Wholehearted Training

Before, we never had bowls or plates. Everything was put together in the almsbowl. Now that can't be done. So if one hundred monks are eating, we need five people to wash dishes afterwards. Sometimes they are still washing when it's time for the Dhamma talk. This kind of thing makes for complications. I don't know what to do about it; I'll just leave it to you to use your own wisdom to consider.

It doesn't have an end. Those who like to complain will always find something else to complain about, no matter how good the conditions become. So the result is that the monks have become extremely attached to flavors and aromas. Sometimes I overhear them talking about their ascetic wandering. ''Oh boy, the food is really great there! I went tudong to the south, by the coast, and I ate lots of shrimp! I ate big ocean fish!'' This is what they talk about. When the mind is taken up with such concerns, it's easy to get attached and immersed in desire for food. Uncontrolled minds are roaming about and getting stuck in sights, sounds, smells, tastes, physical sensations and ideas, and practicing Dhamma becomes difficult. It becomes difficult for an Ajahn to teach people to follow the right way, when they are attached to tastes. It's like raising a dog. If you just feed it plain rice, it will grow strong and healthy. But give it some tasty curry on top of its rice for a couple of days and after that it won't look at the plain rice anymore.

Sights, sounds, smells and tastes are the undoing of Dhamma practice. They can cause a lot of harm. If each one of us does not contemplate the use of our four requisites - robes, almsfood, dwelling and medicines - the Buddha's way cannot flourish. You can look and see that however much material progress and development there is in the world, the confusion and suffering of humans increase right along with it. And after it goes on for some time, it's almost impossible to find a solution. Thus I say that when you go to a monastery you see the monks, the temple and the kutis, but you don't see the Buddhasāsana. The sāsana is in decline like this. It's easy to observe.

The sāsana, meaning the genuine and direct teaching that instructs people to be honest and upright, to have loving-kindness towards each other, has been lost and turmoil and distress are taking its place. Those who went through the years of practice with me in the past have still maintained their diligence, but after twentyfive years here, I see how the practice has become slack. Now people don't dare to push themselves and practice too much. They are afraid. They fear it will be the extreme of self-mortification. In the past we just went for it. Sometimes monks fasted for several days or a week. They wanted to see their minds, to train their minds: if it's stubborn, you whip it. Mind and body work together. When we are not yet skilled in practice, if the body is too fat and comfortable, the mind gets out of control. When a fire starts and the wind blows, it spreads the fire and burns the house down. It's like that. Before, when I talked about eating little, sleeping little and speaking little, the monks understood and took it to heart. But now such talk is likely to be disagreeable to the minds of practitioners. ''We can find our way. Why should we suffer and practice so austerely? It's the extreme of self-mortification; it's not the Buddha's path.'' As soon as anyone talks like this, everyone agrees. They are hungry. So what can I say to them? I keep on trying to correct this attitude, but this is the way it seems to be now.

So all of you, please make your minds strong and firm. Today you have gathered from the different branch monasteries to pay your respects to me as your teacher, to gather as friends in Dhamma, so I am offering some teaching about the path of practice. The practice of respect is a supreme Dhamma. There can be no disharmony, people will not fight and kill each other when there is true respect. Paying respects to a spiritual master, to our preceptors and teachers, causes us to flourish; the Buddha spoke of it as something auspicious.

People from the city may like to eat mushrooms. They ask, ''Where do the mushrooms come from?'' Someone tells them, ''They grow in the earth.'' So they pick up a basket and go walking out into the countryside, expecting the mushrooms will be lined up along the side of the road for them to pick. But they walk and walk, climbing hills and trekking through fields, without seeing any mushrooms. A village person has gone picking mushrooms before and knows where to look for them; he knows which part of which forest to go to. But the city folk only have the experience of seeing mushrooms in their plate. They heard they grow in the earth and got the idea that they would be easy to find, but it didn't work out that way.

Training the mind in samādhi is like this. We get the idea it will be easy. But when we sit, our legs hurt, our back hurts, we feel tired, we get hot and itchy. Then we start to feel discouraged, thinking that samādhi is as far away from us as the sky from the earth. We don't know what to do and become overwhelmed by the difficulties. But if we can receive some training, it will get easier little by little.

So you who come here to practice samādhi feel it's difficult. I had my troubles with it, too. I trained with an Ajahn, and when we were sitting I'd open my eyes to look: ''Oh! Is Ajahn ready to stop yet?'' I'd close my eyes again and try to bear a little longer. I felt like it was going to kill me and I kept opening my eyes, but he looked so comfortable sitting there. One hour, two hours, I would be in agony but the Ajahn didn't move. So after a while I got to fear the sittings. When it was time to practice samādhi, I'd feel afraid.

When we are new to it, training in samādhi is difficult. Anything is difficult when we don't know how to do it. This is our obstacle. But training at it, this can change. That which is good can eventually overcome and surpass that which is not good. We tend to become fainthearted as we struggle - this is a normal reaction and we all go through it. So it's important to train for some time. It's like making a path through the forest. At first it's rough going, with a lot of obstructions, but returning to it again and again, we clear the way. After some time we have removed the branches and stumps, and the ground becomes firm and smooth from being walked on repeatedly. Then we have a good path for walking through the forest.

This is what it's like when we train the mind. Keeping at it, the mind becomes illumined. For example, we country people grow up eating rice and fish. Then when we come to learn Dhamma we are told to refrain from harming: we should not kill living creatures. What can we do then? We feel we are really in a bind. Our market is in the fields. If the teachers are telling us not to kill, we won't eat. Just this much and we are at our wits' ends. How will we feed ourselves? There doesn't seem to be any way for us rural people. Our marketplace is the field and the forest. We have to catch animals and kill them in order to eat.

Footnotes

... Sao¹

A highly respected monk of the forest tradition, considered to be an arahant and a teacher of Ajahn Mun.