Wholehearted Training

I'd like to remind you all of the need for having a good mind and living your lives in an ethical way. However you may have been doing things up to now, you should take a look and examine to see whether that is good or not. If you've been following wrong ways, give them up. Give up wrong livelihood. Earn your living in a good and decent way that doesn't harm others and doesn't harm yourself or society. When you practice right livelihood, then you can live with a comfortable mind.

We monks and nuns rely on the layfolk for all our material needs. And we rely on contemplation so that we are able to explain the Dhamma to the lay people for their own understanding and benefit, enabling them to improve their lives. Whatever causes misery and conflict, you can learn to recognize and remove it. Make efforts to get along with each other, to have harmony in your relations rather than exploiting or harming each other.

These days things are pretty bad. It's hard for folks to get along. Even when a few people get together for a little meeting, it doesn't work out. They just look at each other's faces three times and they're ready to start killing each other. Why is it like this? It's only because people have no sīla or Dhamma in their lives.

In the time of our parents it was a lot different. Just the way people looked at each other showed that they felt love and friendship. It's not anything like that now. If a stranger shows up in the village as evening comes everyone will be suspicious: ''What's he doing coming here at night?'' Why should we be afraid of a person coming into the village? If a strange dog comes into the village, nobody will give it a second thought. So is a person worse than a dog? ''It's an outsider, a strange person!'' How can anyone be an outsider? When someone comes to the village, we ought to be glad: they are in need of shelter, so they can stay with us and we can take care of them and help them out. We will have some company.

But nowadays there's no tradition of hospitality and good will anymore. There is only fear and suspicion. In some villages I'd say there aren't any people left - there are only animals. There's suspicion about everything, possessiveness over every bush and every inch of ground, just because there is no morality, no spirituality. When there is no sīla and no Dhamma, then we live lives of unease and paranoia. People go to sleep at night and soon they wake up, worrying about what's going on or about some sound they heard. People in the villages don't get along or trust each other. Parents and children don't trust each other. Husband and wife don't trust each other. What's going on?

All of this is the result of being far from the Dhamma and living lives bereft of Dhamma. So everywhere you look it's like this, and life is hard. If a few people show up in the village and request shelter for the night now they're told to go find a hotel.

Everything is business now. In the past no one would think of sending them away like that. The whole village would join in showing hospitality. People would go and invite their neighbors and everyone would bring food and drink to share with the guests. Now that can't be done. After people eat their dinner, they lock the doors.

Wherever we look in the world now, this is the way things are going. It means that the non-spiritual is proliferating and taking over. We people are generally not very happy and we don't trust anyone very much. Some people even kill their parents now. Husbands and wives may cut each other's throats. There is a lot of pain in society and it's simply because of this lack of sīla and Dhamma. So please try to understand this and don't discard the principles of virtue. With virtue and spirituality, human life can be happy. Without them we become like animals.

The Buddha was born in the forest. Born in the forest, he studied Dhamma in the forest. He taught Dhamma in the forest, beginning with the Discourse on the Turning of the Wheel of Dhamma. He entered Nibbāna in the forest.

It's important for those of us who live in the forest to understand the forest. Living in the forest doesn't mean that our minds become wild, like those of forest animals. Our minds can become elevated and spiritually noble. This is what the Buddha said. Living in the city we live among distraction and disturbance. In the forest, there is quiet and tranquility. We can contemplate things clearly and develop wisdom. So we take this quiet and tranquility as our friend and helper. Such an environment is conducive to Dhamma practice, so we take it as our dwelling place; we take the mountains and caves for our refuge. Observing natural phenomena, wisdom comes about in such places. We learn from and understand trees and everything else, and it brings about a state of joy. The sounds of nature we hear don't disturb us. We hear the birds calling, as they will, and it is actually a great enjoyment. We don't react with any aversion and we aren't thinking harmful thoughts. We aren't speaking harshly or acting aggressively towards anyone or anything. Hearing the sounds of the forest gives delight to the mind; even as we are hearing sounds the mind is tranquil.

Footnotes

... Sao¹

A highly respected monk of the forest tradition, considered to be an arahant and a teacher of Ajahn Mun.