พระอาจารย์สุรพงค์สอนว่า บุญสามารถไหลผ่านเราได้ในทุกอิริยาบถ ไม่ว่าจะนั่ง นอน หรือยืนเฉย ๆ ขอเพียงมีสติกำหนดรู้ พร้อมชี้เทคนิคสำคัญคือการฝึกสังเกตความแตกต่างระหว่างความรู้สึกตอนมีสติกับตอนขาดสติ เพื่อให้รู้ได้ว่าขณะใดบุญกำลังไหลผ่านตัวเรา ปิดท้ายด้วยการแผ่เมตตาดุจมารดารักบุตรและอุทิศส่วนบุญเต็มรูปแบบPhra Ajarn Suraphong teaches that merit can flow through us in any posture — sitting, lying down, or standing still — so long as mindfulness is present. He points to a key technique: training ourselves to notice the felt difference between having mindfulness and lacking it, so we can recognize, moment to moment, whether merit is flowing through us. The talk closes with loving-kindness radiated like a mother's love for her child, and a full dedication of merit.
Why We Practice, and the Foundation of Knowing Body, Feeling, Mind, and Dhamma
Phra Ajarn Suraphong opened by noting that practice is essential for every life, because we are under the control of three natures. Only brings us real benefit — of truth, rightness, goodness, clarity — guiding, teaching, and helping us in every way. The Buddha therefore taught: "Monks, you should clearly determine and know the body, feelings, mind, and mental phenomena, in order to remove covetousness and grief in regard to the world." For the body, we might fix on the breath — called — or on the body itself, called body-, or hold the mantra and visualization at .
Feeling: How Pleasure, Suffering, Neutrality, and Equanimity Differ
Feeling is what the mind senses from whatever nature has taken possession. If wholesome, it is pleasure and ease; if unwholesome, it is suffering — a state that must be endured and is hard to bear. If it is the neutral nature, we sense only a strange blankness, different from the neutrality of equanimity — neither quite good nor bad, neither pleasant nor painful. Equanimity, by contrast, perceives pleasure and suffering exactly as they are, but holds the mind in balance, without liking or disliking whatever stimulates it.
Mind Within Mind: When the Ruling Nature's Thoughts Overlay Our Own
As for the mind: whatever nature possesses us overlays its own mind and s onto ours — called "mind within mind, within Dhamma." Once overlaid, its thoughts appear as our own thoughts. If the possessing mind is unwholesome, its thoughts and feelings serve to pull us down, feeding greed, aversion, delusion, and lust. If the possessing nature is wholesome, its thoughts are good, its feelings refined, gentle, cool, clean, and pure — quite unlike 's boredom, gloom, irritability, exhaustion, discouragement, and despair. The mind is our instrument of knowing; whatever it knows, we know — but when the ruling nature conceals itself, we don't recognize that the thought is not truly our own.
The Purpose of Determining and Knowing: Removing the World's Gladness and Grief
Determining body, feeling, mind, and Dhamma serves a crucial purpose: letting go of "abhijjhā" and "domanassa." Abhijjhā is gladness that breeds greed; domanassa is grief that breeds irritation and displeasure. The Buddha taught us to remove liking and disliking toward forms, tastes, smells, sounds, and sensual pleasures, so the unwholesome cannot use them as an opening to provoke greed and ill will. When sin flows into us, it brings calamity within the sphere of suffering, together with a blueprint of failure. We should therefore have nothing to do with the unwholesome, relying instead on equanimity — holding the mind neutral, letting the gentle wholesome factor of even-mindedness sustain that neutrality.
Determining Is Paying Attention: Wherever the Mind Is, Mindfulness Arises There
Determining means marking or specifying precisely in order to know. Wherever we mark, the mind is placed there — called "paying attention." Wherever attention is placed, we come to know it, and mindfulness is established there. Once established, the drawing-in of pure energy flows exactly to where the sphere of knowing is, clearing away the defilement — the veiling element of — that lies there.
Defilement Is the Veiling Element, the Root of Every Difficulty
Defilement is the source of problems and obstacles, creating difficulty in life and in practice. When merit flows continuously into the brightness at the center of the sphere of knowing, it drives the wholesome system, refining and lightening the defilement. As defilement lightens, problems, obstacles, and difficulty naturally lighten too.
Sitting Still, Lying Still, Standing Still — Merit Can Always Flow
Phra Ajarn Suraphong pointed out that we need to learn to feel mindfulness itself — to notice the difference between having it and lacking it. What does having mindfulness feel like? What does its absence feel like? If we can perceive this difference, we will know, moment to moment, whether or not merit is flowing through us. Sit still, and merit can flow. Lie still, rest idly, and merit can flow. Stand still, and merit can flow. Whatever we are doing, merit can flow through us — provided we recognize the difference between having mindfulness and lacking it.
