Stopping the Flow of Dependent Origination
Photo: Buddhadāsa Indapañño Archives C06152
“Do you think traveling around the world is just an escape from your responsibility for the society you’re involved with?”
~ Response by Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu ~
The words ‘traveling around the world’ have many meanings, so one has to ask what meaning is meant by these words. One can travel around the world in order to study, to genuinely study things of value and importance. Or one can travel around the world in order to help people in other countries, in other societies. Or one can travel merely for pleasure, for fun, for one’s personal enjoyment.
If one is traveling in a way that is genuinely for one’s own benefit or for the benefit of others, then we must say that that is correct. But if one is only traveling for pleasure, to have fun, to see strange things or whatever, then that doesn’t seem worthwhile to us, it doesn’t seem very correct. It seems to be a bit irresponsible, it’s to take advantage of the world or of others to travel merely for one’s own enjoyment and pleasure.
But if one travels for the sake of genuine learning or to help others, then one isn’t taking advantage of anyone. In fact if one is able to really be of help in other countries, then that’s of enormous benefit for the world. You can’t call that irresponsibility; that’s to be really responsible. That’s a very high level of responsibility to be able to help in other cultures and countries. Merely traveling for fun, then that doesn’t seem worthwhile to us; it seems rather irresponsible.
Nowadays there’s a lot of technology which can help conserve resources. There are books, there are videos, there are lots of forms of communication and information exchange which has made the world much smaller, so it’s not so necessary for us go personally. We can learn all kinds of things about the world without leaving home, so one ought to use this approach first in order to conserve resources. Learn what you can from books and other sources, and only after doing that, if that isn’t enough for one’s needs, then maybe one has to travel. But there are less expensive ways to go about it to try first.
Allow us to point out another world. This is called in Pāli ‘pāralokika,’ the other world. This is the world of the mind, the world inside. One can travel in this world without having to go anywhere, without spending any money. One can with mindfulness travel around the world inside and see all kinds of strange and marvelous things, learn all kinds of wonderful and profound things. So we would like to point out to you the other world, or another world, the world inside that one can travel in the mind.
To practice ānāpānasati in the third tetrad, which is contemplation of mind, will allow one to travel in all kinds of other worlds. One will have all the experience one needs, traveling around the other world.
From the retreat “Stopping the Flow of Dependent Origination,” as translated from the Thai by Santikaro
Dhamma Questions & Responses sessions were offered by Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu in 1990-1991 to foreign meditators attending Suan Mokkh International Dharma Hermitage courses.
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