Someone brought Luang Phor's teaching and asked Pra Ajarn to elaborate: "Even a fault the size of a hair's tip should never be allowed to splash onto us — if it does, it leaves a stain," together with a teaching on avoiding evil companions.

Even the Smallest Fault Leaves a Stain

Luang Phor taught: any fault, however small — even the size of a hair's tip — should never be allowed to touch us, because it leaves a stain. He compared it to feces: even a speck the size of a hair's tip, if it splashes onto something, leaves behind a foul smell. No matter how much you wipe or wash it, a faint trace often lingers — and that lingering trace is exactly what a "stain" is. Whether it's a drug, a disease, or poison, all of them cause harm to whoever comes into contact with them. Harm is, by definition, whatever produces suffering. And the most damaging kind of harm comes from vice and from keeping company with the wicked.

Why We Must Avoid Evil Companions

Even having learned about the six paths to ruin, and about true versus false friends, we still encounter wicked people in everyday life, because there's no visible sign marking someone as wicked. Some dress neatly, speak well, hold respectable positions, live comfortably — yet wherever they go, discord follows. By the time we realize what they are, our group has already split apart, our work already ruined. This is exactly why the Mangala Sutta's very first teaching is: do not associate with fools. Whomever we keep company with, the merit or demerit we shared with them in the past gets drawn forward. Keeping company with the wise draws forward merit we built together before, helping us build further perfections. Keeping company with fools draws forward past karmic debts instead — usually connected to vice.

The Mechanism Behind It: The Unwholesome Side Uses the Foolish as Its Instrument

Foolish people tend to be entangled in vice because the inner body governing them has been seized by the unwholesome natural force, compelling them toward wrong thought, speech, and action. For that force to draw in significant energy, these acts need to become habitual, woven into daily routine — whether alcohol, drugs, gambling, or endless carousing. All of it serves as a tool the unwholesome side uses to keep a person content in that activity, alongside a deep aversion to productive work. Unwholesome discipline compels laziness at every turn, generating pollution both mental and physical — a squalid, cluttered environment — all so that the energy of demerit can flow in continuously, carrying misfortune with it.

The Completed Sphere of Demerit: Pattern, Energy, and Ruin

Once wrongdoing produces harm, the unwholesome side claims the right to use that harm to inflict further damage, sealing it into a completed sphere of demerit made of three parts: the completed pattern of the unwholesome deed, the demeritorious energy that will act, and the ruin that will destroy our qualities — wealth, physical form, ability, everything. All of this is stored, waiting to bear fruit in the future. The unwholesome side finds its easiest opening through evil companionship — without a companion to act alongside, the drive to keep acting out fades quickly; a companion sustains the habit. But without keeping company with the wicked, this kind of karmic entanglement rarely arises. It's like water: ordinarily clean, it only turns foul once something dirty is mixed in. People are the same — ordinarily not wicked, but capable of becoming so the moment the unwholesome side takes hold of the mind. This is why we should keep distance both from the unwholesome force itself and from those it has taken hold of.

Overcoming the Feeling of Being Hurt or Overlooked

Someone asked how to overcome the feeling of being hurt or slighted, since this feeling has caused many people to drop out of building perfections together with their community. Pra Ajarn explained that this feeling arises when we place too much importance on others, losing our own inner balance — seeing value in someone else while failing to see our own worth. When we don't recognize our own value, the unwholesome side seizes on that and keeps repeating: "look, they don't value you at all" — when in truth, it is we ourselves who fail to value ourselves, then look to someone else to fill that gap instead. Everyone on this earth carries some proportion of unwholesomeness in their mind, as long as they haven't yet reached the path and fruit of nibbana — so we should never expect others to be the source of our sense of worth. Expecting wrongly leads to disappointment.

The remedy is to abide within the wholesome system — building up goodness, establishing steady right mindfulness, and placing our faith in the Triple Gem and in our own good qualities, rather than resting our faith in other people. When we're truly grounded in the wholesome system, the mind finds balance, gains mastery over itself, and recognizes its own worth without needing anyone else's validation.

How to Think About People Who Once Looked Down on Us, Once Life Improves

Someone asked further: once our life improves, how should we think about people who once looked down on us? Pra Ajarn explained that we should first examine ourselves honestly — did we ever act in a way that made us seem worthless? Ordinarily, people don't look down on one another unless the unwholesome side has taken hold of their mind, usually as a result of some karmic debt between the two of us from the past. If we once looked down on someone, the unwholesome aspect within them "remembers" that, and when we meet again, it stirs up irritation and displeasure in them toward us — everything we do looks wrong in their eyes. It is really the unwholesome force doing the looking down, not the person themselves — so we shouldn't hold it against them as individuals, but understand it as the fruit of a defilement we ourselves created in the past.

If we must continue living or working alongside such a person, we should cultivate loving-kindness and forgive their mistakes, wishing them well — this dissolves the underlying irritation on both sides, not just theirs. If we once mistreated someone in the past, and now they merely look down on us a little, that's already far lighter than what we once did to them, so there's little reason to be troubled by it. Simply hold good will, offer forgiveness, and extend loving-kindness to one another — this breaks the cycle so it doesn't continue to swing back and forth across lifetimes without end. Forgiveness and loving-kindness allow this to end here, in this very life.