Why Practicing the Dhamma Matters for Every Life

Meditation practice is necessary and vitally important for every life, because we live under the control of three kinds of nature. Only the wholesome system can give benefit, happiness, success, knowledge, understanding, correctness, goodness, and prosperity to us, to the world, and to all beings. Apart from the wholesome system, every other nature gives no benefit at all, and if it is unwholesome it brings us suffering and harm instead. This is why we must learn to understand, and train ourselves to abide within the wholesome system.

The Buddha's Teaching: Determine and Know Body, Feeling, Mind, and Dhamma

The Buddha taught the monks: "Monks, you should clearly determine and know the body, feelings, mind, and mental objects, in order to remove covetousness and grief regarding the world." To determine something is: wherever we point, the mind is placed there. When we go in to know it, the sphere of knowing — mindfulness — arises in the center of the mind. This intention arises together with a continuous drawing-in of pure energy called merit, flowing into the bright center of that sphere of mindfulness. This pure energy drives the wholesome system, refining the elements within us and clearing away defilement. As defilement lightens, problems and hardship lighten too, and once it is exhausted, purification and liberation carry us into a subtler dimension — one with more valuable resources, purer merit, and greater capacity to clear away defilement.

Feeling, Mind, and Dhamma: The Mechanism That Shapes Present and Future

The Buddha taught determined knowing in four grounds: body, feeling, mind, and mental objects. The body is any part of the physical form — the breath (mindfulness of breathing), the rising and falling of the abdomen, or the center of the body. Feeling is pleasure, pain, or neither, arising whenever some nature manages to take the house; the mind is our instrument of knowing — whatever it knows, we know. The mind itself is the arising of thought and recollection drawn from past data — the thinking of whatever nature has come to possess us. Mental objects are what appear in each present moment, the emotional coloring of the mind. When some nature possesses the mind, its voice directs and dictates our speech and action. When we act on it, merit or demerit arises for us: if what dictates us is unwholesome, unwholesome energy is drawn in, storing up misfortune and a completed blueprint of misfortune; if wholesome, merit is drawn in instead. All of this is the working-out of merit and demerit, shaping events both now and in the near and distant future.

We Are Unwitting Accomplices — But Understanding Lets Us Choose

We need to understand this mechanism, because it concerns our life both now and in the future. Without realizing it, we are accomplices in our own thoughts and actions. But once we know and understand, we can choose — even though choosing not to follow along is genuinely difficult, since whatever we feel pleased or displeased about has already had an effect on us that we cannot avoid. This is precisely why we must let go — let go, and settle the mind into neutrality.

If Only One Teaching Could Remain: Let Go of All Clinging

In the Buddhist tradition, someone once asked the Buddha: if only one essential teaching could remain, what should it be? The Buddha answered: "Let go of all clinging and attachment." This differs from what we commonly assume is the heart of Buddhism — "do good, avoid evil, purify the mind." That assumption is not wrong, exactly, because the wholesome system is indeed meant to lead us toward doing good, avoiding evil, and purifying the mind. But if you ask people of the world what "good" means, the answers differ. Each religion has its own notion of good and its own notion of evil, shaped by whatever society and values define them. Letting go of all clinging and attachment, by contrast, is a more universal principle.

Why We Must Cultivate Meditation to Clear Away Defilement

We cultivate right mindfulness and meditation, drawing in the pure energy of merit, precisely to clear away the defilement that presses down on us and dictates our behavior, causing our lives to be filled with problems and obstacles. We could choose not to practice, but life then becomes difficult, because the problems we leave unresolved will resurface in the days ahead. As defilement lightens and clears, our life is freed from one dimension into another, and our circumstances improve. We must therefore keep establishing the cause that draws this pure energy of merit continuously into ourselves, remaining constantly aware without lapsing.

The Twofold Purpose of Determined Knowing: Calm and Wisdom

Practicing determined knowing of body, feeling, mind, and dhamma serves two purposes: calm and wisdom. Calm means being settled and free from the hindrances that create problems, obstacles, confusion, and turmoil. Wisdom means liberation from ignorance and from the mental formations that wrongly proliferate — the mistaken thoughts and feelings that constitute wrong view — moving instead toward right view. The more right view we develop, the more we are able to reject the unwholesome influences that try to direct us, and the more correctly we can act, in accordance with reality. Insight (vipassana) has two aspects: one that knows but does not yet see, which is the foundational stage, and one that both knows and sees. Even if we cannot yet see, for lack of light and the Dhamma-eye, that is fine — basic insight practice still helps our right view develop. The Buddha taught that tranquility (samatha) and insight (vipassana) must go together.

The Five Hindrances: Obstacles to Light and the Dhamma-Eye

In cultivating tranquility, we work to clear away the defilement of the hindrances — sensual desire, restlessness, ill-will, drowsiness and sleepiness, and doubt. These five hindrances continually obstruct our progress, preventing us from reaching the light, the Dhamma-eye, and higher knowledge. We must therefore clear these hindrances until they lighten, so that we can reach the light, the Dhamma-eye, and true knowledge.

