โยคะ 4 คือกามโยคะ ภวโยคะ ทิฏฐิโยคะ และอวิชชาโยคะ เป็นเครื่องมือที่อกุศลใช้ผูกมัดสรรพสัตว์ไว้ในภพ ต้องอาศัยศีล สมาธิ ปัญญา และวิชชาจึงจะหลุดพ้นได้The four bonds — the bond of sensual pleasure, the bond of becoming, the bond of wrong view, and the bond of ignorance — are the tools the unwholesome side uses to keep beings bound to the cycle of existence. Precepts, concentration, wisdom, and true knowledge are what free us from them.
Someone asked the teacher to explain the four bonds that tie beings to existence.
A "bond" is a tie or yoke. There are four: (1) the bond of sensual pleasure — delight in sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch; (2) the bond of becoming — delight in form-jhana and formless-jhana; (3) the bond of wrong view — clinging to one's own mistaken opinions; (4) the bond of — not truly understanding the genuine . All four act like ropes that keep beings cycling through birth and death.
Freeing oneself from the bond of sensual pleasure requires first seeing the danger and suffering in sense pleasures. Once the earlier fetters loosen, one can progress toward the bond of becoming — a subtler — through and . Freeing oneself from the bonds of wrong view and ignorance requires cultivating wisdom, upgrading it through wisdom from learning, wisdom from reflection, and wisdom from meditation, in order to reach true and let go of wrong views.
Wrong View and Conceit: Why the Ancients Compared It to Kingship
A follow-up question asked why the ancients so often compared wrong view to the pride of kings. The teacher explained that conceit — clinging to self-importance — is a tool side uses to inflate the ego through the acceptance of others. People of high standing or rank, such as kings or widely revered teachers, have their ego built up bigger and made more forceful than an ordinary person's. The remedy is to point directly at the dark heart of the unwholesome force possessing someone — what it fears most is being named outright, since it wants to hide. If the person has a wholesome foundation of mind, being shown this directly usually brings them to their senses.
Where Does Declined or Unripened Merit Go?
Another questioner asked: if we decline a gift or prize we were due to receive, or if we pass away before merit has a chance to ripen, or if we simply don't care to rejoice in merit that's coming to us — where does that merit go? The teacher explained that all merit and demerit are stored in the inner sphere of Dhamma; none of it is ever lost. It's like a single mango seed that, once planted, bears fruit season after season — when one season passes, the merit still has future lifetimes in which to ripen. Not being pleased or displeased by sense pleasures, resting in equanimity and , actually raises the quality of mind so the unwholesome side can't exploit it to create greed. And whether merit ripens at a full hundred percent, or even more, depends on how consistently we live within system.
The teacher also spoke of the importance of faith and effort, since these are what allow the inner wise and powerful forces to step in and help fix our lives — just as someone who has already experienced something good tends to carry more hope and faith than someone who never has.