People Practicing The Dhamma

People Practicing the Dhamma

§ One of Ajaan Fuang’s students — a seamstress — was criticized by a customer: “You practice the Dhamma, don’t you? Then why are you so greedy, charging such high prices? People practicing the Dhamma should take only enough profit just to get by.”

Although she knew her prices were fair, she couldn’t think of a good answer, so the next time she saw Ajaan Fuang she told him what had happened. He replied, “The next time they say that, tell them — ‘Look, I’m not practicing the Dhamma to be stupid.’”

§ When I first went to stay at Wat Dhammasathit, the B-52’s from Utapao Air Force Base could sometimes be heard high overhead in the wee hours of the morning, flying on their bombing missions into Cambodia. Each time I heard them, I began to wonder what business I had meditating when there were so many injustices in the world that needed to be fought. When I mentioned this to Ajaan Fuang, he said, “If you try to straighten out the world without really straightening yourself out first, your own inner goodness will eventually break down, and then where will you be? You won’t be able to do anybody — yourself or anyone else — any good at all.”

§ “As soon as we’re born, we’re sentenced to death — just that we don’t know when our turn will come. So you can’t be complacent. Start right in and develop all your good qualities to the full while you still have the chance.”

§ “If you want to be a good person, make sure you know where true goodness really lies. Don’t just go through the motions of being good.”

§ “We all want happiness, but for the most part we aren’t interested in building the causes for happiness. All we want are the results. But if we don’t take an interest in the causes, how are the results going to come our way?”

§ When I first went to practice meditation with Ajaan Fuang, I asked him if people really were reborn after death. He answered, “When you start out practicing, the Buddha asks you to believe in only one thing: karma. As for things aside from that, whether or not you believe them isn’t really important.”

One year, shortly before the Rains Retreat — a time when people traditionally make resolutions to step up their practice of the Dhamma — one of Ajaan Fuang’s students approached him and said that she was thinking of observing the eight precepts during the Rains, but was afraid that going without the evening meal would leave her hungry.

He retorted: “The Buddha fasted until he didn’t have any flesh at all — just skin and bones — so that he could discover the Dhamma to teach us, but here we can’t even stand going without one single meal. It’s because of this that we’re still swimming around in the cycle of birth and death.”

As a result, she resolved that she’d have to observe the eight precepts on each Buddhist sabbath — the full moon, the new moon, and the half-moon days — during the three months of the Rains. And so she did. At the end of the Rains she felt really proud of herself for having kept to her resolution, but on her next visit to Ajaan Fuang, before she was able to broach the topic at all, he commented, “You’re lucky, you know. Your Rains Retreat has only twelve days. Everyone else’s is three months.”

On hearing this she felt so embarrassed that she has observed the eight precepts every day throughout each Rains Retreat ever since.

§ Another student was meditating in Ajaan Fuang’s presence when — in a spasm of mindlessness — she slapped a mosquito that was biting her arm. Ajaan Fuang commented: “You charge a high price for your blood, don’t you? The mosquito asks for a drop, and you take its life in exchange.”

§ A young man was discussing the precepts with Ajaan Fuang and came to number five, against taking intoxicants: “The Buddha forbade alcohol because most people lose their mindfulness when they drink it, right? But if you drink mindfully it’s okay, isn’t it, Than Phaw?”

“If you were really mindful,” he answered, “you wouldn’t drink it in the first place.”

§ There seem to be more excuses for breaking the fifth precept than for any other. One evening another student was conversing with Ajaan Fuang at the same time that a group of people were sitting around them in meditation. “I can’t observe the fifth precept,” he said, “because I’m under a lot of group pressure. When we have social occasions at work, and everyone else in the group is drinking, I have to drink along with them.”

Ajaan Fuang pointed to the people sitting around them and asked, “This group isn’t asking you to drink. Why don’t you give in to their group pressure instead?”

§ The seamstress saw her friends observing the eight precepts at Wat Dhammasathit, and so decided to try it herself. But in the middle of the afternoon, as she was walking through the monastery, she passed a guava tree. The guavas looked inviting, so she picked one and took a bite.

