Q32. What is meant by living rightly?
~ By Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu ~
‘Right living’ has a special meaning of its own. To live rightly is simply to live in ways such that the defilements (kilesa) can’t obtain nourishment nor be stirred up in any way. Hence, there’s nothing more to it than living all the time with mind free and empty (cit-waang), that is, mind that views the entire world as something empty and doesn’t clutch or grab at anything as being self or belonging to self. Then, though one continues to speak, think, and act, to seek, use, and consume things, one doesn’t have the notion of grasping at any of them as being self. Just acting with constant awareness, acting wisely, acting with insight into the circumstances in which one is involved – that is what is known as ‘living rightly.’ In other words, living rightly is living in such a way that the defilements have no means of arising and no means of obtaining nourishment.
We also can say that living rightly is keeping to noble eightfold path. This is right living because right understand- ing, the first aspect of noble path, is simply the knowledge, the understanding, the unobscured insight, that there’s nothing that should be grasped at or clung to. Thus, in striving, in speaking, in all activity whatsoever, there is simply no grasping or clinging.
If we live rightly as described, the defilements become undernourished and emaciated. They fall away of their own accord and are completely cooled. There’s no way they can arise again, because one has given up the habit of letting them arise. This is important because the anusaya (unwholesome tendencies), which build up within us, are only a matter of familiarity with defilement. However, those who don’t know this look upon the defilements as permanent entities or selves, and thus fall into the wrong view of eternalism (sassata- diṭṭhi). To believe that the defilements are permanent enti- ties lying deep within the character is to be an eternalist, one who clings to belief in an eternal self or soul. Those who have understanding based on Buddhist principles and insight can’t regard these things as independent and permanent entities, essences, or selves. There are reasons for them happening; they arise in conformity with causal laws. When they arise too frequently, one gets used to them and regards them as permanent aspects of one’s nature. Believing them to be permanent misleads us to think they are lying in wait deep within us all the time.
Do understand that the anusaya are only habitual tendencies, the results of a process of familiarization. This is how the word anusaya is used.
(From “Buddha-Dhamma for Inquiring Minds”)
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Buddha-Dhamma for Students (title of original translation) was composed of two talks given by Ajahn Buddhadāsa in January 1966 to students at Thammasat University, Bangkok. It was translated from the Thai by Rod Bucknell, and revised in 2018 by Santikaro Upasaka. To read/download as free ebook (pdf).
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Photo: Buddhadāsa Indapañño Archives E-45