Being Dharma

by Ajahn Chah

  All this is just the carrying on of people. As to what is actually happening, there is nothing. There is nothing to cry or laugh over, nothing worthy of love or hate in itself. It is only your mind being tricked. So the Buddha said to work on your mind here, correct your mind at this point. The Dharma is genuine, it is certain; it is the truth. But we are not true. We laugh and we cry. We love and hate, reacting to things. Things are said to be good and bad, and off we go in pursuit. Because we believe that we exist as self-entities and that things belong to us. This is just being deluded.

  So you should not take anything—the body in good or bad health, the mind in elation or depression—as being too real. You only destroy yourself by doing that. The Buddha said when happiness comes, don’t believe it too much. It is not something to cry or laugh over. It isn’t something out there. It is here within us where things are happening, results being born from causes. There is really nothing, only our grasping, that makes things appear like this. Not seeing Dharma, we are always trying to make real these things that are not real.

  But when we talk about things not being real, some will say there is nothing we can do. It doesn’t mean being totally passive and defeated. Without going to extremes and believing too much in things as real, you take care of things as is appropriate. While objects are not yet broken, while the body is not yet sick, take care of them so you can make good use of them. When things break, you let go without tears—don’t end up crying over these internal and external phenomena for no purpose. We have the habit of seeing body and mind as self. We call them “us” and “ours.” But when we are involved in such grasping, we are outside of the Dharma, and the only result is that we suffer.

  You should understand that all the things we practice are for leading the mind to see Dharma and to be Dharma. If you see Dharma, then although you have had the habit of anger, even if it returns it will come with decreasing energy. The same is true of desires, and this is because of the understanding and sensitivity born in the mind from correct practice and understanding. It will change you for the better. You don’t need to change or improve on the Dharma. Don’t try to resolve things that are done already. Resolve the things that are not yet accomplished facts. If you are trying to plane a piece of wood that is full of knots and hard like a rock, you should know when to give up. Or will you just sit there and cry over it? And if another piece is already smooth and varnished, you don’t need to plane it further. Instead of trying to adjust the Dharma to fit you, adjust yourself to fit the Dharma.

  Dharma is truth. If you reach the truth, there is no big or small, no happiness or suffering. There is peace. Even if there is thinking, the mind must be peaceful. If you experience phenomena, they will be just right, with nothing to try to increase or decrease. The characteristics of the mind will be such that when the mind meets objects and conditions, it has this truth.

  It’s like having only one chair in a room. You sit there, and when others come, they have nowhere to sit. Mind is like this. The mental afflictions may come, but because Dharma is in the mind they have nowhere to sit down, so they will have to go on their way. If you have mindful awareness of yourself, then when sense-contact and mental activity give rise to the habits of desire, anger, and delusion, there is no place for them to stay in the mind. There is one seat and you are occupying it already, so the habits cannot sit. They will leave the room. They can’t move you from Dharma. The path and the afflictions fight it out in the mind. If there is no one sitting there, the afflictions can sit down and become the owners. This means you don’t have presence of mind. You don’t understand Dharma, so delusion can take the seat. Then there is no end to suffering.

  The path and defilements fight each other in this way. If the path is brought to fullness, then when things happen in the mind, we meet the Dharma. This takes a person with energy; one who is not energetic will retreat at this point. The factors involved here are simply mind and its internal and external objects. If the mind is not fooled by these objects, what is the problem? Objects are objects, mind is mind. This is listening to Dharma to make it reach the mind. When that happens and Dharma enters the mind, there is no problem—the path kills the afflictions with this meditation practice.

  If there is no one home, unwanted guests can come and make themselves comfortable. They sit down and eat and make a mess. Is that the result you want? Because you don’t understand Dharma, and don’t know right and wrong, good and bad, and don’t recognize the way the mind contacts objects and reacts, they push you all over the place. If things appear to be good, you will smile and laugh. If they are bad, they make you upset and you may come to tears. It is the same as the house with its owner absent. Spinning around like that, unable to separate things, this is a Dharma practitioner who doesn’t really know Dharma. It is someone who is operating at a loss. So you have to meditate to get the Dharma to enter your mind. This is why we listen to the Dharma on every lunar observance day and other holidays.

  So in all activities and postures, learn to do this. When sense-objects come, get a handle on them by remembering they are one thing and the mind is another. Separate them out. Otherwise you don’t know them. You follow what you perceive as good and bad, and this brings suffering. Not satisfied with them, you suffer. The mind is deluded by objects; the mind lacks discernment. So set up mindful recollection and awareness of yourself.

  We say that in all postures, you should keep the meditation on Buddho in mind. Buddho means that “the one who knows,” is arising continuously. When objects come, you know them. You can resolve things and can expound the truth. This is the fruit of Buddho. Let there be the one who knows; practice Buddho just for this. This is called hearing Dharma and realizing fruition, knowing Dharma and practicing it. You should be practicing and seeing it so you become it in your mind. This is called one who understands and sees. This is the way that the Buddha’s teaching bears fruit.

