คำสอน · พระอาจารย์สุรพงค์Teaching · Pra Ajarn Suraphong
สัดส่วนแห่งธาตุธรรม: ทำไมพฤติกรรมปกติของแต่ละคนไม่เหมือนกัน และเหตุใดพระอรหันต์จึงเป็นข้อยกเว้นเดียวThe Proportion of Natures: Why Everyone's Normal Behavior Differs, and Why Arahants Are the Sole Exception
พระอาจารย์สุรพงค์อธิบายว่าทุกคนมีธาตุธรรมทั้ง 3 ฝ่ายคือกุศล อกุศล และอัพยากตะปะปนอยู่ในตัว เพียงแต่มีสัดส่วนต่างกัน ซึ่งเป็นตัวกำหนดพฤติกรรมพื้นฐานหรือ "ความเป็นปกติ" ของแต่ละคน มีเพียงพระอรหันต์เท่านั้นที่มีกุศลธรรมล้วนๆ บริสุทธิ์อย่างเดียว ก่อนนำเข้าสู่การเจริญสมาธิภาวนาเต็มรูปแบบPhra Ajarn Suraphong teaches that everyone carries all three natures — wholesome, unwholesome, and neutral (abyākata) — within them, differing only in proportion, and that this proportion determines each person's baseline "normal" behavior. Only Arahants are the sole exception, possessing pure wholesome nature alone, before leading a full guided sit.
Practice Is Learning, Proving, and Training in the Three Natures
Meditation practice is essential for every life, because practicing is what enables us to dwell within system, which nurtures great benefit for us. If we don't practice, it's the same as leaving life to fate, letting whichever nature manages to seize control of the heart. We must therefore train ourselves to dwell within the correct system.
How to dwell within the correct system, and what results it brings, is something that must be studied, understood, and practiced — studied, understood, and proven through training, learning and understanding the nature of the three factions of -elements, each with a distinct aim and distinct behavior. When one possesses the mind, it colors our thoughts, feelings, and behavior according to its own nature.
Kusalā Dhammā, Akusalā Dhammā, Abyākatā Dhammā: Natures That Truly Exist
The Buddha taught the monks that these three natures truly exist: kusalā dhammā, akusalā dhammā, and abyākatā dhammā. The wholesome nature gives wisdom, , prosperity, , happiness, and , and the fulfillment of every righteous wish. The unwholesome nature gives suffering and harm, hardship, ruin, torment, failure, and destruction. The neutral nature takes neither good nor bad — it simply squanders time, allowing neither goodness nor evil.
We must therefore choose a side, recognizing that we will choose to dwell within the wholesome system. Once we decide to choose it, breaking free from system requires rules for ourselves. To disengage from the unwholesome we need the five precepts; to disengage from both the neutral and the unwholesome we need the eight precepts. These precepts become the tool that protects, guards, and cares for us, leading us into a safe dimension, free from the unwholesome and the neutral.
Precepts and Dhamma: Continuously Drawing In the Stream of Merit
Once precepts are undertaken, the sphere of precepts shines bright, drawing in pure energy together with subtle assets and a blueprint for success, arising for us at all times, day and night, whether asleep, awake, standing, walking, sitting, or lying down. Buddhism has two aspects: precepts () and dhamma. Precepts give us the baseline normalcy of the wholesome nature, meaning the proportion of wholesomeness becomes dominant.
The Proportion of Natures: Why Everyone's Baseline Differs
Everyone carries the nature of all three factions of dhamma-elements — no one has purely one alone, except Arahants, who alone possess pure wholesome nature, undiluted. Everyone else carries differing proportions of the wholesome, unwholesome, and neutral, producing differing baseline "normal" natures. The normal of a wicked person is one thing; the normal of a delinquent troublemaker is another; the normal of someone neither good nor bad is another still; the normal of a virtuous, precept-keeping person is yet another — each with many gradations according to the proportion of that nature.
Therefore each person's baseline differs, and being governed differently, each is controlled toward different behavior by whichever nature dominates — different patterns of thought, speech, and action, because the proportion of natures differs. Increasing the proportion of the wholesome nature requires practice — only through practice can we increase the share of wholesomeness within us.
Mindfulness and Clear Comprehension: The Strength of Wholesomeness Determines How We Use Life's Resources
Practice must include two components: () and (). Mindfulness is recollection — when it arises, it means the wholesome system has been established. How much the wholesome side can seize dominance over our body and mind, and how much authority it holds to use our resources, depends on each being's karmic strength — the proportion of wholesomeness. This shows us the strength of our own wholesome system: whatever the proportion, that is the strength available, determining how much of our most valuable resource — the time of our life — can be devoted to wholesome causes that draw in pure energy together with subtle assets and a blueprint for success.
The more ways of doing good we understand, the more choices we have. Knowing giving alone, we can only give a few times a day. Knowing precepts, we can make sīla part of daily life. Knowing renunciation and concentration, we can spend time within the safe inner dimension — a refined, still, celibate dimension. The more wisdom we gain by studying the dhamma deeply and broadly, entering the inner dimension and seeing dhamma, the safer we become.
