พระอาจารย์อธิบายว่า อารมณ์ที่ไม่ติดข้องสิ่งใด ปล่อยวางทุกสิ่ง คือทางเข้าถึงความสุขภายในได้ง่ายที่สุด เพราะเมื่อใจไม่ยินดียินร้าย เจตสิกฝ่ายกุศลอย่างอโลภะและอโทสะก็จะตั้งขึ้นและเหนี่ยวนำบุญเข้ามา ทำให้ใจหลุดพ้นจากมิติที่หยาบไปสู่มิติที่ละเอียดกว่าทีละขั้นPhra Ajarn explains that a mind free of clinging — wanting and holding onto nothing — is the easiest gateway to inner happiness. When the mind stops reacting with liking or disliking, wholesome mental factors like non-greed and non-hatred arise and draw merit in, releasing the mind step by step into subtler, lighter states.
A student asked Phra Ajarn to expand on a teaching he had heard: “If we do not want to have anything, we will have everything.”
The State of Mind That Opens the Door to Inner Happiness
The feeling that makes inner happiness easy to reach is the moment the mind stops clinging to anything at all — truly not wanting to grasp anything, not wanting to gain anything. The mind is simply still. Try sitting quietly with yourself like that, and you will feel wonderfully at ease. That state opens the door to inner happiness most easily.
If we feel we do not want anything at all — if we do not want any particular thing — then we gain everything we actually need, because what we need is already within us. It is the feeling of letting go of everything.
Wholesome Mental Factors and an Even Mind
This state is a mind free of liking and disliking — the quality of tatramajjhattata (mental balance), one of s, or s, we have studied: (saddha), (), (hiri), moral fear (ottappa), (alobha), and non-hatred (adosa) — not y, not angry, not swayed by liking or disliking — together with tatramajjhattata, which keeps the mind balanced and even, unmoved by the pull of sights, tastes, smells, sounds, and touch.
When the mind stops clinging to anything, it is released. This calls for a that keeps the mind even, along with both () and panna ( through wisdom) working together. Cetovimutti means holding the mind level toward the wholesome feelings that arise, combined with a mind endowed with wisdom that sees, as it truly is, the suffering and danger in things — through eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body, out toward sights, tastes, smells, and sounds — sensing how wearisome all of it really is. This is exactly what lets the mind slip free, unattached to anything, released from a coarser dimension into a subtler one.
The feeling that carries us there is one that can “anchor” — it can hold what is wholesome in place within the mind, so that nothing else can slip in and disturb it. Inner happiness born of this release arises dimension by dimension. That release is exactly what gives rise to happiness: once the mind slips free, the happiness of (punnadhatu) flows through, and the mind senses a state of ease in both body and mind. Each dimension involves a release from something coarser into something subtler — even though every dimension still carries some trace of defilement, moving to a subtler dimension lets the mind sense more of the happiness flowing from merit, a release into a level where the defilements grow lighter.
As Merit Flows In, Defilement Tries to Interfere
He put it this way: if we do not want any particular thing, that not-wanting is itself alobha, non-greed. Once alobha arises, it draws merit in. Alobha and adosa belong to the third group of cetasikas, the sobhana, or beautiful, cetasikas — the wholesome mental factors, twenty-five in all — including faith, mindfulness, moral shame, moral fear, non-greed, non-hatred, and tatramajjhattata. When a wholesome state of mind arises, these cetasikas arise with it, and once they do, they draw merit in.
But defilement tries to interfere too — tries to slip in and take over as the “house-owner”, relying on not-knowing, darkness, and forgetfulness as its foothold; the more defilement there is, the more forgetfulness there is. Even so, when the wholesome cetasikas succeed in drawing merit in, the result is that our mood lightens — more at ease, clearer, more comfortable.