พระอาจารย์อธิบายว่า ความคิดและความรู้สึกของมนุษย์ไม่ได้เป็นของเราเองล้วน ๆ แต่ถูกกายเวทนาจิตธรรมฝ่ายกุศล อกุศล และอัพยากตะควบคุมอยู่ ทางออกคือต้องนำหน้าความคิดอยู่เสมอด้วยการสั่งสมบารมีและปฏิบัติธรรมจนกว่าจะเป็นอัตโนมัติThe teacher explains that our thoughts and feelings aren't purely our own — they're governed by wholesome, unwholesome, and neutral nature acting through body, feeling, mind, and mental phenomena. The way out is to always stay one step ahead of that current, through accumulated perfections and practice until it becomes automatic.
Someone shared a video with the teacher about the brain's DMN, or Default Mode Network, and about practice, mentioning that several doctors are researching why humans think all the time, and looking for a way to stop it.
Always Stay One Step Ahead
The teacher recalled that the Founder said something like this thirty years ago: we must always stay at least one step ahead of it, never following behind. When it lies down, we sit. When it sits, we stand. When it stands, we walk. When it starts walking, we run. When it starts running, we've already reached the finish line. We must always lead it by at least one step.
Body, Feeling, Mind, Dhamma: The Nature That Governs Thought and Feeling
Most people don't yet realize that a natural force governs them and all beings — governing through body, feeling, mind, and mental phenomena, which shape behavior. When this governs through , it compels the human body, or the body of any being, to act and speak in ways that produce different behavior: side makes one harsh and coarse, side makes one gentle and polite, and the neutral side takes neither position.
As for our thoughts and feelings, they are governed by and s (). The mind governs thought — the inner voice and the mental images. The mental factors govern feeling and emotion. This is how the components of a human being — body, feeling, mind, — are governed. So how could every thought truly belong to us, when that other side's body-feeling-mind-dhamma is the one managing and controlling our own? What people call “thinking” actually includes feeling and emotion as well.
Science Is Getting Closer to the Truth
The teacher noted that science is now on the right track, because the wholesome, unwholesome, and neutral forces of nature keep developing over time. Decades ago, samadhi practice developed and people grew more interested in meditation because something coarse and visible appeared — laser light, a wave with a high degree of order. After that, more people took up meditation, using the wave of the mind to address illness such as cancer and AIDS. The World Health Organization once visited a temple in Thailand that used meditation to heal illness, and in America an institute was founded to treat cancer through meditation. Later research found brainwave patterns such as beta and alpha waves, though science still could not fully explain them.
Something even more striking is that science discovered particles finer than the atom — electrons, then protons — and, at the finest level, emptiness itself. It is this very emptiness that gives rise to vibration, which became the basis of string theory: specific frequency patterns that are the origin of everything, which is why it's also called the theory of everything. But Buddhism already knew this — that wholesome dhamma, unwholesome dhamma, and neutral dhamma are the natural forces at the root of all things, governing every being and everything that exists, because human thought and feeling are entirely the result of guidance from that inner voice.
Why Accumulating Perfections Matters
Before Buddhists could know this truth, the Lord Buddha had to accumulate perfections for twenty incalculable aeons plus a hundred thousand great aeons, in order to know what holds every being in its grip. Even if beings do good, refrain from evil, and purify the mind as much as they can, none of that alone can free them from the cycle of samsara.
In the old days, every family taught its children to avoid evil and do good, and to practice meditation to purify the mind — some even became yogis able to fly through the air, and adepts in China who could fly and lived for hundreds or even thousands of years, along with accomplished practitioners across South Asia. But not one of those extraordinary beings was ever able to escape samsara.
The scriptures record that the Buddha once passed through a village and asked Ananda whether he had seen the piglet in a villager's pen just a moment before. Ananda said he had. The Buddha told him that the piglet had once been a Great Brahma; but once its as Brahma ran out, it had to cycle through birth and death in samsara — as a hell being, an asura, an animal — endlessly, without end.
This is why the Buddha had to accumulate perfections for such an immense span of time, to awaken to the truth of these three natural forces. The heart of the Buddhist teaching is recognizing how nature governs beings through that inner voice — body, feeling, mind, dhamma. Recognizing this is through wisdom. Remaining constantly aware, without lapsing, in order to draw in energy for , is . Both are needed to be freed from of these three natural forces. Had the Buddha not accumulated those perfections, none of us could understand any of this — which is why perfections matter so greatly; they are the very mechanism of liberation from samsara. No matter how extraordinary a person may be, without perfections there is no escaping samsara. One must walk the path of one who has accumulated great perfections — the path of the great Bodhisatta. Without accumulating perfections, one cannot truly access, understand, or even take interest in the Buddhist teaching. Some study until they reach the Triple Gem within, yet still do not reach the kaya, and still do not accept it.
To practice , one needs the eye of dhamma, the light of wisdom, -, and understanding — and these qualities can only be attained by reaching the Dhammakaya. As for that light, Khun Yai once said: the light needed to know and see the knowledge that cannot otherwise be hidden or obscured is not the brightness of ten suns, or twenty, or a hundred, or a thousand — it must be a million suns, filling the whole sky, packed densely with sunlight. Yet that brightness does not hurt the eyes; it is a heavenly light, soft and gentle to both eye and heart. Such an immense light is needed, together with the dhamma-wheel of the arahant Dhammakaya body and insight-knowledge, to see the subtle knowledge and the path and its fruit. All of this together makes up wisdom.
Practicing Until It Becomes Automatic — and How Merit Differs From Perfections
Practice requires a suitable, worry-free environment, and sitting continuously — morning, midday, afternoon, evening — sitting only with a comfortable, at-ease heart. If sitting doesn't feel comfortable, before long one wants to get up and do something else, which serves no purpose. Those who sit at ease can sit through day and night, simply resting in that ease. The goal is to keep sitting until it becomes automatic. Once that automatic state is reached, outwardly one can still speak and work as usual, while inwardly merit is continuously drawn in, working in fine detail at all times, because it has become one with the Triple Gem within. Only then can one carry out right livelihood at ease.
Merit itself must have three components. First, the within the sphere of merit, which dissolves the impurities that create problems and obstacles, so that obstacles and problems disappear. Second, the happiness within the sphere of merit, which makes our life — speaking, sitting, lying down, standing, walking, or working — comfortable in body and at ease in heart. Third, the refined treasure at the center of the sphere of merit, which draws abundance to us — a small effort yielding immense results, and greater effort yielding even more. All three exist within the sphere of dhamma, within the sphere of merit.
Human beings must take the lead in seeking merit and building perfections, so that merit can arise and be put to use. Merit and perfections are not the same. Merit aims simply at gathering energy, while perfections are the distilled from merit — merit of quality, aimed specifically at quality. Both are a form of energy, but perfections are energy of quality.
Take giving, for example. If it's merit, simply giving is enough. But if it's perfection, giving means releasing the that locks the heart and keeps it from expanding. Once that stinginess is released, one becomes a bringer of good fortune to others — a wellspring of good fortune, someone who is generous, giving, and helpful with quality, not just giving for its own sake. It resolves the problem of one's own stinginess, narrowness, and meanness of heart — giving is no longer withheld out of fear of scarcity or poverty. Perfection, then, is quality — it is virtue, the virtue of a life that must cultivate the causes and the character needed to bring forth pure energy, which is merit.