Wat Dhammasathit (Rayong Province)
Mind What You Say.
‘Before you say anything, ask yourself whether it’s necessary or not. If it’s not, don’t say it. This is the first step in training the mind – for if you can’t have any control over your mouth, how can you expect to have any control over your mind?’ (p. 1)
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‘Litter’ is Thai slang for idle chatter, and once Ajaan Fuang used the term to dramatic effect. It happened one evening when he was teaching in Bangkok. Three young women who were long-time friends happened to show up together at the building where he was teaching, but instead of joining the group that was already meditating, they found themselves an out-of-the-way corner to catch up on the latest gossip. As they were busy talking, they didn’t notice that Ajaan Fuang had gotten up to stretch his legs and was walking right past them, with an unlit cigarette in his mouth and a box of matches in his hand. He stopped for a second, lit a match, and instead of lighting his cigarette, tossed the lit match into the middle of the group. Immediately they jumped up, and one of them said, ‘Than Phaw’! Why did you do that? You just barely missed me!’.
‘I saw a pile of litter there,’ he answered, ‘and felt I should set fire to it’. (p. 3)
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One day Ajaan Fuang overheard two students talking, on eof them asking a question and the other starting his answer with, ‘Well, it seems to me…’ Immediately Ahaan Fuang cut him off: ‘If you don’t really know, say you don’t know, and leave it at that. Why go spreading your ignorance around?’ (p. 3)
On the Cult of Amulets
Thailand has a number of monk magazines, somewhat like movie-star magazines, which print the life stories and teachings of famous and not-so-famous monks, nuns and lay meditation teachers. The life stories tend to be so heavily embellished with supernatural and miraculous events, though, that they are hard to take seriously. From the occasional contact he had with the editors and reporters responsible for these magazines, Ajaan Fuang felt that, by and large, their primary aims were mercenary. As he put it, ‘The great meditation teachers went into the wilds and put their lives on the line in order to find the Dhamma. When they found it, they offered it free of charge on their return. But these people sit in their air-conditioned offices, write down whatever comes into their heads, and then put it up for sales’. As a result, he never cooperated with them when they tried to put him in their magazines. (p.4)
People practicing the Dhamma.
One of Ajaan Fuang’s students – a seamstress – was criticized by a customer: ‘You practice Dhamma, don’t you? Then why are you so greedy, charging such high prices? People practicing the Dhamma should take only enough profit just to get by.’
Although she knew her prices were fair, she couldn’t think of a good answer, so the next time she saw Ajaan Fuang she told him what had happened. He replied, ‘The next time they say that, tell them – ‘Look, I’m not practicing the Dhamma to be stupid.’ (p. 9)
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Another student was meditating in Ajaan Fuang’s presence when – in a spasm of mindfulness – she slapped a mosquito that was biting her arm. Ajaan Fuang commented: ‘You charge a high price for your blood, don’t you? The mosquito asks for a drop, and you take its life in exchange’. (p. 11)
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Even in a Buddhist country like Thailand, some young people who practice the Dhamma find that their parents are against it, and feel that they should be spending their time in more practical ways. Once the parents of the seamstress tried to put a stop to her visits to Wat Makut, and this got her very angry. But when she told her feelings to Ajaan Fuang, he warned her, ‘You owe huge debt to your parents, you know. If you get angry with them, or yell at them, you’re stoking the fires of hell on your head, so watch out’. And remind yourself: If you wanted parents who would encourage your practice, why didn’t you choose to be born from somebody’s else? The fact that they’re your parents shows that you’re made past karma with them. So just take up your old karma debts as they come. There’s no need to create any more karma by getting into arguments’. (p. 14)
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Once, while the Chedi at Wat Dhammasathit was being built, some of the students working on the chedi got into a serious argument. One of them became so upset that she went to tell Ajaan Fuang, who was staying in Bangkok at the time. When she finished her report, he asked her, ‘Do you know what gravel is?’
Taken aback, she answered, ‘Yes’
‘Do you know what diamonds are?’
‘Yes’
‘Then why don’t you gather the diamonds? What good do you get out of gathering gravel?’. (p. 14)
The Highest Refuge
Channeling spirits has long been popular in Thailand, and even some people who practice the Dhamma also like to attend seances. But Ajaan Fuang once said, ‘If you want results from your practice, you have make up your mind that the Buddha is your one and only refuge. Don’t go taking in anything else’. (p. 14)
Heart
‘If you practice the Dhamma, you don’t have to be amazed by anyone else’s powers or abilities. Whatever you do, say or think, let your heart take its stand on the principles of reason’. (p.15)
Student/Teacher
On occasion people would present Ajaan Fuang with amulets, and he would hand them out among his students – but only rarely among those who were especially close to him. One day a monk who lived several years with him couldn’t help but complain, ‘Why is it that when you get good amulets, you never give any to me, and always to everybody else?’
