Still, Flowing Water¹

Take a simple example. You have children - now suppose you want to only love them and never experience hatred. This is the thinking of one who doesn't know human nature. If you hold onto love, hatred will follow. In the same way, people decide to study the Dhamma to develop wisdom, studying good and evil as closely as possible. Now, having known good and evil, what do they do? They try to cling to the good, and evil follows. They didn't study that which is beyond good and evil. This is what you should study.

''I'm going to be like this,'' ''I'm going to be like that''... but they never say ''I'm not going to be anything because there really isn't any 'I'.'' This they don't study. All they want is goodness. If they attain goodness, they lose themselves in it. If things get too good they'll start to go bad, and so people end up just swinging back and forth like this.

In order to calm the mind and become aware of the perceiver of sense impressions, we must observe it. Follow the ''one who knows.'' Train the mind until it is pure. How pure should you make it? If it's really pure the mind should be above both good and evil, above even purity. It's finished. That's when the practice is finished.

What people call sitting in meditation is merely a temporary kind of peace. But even in such a peace there are experiences. If an experience arises there must be someone who knows it, who looks into it, queries it and examines it. If the mind is simply blank then that's not so useful. You may see some people who look very restrained and think they are peaceful, but the real peace is not simply the peaceful mind. It's not the peace which says, ''May I be happy and never experience any suffering.'' With this kind of peace, eventually even the attainment of happiness becomes unsatisfying. Suffering results. Only when you can make your mind beyond both happiness and suffering will you find true peace. That's the true peace. This is the subject most people never study, they never really see this one.

The right way to train the mind is to make it bright, to develop wisdom. Don't think that training the mind is simply sitting quietly. That's the rock covering the grass. People get drunk over it. They think that samādhi is sitting. That's just one of the words for samādhi. But really, if the mind has samādhi, then walking is samādhi, sitting is samādhi... samādhi in the sitting posture, in the walking posture, in the standing and reclining postures. It's all practice.

Some people complain, ''I can't meditate, I'm too restless. Whenever I sit down I think of this and that... I can't do it. I've got too much bad kamma. I should use up my bad kamma first and then come back and try meditating.'' Sure, just try it. Try using up your bad kamma....

Footnotes

...¹

Given at Wat Tham Saeng Phet, during the rains retreat of 1981.

... precepts²

The basic moral code for practicing Buddhists: To refrain from intentional killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying and imbibing of intoxicants.