พระอาจารย์อธิบายว่ามลทินในใจเป็นสาเหตุของฝันร้ายและอาการจิตตก แนะให้แก้ไขด้วยศีล 8 การเจริญภาวนาและเมตตา พร้อมอธิบายว่าดวงศีล สมาธิ ปัญญา วิมุตติ และวิมุตติญาณทัศนะ เป็นเครื่องมือประจำกายที่จะช่วยแก้ปัญหาได้Pra Ajarn explains that mental impurity is the cause of both nightmares and a sinking mood, recommends the eight precepts, meditation, and loving-kindness as remedies, and describes how the inner spheres of morality, concentration, wisdom, liberation, and knowledge-and-vision of liberation are the built-in tools that resolve these problems.
Someone asked: why do nightmares occur several nights in a row, how can this be fixed, and why does the mind feel low so often lately while sitting in meditation?
Mental Impurity Is the Cause of Nightmares and Low Mood
When the mind carries im, nightmares tend to follow. Impurity belongs to the subtler body, and it forces us toward unwholesome actions, because it is controlled by demerit that keeps drawing in more demerit.
The Remedy: The Eight Precepts, Meditation, and Study
The remedy is to keep the eight precepts, meditate, study the , give generously, and practice consistently. Once the mind is free of impurity, the nightmares stop. A sinking mood is remedied the same way — keeping the eight precepts, cultivating , studying the Dhamma, and making the aspiration for the mind to grow ever nobler and more wholesome.
The Built-In Tools: The Spheres of Morality, Concentration, Wisdom, Liberation, and Liberation-Knowledge
We already carry the tools needed to solve these problems within us — the inner spheres of Dhamma: morality, concentration, wisdom, liberation, and -and-vision of liberation. Undertaking brightens the sphere of morality, drawing in merit that clears away impurity; morality addresses matters of body and speech. The sphere of concentration addresses the mind and its s, impurities there — though fixing things at that level only goes so far. What matters most is right view (sammā-diṭṭhi), a correct and wholesome outlook, which depends on the sphere of wisdom recognizing the value of and the harm of the unwholesome. Once we see the danger of the unwholesome and avoid it, and see the benefit of the wholesome and abide in it, that correct outlook allows the sphere of liberation to free us from unwholesome tendencies — laziness, fearfulness, irritability, self-pity, and the like. The sphere of knowledge-and-vision of liberation, in turn, leads us to a life that grows ever more wholesome and wondrous.