พระอาจารย์อธิบายว่าดวงธรรมกลางตัวเราเก็บบุญบาปที่สำเร็จแล้วซึ่งกำหนดชีวิตของเรา ฝ่ายอกุศลใช้โลภะโทสะโมหะทำลายทรัพย์สมบัติ รูปสมบัติ คุณสมบัติ จึงต้องอาศัยศีล สมาธิ ปัญญาสามระดับในการปกป้องและยกระดับชีวิตให้หลุดพ้นจากวงจรนี้The teacher explains that the sphere of dhamma at our center stores completed merit and demerit that shape our life. The unwholesome side uses greed, aversion, and delusion to destroy our wealth, form, and virtue, so we must rely on morality, concentration, and wisdom — three levels of life — to protect and elevate us out of that cycle.
Someone shared the great teacher's teaching from the " for the People" program: performing wholesome deeds — giving, morality, meditation — forms an important blueprint used to eliminate roots of greed, anger, and delusion, all rooted in . Giving well, keeping precepts, and meditating purify our underlying elements — sight, memory, thought, and awareness — into cleanliness and . Eliminating greed brings forth wealth; eliminating anger brings a complete, well-formed body; eliminating delusion brings complete . We should therefore devote ourselves fully to accumulating merit, without heedlessness.
When asked why we must abide within - system, the teacher explained as follows.
The Sphere of Dhamma at Our Center Holds Everything That Shapes Our Life
The teacher explained that within us lies a sphere of dhamma at our center, storing everything connected to us — the material element, mind and mental factors, and the energy of completed merit and demerit. Our lives on this earth differ from one another because of the fruit of that completed merit and demerit stored within the sphere of dhamma, which determines the parents and family we are born to, the environment we live in — all according to the completed blueprint that draws in those very conditions for us.
The unwholesome side incites greed in order to destroy our wealth, urging us to want things quickly and in great excess, beyond what our own sphere of merit can actually draw in. Everything unfolds according to its own proper timing — nothing can be forced beyond that timing. So the unwholesome side uses greed to destroy wealth-treasure, aversion to destroy form-treasure, and delusion to destroy virtue-treasure. The wholesome side must therefore counter with morality, concentration, and wisdom — the three levels of life contained within our own sphere of dhamma.
The First Level: Morality, Which Provides Safety
Morality is the level that provides safety in how we live. As long as the unwholesome side can lead us into breaking precepts, we remain within "unwholesome morality" — the normal state of the unwholesome side — killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, and drinking. Killing arises from the power of aversion; stealing arises from the power of greed, which pressures and compels craving into being — a bribery scenario, for instance, would never arise at all without a corresponding karmic history of repeated dishonesty. Sexual misconduct arises from lust transgressing what is forbidden; lying keeps us living amid distortion, never encountering truth; and drinking destroys mindfulness, the core component of wholesome dhamma — destroying it directly.
When we abide in wholesome morality instead, the wholesome side guides us to protect our safety from aversion — not killing or harming others — to be free of greed for what belongs to others, to avoid transgressing what is forbidden, to stand in truthfulness, and to avoid heedlessness toward whatever would destroy us. The five precepts protect us from unwholesome morality; the eight precepts protect us from both the unwholesome and the neutral, letting us abide continuously within the wholesome-dhamma system.
Morality leads toward purity. Once we undertake and affirm to ourselves, "I now hold to morality, I am pure," and sustain that purity continuously, a point of brightness begins to form at the very center of the mind — smaller, at first, than the tip of a needle — and gradually expands outward until it reaches the full span of our outstretched arms. At that point, we exclaim inwardly: "Once I had to guard the precepts — now the precepts guard me."
The Second Level, Concentration — Peaceful Happiness; and the Third, Wisdom — Clarity
The teacher explained that happiness exists within every underlying nature, each offering its own gain, honor, and praise — but only wholesome happiness comes paired with purity. Knowledge from the other natures serves happiness alone, a happiness that scatters the mind into excitement and agitation, never finding true peace. This differs from the wholesome side's knowledge paired with happiness and purity, oriented toward peace, seclusion, dispassion, liberation, purity, and Nibbana.
Morality leads to concentration, the second level of life — abiding in peaceful , oriented by the power of concentration toward peace and seclusion, which grants access to the inner knower. This inner knower then leads us to clear understanding of purity, freeing us from ignorance, craving, clinging, becoming, birth, aging, death, sorrow, and lamentation — through the power of wisdom, the third level of life.
Raising Life Through Morality, Concentration, and Wisdom
Although our life is initially shaped by the completed blueprint of past karmic merit and demerit, we can correct, refine, and develop it through morality, concentration, and wisdom, raising the quality of all three levels of life ever higher — from higher morality, higher mind, and higher wisdom, onward to even greater heights still. Only wholesome dhamma can support us in attaining a complete form-treasure, wealth-treasure, and virtue-treasure — finding safety, peaceful happiness, and ever clearer understanding along the way.