Wholehearted Training

I've been trying to teach people ways to deal with this issue for many years. It's like this: farmers eat rice. For the most part, people who work in the fields grow and eat rice. So what about a tailor in town? Does he eat sewing machines? Does he eat cloth? Let's just consider this first. You are a farmer so you eat rice. If someone offers you another job, will you refuse, saying, ''I can't do it - I won't have rice to eat''?

Matches that you use in your home - are you able to make them? You can't; so how do you come to have matches? Is it only the case that those who can make matches have matches to use? What about the bowls you eat from? Here in the villages, does anyone know how to make them? But do people have them in their houses? So where do you get them from?

There are plenty of things we don't know how to make, but still we can earn money to buy them. This is using our intelligence to find a way. In meditation we also need to do this. We find out ways to avoid wrongdoing and practice what is right. Look at the Buddha and his disciples. Once they were ordinary beings, but they developed themselves to progress through the stages of Stream Entry on up to arahant. They did this through training. Gradually wisdom grows. A sense of shame towards wrongdoing comes about.

I once taught a sage. He was a lay patron who came to practice and keep precepts on the observance days, but he would still go fishing. I tried to teach him further but couldn't solve this problem. He said he didn't kill fish; they simply came to swallow his hook.

I kept at it, teaching him until he felt some contrition over this. He was ashamed of it, but he kept doing it. Then his rationalization changed. He would put the hook in the water and announce, ''Whichever fish has reached the end of its kamma to be alive, come and eat my hook. If your time has not yet come, do not eat my hook.'' He had changed his excuse, but still the fish came to eat. Finally he started looking at them, their mouths caught on the hook, and he felt some pity. But he still couldn't resolve his mind. ''Well, I told them not to eat the hook if it wasn't time; what can I do if they still come?'' And then he'd think, ''But they are dying because of me.'' He went back and forth on this until finally he could stop.

But then there were the frogs. He couldn't bear to stop catching frogs to eat. ''Don't do this!'' I told him. ''Take a good look at them. . . . okay, if you can't stop killing them, I won't forbid you, but please just look at them before you do that.'' So he picked up a frog and looked at it. He looked at its face, its eyes, its legs. ''Oh man, it looks like my child: it has arms and legs. Its eyes are open, it's looking at me.'' He felt hurt. But still he killed them. He looked at each one like this and then killed it, feeling he was doing something bad. His wife was pushing him, saying they wouldn't have anything to eat if he didn't kill frogs.

Finally he couldn't bear it anymore. He would catch them but wouldn't break their legs like before; previously he would break their legs so they couldn't hop away. Still, he couldn't make himself let them go. ''Well, I'm just taking care of them, feeding them here. I'm only raising them; whatever someone else might do, I don't know about that.'' But of course he knew. The others were still killing them for food. After a while he could admit this to himself. ''Well, I've cut my bad kamma by 50 percent anyhow. Someone else does the killing.''

This was starting to drive him crazy, but he couldn't yet let go. He still kept the frogs at home. He wouldn't break their legs anymore, but his wife would. ''It's my fault. Even if I don't do it, they do it because of me.'' Finally he gave it up altogether. But then his wife was complaining. ''What are we going to do? What should we eat?''

He was really caught now. When he went to the monastery, the Ajahn lectured him on what he should do. When he returned home, his wife lectured him on what he should do. The Ajahn was telling him to stop doing that and his wife was egging him on to continue doing it. What to do? What a lot of suffering. Born into this world, we have to suffer like this.

In the end, his wife had to let go too. So they stopped killing frogs. He worked in his field, tending his buffaloes. Then he got the habit of releasing fish and frogs. When he saw fish caught in nets he would set them free. Once he went to a friend's house and saw some frogs in a pot and he set them free. Then his friend's wife came to prepare dinner. She opened the lid of the pot and saw the frogs were gone. They figured out what had happened. ''It's that guy with the heart of merit.''

Our grasping attachments are like this. We are still far, very far from the real path of Dhamma. So please get to work right now. Don't say, ''After I'm aged, I will start going to the monastery.'' What is aging? Young people have aged as well as old people. From birth, they have been aging. We like to say, ''When I'm older, when I'm older'' Hey! Young folks are older, older than they were. This is what 'aging' means. All of you, please take a look at this. We all have this burden; this is a task for all of us to work on. Think about your parents or grandparents. They were born, then they aged and in the end they passed away. Now we don't know where they've gone.

So the Buddha wanted us to seek the Dhamma. This kind of knowledge is what's most important. Any form of knowledge or study that does not agree with the Buddhist way is learning that involves dukkha. Our practice of Dhamma should be getting us beyond suffering; if we can't fully transcend suffering, then we should at least be able to transcend it a little, now, in the present. For example, when someone speaks harshly to us, if we don't get angry with them we have transcended suffering. If we get angry, we have not transcended dukkha.

When someone speaks harshly to us, if we reflect on Dhamma, we will see it is just heaps of earth. Okay, he is criticizing me - he's just criticizing a heap of earth. One heap of earth is criticizing another heap of earth. Water is criticizing water. Wind is criticizing wind. Fire is criticizing fire.

But if we really see things in this way then others will probably call us mad. ''He doesn't care about anything. He has no feelings.'' When someone dies we won't get upset and cry, and they will call us crazy again. Where can we stay?

It really has to come down to this. We have to practice to realize for ourselves. Getting beyond suffering does not depend on others' opinions of us, but on our own individual state of mind. Never mind what they will say - we experience the truth for ourselves. Then we can dwell at ease.

But generally we don't take it this far. Youngsters will go to the monastery once or twice, then when they go home their friends make fun of them: ''Hey, Dhamma Dhammo!'' They feel embarrassed and they don't feel like coming back here. Some of them have told me that they came here to listen to teachings and gained some understanding, so they stopped drinking and hanging out with the crowd. But their friends belittled them: ''You go to the monastery and now you don't want to go out drinking with us anymore. What's wrong with you?'' So they get embarrassed and eventually end up doing the same old things again. It's hard for people to stick to it.

So rather than aspiring too high, let's practice patience and endurance. Exercising patience and restraint in our families is already pretty good. Don't quarrel and fight - if you can get along, you've already transcended suffering for the moment and that's good. When things happen, recollect Dhamma. Think of what your spiritual guides have taught you. They teach you to let go, to give up, to refrain, to put things down; they teach you to strive and fight in this way to solve your problems. The Dhamma that you come to listen to is just for solving your problems.

What kind of problems are we talking about? How about your families? Do you have any problems with your children, your spouses, your friends, your work and other matters? All these things give you a lot of headaches, don't they? These are the problems we are talking about; the teachings are telling you that you can resolve the problems of daily life with Dhamma.

We have been born as human beings. It should be possible to live with happy minds. We do our work according to our responsibilities. If things get difficult we practice endurance. Earning a livelihood in the right way is one sort of Dhamma practice, the practice of ethical living. Living happily and harmoniously like this is already pretty good.

But we are usually taking a loss. Don't take a loss! If you come here on the observance day to take precepts and then go home and fight, that's a loss. Do you hear what I am saying, folks? It's just a loss to do this. It means you don't see the Dhamma even a tiny little bit - there's no profit at all. Please understand this.

Now you have listened to the Dhamma for an appropriate length of time today.

Footnotes

... Sao¹

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