sometimes, but eventually you’d want for more again. 

You don't see how important your mind is to you. 

Because you are being influenced by your defilements to see that what you can get for your body is more important than what you can get for your mind. But the body is temporary. Once the body dies, everything that you’ve accumulated for the body becomes useless to the mind. The mind couldn’t take anything with it at all. 

Try to practice because whatever you accumulated from your practice the mind can take that practice with it. 

You can take mindfulness with you, you can take wisdom with you, you can take jhāna with you; but you can’t take your Rolls-Royce with you, you can’t take your condominium with you. So what do you want? 

You can’t take anything that is physical with you. You can only take the mental qualities with you like charity, morality, contentment, peace, calm and wisdom. These are the things that you can take with you. These mental qualities will keep the mind peaceful and happy. 

But if you don’t have any of those mental qualities, if you keep hungering for this and that thing, when the body dies, the mind will be consumed with hunger because those were the things that you’ve been giving it to the mind everyday of your life. You give the mind more hunger, more craving, more desire. You will end up becoming a hungry spirit when you die. You take these poisons – greed, hate, delusion and fear – with you too. 

If you have mindfulness and wisdom, you can get rid of those 4 poisons, so you don’t have to take them with you. 

Just keep practising the triple steps: charity, morality and meditation. This is the path to freedom, path to everlasting happiness. 

The path of the worldly things is not the path to freedom; it’s path to subjugation, path to imprisonment in the realm of saṃsāra – continuous rebirth: birth, ageing, sickness and death.

“Dhamma in English, Sep 19, 2023.”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto

www.phrasuchart.com

YouTube:  Dhamma in English.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g

The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.

The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.

1 February 2025

Q:  How can I have a balance between my personal meditation practice and taking care of my children? I was meditating at a monastery for 5 weeks and my 11 year old got into a little bit of trouble when I was away.

Tan Ajahn:  Well you need to give them all the time that they need. So you just have to see how much time they need from you. If you feel that when you leave them, they are in good hands or they can look after themselves, then you can leave them for awhile. But if you feel that when you leave them, they can be bad or something like that, then you may have to stay with them more. 

Just look at how they behave.

Understand?

Sometimes you just have to sacrifice your own time for their benefit. Because they are still young and not able to distinguish good from bad, right from wrong. So it’s your job to teach them to distinguish good from bad, right from wrong and then you can may be leave them for awhile to see how they do alone without you. If they seem to be doing okay then may be you can leave them longer.

But now your priority is to teach them and look after them until they can look after themselves or else you will be neglecting your duty as a mother.

Okay?

In the meantime if you cannot leave them then you just have to meditate at home whenever you can. Or practice mindfulness or practice the Brahma Viharas.

When you live with people you have to practice Mettā, Karuṇā, Muditā and Upekkhā. 

So that you don’t lose your precious time doing everything else but not Dhamma. So you have to change may be from not doing as much meditation to do more mindfulness and do more loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity.

Is that clear?

Just think it’s not too far away, just a few more years and they’ll be gone to college or something and then you probably be free to do whatever you like.

But now it’s your kamma, you are paying the consequence of your kamma, the result of your sensual pleasure cravings.

But don’t be mad or be angry under your situation, you just have to accept your fate and try to make the best out of it. You can always be happy under any situation if you just let go of your cravings and accept the status of the situation that you are in.

Okay?

Good to see you. I hope you have a strong mind and are able to cope with everything that you have to cope with

“Dhamma in English, Feb 13, 2024.”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto

www.phrasuchart.com

YouTube:  Dhamma in English.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g

The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.

The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.

20 January 2025

Q: A person can achieve Sovan status (become a Sotapanna) if he can get rid of the first three fetters namely sakkāya–diṭṭhi, vicikicchā, and sīlabbata–parāmāsa. What steps should a Buddhist follow to get rid of these three fetters? Could you enlighten the readers on the procedure to be followed to get rid of the three fetters?

A: First you have to develop equanimity through jhāna. In order for you to develop equanimity through jhana, you need to have sīla (morality). You need to keep the Eight Precepts first and you have to practise this consistently and continuously, all the time, doing nothing else. You have to be a professional practitioner. 

You cannot go to work and then come back and practise on your day off because this will not give you enough time to keep the practice going forward. In order for you to practise - to go forward- you have to give up everything and concentrate all of your efforts on the practice of sīla (morality), meditation, and wisdom. 

So you have to go and look for a quiet place –somewhere in a forest - or live in a quiet monastery which would allow you to do the practice all day long. 