  2

  UNDERSTANDING DHARMA

  The Here and Now Dharma

  WE PRACTICE DHARMA BECAUSE we see the value of noble treasure, the wealth that is within. We have attachment to material wealth, but now we try to exchange it for inner wealth. This kind of wealth will be free from the dangers of the elements, such as flood and fire, as well as that of thieves. It is something that they cannot find. No external threats can touch this happiness of mind. This is what the Buddha meant when he spoke about merit. Making offerings is one source of such happiness, because we are overcoming the tendencies toward greed and miserliness.

  Whatever Dharma practice we are doing, whether it is giving, keeping moral precepts, or meditating on lovingkindness toward all beings, the Lord Buddha has taught that they should all come to a single point, the pursuit of peace. So Paccupana Dharma, the “here and now truth,” is something extremely important. We practice various activities we call Dharma, such as making offerings to support the Buddhist religion, but we should know just what this is. Merely seeking merits may not bring us to the Buddhasasana, the “dispensation of the Buddha.” We need to distinguish between merit and skillfulness. Merit on its own is lacking in wisdom, and without wisdom we will never be free of suffering. Merit without skillfulness is like carrying something and not being able to put it down; it ultimately gets heavy enough to crush us. Skillfulness knows when to let go. Together they support the Buddhasasana. We listen to Dharma to increase our skillfulness and happiness, and then to reflect on these things to create benefit for ourselves and others. We learn to let go, because holding on to things leads only to suffering. Dukkha, the “pervasive unsatisfactoriness of life,” is not the way it has to be. But do you know the causes? Suffering is in the present; we don’t have to look to the past. Dharmas all come from a cause. They don’t just mysteriously float up into existence. Nothing in this world can make people suffer but a lack of knowledge. Is a boulder heavy? If we just walk by it, where is the heaviness? But if we try to lift it, that’s another story.

  So birth, youth, aging, poverty, riches,
and so forth are all suffering if we don’t know them. The Buddha said that we should know dukkha and the other Noble Truths, the cause, cessation, and path. If we do know, there is nothing to suffer over.

  Some people say that suffering is a fixed part of the mind, that it has been there forever. I was talking to someone about this just today. I tried to explain that suffering is not intrinsic to the mind. It arises in the present moment. You have a mood of aversion in the mind and you experience suffering now. Think about a lemon. If you leave it alone, is it sour? Where is the sourness then? It’s when the lemon contacts the tongue that sourness occurs. If you aren’t experiencing it, it’s as if it isn’t there. When there is contact with the tongue it arises at that moment. And from there arise dislike and afflictions. These afflictions are not intrinsic to the mind, but are momentary arisings.

  When the mind has attained peace, that is the end of the path. This is the goal the Buddha wished everyone to realize. But before we reach the end, we need to know how to practice in order to attain a peaceful mind. Our minds are not peaceful because they have not realized the genuine Dharma. The mind is still unskilled and unreliable, lacking the wisdom that knows things as they are, that sees the truth of all phenomena or sabhava dharma (natural conditions). Sabhava means “existing like that,” existing just as it is. Whether or not a Buddha appears in the world, phenomena exist as they are. They do not change into some other mode of existence.

  Photographer unknown

  Ajahn Chah, circa 1977.

  We are taught to begin with right understanding. Then there are right thought, right action, right speech, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right meditation. We say there are eight, but they are really factors of the one path upon which each individual must travel. When understanding is correct, thinking will be correct, and so will speech and all the other factors. When the mind is established in what is correct, the entire progression of the path must be correct. Nothing will be wrong, and walking the path will lead to peace.

  The Buddha taught about letting go. When there is pleasurable experience, he said to recognize that it is merely pleasure. When there is painful experience, he said to recognize that it is merely pain. There is no one experiencing pleasure or pain, happiness or suffering. These things appear as a result of previous causes, but when we are practicing correctly we won’t find any owner of them. The Buddha taught us to see that it is merely happiness, merely suffering—not a self, a being, a person, or an individual entity. This is right view. There is no self or owner of these conditions.

  We think in terms of my leg, my arm, my friends. Thus we see self. But according to Dharma, this is not seeing self. Understanding that these are not self is seeing self. You see it but don’t carry it. If you see a snake but don’t pick it up, there’s no poisonous bite. It’s still a snake, but the poison doesn’t get you. So the Buddha said to see self. This is difficult to hear and understand. The world has its conventions. The teachings of the world, when they reach the mind of the Buddha, are all false. The teachings of the enlightened ones, when they reach the minds of worldly beings, are false.

  When people feel they are the owners of good and bad experience or that these things happen to their selves, they are at the mercy of impermanence. Because all things are subject to change, being attached to them can only produce experience that is unsatisfactory. You are sometimes pleased and sometimes upset as things come and go and keep changing. There is turmoil because wrong view has invaded your mind and given you mistaken ideas. You end up carrying happiness and suffering, and they get heavy for you.

