The Dhamma Goes Westward

It's like the Buddha is catching hold of you and bringing you to the beginning of the path, and he tells you, ''Here is the path - walk on it.'' He doesn't help you walk. You do that yourself. When you do travel the path and practice Dhamma, you meet the real Dhamma, which is beyond anything that anyone can explain to you. So one is enlightened by oneself, understanding past, future and present, understanding cause and result. Then doubt is finished.

We talk about giving up and developing, renouncing and cultivating. But when the fruit of practice is realized, there is nothing to add and nothing to remove. The Buddha taught that this is the point we want to arrive at, but people don't want to stop there. Their doubts and attachments keep them on the move, keep them confused and keep them from stopping there. So when one person has arrived but others are somewhere else, they won't be able to make any sense of what he may say about it. They might have some intellectual understanding of the words, but this is not real understanding or knowledge of the truth.

Usually when we talk about practice we talk about entering and leaving, increasing the positive and removing the negative. But the final result is that all of these are done with. There is the sekha puggala, the person who needs to train in these things, and there is the asekha puggala, the person who no longer needs to train in anything. This is talking about the mind: when the mind has reached this level of full realization, there is nothing more to practice. Why is this? It is because such a person doesn't have to make use of any of the conventions of teaching and practice. It's spoken of as someone who has gotten rid of the defilements.

The sekha person has to train in the steps of the path, from the very beginning to the highest level. When they have completed this they are called asekha, meaning they no longer need to train because everything is finished. The things to be trained in are finished. Doubts are finished. There are no qualities to be developed. There are no defilements to remove. Such people dwell in peace. Whatever good or evil there is will not affect them; they are unshakeable no matter what they meet. It is talking about the empty mind. Now you will really be confused.

You don't understand this at all. ''If my mind is empty, how can I walk?'' Precisely because the mind is empty. ''If the mind is empty, how can I eat? Will I have desire to eat if my mind is empty?'' There's not much benefit in talking about emptiness like this when people haven't trained properly. They won't be able to understand it.

Those who use such terms have sought ways to give us some feeling that can lead us to understand the truth. For example, these sankhārā that we have been accumulating and carrying from the time of our birth until this moment - the Buddha said that in truth they are not ourselves and they do not belong to us. Why did he say such a thing? There's no other way to formulate the truth. He spoke in this way for people who have discernment, so that they could gain wisdom. But this is something to contemplate carefully.

Some people will hear the words, ''Nothing is mine,'' and they will get the idea they should throw away all their possessions. With only superficial understanding, people will get into arguments about what this means and how to apply it. ''This is not my self,'' doesn't mean you should end your life or throw away your possessions. It means you should give up attachment. There is the level of conventional reality and the level of ultimate reality - supposition and liberation. On the level of convention, there is Mr. A, Mrs. B, Mr. M., Mrs. N. and so on. We use these suppositions for convenience in communicating and functioning in the world. The Buddha did not teach that we shouldn't use these things, but that we shouldn't be attached to them. We should realize that they are empty.

It's hard to talk about.

We have to depend on practice and gain understanding through practice. If you want to get knowledge and understanding by studying and asking others you won't really understand the truth. It's something you have to see and know for yourself through practicing. Turn inwards to know within yourself. Don't always be turning outwards. But when we talk about practicing people become argumentative. Their minds are ready to argue, because they have learned this or that approach to practice and have one-sided attachment to what they have learned. They haven't realized the truth through practice.

Did you notice the Thai people we met the other day? They asked irrelevant questions like, ''Why do you eat out of your almsbowl?'' I could see that they were far from Dhamma. They've had modern education so I can't tell them much. But I let the American monk talk to them. They might be willing to listen to him. Thai people these days don't have much interest in Dhamma and don't understand it. Why do I say that? If someone hasn't studied something, they are ignorant of it. They've studied other things, but they are ignorant of Dhamma. I'll admit that I'm ignorant of the things they have learned. The Western monk has studied Dhamma, so he can tell them something about it.

Among Thai people in the present time there is less and less interest in being ordained, studying and practicing. I don't know why this is, if it's because they are busy with work, because the country is developing materially, or what the reason might be. I don't know. In the past when someone was ordained they would stay for at least a few years, four or five rains. Now it's a week or two. Some are ordained in the morning and disrobe in the evening. That's the direction it's going in now. People say things like that fellow that told me, ''If everyone were to be ordained the way you prefer, for a few rains at least, there would be no progress in the world. Families wouldn't grow. Nobody would be building things.''