Someone asked Pra Ajarn to expand on Luang Pu's teaching that joy and sorrow are terrible demons.

Joy and Sorrow Are Terrible Demons

Luang Pu taught: always keep mindfulness present, never let it slip; put aside covetousness and grief toward the world. Don't let joy or sorrow dart into your heart — once it does, it won't easily stop; you must wake up and pull yourself back out. This joy and sorrow is truly terrible — let it into your heart too often and your face darkens, you grow tense and stressed, your body loses its freshness, you turn dull and clouded instead of bright. Some people even waste away to nothing because of it, because joy and sorrow kill the human body — the refined human body, the celestial body, the refined celestial body — every body alike. This is why he taught us to utterly destroy joy and sorrow toward the world.

Joy Is the Bait on the Unwholesome Side's Hook

Pra Ajarn explained that the three natures — wholesome, unwholesome, and neutral — each command as many as 84,000 tools of their own. Among the wholesome qualities, the ten perfections — giving, morality, renunciation, wisdom, effort, patience, truthfulness, resolution, loving-kindness, and equanimity — culminate in equanimity, the highest of them all: neither delighting nor being averse. Luang Pu pointed directly to this: it is precisely this delight, this joy, that the unwholesome and neutral sides use to control human beings, dangling something pleasing as bait on a hook, just as in fishing. The moment the fish takes the bait, suffering begins. The unwholesome side takes whatever we find pleasing — whatever, once perceived, brings us joy — and uses it as bait to give rise to craving, through the six channels of eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind. Once we're caught on that hook, the "body within the body" conjures a simulated existence, and consciousness carries the mind into it, staging a scene and assigning us a role to play according to a fixed script, drawing in unwholesome energy until the sequence completes, sealing it into a blueprint of demerit together with misfortune.

Pra Ajarn gave an example: when we come to love or care for someone, the unwholesome side keeps stirring that emotion of love higher and higher. Once it reaches its peak, it destroys whatever we love most, tearing it away from us. In the very moment that emotion is stirred to its highest pitch, who could possibly bear it? Luang Pu said some people, unable to endure it, have taken their own lives. This is why joy is so terrible — it darts into the heart and coarsens it, and since we remain within the dimension where we're being held captive, the mind inevitably grows clouded along with it. Even during meditation, if excitement or joy arises — say, seeing a light and growing thrilled by it — that very light will vanish at once, because coarseness has intruded, pulling us out of the refined dimension.

The Remedy: Equanimity and Contentment

The way to guard against this is to rely on equanimity, supported by contentment — being satisfied with what we have and what we are, and refusing to accept the bait that gives rise to craving. Luang Pu taught us to keep the mind at ease, fresh, and cool — whatever our wealth or status may be — and to keep the heart cheerful, so the body stays fresh and comfortable. Pra Ajarn added: the beauty of the world does exist, but it is not itself the fault; it is the craving delight in that beauty that is the fault. What is good is simply good; what is beautiful is simply beautiful — these things exist to adorn the world and are, in themselves, a benefit. But it is the craving delight in sensual pleasure that catches us on the hook baited with what appears pleasing.

Practicing Sympathetic Joy Until It Becomes Familiar

Pra Ajarn advised that every quality of dhamma must be practiced until it becomes familiar, used often in daily life. When we visit the temple and see others making merit, we should stand in loving-kindness, feeling sympathetic joy (muditā) in the goodness of others, and look for every opportunity to give — the more we give, the more we receive; it never runs dry, because the refined qualities that arise draw in coarser wealth as well. Once practiced until familiar, we naturally grow close to and come to love that quality of dhamma — just as two people who first meet gradually grow close. If we never practice a wholesome quality until it becomes familiar, it remains a stranger to us; and if we never make wholesome qualities familiar, the unwholesome ones become the familiar ones instead.

Raising Our Love for Our Parents from Acceptance to Faith

Someone asked: if we love our parents and siblings, how should we hold our minds so as not to fall prey to the trap of delight? Pra Ajarn explained that we should stand in gratitude — appreciating and repaying their kindness — which unfolds through several levels of the mind's development. It begins with acceptance, recognizing them as the parents who raised us; it develops into respect (nábthûe), holding their good qualities in our hearts; and from there it can develop further into reverence (khaorop), which naturally gives rise to politeness, composure, honesty, and sincerity. When scolded by our parents, we don't argue back, because we don't want to cause them sorrow. This reverence depends on the virtue of both sides — if a child's own virtue is strong enough, it can raise the parents from mere acceptance to reverence, however little virtue the parents themselves may hold.

From reverence, the mind can develop further into admiration (leūam sai) — seeing even the smallest good quality in them and letting it reflect as brightness within our own hearts. And from admiration it can rise higher still into faith (saddhā), which the Pali Canon says, when powerful enough, can lead to the truly extraordinary. Once faith is firmly established, the mind grows bright, the inner knower guides us clearly, and we become easy to teach and easy to guide — and prosperity then knows no end. This is the path that steadily raises the quality of our minds, carrying us into ever more refined dimensions, so that life turns, step by step, from difficult to easy.