The Teachings of Ajahn Suchart.
18 February 2026
Question: Ajahn mentioned that the way to get rid of the dukkha is to get rid of the cause of it which is the cravings. If we start to do this, we start to generate the magga (the fourth truth).
For example, when we want coffee and we can’t get it, then we’ll have dukkha. Usually, we’ll try to push it to get the coffee. If I can see that this is a craving that’s causing the dukkha and I can stop it and just drink water, then the dukkha is gone.
Is this the start of generating magga?
Than Ajahn: You change your mind.
Once you change your mind, you stop your craving, ‘Well, if I can’t have coffee, then forget about it. I’ll have something else.’
Because you know you can’t have it anyway, right? So, why try to insist on it? Sometimes people insist on getting what they want. If they don’t have it, they will go outside of the house and buy one. But this will give them restlessness and agitation all the time, wanting to get the coffee. So, just change your mind, it means you stop your craving.
When you change your mind, you automatically stop your craving.
Question: Is changing my mind the start of generating magga?
Than Ajahn: No, the seeing that there is no coffee. So, why suffer? It’s aniccā. Coffee is impermanent.
Sometimes, you can have coffee; sometimes, you don’t have coffee. If there is no coffee, accept it. Accept the truth, ‘Ok, there is no coffee.’ So, you change your mind from the desire to have coffee to, ‘Ok, not having coffee.’
Question: I’m trying to understand the last part, Ajahn, generating the magga.
Than Ajahn: Wisdom. Wisdom. You look at coffee as being aniccaṁ, dukkhaṁ, anattā, and mindfulness and upekkhā. You have to have enough upekkhā when wisdom tells you that coffee is aniccā and it’s happening in real time. It’s gone, there is no coffee for you to drink. If you insist on having it, you’ll get dukkha, right? But if you see that your dukkha arises from your insistence on having coffee, then you just stop your mind from insisting to have that coffee, because it’s not there anymore for you to have.
You keep insisting on the things that have already gone.
Like when you lost your loved ones, you still want them to come back or you’re mourning, ‘Why did they have to die?
Why did they have to go?’ This is not accepting the truth of aniccā. If you accept the truth of aniccā, then you wouldn’t complain about and you wouldn’t deny it.
You just accept it, ‘No coffee? Ok. No desire for it then.
If there’s no coffee to drink, then I’d have no desire to drink the coffee.’ When there is no desire to drink the coffee, dukkha disappears. But if the desire for coffee is still there, the dukkha would drive you crazy, right?
Sometimes, if you couldn’t endure the dukkha, you’d have to run around to look for coffee, and then you would run into the next cycle when you run out of coffee again. But once you stop your desire for drinking coffee, then you stop your problem once and for all, then you don’t need to have coffee. So, you have to stop your desire for coffee. You shouldn’t maintain your desire for coffee, shouldn’t satisfy your desire for coffee by providing more coffee for your desire, because if you do so, you’ll have to keep on getting more coffee all the time. And sooner or later, you won’t be able to drink coffee, then what happens? You’ll have dukkha. So, you have to see aniccaṁ, dukkhaṁ, anattā in the coffee, and in all things that you desire for.
Eventually, sooner or later, you won’t be able to get what you want, and when that happens, you will feel miserable.
Like nowadays, people have mental issues because they cannot get out of the house to do the things they used to do. But if they just change their minds, ‘Ok, if I cannot go out, I’ll stay in the house and be happy staying in the house,’ then there will be no problem. Just stop the desire to get out of the house, that’s all.
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
YouTube: Dhamma in English.
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