Fragments of a Teaching¹

Benefits from Practice

When we have practiced meditation as explained above, the fruits of practice will arise in the following three stages:

First, for those practitioners who are at the level of ''Buddhist by faith'', there will arise increasing faith in the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha. This faith will become the real inner support of each person. Also, they will understand the cause-and-effect nature of all things, that wholesome action brings wholesome result and that unwholesome action brings unwholesome result. So for such a person there will be a great increase in happiness and mental peace.

Second, those who have reached the noble attainments of stream-winner, once-returner or non-returner, have unshakable faith in the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha. They are joyful and are pulled towards Nibbāna.

Third, for those arahants or perfected ones, there will be the happiness free from all suffering. These are the Buddhas, free from the world, complete in the faring of the holy way.

We all have had the good fortune to be born as human beings and to hear the teachings of the Buddha. This is an opportunity that millions of other beings do not have. Therefore do not be careless or heedless. Hurry and develop merits, do good and follow the path of practice in the beginning, in the middle and in the highest levels. Don't let time roll by unused and without purpose. Try to reach the truth of the Buddha's teachings even today. Let me close with a Lao folk-saying: ''Many rounds of merriment and pleasure past, soon it will be evening. Drunk with tears now, rest and see, soon it will be too late to finish the journey''.

Footnotes

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Given to the lay community at Wat Pah Pong in 1972