คำสอน · พระอาจารย์สุรพงค์Teaching · Pra Ajarn Suraphong
เหตุใดจึงกล่าวว่า 'สร้างโลกสวยด้วยใจเรา' และเหตุใดการปฏิบัติธรรมจึงขจัดความคิดเบียดเบียนได้ดีที่สุด?Why Is It Said We 'Build a Beautiful World With Our Own Mind,' and Why Does Practice Best Remove Harmful Thoughts?
พระอาจารย์ขยายความโอวาทหลวงพ่อว่าไม่มีวิธีใดขจัดความคิดเบียดเบียน ความเห็นแก่ตัว และทิฐิมานะได้ดีเท่าการปฏิบัติธรรม เพราะเหนี่ยวนำบุญได้มากพอ อธิบายว่าความคิดเบียดเบียนคืออารมณ์ของอกุศลที่เข้าสิงใจ และการปฏิบัติทั้งเจโตวิมุตติและปัญญาวิมุตติจะทำให้หลุดพ้นอย่างต่อเนื่องจนสัดส่วนของกุศลเต็ม 100%Pra Ajarn expands on Luang Phor's teaching that no method removes harmful thoughts, selfishness, and conceit as well as meditation practice, because it draws in enough merit. He explains that harmful thoughts are the moods of the unwholesome side possessing the mind, and that practicing both liberation of heart and liberation by wisdom brings continuous liberation until the wholesome proportion reaches one hundred percent.
Someone asked why Luang Phor's teaching invoked meditation practice in speaking of building a beautiful world with our own mind.
No Method Removes Harmful Thoughts as Well as Practice
The teaching says: there is no method that cuts away human beings' harmful thoughts, selfishness, quarreling, wrong view, or conceit as well as meditation practice — because other methods draw in little merit. Only practice draws in merit enough to remove these.
Mindfulness Draws Merit In to Drive the Wholesome System
When we do anything without a resting place for the mind, no merit is drawn in, and the mind drifts and scatters. But when — a wholesome — arises, it draws merit in. The wholesome mental factors are not mindfulness alone but also faith, moral shame and dread, non-greed, non-aversion, equanimity, and others — nineteen that arise together with . When they arise, they draw merit in to drive the wholesome system, refining the elements to automatically. The human body's only role is to keep knowing, staying aware without lapse, so the sphere of mindfulness arises and draws merit in to clear impurity — both and the latent tendencies.
Harmful Thoughts Are the Moods of the Unwholesome Side Possessing the Mind
Harmful thoughts are the thoughts of side possessing our mind. When a nature takes rulership, it overlays the body, feeling, mind, and mental objects of a lower side, and its thoughts arise in our mind as if they were our own. But no one teaches us that these thoughts aren't ours — they belong to the three natural forces. When the wholesome possesses us, the thoughts are good, even moving to us; both thought and mood are beautiful, adorned with morality and . But when the unwholesome possesses us, its mental factors — being of a side lower than human, like wandering spirits, hell-beings, asuras — are furnished with greed, aversion, delusion, lust, the hindrances, and envy; so thinking, speaking, and acting badly becomes unavoidable.
Harming Even Those We Love, Because the Unwholesome Compels
When the unwholesome possesses us, even within one family people clash — harming even those we love or who love us — selfish and grasping, quarreling with those around us. This is because the unwholesome must pick fights to draw demerit in to drive its own system, pressing our elements downward. The more we sink, the darker the mind; the unwholesome proportion grows and the wholesome shrinks, and we live with ever more difficulty. Living peacefully becomes harder, as we're freed from a coarse dimension only into a coarser one, again and again.
Practice Brings Continuous Liberation
To recover, the wholesome must possess our mind, overlaying the body, feeling, and mind of the good wholesome side to draw merit in. Whenever the unwholesome possesses us, it drives to the extreme of badness; whenever the wholesome possesses us, we're freed toward the noble and good, liberated again and again. Giving and morality free us to a degree, but concentration refines continuously, liberating over and over, until we come to sense and purity.
Liberation of Heart and Liberation by Wisdom: Both Are Needed
Practice has two aspects — and . Tranquility reaches liberation of heart, freeing us from the impurity of the hindrances. Insight helps us reach liberation by wisdom. With liberation of heart alone, if we create wrong causes we can still be pressed down; but with liberation by wisdom, once freed, it's hard to return to those causes, because we understand their danger clearly. So both are needed. Liberation of heart frees us from the hindrances that agitate and confuse the mind — like white paper that's been dirtied, which must be cleaned before its deep contents can be studied.
Liberating Until the Wholesome Proportion Reaches One Hundred Percent — That Is Nibbana
Practice is therefore essential, taking us far from the defilements. The more we're liberated, the subtler the dimension we enter, where the wholesome proportion is greater and the unwholesome and neutral ease off. We must keep liberating until the wholesome proportion reaches one hundred percent, unmixed with the unwholesome — then we attain nibbana. Human beings differ precisely in this wholesome proportion: the more wholesome, the lighter and more open the mind. But without practice, one is good one moment and bad the next; the unwholesome seeks to press one down, circling endlessly in the round of rebirth — rising to the brahma and formless-brahma realms, then sinking back to the hells, hungry ghosts, asuras, and animals, back and forth without end — all because of not practicing.