Ajaan Fuang replied, ‘I’ve already given you lots of things better than that. Why don’t you accept them?’. (p. 16)
Living in the World
‘Other people criticize us and then forget all about it, but we take it and keep thinking about it. It’s as if they spit out some food and we pick it up to eat. When that’s the case, who’s being stupid?’ (p. 21)
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‘Beware of the fall-in-the-well kindness: the cases where you want to help other people, but instead of your pulling them up, they pull you down’. (p.22)
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‘To have a partner in life is to suffer. To have a good partner is really to suffer, because of all the attachment’. (p. 23)
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Lingas & Phalakits
‘When we see Hindus worshipping Siva lingas it look strange to us, but actually everyone in the world worships the Siva linga – i.e. they worship sex, simply that the Hindus are the only ones who are open about it. Sex is the creator of the world. The reason we’re all born is because we worship the Siva linga in our hearts’. (p.23)
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“If there are any sensual pleasures you really hunger for, it’s a sign you enjoyed them before in a previous life. That’s why you miss them so much this time around. If you think about this long enough, it should be enough to make you dispassionate and dismayed’. (p.24)
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The Celibate Life
‘Some people say that monks don’t do any work, but actually the work of abandoning your defilements is the most difficult work in the world. The work of the everyday world has its days off, but our work doesn’t have any time off at all. It’s something you have to do 24 hours a day. Sometimes you may feel you’re not up to it, but still you have to do it. If you don’t, who’s going to do it for you? It’s your duty, and nobody else’s. If you don’t do it, what are you living off the donations of other people for?’. (p.25)
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The relationship of a monk to his supporters is something of a balancing act. One of Ajaan Fuang’s favorite reminders to his monk disciples was, ‘Remember, nobody’s hired you to become a monk. You haven’t ordained to become anybody’s servant.’ But, if a monk complained that the monastery attendants weren’t doing as they were told, he’d say, ‘Did you ordain to have other people wait for you’. (p.27)
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‘Monks who eat the food that other people donate, but then don’t practice, can expect to be reborn as water buffaloes next time around, to till the fields and work off their debts’. (p. 27)
Meditation
When Ajaan Fuang taught meditation, he didn’t like to map things in advance. As soon as he had explained the beginning steps, he’d have the student start sitting right in his presence, and then take the steps back home to work on there. If anything came up in the course of the practice, he’d explain how to deal with it and then go on to the next step.
Once a layman who had known more than his share of meditation teachers came to discuss the Dhamma with Ajaan Fuang, asking him many questions of an advanced nature as a way of testing his level of attainment. Ajaan Fuang asked him in return, ‘Have you had these experiences in your own meditation yet’
‘No, not yet’.
‘Then in that case, I’d rather not discuss them, because if we discuss them when they’ve not yet a reality for you, they’ll just be theories, and not the real Dhamma.’ (p. 34)
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Visions and Signs
One evening a school teacher was meditating at home and began remembering her previous lives all the way back to the time of King Asoka. In her vision she saw King Asoka beating her father mercilessly over a trivial infraction of palace etiquette. The next morning she went to tell Ajaan Fuang about her vision, and it was obvious that she was still furious with King Asoka for what she had seen him do.
Ajaan Fuang didn’t affirm or deny the truth of her vision. Instead, he spoke to her anger in the present, ‘Here you’ve been carrying this grudge for over 2,000 years, and where is it getting you? Go ask forgiveness of him in your mind and have done with it’. (p. 52)
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‘Don’t have anything to do with the past or the future. Just stay with the present – that’s enough. And even though that’s where you’ve supposed to stay, you’ve not supposed to latch onto it. So why do think you should latch on to things where you’ve not even supposed to stay?’ (p. 53)
Right at Awareness
One of Ajaan Fuang’s students was feeling mistreated by the world, and so went to him for consolation. He told her, ‘What’s there to feel mistreated about?’ You’re the one that’s swayed under the events that have hit you, that’s all. Contemplate what’s happening and you’ll see that the mind is something separate. Events come passing in and then go passing by. So why be influenced by them? Keep your mind right at the simple awareness that these things come and soon they’ll be gone, so why follow them?. (p54)
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‘Whenever anything hits you, let it go only as far as ‘aware’. Don’t let it go all the way into the heart’. (p.55)
Contemplation
‘Everything that happens to you has its causes. Once you contemplate it skillfully until you know its causes, you’ll be able to get past it’. (p.57)
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‘Our defilements have made us suffer enough already. Now it’s our turn to make them suffer’. (p.57)
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‘Even though your views may be right, if you cling to them you’re wrong.’ (p. 58)
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A meditator in Singapore once wrote a letter to Ajaan Fuang describing how he applied the Buddha’s teachings to everyday life: Whatever his mind focused on, he would try to see it as inconstant, stressful and not self. Ajaan Fuang had me write a letter in response, saying, ‘Do things ever say that they’re inconstant, stressful and not self? They never say it, so don’t go faulting them that way. Focus on what labels them, for that’s where the fault lies’. (p.58)
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A high school student once said that in practicing meditation, if his mind thought good thoughts he’d let them pass, but if it thought bad thoughts he’d put a stop to them right away. Ajaan Fuang told him, ‘Just watch them. See who it is that’s thinking good thoughts and bad thoughts. The good thoughts and bad thoughts will disappear on their own, because they fall under the Three Characteristics of inconstancy, stress and not-self’. (p. 58)
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‘If the mind is going to think, let it think, but don’t fall for its thoughts’. (p. 58)
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Advice for a woman who had to live one illness after another: ‘Use your mindfulness to contemplate the body until you can visualize it as bones falling down in a heap, and you can set them on fire until there’s nothing left. The ask yourself: Is that your self? Then why does it make you suffer and feel pain? Is there any ‘you’ in there? Keep looking until you reach the true core of the Dhamma – until there’s nothing of yours at all. The mind will then see itself as it really is, and let go of its own accord.’ (p. 61)
Release
‘Our practice is to go against the stream, against the flow. And where are we going? To the source of the stream. That’s the ‘cause’ side of the practice. The ‘result’ side is that we can let go and be completely at ease. (p. 70)
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Source: Excerpts from: Awareness Itself,
The Teachings of Ajaan Fuang Jotiko, Compiled and translated by Thanissaro Bhikku (Geoffrey DeGraff) 1993A.D./2536B.E.
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