พระอาจารย์อธิบายว่า เมื่อไม่ทำสมาธิ จิตจะสืบต่อกุศลได้ยาก ทำให้อกุศลเข้าครอบงำ ใจฟุ้งซ่านและอ่อนกำลังลงเรื่อย ๆ พร้อมชี้ให้เห็นความสำคัญของสัมมาสติและการสร้างบุญใหม่เพื่อพยุงชีวิตไว้Phra Ajarn explains that without meditation, the mind struggles to sustain wholesome continuity, leaving it open to unwholesome states — growing scattered and weak — and points to the importance of right mindfulness and making new merit to hold life steady.
The question is: why, when we do not meditate, does the mind become scattered and weak?
Why the Mind Grows Scattered and Weak Without Meditation
According to the teaching of a revered senior monk that Phra Ajarn cited, someone who does not meditate finds the mind growing scattered and the heart losing its strength — leaving an opening for sadness, boredom, and gloom to creep in easily. This is because without meditation, it becomes very difficult for the mind to sustain an unbroken continuity (santati). Meditation is the practice of training that continuity to hold steady. When that inner pull happens in the moment, we come to feel each subtler layer of the mind more and more finely. The wholesome () share of the mind grows, while the strength of side fades.
Someone who never meditates, then, never cultivates that continuity. That means they are not dwelling within system — and once they are not, the unwholesome system moves in instead, carrying them further away from wisdom.
When Wholesomeness Cannot Take the Helm, the Mind Is Pulled by Feeling
If, in that moment, an indeterminate state of mind (avyākata — neither wholesome nor unwholesome) takes the helm, the mind is left without any firm footing, unable to draw inward. It scatters out toward sights, tastes, smells, sounds, and touch — exactly what the unwholesome side has been waiting for. It steers the mind toward pleasure, wanting more and more without end, and when things do not go as wished, irritation and anger flare up, leaving the mind weaker still.
A mind that scatters after its feelings is a restless mind. The unwholesome side stirs it further, spinning stories and twisting things away from what is actually true. The mind gets pulled toward sights, tastes, smells, and sounds, piling up more and more, until it grows weak.
When we cannot hold our attention steadily on one thing, that is a short attention span — jumping from one thing to the next. It is like someone watching a film, a series, or listening to music: the heart keeps shifting mood with every changing scene, constantly changing. Exciting content pulls us to stay fixed on that feeling, which is really just a way of drawing in the strength of the unwholesome side — becoming a stain that leaves the heart clouded.
The Everyday Result: Forgetfulness, Mistakes, and a Clouded Heart
All of this wears down goodness, clarity, vitality, and the lightness of body and mind, letting them slowly fade — replaced instead by weariness, sluggishness, and a heart that no longer feels fresh. The wholesome s gradually lose their strength.
As the strength of the wholesome side keeps declining, life grows harder — feelings of hopelessness, restlessness, and frustration pile up. Because we can no longer connect with the wholesome side that would otherwise guide and remind us, we forget good things and mistakes follow one after another — misplacing things and forgetting where we put them, bumping and stumbling into one thing after another. New mistakes keep arising, because (avijjā) keeps blocking our connection to the wise, wholesome part within.
The body, too, grows clumsy — bumping and stumbling along. All of this is the result of the behavioral mental factors turning rough and coarse. We make the same mistakes again and again, until we scold ourselves, anger arises, and one mistake follows another in a loop — all because the wholesome, knowing mental factors cannot make their connection.
Right Mindfulness: The Root of Happiness and Progress — Old Merit and New Merit
Being unable to sustain , unable to sustain that continuity without a break, matters enormously for our moral conduct (). It is the root cause of happiness, of progress, and of success in whatever we hope to achieve. Cultivating (sammā-) is therefore something worth doing continuously.
Some people hardly seem to meditate at all — because they are living off old merit. If they have a great store of old merit, that is fine for a while. But without much old merit, obstacles and problems will surface unless new merit comes to help. When we make merit, new merit flows in and brings color into life — a sense of good fortune, of things falling into place alongside what is good, bringing ease of mind. It cannot change the deeper level of one's life altogether, but it differs from the kind of merit that reshapes life's whole timeline — which comes only from the causes we build, moment by moment, in the present.