Cultivating Tranquility at the Seventh Base: The Gateway to Nibbana

In cultivating tranquility, our teachers advise us to place the mind at the center of the body, the seventh base. This position matters because it is the point where all eighteen of our bodies converge on a single center, and it is also the gateway leading straight toward the path of Nibbana. Simply by placing our attention at this seventh base, an image of two crossing lines forming an X appears, bright and clear in the center of our body, at the level of the navel, two finger-widths above it — the seat of the mind.

Samma-Arahang, and the Crystal Buddha Image Appears

Our teachers advise us to recite, from deep and subtle awareness: "Samma-Arahang, Samma-Arahang," to connect with the refined inner knowing within. This is the epithet of the Dhammakaya of the arahant — one who is far from every defilement, who practices well and rightly. As we utter this name, the figure appears in the center of our mind and body — a crystal Dhammakaya, crowned with an unopened lotus bud, bright and gleaming. Once it appears, it purifies the elements of seeing, remembering, thinking, and knowing, along with earth, water, wind, fire, space, and consciousness within us, clearing away every defilement — because this figure is our own true nature. It expands and overlays, becoming one with our human body, taking on the role of guiding, guarding, and protecting it.

Merging Into One With the Buddha Image, Part by Part

Let us adopt the felt sense that we are the Buddha-image and the Buddha-image is us, so that our whole body becomes the crystal Dhammakaya, bright, clear, cool, clean, and pure — the crown of the head, the face with its gently closed eyes and faint, serene smile, the eyebrows, nose, cheeks, mouth, chin, shoulders and arms down to the fingertips, chest, abdomen, and back, hips, thighs, knees, shins, and feet — all becoming the crystal Dhammakaya, gleaming and radiant, soft, gentle, and delicate, clear, cool, clean, and pure. The mind is a servant of what we determine — whatever we set our intention on, that is what becomes.

Still Within Still, Silent Within Silence: Aiming Straight for Nibbana

Once body merges with body as one unity, let mind merge with mind as one as well. The figure dwells at the center of our body, entering the attainment of cessation, settling the mind into stillness — and we settle our mind into stillness along with it: soft, relaxed, at ease, still within still, silent within silence, in the center of the Buddha-image, the center of our body, the center of our mind, aiming straight along the middle path toward Nibbana, with a mind that is relaxed, light, clear, cool, clean, pure, and radiant. This is the noblest and highest way of living — a life aimed straight at the path to Nibbana. Each day, once our duties are done and the body has been cleansed, we come to merge ourselves with the wholesome system, with the Triple Gem as its guardian, becoming one with the Dhamma-body endowed with the virtue of perfect wisdom, perfect purity, and boundless compassion.

Radiating Loving-Kindness to All Beings and the Universe

Abiding in the center of Nibbana, we go on to establish good causes, bringing boundless benefit to the world and all beings. We set the wish that the world and all beings be free from suffering and find happiness everywhere; that we cause no harm to one another; that all may be freed from bodily and mental suffering. Loving-kindness, a bright clear sphere, appears in the center of our being; its light dispels resentment and ill-will wherever it shines. We let it expand — covering our home, village, district, province, country, and neighboring countries, until it covers the whole world, turning it into a crystal sphere, bright, clear, cool, clean, and pure. May all beings — earthbound devas, tree devas, sky devas, every realm of heaven, brahmas, formless brahmas, and even beings in hell, the hungry-ghost realm, the asura realm, and the animal realm — be free from suffering and find happiness. We let it expand further still, across countless stars, out to boundless world-systems, without limit.

Dedicating Merit and Making an Aspiration

The stream of merit continues pouring in through the bright center of loving-kindness. We dedicate this merit to the world and all beings, to our ancestors, parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and to the teachers who have shown us kindness, to the devas who help and protect all beings, and to our karmic counterparties (คู่กรรมคู่เวร) whom we may have wronged, asking mutual forgiveness. We then settle the mind still in this stream of merit, in the pure sphere of merit, in the center of the Triple Gem — the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha jewels — in the subtlest Dhamma-body of our Grand Teachers, and pray for their blessing to fix a completed blueprint in the center of our sphere of merit, so that our whole path of building perfections may be filled with knowledge, happiness, and purity. We ask that all this accumulated merit combine into sacred power that dissolves misfortune, karmic consequences, and every obstacle; that greed, hatred, delusion, lust, ignorance, wrong view, craving, and clinging be exhausted without residue; that we gain the eye of Dhamma, attain the knowledge of the Dhammakaya, enjoy strong health and long life to keep building perfections, and progress steadily toward the path of Nibbana. The sit closes with the traditional dedication chant beginning with the Sabbe Buddha verses and the word Sadhu.