Someone asked Pra Ajarn to expand on the third blessing of life: venerating those worthy of veneration. It's compared to a young sapling that still needs a supporting stake to keep it from dying before it's established — likewise, anyone who hopes to progress needs to hold up someone worthy of veneration as a living example of the right way to live, an anchor for the heart that guards against wrong view and prevents unwholesome tendencies from resurfacing.

Why Every Life Needs Something to Have Faith In

Pra Ajarn explained that every life needs correct belief. Without belief, only doubt and hesitation remain, making it very hard to act on anything. Human beings therefore need something they can trust as a source of hope — and hope, for every person, ultimately comes down to two things: faith and wisdom. Together, these two support the fulfillment of our hopes. But belief without wisdom risks sliding into darkness — into superstition — while belief grounded in wisdom leads toward an exit, a refuge, safety, and light. So when we decide to place our faith in someone, we must first consider whether that person is truly worthy of veneration.

Three Qualities of Someone Worthy of Veneration

1. **Purity** — purity is what brings power and sanctity. Without purity, tainted by defilement, true sanctity is impossible. 2. **Wisdom** — someone worthy of veneration must possess great wisdom (mahapañña), capable of resolving every problem, wise enough to point the way to an exit, a refuge, safety, and light for both themselves and others. 3. **Boundless compassion** — a heart of loving-kindness and compassion, able to help both themselves and others. Someone unable to help themselves cannot possibly help us; someone lacking purity cannot teach us to reach purity either.

Together these are called purity of virtue, wisdom of virtue, and boundless compassion of virtue. When we pay homage to someone hoping to rely on them, we need confidence that their power is real, and that their compassion is genuine — so that when we're in trouble and ask for help, they won't refuse, because their compassion is boundless.

Their Teaching Must Be Sound and Practically Applicable

When we place faith in someone worthy of veneration, it inspires us to study their teaching. Even after they have passed away, teaching born of great wisdom remains for us to study and use to raise our own wisdom. Such teaching can be studied at every level — beginner, intermediate, advanced — much like worldly education from primary school through to doctoral study, covering theory, practice, and realization, so that we can learn, train, and reach purified results, freed from defilement, and attain a noble life.

Someone Worthy of Veneration Must Reveal the Root of Life's Problems

Most importantly, someone worthy of veneration must be able to teach us the true root of every problem that governs all beings — showing clearly the mechanisms and systems controlling life, and how to be free of them and live rightly. Both the knowledge, the practice, and the results must all be made plainly clear. Anyone able to reach such a teacher has, in the past, accumulated truly great merit — merit enough to be born into this world with the chance to travel and encounter this profound knowledge. Those worthy of veneration — the Buddha and the teachers who carry his teaching forward — can explain the mechanisms of each system with total clarity, offering themselves as the right example to follow. And even when we close our eyes on this world for the last time, they will be there to receive and care for us onward.

The Importance of Choosing Wisely Whom to Venerate

Pra Ajarn cautioned that every life is sustained by belief, and once a wrong belief takes hold, it's extremely difficult to change — because whichever person or teacher we come to revere tends to hold our faith for the rest of our life. Venerating the wrong figure, without understanding why, is therefore dangerous, because the unwholesome side of nature works precisely by steering us away from the truth. The more we accept its guidance, the further we drift from the true teacher and our spiritual guides. Being able to remain within the special circle of merit that reaches the genuine teaching of the Buddha and the Triple Gem within requires truly great merit.

The Guardian Emperor: The Inner Manager Who Watches Over Each Life

Someone asked Pra Ajarn to expand further on the term "guardian emperor" (chakkraphat, the nurturing-and-protecting aspect). Pra Ajarn explained that every life born into this world carries a certain level of merit accumulated from the past — enough to be born into that particular realm. Within the sphere of merit that carries us into birth is a body whose role is to manage and administer — our own personal "manager," tending and protecting us. This is called the guardian emperor, and it comes in three tiers:

- **The lesser guardian (jula-chakra)** — watches over those with little accumulated merit, born from carelessness in past lives, leading to birth into a family of hardship. Even so, the lesser guardian strives to help them get through each day, all the way to the end of their natural lifespan. - **The middle guardian (maha-chakra)** — watches over those who did good as a matter of habit, with a reasonably good heart — not excessive, not lacking — leading to birth into a middle-class family, with enough to live on and a reasonable education. - **The great guardian (borom-chakra)** — watches over those who devoted themselves intensely to accumulating good and created great benefit for others in past lives, arriving with a vast, radiant sphere of merit. This leads to birth into a family of great abundance, an excellent education, and a far more comfortable life than most.

Pra Ajarn explained that the tier of guardian watching over us can change, according to the blueprint of merit laid down on our life's timeline from past deeds. Some people are born into a lower class and gradually rise to the middle class as they grow, depending on when that stored merit is set to bear fruit.

How to Elevate Our Own Guardian Emperor

To raise the level of the guardian watching over us, we need to devote ourselves to doing good — for instance, cultivating loving-kindness continually, to the point of reaching the first and second jhanas. Whether standing, walking, sitting, lying down, or talking — any activity at all, from the moment we wake until we sleep — we can cultivate loving-kindness or right mindfulness alongside it. It may seem like a small thing, but the effect is enormous. Most people think only of giving generously in the form of material donations, but doing good extends far beyond giving. If we have wealth, we can give; if we don't, we can still do good through cultivating loving-kindness. The results differ dramatically. The Buddha once taught, comparing the two: if we lined up material offerings continuously for sixteen kilometers — one yojana — and gave alms for seven days and seven nights, the merit gained would still be less than the merit from a single moment of loving-kindness, no longer than a snap of the fingers. When we sustain this kind of goodness continually, our guardian emperor grows in power, in step with the merit that arises.

Inner Voices: Both Wholesome and Unwholesome Guidance

Pra Ajarn added that the inner voice that guides us to study, to pursue an honest livelihood, or to do things that bring good results in life, comes from the guardian emperor. But the unwholesome side has its own guiding voice too — steering us through greed, toward buying stocks or lottery tickets until we lose everything. We must learn to distinguish which voice is the wholesome one, bringing genuine benefit, and which is the unwholesome one, driven by greed, anger, and delusion, lacking wisdom and reason. This is why the Buddha taught monks to clearly recognize the body, feelings, mind, and mental objects, in order to eliminate covetousness (abhijjha) and displeasure (domanassa) toward the world. Studying the precepts of morality, of mind, and of wisdom is therefore essential — so that we can tell apart the guiding voices from each background force, and not fall unknowingly under the sway of thoughts inserted into our minds from outside ourselves.