The Flood of Sensuality¹

I used to consider trying it out as well. When I had lived as a monk for five or six years, I thought of the Buddha. He practiced for five or six years and was finished, but I was still interested in the worldly life, so I thought of going back to it: ''Maybe I should go and 'build the world' for a while, I would gain some experience and learning. Even the Buddha had his son, Rāhula. Maybe I'm being too strict?...''

I sat and considered this for some time, until I realized: ''Yes, well, that's all very fine, but I'm just afraid that this 'Buddha' won't be like the last one.'' A voice in me said, ''I'm afraid this 'Buddha' will just sink into the mud, not like the last one.'' And so I resisted those worldly thoughts.

From my sixth or seventh rains retreat up until the twentieth, I really had to put up a fight. These days I seem to have run out of bullets, I've been shooting for a long time. I'm just afraid that you younger monks and novices have still got so much ammunition, you may just want to go and try out your guns. Before you do, consider carefully first.

Speaking of sensual desire, it's hard to give up. It's really difficult to see it as it is. We must use skillful means. Consider sensual pleasures as like eating meat which gets stuck in your teeth. Before you finish the meal you have to find a toothpick to pry it out. When the meat comes out you feel some relief for a while, maybe you even think that you won't eat any more meat. But when you see it again you can't resist it. You eat some more and then it gets stuck again. When it gets stuck you have to pick it out again, which gives some relief once more, until you eat some more meat... That's all there is to it. Sensual pleasures are just like this, no better than this. When the meat gets stuck in your teeth there's discomfort. You take a toothpick and pick it out and experience some relief. There's nothing more to it than this sensual desire.... The pressure builds up and up until you let a little bit out... Oh! That's all there is to it. I don't know what all the fuss is about.

I didn't learn these things from anybody else, they occurred to me in the course of my practice. I would sit in meditation and reflect on sensual pleasure as being like a red ants' nest⁴. Someone takes a piece of wood and pokes the nest until the ants come running out, crawling down the wood and into their faces, biting their eyes and ears. And yet they still don't see the difficulty they are in.

However it's not beyond our ability. In the teaching of the Buddha it is said that if we've seen the harm of something, no matter how good it may seem to be, we know that it's harmful. Whatever we haven't yet seen the harm of, we just think it's good. If we haven't yet seen the harm of anything we can't get out of it.

Have you noticed? No matter how dirty it may be people like it. This kind of ''work'' isn't clean but you don't even have to pay people to do it, they'll gladly volunteer. With other kinds of dirty work, even if you pay a good wage people won't do it, but this kind of work they submit themselves to gladly, you don't even have to pay them. It's not that it's clean work, either, it's dirty work. Yet why do people like it? How can you say that people are intelligent when they behave like this? Think about it.

Footnotes

...¹

Given to the assembly of monks after the recitation of the Patimokkha, at Wat Pah Pong during the rains retreat, 1978

...ana²

Nibbāna - the state of liberation from all conditioned states.

...bhava)³

The Thai word for bhava - ''pop'' - would have been a familiar term to Ajahn Chah's audience. It is generally understood to mean ''sphere of rebirth.'' Ajahn Chah's usage of the word here is somewhat unconventional, emphasizing a more practical application of the term.

... nest⁴

Both the red ants and their eggs are used for food in North-East Thailand, so that such raids on their nests were not so unusual.

... Bhagavato'⁵

The first line of the traditional Pāli words of homage to the Buddha, recited before giving a formal Dhamma talk. Evam is the traditional Pāli word for ending a talk.