The Dhammic Life Which Is Still a Secret
Photo: Buddhadāsa Indapañño Archives C01313
“Since there is no ‘I,’ no ‘me,’ and no ‘mine,’ I know it really wasn’t my father who died of cancer, or my friend who died of AIDS. On an intellectual level I know that everything is impermanent, but what advice do you give to people who are still hurting years after a loved one’s death, and how does one get rid of the memories that are still so strong of having watched these wonderful people deteriorate?”
~ Response by Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu ~
The first response to this question is the same as we’ve just mentioned – that if there’s no attachment to self there won’t be any problems like this. One will not have any difficulties about the way nature takes its course. But once there is a sense of self, then the self will look for people and things that are of use to it, that benefit it. Or the self will feel a desire to be thankful to the people and things that have helped it. Once there is a sense of self we create this feeling of mine about other things, either the things that we want to get something from or the things that have benefited us. This is once again on the ordinary level of morality. It’s just a natural instinctual morality that beings will help each other. This is one way that the law of idappaccayatā (conditionality) works. It’s just natural that things in nature will help each other. For example a small chick can pick the ticks off the face of an adult chicken. The large chickens can’t pick the ticks off their own faces – there’s nothing they can do about them – but they can go up to a little chick, put their head down, and the chick can pick the ticks. (Ticks are little insects that suck blood; there are many of them in the forest.) This is just something natural, a natural kind of morality. If on this level animals and people learn to work together properly, we can live without any problems. If we can live without selfishness, then we can live together in ways where we just help each other to deal with worldly situations.
This natural morality and this instinctual helping of each other just follows from the law of idappaccayatā through the flow of causes and conditions which makes up nature. So if someone dies, whether we die or the friend dies, if one understands the law of conditionality, then one will understand death. Instead of creating a problem or dukkha out of it, the death of whoever will be understood as just being thus. The thusness of it will be understood. It will be seen as ‘just that.’ That’s the way things happen, and then there will be no attachments and no dukkha to the situation. So by understanding the law of conditionality, idappaccayatā, we can respond wisely to any situation. There’s a secret in nature that all dukkha occurs because of ignorance (avijjā) and attachment (upādāna), and there’s a place in the scriptures where the Buddha recommends to kill the mother and kill the father. The Buddha actually said this, to kill the mother and kill the father, but here the father represents ignorance and the mother represents attachment. So when we speak on the highest level of Dhamma it’s okay to kill one’s mother and father, because it’s ignorance and attachment which give birth to this sense of self. If we kill that ignorance and attachment then there’s no more self to be creating problems and dukkha. If we speak in the normal way of morality, if we speak in an ordinary, popular, or moralistic religious way, then to say to kill one’s mother and father is a horrible thing. But in the language of the highest Dhamma, of the Dhamma that liberates, one must kill one’s mother and father. There are some sayings of the Buddha, or Buddha-vasitā (mastery) of the Buddha, which stupid people cannot understand, and they get these people very very upset and confused. One of these is the saying that we just mentioned – to kill one’s mother, to kill one’s father. Another is to be an ungrateful person, an akataññū person. The word kataññū, in the language of morality, in people language, means to be grateful. So in the ordinary meaning an akataññū person is an ungrateful one. So some people when they hear this – to kill one’s father and mother and be a very ungrateful person – they think that this is a real criminal teaching. However the Buddha is not speaking in people language here, rather he’s speaking in the highest Dhamma language. The things that give birth to the self are not our biological parents but merely ignorance and attachment, which give rise to the self. Once the self concept is born, then one attaches to this as ‘my mother’ and to that as ‘my father.’ So the Buddha said to get out of dukkha, to escape from dukkha, ‘kill the mother, kill the father, and be an akataññū person.’ However in Dhamma language, akataññū doesn’t mean ‘ungrateful.’ Akata is ‘that which is not made, not formed, not created’ – so the thing that is unconcocted, unaffected by any cause or conditions. Aññū means ‘to know.’ So akataññū here means ‘be one who knows that which cannot be affected or concocted by anything.’ These words cannot be understood by people who do not understand the language of Dhamma. If we interpret everything in the simple language of morality, we will get very confused.
When I first repeated these words of the Buddha I was severely scolded and reviled by many people – they called me a liar. They said that the Buddha would never say such a thing as kill one’s mother and kill one’s father, and so they just started getting angry with me right away and didn’t even listen to the explanation. So this is a certain kind of problem that exists.
Therefore we ask that you listen very carefully with an open mind until you understand the Dhamma meaning of such words very profoundly, because there are other sayings like this which are very difficult to understand. There’s not just this one, there are many. Of course the ordinary moralistic Buddhists never talk about these things, but they are there, and with an open mind we can come to understand them.
From the retreat “The Dhammic Life Which Is Still a Secret,” 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.
Listen to this teaching on Soundcloud
Listen to other English retreat talks by Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu
For more information and free ebooks, visit Suan Mokkh – The Garden of Liberation