The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.
11 December 2025
“The mind also needs the four requisites like the body.”
The food requisite for the mind is charity. The clothing for the mind is keeping the precepts or morality. The home for the mind is meditation (samādhi/calm). And the medicine for the mind is wisdom. These are what the mind needs in order for the mind to be happy, healthy and content.”
But we hardly give these things to the mind.
So the mind is constantly in a state of hunger, in a state of dissatisfaction, discontent. Even if you give the mind $100 million dollars, the mind is still discontent, dissatisfied because you give it to the wrong person.
All the things that you do, you do it for the body not for the mind. It’s because nobody teaches you what to give to the mind unless you come to Buddhism.
Buddhism teaches you to give the four requisites to the mind.
(i) If you want to give food to the mind, you do good things for other people like do charity;
(ii) If you want to give clothing for the mind, you keep the precepts. This is like putting on nice clothing. When you put on nice clothing, when people look at you, they will feel happy, and they want to be near you. If you are morally good, people want to be close to you because they know that you are not going to hurt them.
This is clothing for the mind —morality;
(iii) Housing for the mind is meditation, jhāna.
When you get to jhāna, you know that you are in a safe place, nothing can harm you. It’s like when you stay in the house, you feel protected;
(iv) When you are sick , you use the Dhamma medicine which is wisdom—the Three Characteristics of Existence or the Four Noble Truths—to tell you why your mind is sick, why you have stress. It’s because you have cravings. So stop your cravings. Once you stop cravings then your mind has no stress then your mind is well, your mind is not sick.
Q: Do we have to have the first three requisites before we get to the 4th one because without the first three requisites we are not able to use the medicine fully?
Than Ajahn: Well you might be able to use it partially by studying from the text or learning from the Buddha’s teachings. You can apply it to cure some sickness that is not deeply rooted. Like when you have a cut, you can use a plaster, you don’t need a surgery. But if you have cancer, then you have to go to hospital to get surgery.
So wisdom has many levels: lower level and higher level. The wisdom that you learn here is on a lower level and you can apply it when you have lower-level stress.
It’s like using a bandage or applying some tincture on to your wound. For wound that needs surgery [wisdom on higher level], you need to do meditation first. You need to calm the mind first before you can apply this higher type of medication. You need upekkhā.“
~ Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
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