Effort, Endurance, Fortitude, and Sincerity: Forces That Must Reinforce Each Other
Effort (viriya) drives us toward ever greater success, but effort has its limits — each person's capacity for effort is bounded. To expand that limit requires endurance (), which pushes effort forward, raising the level of success achievable. The reward of endurance is fortitude (tapa) — the body and mind's capacity to withstand hardship, an armor protecting us when we face difficulty.
Endurance, too, has its own limits — each person's capacity to endure differs. When endurance reaches its limit, we need sincerity (sacca) — truthfulness — to sustain it. Every time we falter, recognizing truth and sincerity helps: sincerity toward our goal allows us to endure; sincerity toward our ideals allows us to endure even what is extremely hard to bear. But this must rest on a foundation of understanding truth — having sound principles, understanding nature, and holding genuine, honest sincerity.
The Triple Gem and Nibbāna: The Ultimate Truth We Can Rely On With Sincerity
We must hold sincerity toward those who are sincere with us — the Triple Gem and Nibbāna, which are the ultimate truth (paramasacca), governing the wholesome system. If we abide with this truth, it grants us boundless benefit. We can aspire for help, and whatever we wish for will succeed, because the Triple Gem holds boundless compassion, boundless wisdom, and complete purity of body, speech, and mind.
But success, and the aspiration that drives toward success, has its own limits too. To expand that limit, we must extend goodwill to the whole world and all beings, opening the heart without limit, so it embraces the world and the universe, wishing to bring benefit to all beings. This expands our aim and aspiration into something vast and wondrous.
The Ten Perfections: Right Mindfulness Is the Indispensable First Foundation
The ten perfections (pāramī) are something we must keep in mind in daily life. Sustained recollection without lapsing lets us develop these ten perfections toward ever greater purity and completeness. All ten perfections require as their very first foundation — as long as the wholesome system cannot be established, accumulating the perfections cannot happen at all. Accumulating the ten perfections can only occur once right mindfulness is established.
This is simple: just determine your knowing — know what you know, be aware of your own body, that is already normal knowing. But you must determine it — you cannot skip this step, or another nature will command you to determine things that aren't beneficial, dragging you off to eat, play, dance, and wander endlessly. The Buddha taught the monks: "Bhikkhus, you should determine and know clearly body, feeling, mind, and dhamma, in order to abandon covetousness and grief toward the world" — that means you must determine, that is mindfulness; you must know clearly, that is clear comprehension of body and mind.
The 84,000 Sections of the Wholesome Dhamma-Sphere: A Dwelling We Can Rely On
When the sphere of knowing arises, the sphere of not-knowing — — falls away. All 84,000 sections of the wholesome dhamma-sphere are bright and clear spheres. All dhammas arise only at the heart, nowhere else. So when the wholesome dhamma is established at the heart, it displays its quality of clarity and brightness. We therefore need to rely on this wholesome dhamma as our dwelling place, like a home — we can choose , mindfulness, concentration, wisdom, equanimity, relaxation, or ease — there are many to choose from.
The pure energy called merit is a pure, sacred dhamma-element with power and might, able to dissolve suffering, sorrow, and misfortune completely. Within the sphere of merit are also contained physical assets, wealth, s, retinue, honor and praise, the path and fruit of Nibbāna, and the knowledge of the dhammakāya, all complete within the sphere of merit.
The Stream of Merit and Dedicating Merit to Our Ancestors
As the stream of merit flows continuously, when we determine right mindfulness, knowing always without lapsing, abiding with wholesome dhamma, the stream of merit flows forth into the center of brightness of the sphere of knowing. We then dedicate this merit to our ancestors — parents, siblings, grandparents, and the teachers who have helped us, together with the guardian devas who assist us, and all beings we may have wronged, our karmic counterparts (คู่กรรมคู่เวร) — asking for mutual forgiveness, that they too may share fully in this merit.
Radiating Loving-Kindness to All Beings and the Universe
We then wish well for all beings and the whole world, drawing on the heart of a mother toward her infant child, letting this arise within us — a mother's goodwill toward her small child is the very pinnacle of . May all beings and the whole world be free from suffering and find happiness together; may those with much suffering have less, those with little suffering be free of it entirely, those with little happiness have more, and those already happy grow happier still.
We then extend this heart, filled with loving-kindness, to cover our home, village, sub-district, district, province, throughout Thailand and neighboring countries, until it embraces the whole world, making it a crystal world, bright, clean, and pure. May the earth-dwelling devas, tree devas, sky devas, celestial beings of every heaven, the brahma and formless-brahma realms, together with the denizens of hell, the hungry ghosts, and the animal realm, all be free from suffering and find happiness together. We extend it further still, into the vastness of the universe, embracing countless stars throughout the ten thousand world-systems and the infinite cosmos, without limit.
Resting in the Triple Gem and the Closing Aspiration
We rest the mind, still, in the center of the Triple Gem, in the center of the great teachers who watch over our merit and at all times, resting in the center of Nibbāna, in the center of the knowing ones of boundless power, countless as the grains beyond measure. We use this auspicious moment to ask their blessing, setting a blueprint for success for the sake of benefit both now and in the future, so our life abides with knowledge, happiness, and purity, fulfilling every righteous wish, closing with a Pali chant of dedication.