"Tuccho Pothila'' - Venerable Empty-Scripture¹

You know, the way we human beings are, the way we do things, are just like little children. A child doesn't know anything. To an adult observing the behavior of a child, the way it plays and jumps around, its actions don't seem to have much purpose. If our mind is untrained it is like a child. We speak without awareness and act without wisdom. We may fall to ruin or cause untold harm and not even know it. A child is ignorant, it plays as children do. Our ignorant mind is the same.

So we should train this mind. The Buddha taught to train the mind, to teach the mind. Even if we support Buddhism with the four requisites, our support is still superficial, it reaches only the ''bark'' or ''sapwood'' of the tree. The real support of Buddhism must be done through the practice, nowhere else, training our actions, speech and thoughts according to the teachings. This is much more fruitful. If we are straight and honest, possessed of restraint and wisdom, our practice will bring prosperity. There will be no cause for spite and hostility. This is how our religion teaches us.

If we determine the precepts simply out of tradition, then even though the Master teaches the truth our practice will be deficient. We may be able to study the teachings and repeat them, but we have to practice them if we really want to understand. If we do not develop the practice, this may well be an obstacle to our penetrating to the heart of Buddhism for countless lifetimes to come. We will not understand the essence of the Buddhist religion.

Therefore the practice is like a key, the key of meditation. If we have the right key in our hand, no matter how tightly the lock is closed, when we take the key and turn it the lock falls open. If we have no key we can't open the lock. We will never know what it is in the trunk.

Actually there are two kinds of knowledge. One who knows the Dhamma doesn't simply speak from memory, he speaks the truth. Worldly people usually speak with conceit. For example, suppose there were two people who hadn't seen each other for a long time, maybe they had gone to live in different provinces or countries for a while, and then one day they happened to meet on the train... ''Oh! What a surprise. I was just thinking of looking you up!''... Actually it's not true. Really they hadn't thought of each other at all, but they say so out of excitement. And so it becomes a lie. Yes, it's lying out of heedlessness. This is lying without knowing it. It's a subtle form of defilement, and it happens very often.

So with regard to the mind, Tuccho Pothila followed the instructions of the novice: breathing in, breathing out... mindfully aware of each breath... until he saw the liar within him, the lying of his own mind. He saw the defilements as they came up, just like the lizard coming out of the termite mound. He saw them and perceived their true nature as soon as they arose. He noticed how one minute the mind would concoct one thing, the next moment something else.

Thinking is a sankhata dhamma, something which is created or concocted from supporting conditions. It's not asankhata dhamma, the unconditioned. The well-trained mind, one with perfect awareness, does not concoct mental states. This kind of mind penetrates to the Noble Truths and transcends any need to depend on externals. To know the Noble Truths is to know the truth. The proliferating mind tries to avoid this truth, saying, ''that's good'' or ''this is beautiful,'' but if there is Buddho in the mind it can no longer deceive us, because we know the mind as it is. The mind can no longer create deluded mental states, because there is the clear awareness that all mental states are unstable, imperfect, and a source of suffering to one who clings to them.

Wherever he went, the one who knows was constantly in Tuccho Pothila's mind. He observed the various creations and proliferation of the mind with understanding. He saw how the mind lied in so many ways. He grasped the essence of the practice, seeing that ''This lying mind is the one to watch - this is the one which leads us into extremes of happiness and suffering and causes us to endlessly spin around in the cycle of samsāra, with its pleasure and pain, good and evil - all because of this one.'' Tuccho Pothila realized the truth, and grasped the essence of the practice, just like a man grasping the tail of the lizard. He saw the workings of the deluded mind.

Footnotes

...¹

An informal talk given at Ajahn Chah's kuti, to a group of lay people, one evening in 1978

...samana²

One who lives devoted to religious practices. The term is used also to refer to one who has developed a certain amount of virtue from such practices. Ajahn Chah usually translates the term as ''one who is peaceful.''

...ñānadassana³

Literally: knowledge and insight (into the Four Noble Truths).

... Mind⁴

One of the four foundations of mindfulness: body, feeling, mind, and dhammas.

...kāmachanda⁵

Kāmachanda: Sensual desire, one of the five hindrances, the other four being ill will, doubt, restlessness and worry, and doubt.

...khandhas⁶

The five khandhas, or ''heaps'': form, feeling, perception, conception, and consciousness.

...sīla-dhamma⁷

Sīla-dhamma: The practice of virtue.

... Wisdom⁸

Sīla, samādhi, paññā.