Once you can do this - when you get to a quiet surrounding like the monastery - then you have to keep at least the Eight Precepts. Then you have to practise mindfulness all day long from the time you get up to the time you go to sleep and meditate whenever you have the time to get your mind to the fourth jhāna, so that you can achieve equanimity. 

Once you become well-versed or proficient in your samādhi practice, when you come out of samādhi, you have to teach your mind that the body is not you. The body is temporary, it is anicca; it is subjected to ageing, sickness, and death. So you have to teach your mind to accept ageing, sickness, and death.

When the body becomes sick and gets painful, you have to accept it. Do not try to reject or deny it. Don’t try to get rid of the painful feelings that arise from your sickness. 

You have to learn to live with it, to take it as it comes. 

It is the same with death. When the body dies you should accept it because it is anattā. The body is not you. It is not something you can stop or prevent from happening. You just have to let it happen. 

Once you can let go of your attachment to the body and your painful feelings, then you have overcome the first Fetter (sakkāya–diṭṭhi) 

When you let go of the sakkāya–diṭṭhi, and when you experience the peace of mind of letting go, then you will see the Four Noble Truths clearly in your mind. 

This means you see the Dhamma. Once you see the Dhamma, you have no doubt in the Buddha- whether he existed or not, because the Dhamma came from the Buddha. And the one who can see the Dhamma is the Sangha which is you. So you have no more doubt in the Buddha, Dhamma, and the Sangha. Thus you have overcome the second fetter (vicikicchā).

Then you will have no attachment to rites or rituals (sīlabbata–parāmāsa) which is the third fetter. You won’t have any attachment to rites or rituals because you see that your suffering, stress, and bad feelings all arise from your craving, and your bad action (bad kamma) so you will not do any more bad kamma. You will never break the Five Precepts for the rest of your life. 

And you do not have to do any rites and rituals when you have stress in your mind. 

When you are not feeling good about something, you understand that it is the nature of things to be like that. 

Then you can let go and accept things as they come. 

So this is basically what you will have to teach the mind with wisdom: to see that everything is anicca, dukkha, and anattā. 

This includes your body and your feelings. 

You cannot control them, you have to face them calmly with equanimity. Then you will have no stress or dukkha. 

“Dhamma in English, Apr 23, 2023.”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto

www.phrasuchart.com

YouTube:  Dhamma in English.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g

The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.

The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.

17 January 2025

Q:  Even when one gets old and the mind starts to deteriorate, the mind still can see the Four Noble Truths.

Than Ajahn:  Yes, because the Four Noble Truths is not in the body, it’s in the mind. The mind sees things that appear in the mind. So when you get dukkha (stress), your stress is in the mind not in your body. If you have mindfulness, you’ll see, ‘Right now, I am stressful,’ then you start to investigate and you’ll find that the cause of your stress is your desire or your expectation. 

You want something and when you can’t get what you want, you feel stressful. For instance, you don’t want to get sick so when you get sick, you feel stressful because you don’t want to get sick. You see this in your mind. 

If you want to get rid of your stress, you can do it by using samādhi and wisdom. Samādhi is to stop your mind from craving; and wisdom is to tell your mind that to crave is to create stress so you have to stop craving for things. You see this automatically, right away, in your mind if you keep practising mindfulness.

Right now, your mind goes outside of your mind, you see things, you see people. So you don’t see what’s going on inside your mind. 

But when you start to develop mindfulness, you start pulling your mind back inside so you start to see the inner activities or mental activities that you normally don’t see because you keep seeing the external activities. 

The external activities come through the body. You need the body to see or to hear things and the body faculties deteriorate e.g. you are not able to see things clearly, your eyes get blurry, your ears can’t pick up sound clearly, your brain doesn’t function as good as when you are younger, your body can’t do things you used to do. 

But the mind is different. Your mind doesn’t deteriorate with your body. So you can always see the inner activities of the mind if you use mindfulness to pull the mind away from the body.

When you meditate, you are pulling your mind away from the body, you bring it inside. 

So when it starts to pull inside, you’ll start to see the four nāma-khandhas (saññā, vedanā, sankhāra, viññāṇa) and see how they work together then you understand that when you have stress, it’s because of your craving or desire. So you see this all inside your mind. 

But first, you have to bring your mind back inside. 

Right now you keep looking at other things outside so you don’t see the real cause of your problem which is inside your mind. 

So no matter how old you are, you can see the Four Noble Truths if you have the tools. 

And the tools are mindfulness and wisdom which you have to learn to develop. 

“Dhamma in English, Feb 10, 2024.”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto

www.phrasuchart.com

YouTube:  Dhamma in English.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g