-15- Dhamma Study and Meditation Training for Foreigners
~ By Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu ~
There are two kinds of training offered here, one for general Dhamma principles and the other for meditation. They are two different things, but deserve being studied just the same. This is because, if you don’t know Dhamma principles, you will not know what direction you should travel along. It’s like when you don’t have a map and don’t know where to go. Those who practice meditation are just like others who are walking, but the meditators are walking spiritually. The training activity we have continually done is only that for farangs (Westerners). They come here to study both Dhamma and meditation. The first ten days of each month are set aside for farangs, who come in a number of a few tens – sometimes more than a hundred – or maybe more in the future.
We are satisfied that the farangs take the training seriously because they really want to study. I may offend you if I speak frankly that the farangs take it more seriously than the Thais. Some of them – but not all – are more intelligent, having studied much, and are quick to learn. They also want to know themselves, to know what life is, to know the new life that is beyond suffering. They all intend to do so. We Thais should do the same, too.
Most people who have studied Dhamma or religions usually have done so as a tradition or a ritual; they have hardly reached the real Dhamma. Therefore, we teach them what the true life is and what kind of life they have not yet attained but should do so. We summarize the teaching for them so that they can easily remember that they should have the life that is beyond both positiveness and negativeness – as modern science should say.
Positiveness makes us joyful and laugh like a maniac; negativeness, on the other hand, makes us depressed and cry. In the Dhamma language, these states of the mind are called ‘satisfaction’ and ‘dissatisfaction.’ But since these terms are not so clear and are superficially understood, we prefer using the terms ‘positiveness’ and ‘negativeness.’ One state makes us feel like we are in heaven then and there, while the other makes us feel like we are in hell.
To go one more step farther, we may say that we should stay beyond merit and demerit – being neither good nor bad. But people may not understand this, and some may argue that they are taught every day to do good and may ask us why we teach them to stay beyond goodness. Actually, it is absolutely right to be above and beyond goodness before one can be peaceful. If one is still associated with merit and demerit alternately, then he cannot be peaceful, untarnished, unoccupied, or free. The Pāli Canon also says that we should go beyond abhijjhā (covetousness) and domanassa (sad-minded-ness), feeling no need to take or reject anything. Or, to use modern terms, we should transcend both positiveness and negativeness.
Pay a little attention to this. Having a life in positiveness means that you adore merit; you are intoxicated and deluded by it. Having a life in negativeness means that you are afraid, depressed, and unhappy. The former kind of life makes you maniacal, while the latter makes you depressive. So reject both of them. Staying beyond both is actually the new life to be attained. You should consider that pleasure and joy do not give peace of the mind; they are a stir, a chaos, or madness. If you are very pleased, you may not be able to eat or sleep. If you are pleased with winning a grand-prize lottery, you may be an insomniac for many nights. This is how pleasure destroys peace of the mind. But so does displeasure, which causes depression and stress. Being free from both satisfaction and dissatisfaction is peace or unperturbedness. You may call it ‘voidness’ or ‘freedom’ of the mind, that is, when the mind does not fall slave to anything. When you are pleased with something, you fall slave to that pleasant thing, and when you are depressed, you fall slave to an unpleasant thing. Being neither pleased nor displeased with anything means you are free from being enslaved. This is what we call ‘the new life,’ which we try to teach to others every day, especially to farangs, who want to attain it.
The farang people are materially more advanced than we are, but they are dissatisfied with the advancement because it is a never-ending chaos. They want to find the state that is peaceful, free, or liberated, or where chaos has ceased. So they come to study Dhamma and are satisfied. Then they tell or teach others and further their study of Dhamma. I think they can become so knowledgeable about Dhamma that they may become Dhamma teachers themselves. If we Thais stay as negligent as we are now, I’m afraid the farangs will be our Dhamma teachers in the future.
So set up a resolution to come here to study Dhamma and to train your mind so that it is most beneficial, allowing you to stay beyond suffering, intelligence, and everything – to stay in the coolness of nibbāna, here and now.
Where there is extinction of the fire of conditioning, there is nibbāna to some degree. This can happen everywhere, at every breath. Birth and death are within our bodies all the time. When birth occurs, there is saṅkhāra (conditioned state); when death occurs, there is a little nibbāna (unconditioned state), which most people neither realize nor pay attention to. This is because nibbāna is not as pleasant as sensual feelings. Most are interested in worldly happiness, but not in the peace and quiet of the mind resulting from cessation or suppression of its perturbed state.
True happiness and false happiness are described by the same word, ‘happiness.’ You should know that there are both kinds of happiness. The one resulting from a conditioning cause or a deluding bait is the false one, whereas the one above and beyond that, or having nothing to do with the false happiness, is the true one, which is supra-mundane. We can recognize true happiness if we observe the most peaceful state of our mind – when we are void of mental defilements or free from enslavement by sense-objects: neither pleased nor displeased, neither positive nor negative. Some defilements make us feel pleasant, others make us feel unpleasant. Don’t remain a fool by believing that the best thing is when you feel pleasant or when you get what you want. It’s just conditioning or perturbation of the mind. You have to transcend that, staying beyond pleasure and displeasure, being void of conditioning.
This is what we greatly intend, attempt, and make an effort to teach as one of the Buddha’s principles. We teach meditation to the trainees so that they can be ultimately liberated. The mindfulness with breathing method we practice here is what the Buddha taught. It’s not a special one invented by Suan Mokkh or any teacher, but one that the Buddha taught, recommended, and praised for its benefit which he himself had experienced. Through mindfulness with breathing, we can reach enlightenment.
That’s all about the training we regularly offer the farangs during the first ten days of each month. Whoever is really interested will benefit from it. If they could see the true usefulness, they could become interested in Dhamma study and practice, and we will always help them.
(From "Benefits You Should Get from Coming to Suan Mokkh," a talk given by Tan Ajahn in December 1988 at the request of Tan Dusadee Bhikkhu, as translated from the Thai by Aj. Mongkol Dejnakarintra.)
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“24 Benefits of Suan Mokkh,” is a series of weekly posts published to commemorate the 88th anniversary of the foundation of Suan Mokkh in May 1932 in Chaiya, southern Thailand.
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For other Dhamma teachings by Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu (audios, free ebooks, interviews, poems), please visit Suan Mokkh – The Garden of Liberation.
Buddhadāsa Indapañño Archives collection (Ref. L-141)