The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.
30 October 2025
Q: I’ve found recently a few times when I intensify the practice a little bit, like keep the 8 precepts on the weekend, on a Saturday, on a Sunday for example, toward the end of that sometimes I get a lot of anger arising. It doesn’t come out, speak or act because I am on my own but I get some quite angry thoughts coming up.
Tan Ajahn: Because when you keep the 8 precepts you are putting pressure on your mind, on your defilements.
So it causes you to react negatively because the mind or the defilements want to be freed from restraint.
But once you start to put restraints on them they start to react negatively. But that’s normal, don’t pay attention.
It’s just the normal reaction of the defilements. This is something you will have to go through.
So one way to reduce this is to maintain more mindfulness. Think less. Have mindfulness to hang onto something and then these thoughts will not bother you or will come up less often. It’s because you don’t increase your mindfulness, you keep the same level of mindfulness but you are putting more pressure on your defilements so they are reacting. So it means when you are keeping the 8 precepts you need to be more mindful.
Practice more mindfulness.
“Dhamma in English, Jun 11, 2024.”
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Q: Why do I find that the sensual desires tend to be more pronounced during meditation retreat compare to my normal days?
Than Ajahn: It’s because your sensual desire is being curbed more when you’re in a retreat. You cannot let your eyes, ears, nose, and tongue see and hear things as they normally do because you have to meditate, so the desire can become stronger. It’s like a pressure cooker, when the steam inside the pressure cooker has no exit, the steam keeps on building up and it becomes very strong.
When you are not in meditation retreat, you can see, hear and do anything you like, whenever you like, so the sensual pleasure has some outlet to release its pressure and you don’t feel the pressure. When you go for a retreat, you are closing the pressure releaser. It then builds up inside your mind and it becomes stronger. The only way to deal with this is by using mindfulness and meditation. When you have mindfulness or when you meditate, you stop your mind from creating cravings and desires, then the pressure will subside and disappear temporarily. But as soon as you come out of your meditation, if you are not mindful, you start creating more cravings and desires again.
“Dhamma in English, Nov 9, 2018.”
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
YouTube: Dhamma in English.
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