Learning to Feel the Difference Between Having Sati and Not
As for the meditation object itself, this belongs to the mind — the recollection of whichever object we have learned. There are many kinds; we choose one to determine and establish the sphere of knowing, giving it something to hold and rely on. The drawing-in of pure energy then continues without break. As long as that awareness persists — whether as sound, image, or any feeling — we should stay continuously, unfailingly aware of it.
The Signal of a Meditation Object: Mantra and Visualization
What we need is a clear, continuous signal — such as a recited mantra. The signal of the verbal mantra is "Sammā Arahaṃ, Sammā Arahaṃ," and the signal of the visualization is the image of the Buddha figure — together, image and sound give mindfulness something to hold onto continuously.
The Present Moment: Past and Future Are Both Cooked Up in the Now
Every phenomenon that arises in our mind can only arise in the present moment. Whatever nature is active reveals itself in the present, drawing on illusory data from the past to shape us, and channeling hopes about the future into the present as well. If we abide within the wholesome system, mindfulness perceives things as they truly are and helps draw in pure energy to clear away defilement — the ignorance that obscures reality. But if the unwholesome takes hold, it uses mental formations — thought and conditioning — to produce wrong view that distorts the truth, guiding us to speak and act wrongly according to its own aims.
From Coarse to Subtle Dimensions: Inner Status Is the Cause, Outer Status the Result
When the sphere of knowing is established continuously, merit flows in to purify the defilement at whatever point we determine, until it is fully lightened. With nothing left binding us to that dimension, we are liberated into a subtler one with better resources waiting. This purification and liberation increase the proportion of wholesomeness within us, while the strength of the unwholesome and the neutral diminishes. Inner status is the cause; outer status is the result. Every day, after finishing our worldly duties, we cleanse the body — but the mind needs cleansing too, so that no defilement remains to cause problems and obstacles.
Radiating Loving-Kindness Like a Mother's Love for Her Child
Having done good for ourselves, we go on to benefit the world and all beings through . He taught us to set this wish with real sincerity, like the love and goodwill of a mother for her young child: may all beings who share the suffering of birth, aging, sickness, and death be free from suffering and find everywhere. We expand this mind filled with loving-kindness to cover our home, village, sub-district, district, province, the whole country, neighboring countries, and finally the entire world, turning it into a shining crystal orb, cool, clean, and pure. May earth-bound devas, sky devas, celestial beings of every heavenly realm, Brahmas, formless Brahmas, and even hell-beings, hungry ghosts, and animals be free from suffering and find happiness everywhere. We then expand further into the atmosphere of the cosmos, covering countless stars, out to ten thousand world-systems and the boundless universe. Loving-kindness also refines every element — earth, water, air, mountains, and forests — making the environment fit for all people and beings to dwell in.
Dedicating Merit to Karmic Counterparts and Family, Merging with the Triple Gem
Phra Ajarn Suraphong dedicated this merit to all beings, our ancestors, relatives and friends, parents, siblings, grandparents, teachers and benefactors, our caretakers, and all the beings we have ever wronged, our karmic counterparts (คู่กรรมคู่เวร), asking forgiveness on both sides and that they too receive a share of this merit. We then gathered the mind to stillness within the stream of merit, settling into the Triple Gem — the Buddha Jewel, the Dhamma Jewel, the Sangha Jewel — wearing the feeling that we are the Buddha image and the Buddha image is us, merging ourselves with it as one, into the center of the refined Dhamma bodies of the Great Preceptor, the Great Revered Luang Pu, and Luang Phor.
Setting the Blueprint of Success and the Closing Chant
When we recollect them, we and they appear bright at the center of Nibbāna, the center of the boundless, powerful knowing beings. Nibbāna takes the elements of seeing, memory, thought, and knowing — earth, water, wind, fire, space, and consciousness — and refines them to , connecting our stream of merit and treasure and resolving obstacles in advance. Phra Ajarn Suraphong then led the setting of a within this bright sphere of merit, asking that all merit combine into a sacred, powerful force, freeing us from calamity and the effects of past kamma, granting the Dhamma-eye and full penetration of the knowledge of , good health, and prosperity in whatever business or work we undertake, and, when the time comes to leave this world, rebirth into a family of right view. The sit closed with the chant: "Sabbe Buddhānubhāvena... Sabbe Dhammānubhāvena... Sabbe Saṅghānubhāvena... Saddhā sotthī ntu te. Sādhu."