If we don’t have wisdom everything round us will be a source of suffering. If we are wise these things will lead us out of suffering. Eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind… Eyes aren’t necessarily good things, you know. If you are in a bad mood just seeing other people can make you angry and make you lose sleep. Or you can fall in love with others. Love is suffering, too, if you don’t get what you want. Love and hate are both suffering, because of desire. Wanting is suffering, wanting not to have is suffering. Wanting to acquire things… even if you get them it’s still suffering because you’re afraid you’ll lose them. There’s only suffering. How are you going to live with that? You may have a large, luxurious house, but if your heart isn’t good it never really works out as you expected.
Therefore, you should all take a look at yourselves. Why were we born? Do we ever really attain anything in this life? In the countryside here people start planting rice right from childhood. When they reach seventeen or eighteen they rush off and get married, afraid they won’t have enough time to make their fortunes. They start working from an early age thinking they’ll get rich that way. They plant rice until they’re seventy or eighty or even ninety years old. I ask them. “From the day you were born you’ve been working. Now it’s almost time to go, what are you going to take with you?” They don’t know what to say. All they can say is, “Beats me!” We have a saying in these parts, “Don’t tarry picking berries along the way… before you know it, night falls.” Just because of this “Beats me!” They’re neither here nor there, content with just a “beats me”… sitting among the branches of the berry tree, gorging themselves with berries… “Beats me, beats me…” ~Ajahn Chah
by Venerable Ajahn Chah
This Rains Retreat I don’t have much strength, I’m not well, so I’ve come up to this mountain here to get some fresh air. People come to visit but I can’t really receive them like I used to because my voice is just about had it, my breath is just about gone. You can count it a blessing that there is still this body sitting here for you all to see now. This is a blessing in itself. Soon you won’t see it. The breath will be finished, the voice will be gone. They will fare in accordance with supporting factors, like all compounded things. The Lord Buddha called it khaya vayam, the decline and dissolution of all conditioned phenomena.
How do they decline? Consider a lump of ice. Originally it was simply water… they freeze it and it becomes ice. But it doesn’t take long before it’s melted. Take a big lump of ice, say as big as this tape recorder here, and leave it out in the sun. You can see how it declines, much the same as the body. It will gradually disintegrate. In not many hours or minutes all that’s left is a puddle of water. This is called khaya vayam, the decline and dissolution of all compounded things. It’s been this way for a long time now, ever since the beginning of time. When we are born we bring this inherent nature into the world with us, we can’t avoid it. At birth we bring old age, sickness and death along with us.
So this is why the Buddha said khaya vayam, the decline and dissolution of all compounded things. All of us sitting here in this hall now, monks, novices, laymen and laywomen, are without exception “lumps of deterioration.” Right now the lump is hard, just like the lump of ice. It starts out as water, becomes ice for a while and then melts again. Can you see this decline in yourself? Look at this body. It’s aging every day… hair is aging, nails are aging… everything is aging!
You weren’t like this before, were you? You were probably much smaller than this. Now you’ve grown up and matured. From now on you will decline, following the way of nature. The body declines just like the lump of ice. Soon, just like the lump of ice, it’s all gone. All bodies are composed of the four elements of earth, water, wind and fire. A body is the confluence of earth, water, wind, and fire, which we proceed to call a person. Originally it’s hard to say what you could call it, but now we call it a “person.” We get infatuated with it, saying it’s a male, a female, giving it names, Mr., Mrs., and so on, so that we can identify each other more easily. But actually there isn’t anybody there. There’s earth, water, wind and fire. When they come together in this known form we call the result a “person.” Now don’t get excited over it. If you really look into it there isn’t anyone there.
That which is solid in the body, the flesh, skin, bones and so on, are called the earth element. Those aspects of the body which are liquid are the water element. The faculty of warmth in the body is the fire element, while the winds coursing through the body are the wind element.
At Wat Ba Pong we have a body which is neither male or female. It’s the skeleton hanging in the main hall. Looking at it you don’t get the feeling that it’s a man or a woman. People ask each other whether it’s a man or a woman and all they can do is look blankly at each other. It’s only a skeleton, all the skin and flesh are gone.
People are ignorant of these things. Some go to Wat Ba Pong, into the main hall, see the skeletons… and then come running right out again! They can’t bear to look. They’re afraid, afraid of the skeletons. I figure these people have never seen themselves before. Afraid of the skeletons… they don’t reflect on the great value of a skeleton. To get to the monastery they had to ride in a car or walk… if they didn’t have bones how would they be? Would they be able to walk about like that? But they ride their cars to Wat Ba Pong, go into the main hall, see the skeletons and run straight back out again! They’ve never seen such a thing before. They’re born with it and yet they’ve never seen it. It’s very fortunate that they have a chance to see it now. Even older people see the skeletons and get scared… What’s all the fuss about? This shows that they’re not at all in touch with themselves, they don’t really know themselves. Maybe they go home and still can’t sleep for three or four days… and yet they’re sleeping with a skeleton! They get dressed with it, eat food with it, do everything with it… and yet they’re scared of it. Continue reading
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Pain makes you stronger.
Tears make you braver.
Headaches makes you wiser.
True friends make you forget
all the nonsense! ~sms