Ajaan Fuang happened to be standing not far away, and so he remarked, “Hey. I thought you were going to observe the eight precepts. What’s that in your mouth?”

The seamstress realized in a jolt that she had broken her precepts, but Ajaan Fuang consoled her, “It’s not all that necessary to observe the eight precepts, but make sure you observe the one precept, okay? Do you know what the one precept is?”

“No, Than Phaw. What is it?”

“Not doing any evil. I want you to hold onto this one for life.”

§ A woman came to Wat Dhammasathit to observe the precepts and meditate for a week, but by the end of the second day she told Ajaan Fuang that she had to return home, because she was afraid her family couldn’t get along without her. He taught her to cut through her worries by saying, “When you come here, tell yourself that you’ve died. One way or another, your family will have to learn to fend for themselves.”

§ On his first visit to Wat Dhammasathit, a middle-aged man was surprised to see an American monk. He asked Ajaan Fuang, “How is it that Westerners can ordain?”

Ajaan Fuang’s answer: “Don’t Westerners have hearts?”

§ A Bangkok magazine once carried the serialized autobiography of a lay meditator who used his powers of concentration to treat diseases. One installment mentioned how he had visited Ajaan Fuang, who had certified that he (the layman) had attained jhana. This didn’t sound like Ajaan Fuang’s style, but soon after the magazine came out, unusual numbers of people came to the wat under the impression that Ajaan Fuang, like the author of the autobiography, could treat illnesses through meditation. One woman asked him if he treated kidney diseases, and he answered, “I treat only one kind of disease: diseases of the mind.”

§ A student asked permission to keep a notebook of Ajaan Fuang’s teachings, but he refused, saying, “Is that the sort of person you are? — always carrying food around in your pocket for fear there’ll be nothing to eat?” Then he explained: “If you jot everything down, you’ll feel it’s okay to forget what you’ve written, because it’s all there in your notebook. The end result is that all the Dhamma will be in your notebook, and none in your heart.”

§ “The texts say that if you listen well, you’ll gain wisdom. To listen well, your heart has to be quiet and still. You listen with your heart, not just with your ears. Once you’ve listened, you have to put what you’ve heard into practice right then and there. That’s when you’ll reap the benefits. If you don’t put it into practice, what you’ve heard will never become real inside you.”

§ Once, while the chedi at Wat Dhammasathit was being built, some of the students working on the chedi got into a serious argument. One of them became so upset that she went to tell Ajaan Fuang, who was staying in Bangkok at the time. When she finished her report, he asked her, “Do you know what gravel is?”

Taken aback, she answered, “Yes.”

“Do you know what diamonds are?”

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t you gather the diamonds? What good do you get out of gathering gravel?”

§ Even in a Buddhist country like Thailand, some young people who practice the Dhamma find that their parents are against it, and feel that they should be spending their time in more practical ways. Once the parents of the seamstress tried to put a stop to her visits to Wat Makut, and this got her very angry. But when she told her feelings to Ajaan Fuang, he warned her, “You owe a huge debt to your parents, you know. If you get angry with them, or yell at them, you’re stoking the fires of hell on your head, so watch out. And remind yourself: If you wanted parents who would encourage your practice, why didn’t you choose to be born from somebody else? The fact that they’re your parents shows that you’ve made past karma with them. So just use up your old karma debts as they come. There’s no need to create any more karma by getting into arguments.”

§ Channeling spirits has long been popular in Thailand, and even some people who practice the Dhamma also like to attend seances. But Ajaan Fuang once said, “If you want results from your practice, you have to make up your mind that the Buddha is your one and only refuge. Don’t go taking refuge in anything else.”

§ “If you practice the Dhamma, you don’t have to be amazed by anyone else’s powers or abilities. Whatever you do, say or think, let your heart take its stand on the principles of reason.”

§ “The truth lies within you. If you’re true in what you do, you’ll meet with the truth. If you’re not, you’ll meet only with things that are fake and imitation.”