51-60
MAIN CONTENT
51-60
51. Simply a motion
There were times when I felt ill at ease, fearing that I may have done wrong in being party to those who talked Luang Pu into doing things that he wasn’t interested in doing. The first time was when he joined in the opening ceremonies for the Phra Ajaan Mun Museum in Wat Pa Sutthaavaat in Sakon Nakhorn. There were lots of meditation teachers and lots of lay people who went to the teachers to pay respect and ask for favors. Many people asked Luang Pu to blow on their heads. When I saw him just sitting there without responding, I pleaded with him, “Please just do it to get it over with.” So he blew on their heads. After a while, when he couldn’t get out of it, he’d make auspicious marks on their cars. When he grew tired of their requests for amulets, he allowed them to make amulets in his name. When he felt pity on them, he’d light the “victory” candle at their chanting rituals and join in their ceremonies for consecrating amulets.
But then I felt extremely relieved when Luang Pu said,
“My doing things like this is simply an external physical motion in line with social norms. It’s not a motion of the mind that leads to states of becoming, levels of being, or to the paths, fruitions, and nibbāna in any way at all.”
52. Seize the opportunity
“All 84,000 sections of the Dhamma are simply strategies for getting people to turn and look at the mind. The Buddha’s teachings are many because people’s defilements are many. Still, the way to put an end to suffering is only one: nibbāna. This opportunity we have to practice the Dhamma rightly is very rare. If we let it pass by, we’ll have no chance of gaining release in this lifetime, and we’ll have to get lost in wrong views for a long, long time before we can meet up with this very same Dhamma again. So now that we’ve met with the Buddha’s teachings, we should hurry up and practice to gain release. Otherwise, we’ll miss this good opportunity. When the noble truths are forgotten, darkness will overwhelm beings with a mass of suffering for a long time to come.”
53. The limits of science
It wasn’t just once that Luang Pu taught the Dhamma using comparisons. Once he said,
“External discernment is the discernment of suppositions. It can’t enlighten the mind about nibbāna. You have to depend on the discernment of the noble path if you’re going to enter nibbāna. The knowledge of scientists, like Einstein, is well informed and very capable. It can split the smallest atom and enter into the fourth dimension. But Einstein had no idea of nibbāna, which was why he couldn’t enter nibbāna.
“Only the mind that has been enlightened in the noble path can lead to real Awakening, full Awakening, complete Awakening. Only that can lead to release from suffering, to nibbāna.”
54. How to extinguish suffering
In 1977 a lot of undesirable events overwhelmed the senior officials in the Interior Ministry—loss of wealth, loss of status, criticism, and suffering. And of course, the pain and sorrow spread to affect their wives and children as well. So one day some of their wives came to pay respect to Luang Pu and told him of their suffering so that he might advise them on how to overcome it.
He told them,
“One shouldn’t feel sad or miss things external to the body that are past and gone, for those things have performed their function correctly in the most consummate way.”
55. The truth is always the same
Many well-read people would comment that Luang Pu’s teachings were very similar to those of Zen or the Platform Sutra. I asked him about this many times, and finally he replied in an impersonal way,
“All the truths of the Dhamma are already present in the world. When the Buddha awakened to those truths, he brought them out to teach to the beings of the world. Now, because those beings had different propensities—coarse or refined—he had to use up a lot of words: 84,000 sections of Dhamma in all. When wise people try to select the words best suited to explain the truth to those who aim at the truth, they have to use the methods of the truth that, on reflection, are the most correct and complete, without worrying about the words or getting fixated on the letters of the texts in the least way at all.”
