The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.
19 October 2025
Q: Is it correct that kilesas are part of the citta and the Dhamma is also part of the citta?
Than Ajahn: Well, they all come from the citta. They are inside the citta. They are in your mind. Your defilement is part of your habits – the habit to greed, to hate, and the delusion of not knowing that it can cause you suffering. You think that it’s giving you pleasure, but instead it is giving you suffering.
When you crave for something, if you get it, you feel good. But you don’t think about the opposite result, how do you feel if you don’t get it? You’ll feel bad, you’ll feel angry, disappointed or sad because you can’t get what you want. Our delusion causes us to only look at the good side of craving or greed so we don’t look at the other side of it. What happens if you can’t get what you crave for or you lose the things you have?
You get something and sooner or later you’re going to lose it because everything is anicca (impermanent).
This is what we call ‘wisdom’.
Wisdom is Dhamma. Usually it has to be taught to us.
We don’t have wisdom within us so we need somebody like the Buddha to come and say that everything that we crave for can give us disappointment or sadness because everything that we get, sooner or later, we will lose it or it will change. It doesn’t remain the same all the time so it doesn’t give us happiness or pleasure all the time. It can turn into poison instead of giving us pleasure. So this is what we don’t see.
Our delusion prevents us from seeing anicca, dukkha, anattā so we go after things. In the pursuit of getting thing, you have to work hard to get it. This is already dukkha. After you got it, you can lose it and when you lose it then you become sad, and you go look for another thing again for replacement and it’s the same thing happens - the replacement is also impermanent.
When you cannot remain without anything, you are like a drug addict. You have to have the sensual pleasure to feed you all the time.
You need to see, to hear, to smell and taste and touch things all the time. Without them you feel empty, you feel unfulfilled. But these things cannot fulfil your mind. They cause you to have more cravings because they are like drugs. You take them and then you want more of them and when you cannot get them, you suffer. So the defilement is in the mind.
Usually we have defilements. We lack Dhamma. We lack the wisdom of the Buddha until we are fortunate to come across his teachings and start to study and follow his teachings. Then we have something to counter measure or to go against the defilements (kilesas). He gave us the tools, the noble eightfold path, to counter the defilements.
The noble eightfold path can be condensed into 3 parts: the practice of morality, meditation and wisdom (vipassanā). If we keep practising these 3 practices, we will have the ability to get rid of our defilements and consequently, get rid of our suffering that the defilements create for us.
Don't try to study the mechanic of things. Try to study the ‘how to do it.’ It’s like driving a car. Just learn how to drive the car. Don’t worry about the mechanic of the car like what RPM should the car drive at, what cylinder is in the car, or what horsepower is it and so forth. You don’t have to know all these things.
All you have to know is how to drive the car safely to take you home or to take you to places where you want to go.
Our goal is the complete eradication of our suffering. In order to get there we need to practice morality (sīla), meditation (samādhi) and wisdom (paññā). In Pāli, we call these the triple training.
Sometimes we study too much about the mechanic or the composition of things. We forget the things we have to do. People spend years studying Buddhism and they never practise the triple training. Or if they practise, they practise partially. Like monks, they practise morality but sometimes they spend too much time on the scholastic side of Buddhism, they forget the practice of meditation and wisdom.
“Dhamma in English, May 28, 2024.”
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
YouTube: Dhamma in English.