  If there is right view, then feeling is merely feeling. Pleasure is merely pleasure. Pain is merely pain. There is no owner of either pleasure or pain. The Buddha wanted us to contemplate in this way. If we contemplate for some time, there comes about that quality of the Dharma that calls the mind to look and see what is going on. What exactly is this happiness we experience? What is this suffering we have? Are they something stable or permanent? Or how exactly are they? We are certainly able to look at things we have experienced before. Happiness we’ve had—did it end? Have we ever had unhappiness? Did it last forever? When we come to know about phenomena and don’t get so involved with them, the mind becomes peaceful because we are no longer trying to own anything. But still we can enjoy our lives and make use of things in this world. The household items we have—kitchen goods, furniture, and so on—are not really ours. We use them, but it is in order to gain the realization that they are not ours. We can use them freely and comfortably without having to suffer over them. We use them with a knowledge that is comprehensive and transcends ordinary ways. If we cannot be above all these things, we are under them, carrying them with the attachment that says, “This is mine,” bearing their weight. This wrong view can only lead to suffering because things will never work out exactly as we desire.

  Why do things break? Because they exist. Seeing things as already broken, you don’t need to cry if they break. If the cup is not mine, then without this involvement, whether it breaks or not there is no problem. You have things in your house, so you’d better think about this. Still, you have to teach your kids to take care of things. If you just say, “It’s not ours,” you’ll end up with no plates to eat off of. You speak in one way but see in another way; if you use adult concepts for children, no one cleans the dishes.

  Living in the world there will always be things we must do, but we do them with letting go, and the mind is peaceful, without distress. So we can work at ease. This is right livelihood. Even if we have hard, grueling work, it’s OK.

  The Buddha wants us to escape from birth, but we want birth. What are we going to get? We don’t see the liability yet. We still don’t see the way the Buddha sees. His teaching talked of the conceit that says, “I am better than others; I am equal to others; I am worse than others.” If we think in any of these ways, it is not accurate. If we don’t have this conceit, there is no obstruction.

  People want happiness, riches, and so forth. They are attached to merit, only wanting tangible benefits but not making real spiritual progress. In arithmetic there are adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, but we only want addition and multiplication. This is just self-cherishing. People will practice their meritorious activities but still experience sickness and other problems, and they begin to wonder, Why does this happen? Where is the merit? But that isn’t the point of merit and virtue. You don’t seek merit to cause a cat to become a dog; it isn’t something to change the nature of sankhara (conditioned phenomena). They are, by nature, unreliable. Whatever happens, you needn’t get overly concerned or upset.

  What we call skillfulness or wholesomeness is translated in our language as cleverness, a circumspect quality with which we can live our lives in the world. It is necessary to have merit and skillful means working together. Merit is like raw meat, which will go bad after a while. Wisdom is the salt that preserves it. Or you can put it in the refrigerator! It is said, there is no light like wisdom, no river like tanha, or “craving.” So the Buddha advised, in acting, eating, and seeing, don’t let them become tanha. Live in the world but know the world clearly, not letting the heart become flooded by craving; that is, keep letting go.

  The Buddha’s teaching is for the purpose of helping every being to escape from the cycle of samsara. But we who have such coarse defilements of mind and feeble wisdom have different ideas. When we hear the Dharma that says nothing is ours, we become afraid that we won’t get anything; it just makes us uncomfortable.

  Actually, we can say that these are our selves and things are ours, but that is only a conventional reality. It is not on the level of liberation. We need to learn about the way we use conventions in all aspects of our lives. For example, our names. When we were born, we didn’t bring a name with us. After we came into this world, we were given a name. There wasn’t any old name to be replaced—it was empty there. In the space that is empty, you can put anything. People are born empty l
ike this, and a name is put on them, a designation for this existence. So we can call the person John or Mary or whatever, and they come to be so according to conventional understanding. They are not really John or Mary. They are a supposed John or Mary, not an ultimately true John or Mary. Really there is no one there, just natural conditions. But if we want John to come we have to say, “John.” If we want to call Mary, we have to use the name she was given. It is a convenience for communicating and functioning in this world, that’s all.

  Having been born, things pass away. Having passed away, things are born again. Birth and passing away: all conditions are like this. When we look clearly, we will come to realize that what the Buddha taught is the truth. When we see the reality of this, it is not something that will bring suffering or impoverish us. Seeing that there is no self and that nothing belongs to us will make us much more comfortable than before. We will be able to use things at ease and live in the world at ease.

  Some people will think about this and lose the desire to do anything. They think that, since they can’t get anything that will be theirs, what’s the use? Actually it is those who relate to things as their own and work in order to get things for themselves who suffer so greatly. It’s better if we can do work for the sake of doing it, all the while realizing that there is no self involved and nothing belonging to us and training our minds to let go. Working and performing actions we will also be letting go and giving up, in accordance with the truth.