Someone asked Pra Ajarn to expand on a teaching from Luang Pu of Wat Paknam: "This is the hidden goal — once you know the heart of the religion, wrestle the mind into stillness, and that alone stays true to the path of the Buddha and the Arahants."

The Hidden Goal of Buddhism

Luang Pu taught that staying true to the path of the Buddha and the Arahants requires morality (sīla), concentration (samādhi), and wisdom (paññā) — heightened morality, heightened mind, heightened wisdom — and ultimately the liberation born of morality, of mind, and of wisdom. Without relying on all of this, the path cannot be walked. This is why the Pali Canon is structured the way it is: the Vinaya Piṭaka reduces to morality, the Sutta Piṭaka reduces to the mind (concentration), and the Abhidhamma Piṭaka reduces to wisdom — the very same as heightened morality, mind, and wisdom, and the liberation of morality, mind, and wisdom. Once we know the hidden heart of the religion this way, we must practice accordingly; only then do we stay true to it. Walk any other way and there is no foothold at all — it's as if we were adrift outside the universe. But walk this way, and it's as though we are holding the hem of the Buddha's robe.

Why "Stillness" Is the Accomplishment Itself

Luang Pu once said that stillness itself is the accomplishment, because everything in existence is, at root, a wave and a vibration. The coarser the wave, the more violent the vibration and the more destructive it is. Wholesome waves, by contrast, grow gentler and more refined the more they are cultivated — the finer they become, the quieter the vibration, until it settles into stillness. Yet even in stillness there remains a faint vibration within; we must keep entering stillness within stillness, again and again, until every system comes to a complete halt. Only when every system halts does merit — and the energy within it — become perfectly pure. A wave's function is to draw in energy: a wholesome wave draws in wholesome energy, an unwholesome wave draws in unwholesome energy. When the mind reaches ultimate stillness, all vibration settles, which is why it is the ultimate merit and the ultimate energy. This is why Luang Pu said that stillness of mind is the pinnacle of merit.

Morality, Concentration, Wisdom: Tools We Must Learn to Use

Morality, at its root, is simply the natural, ordinary state of a given nature. The Pali Canon actually records wholesome morality, unwholesome morality, and neutral morality — though we usually only study the wholesome kind. Every person carries a different mix of the three natures within them, except the Arahants, who are purely wholesome. To improve, we must reduce the unwholesome and neutral portions and increase the wholesome one. Those fully committed to the wholesome system are the ones who choose to ordain, taking up the three trainings — morality, concentration, and wisdom — which lead to liberation, developing sīla into heightened sīla, and so on. Learning unfolds in three stages: wisdom born of listening, wisdom born of reflection, and wisdom born of meditation. We must first be able to recall what we've learned, then reflect on it — and the more we turn it over in repeated recollection, the more the "knowing sphere" draws in pure energy to cleanse away the ignorance that clouds it, until understanding dawns on its own. It's like reading the same page of a textbook over and over — the information never changes, yet somehow our understanding deepens. Once recall and comprehension are firmly grounded, we can move on to meditative wisdom — wisdom that connects with the inner knower.

Morality, then, is not merely a rulebook to be worked around, but the ordinary, natural state we must protect in order to raise the quality of our minds. Both the five precepts and the eight precepts therefore exist at many levels, from coarse to refined, depending on how much wholesomeness is present in the mind. Morality is the foundation for concentration, because it carries the mind into a certain degree of refinement — a solid base from which concentration can further refine and settle the mind. Concentration goes further inward to meet the inner knower, the one with inner power, who bestows right understanding (sammā-diṭṭhi) — true insight into how life and the world actually work, clearing away the ignorance that conceals it. In the end, morality, concentration, and wisdom together bring about liberation through the sphere of liberation (vimutti); and once liberated, one must go on to attain something even better through the sphere of knowledge-and-vision-of-liberation (vimuttiñāṇadassana). This is the hidden goal of Buddhism, just as Luang Pu taught it.