Someone asked: a few months ago, Pra Ajarn taught that a monk who liked playing Chinese chess or checkers, after his passing, had to keep playing that same game out under the harsh sun (a story recounted from the late revered teacher Luang Por Charan). Hearing this, the questioner deleted the game they'd been playing. Does the same apply to someone hooked on watching series or films — will they also end up sitting and watching films under the sun after death?

This concerns monastics specifically. Once ordained, a monk's purpose is to make nibbana manifest; spending the time available on things that produce no real benefit for oneself runs contrary to that purpose. It is precisely this wasted time, producing no benefit, that violates the purpose of that state of life — and all of this follows the mechanics of the three natures. The neutral guides one toward things that produce no benefit; the unwholesome guides one toward things that cause harm.

As for playing chess or checkers itself: if the mind is set only on winning or losing, with no connection to greed, this doesn't in itself count as directly unwholesome — unless gambling with money is involved, which would then count as wrong livelihood. Even when the mind isn't wholesome, that alone doesn't make it unwholesome — except insofar as it reflects a mistaken view: that time, life's single most precious resource, is being spent producing no benefit at all, squandering that resource for nothing.

A separate issue is absorption. Without gambling involved, what happens instead is simply becoming absorbed in something unproductive, spending time without any benefit resulting. This absorption produces delusion (moha). Once delusion arises, it leads on to greed and aversion — a fixation on the emotion at hand. Winning brings pleasure that fixates the mind on that feeling; losing brings irritation. Both draw in demerit alike. It resembles someone addicted to cigarettes: smoking brings a dull, hazy feeling; not smoking brings craving. Life ends up cycling between craving and a felt sense of lack.

Gamers are the same — absorbed in the game until the mind loses its clarity, at which point the unwholesome or the neutral keeps urging them to play more. Watching films or series works the same way: the crafted storylines are designed precisely to produce pleasure and displeasure in turn — watching brings alternating joy, sorrow, mindless laughter, tears, fear when watching a horror film — all of it swings the mind toward pleasure or displeasure. When pleased, greed arises; when displeased, aversion and irritation arise, drawing in demerit little by little. The mind grows unclear, and when one then sits in meditation, it doesn't go well — one tends to either fall asleep or become scattered, because a mind absorbed in things that swing it toward pleasure and displeasure gives the unwholesome an easier opening to steer it down into greed, lust, aversion, and delusion.