Making the Heart Good¹

That's why I've had these little poems written up in the trees here. Let the trees teach you. Have you learned anything from them yet? You should try to learn at least one thing from them. There are so many trees, all with something to teach you. Dhamma is everywhere, in everything in nature. You should understand this point. Don't go blaming the hole for being too deep... turn around and look at your own arm! If you can see this you will be happy.

If you make the merit or virtue, preserve it in your mind. That's the best place to keep it. Making merit as you have done today is good, but it's not the best way. Constructing buildings is good, but it's not the best thing. Building your own mind into something good is the best way. This way you will find goodness whether you come here or stay at home. Find this excellence within your mind. Outer structures like this hall here are just like the ''bark'' of the ''tree'', they're not the ''heartwood.''

If you have wisdom, wherever you look there will be Dhamma. If you lack wisdom, then even the good things turn bad. Where does this badness come from? Just from our own minds, that's where. Look how this mind changes. Everything changes. Husband and wife used to get on all right together, they could talk to each other quite happily. But there comes a day when their mood goes bad, everything the spouse says seems offensive. The mind has gone bad, it's changed again. This is how it is.

So in order to give up evil and cultivate the good you don't have to go looking anywhere else. If your mind has gone bad, don't go looking over at this person and that person. Just look at your own mind and find out where these thoughts come from. Why does the mind think such things? Understand that all things are transient. Love is transient, hate is transient. Have you ever loved your children? Of course you have. Have you ever hated them? I'll answer that for you, too... Sometimes you do, don't you? Can you throw them away? No, you can't throw them away. Why not? Children aren't like bullets, are they³? Bullets are fired outwards, but children are fired right back to the parents. If they're bad it comes back to the parents. You could say children are your kamma. There are good ones and bad ones. Both good and bad are right there in your children. But even the bad ones are precious. One may be born with polio, crippled and deformed, and be even more precious than the others. Whenever you leave home for a while you have to leave a message, ''Look after the little one, he's not so strong.'' You love him even more than the others.

You should, then, set your minds well - half love, half hate. Don't take only one or the other, always have both sides in mind. Your children are your kamma, they are appropriate to their owners. They are your kamma, so you must take responsibility for them. If they really give you suffering, just remind yourself, ''It's my kamma.'' If they please you, just remind yourself, ''It's my kamma.'' Sometimes it gets so frustrating at home you must just want to run away. It gets so bad some people even contemplate hanging themselves! It's kamma. We have to accept the fact. Avoid bad actions, then you will be able to see yourself more clearly.

This is why contemplating things is so important. usually when they practice meditation they use a meditation object, such as Bud-dho, Dham-mo or San-gho. But you can make it even shorter than this. Whenever you feel annoyed, whenever your mind goes bad, just say ''So!'' When you feel better just say ''So!... It's not a sure thing.'' If you love someone, just say ''So!'' When you feel you're getting angry, just say ''So!'' Do you understand? You don't have to go looking into the tipitaka⁴. Just ''So!'' This means ''it's transient.'' Love is transient, hate is transient, good is transient, evil is transient. How could they be permanent? Where is there any permanence in them?

You could say that they are permanent insofar as they are invariably impermanent. They are certain in this respect, they never become otherwise. One minute there's love, the next hate. That's how things are. In this sense they are permanent. That's why I say whenever love arises, just tell it ''So!'' It saves a lot of time. You don't have to say ''Aniccam, dukkham, anatt?.'' If you don't want a long meditation theme, just take this simple word... If love arises, before you get really lost in it, just tell yourself ''So!'' This is enough.

Everything is transient, and it's permanent in that it's invariably that way. Just to see this much is to see the heart of the Dhamma, the True Dhamma.

Now if everybody said ''So!'' more often, and applied themselves to training like this, clinging would become less and less. People would not be so stuck on love and hate. They would not cling to things. They would put their trust in the truth, not with other things. Just to know this much is enough, what else do you need to know?

Having heard the teaching, you should try to remember it also. What should you remember? Meditate... Do you understand? If you understand, the Dhamma clicks with you, the mind will stop. If there is anger in the mind, just ''So!''... and that's enough, it stops straight away. If you don't yet understand then look deeply into the matter. If there is understanding, when anger arises in the mind you can just shut it off with ''So! It's impermanent!''

Today you have had a chance to record the Dhamma both inwardly and outwardly. Inwardly, the sound enters through the ears to be recorded in the mind. If you can't do this much it's not so good, your time at Wat Pah Pong will be wasted. Record it outwardly, and record it inwardly. This tape recorder here is not so important. The really important thing is the ''recorder'' in the mind. The tape recorder is perishable, but if the Dhamma really reaches the mind it's imperishable, it's there for good. And you don't have to waste money on batteries.

Footnotes

...¹

Given on the occasion of a large group of lay people coming to Wat Pah Pong to make offerings to support the monastery

... merit²

''Looking for merit'' is a commonly-used Thai phrase. It refers to the custom in Thailand of going to monasteries, or ''wats'', paying respect to venerated teachers and making offerings.

... they³

There is a play on words here between the Thai words ''look'', meaning children, and ''look bpeun'', meaning literally ''gun children''... that is, bullets.

...tipitaka⁴

The Buddhist P?li Canon.