-10- The Dhammaghosana Hall (Buddhadāsa’s Literary Works over the Past Fifty Years)

~ By Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu ~

I hardly see anybody who is interested in seeing that the works collected in the Dhammaghosana Hall have been done by just one person. Few people believe that a person could single-handedly create all those books. Why don’t they try to realize that it took me fifty years of hard work and dedication? I work eighteen hours every day, whereas people can ordinarily work for only eight hours before they are exhausted or bored with working. I can work so hard, and a lot of work gets done.

The Dhammaghosana Hall is intended to show people that each human being can achieve more than what they ordinarily think they can. How much you think you can do is not accurate because you can do much more than that. All the books there have been created by just one person. This means that the creator of the works has to do much more than you think or would do. I work practically all the time, maybe more than eighteen hours a day. My thinking never stops. Even while I am asleep, I sometimes dream about work. In the past, when I was still able to walk well, I used to go on alms rounds near Nam Phut Village. While walking for two hours for the round trip, I also worked mentally and figured out a lot of things. I usually brought with me a pencil or a ball-point pen so that when I figured out anything, I could immediately jot it down. And you know what I wrote on? On the palms of my hands, of course. But I wrote only the headings or topics of what popped up in my mind. A lot of these – ten or even twenty headings – can be written on the palm of a hand. When I returned to the monastery, I immediately converted them into full writings for long discourses before I forgot them.

You can see that I also worked while I was walking on alms rounds. My thinking is my work. Therefore, I work more than eighteen hours a day, and all the works accumulate into a big lot. So you should believe that we can work harder than people think we can. Most people get tired after an eight-hour period of work. But if you like your work, you are satisfied with it or resolute about it, you can continue to do it all the time, especially mentally. In my case, I could figure out more plans than I could handle. Among the hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of plans I made in my mind, I could achieve in practice only a few. Even so, they appear to be a lot.

Don’t limit yourselves to what you can do comfortably.

When you go for a meal, a bath, or a similar thing, you can still work while you are at it. Even when you go to the toilet, you can work. I would say that there are many ideas you can conceive of while you are sitting on the toilet bowl. In this way, I could get a lot of ideas, which I always wrote down and accumulated. When I accumulated enough material, I turned it into a discourse. For me, no matter what posture I am in and whatever I am doing, I can always get a new idea. If you visit the Dhammaghosana Hall, please realize that the volumes of works have been done by just one person. This is the benefit from going to visit it.

(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. W-48)