พระอาจารย์เล่าเรื่องจริงของคุณยายท่านหนึ่งที่หายจากอาการตื่นตระหนกด้วยการกำหนดรู้ง่ายๆ แล้วขยายไปสู่คำสอนเรื่องธรรมชาติสามฝ่าย คือกุศล อกุศล และอัพยากตะ ที่คอยชี้นำชีวิตเราด้วยเสียงและความรู้สึกภายในโดยที่เราไม่รู้ตัว พร้อมชี้ทางออกด้วยการเจริญภาวนาเหนี่ยวนำบุญ และการปรับความเห็นให้ถูกต้องตรงตามความเป็นจริง อันเป็นหัวใจของสัมมาทิฏฐิPhra Ajarn opens with the true story of an elderly lay follower who overcame panic attacks through a simple point of awareness, then unfolds the teaching on the three natures, wholesome, unwholesome, and neutral, that quietly direct our lives through inner voices and feelings we rarely question. He points the way out through meditation that draws in merit, and through correcting our view to match reality, the very heart of right view.
An Elderly Lay Follower and Her Panic Attacks: Where This Talk Begins
Phra Ajarn told the story of an elderly lay follower in her eighties who suffered from panic disorder, a condition he called common to this era. She had never meditated before. Her granddaughter phoned Phra Ajarn, worried and unsure how to help. He told her to have her grandmother simply rub her hand on something, over and over, and to keep her awareness resting on that senon. Whenever a panic episode began to build, she was to return to this same simple awareness. Little by little, the panic dissolved.
Phra Ajarn then explained the mechanism behind it: wherever we place our attention, the mind goes there. If we focus on our feet, we can feel warmth, coolness, softness, or hardness there, because the mind, made up of feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness, has settled at that spot, working together with 's nervous system to register sensation. If instead we shift our attention to the nostrils, the mind moves there instead; we notice the breath entering and leaving, long or short, while the sensation at the feet is completely forgotten. This is simply how the mind works.
When we keep our awareness steadily on the breath, a sphere of awareness, , forms and begins to draw in pure energy, that is, , continuously. This pure energy works to clear away the defilements clouding the mind.
Phra Ajarn illustrated this with a simple image: water only becomes sweet once sugar is added, sweetness comes from the sugar, not from the person who adds it. Our role is simply to learn what quality each state carries, then establish that state in the mind. If we feel tight and uncomfortable, repeating the words open and clear, open and clear will gradually dissolve the discomfort, because the mind can only hold one state at a time; once a new state is established, the old one no longer has anywhere to stand.
What Is Merit? The Pure Energy That Sustains Life
Phra Ajarn explained that merit is the pure energy of system. It appears as a bright, clear sphere, filled with and a sacred, potent quality capable of dissolving the defilements that create problems, obstacles, and the results of past kamma. Within the sphere of merit is also complete happiness of both body and mind, which is why a life with enough merit feels at ease whether sitting, lying down, talking, or working.
He pointed out that when our lives feel physically fine but not at ease inwardly, when conversations irritate us, or work leaves us anxious, it is because our merit is insufficient. When negative kamma accumulates instead, it produces suffering and worry. Everything we experience is simply the constant working-out of the merit and negative kamma already within us.
Beyond purity and happiness, at the very center of the sphere of merit lies every kind of good fortune: beauty, wealth, , good company, status and praise, and ultimately the path, fruit, and , all held complete within it. Phra Ajarn compared the flow of merit to blowing air through a straw dipped in water: a continuous stream of bubbles rises, carrying that stream of good fortune into our sphere of dhamma.
He noted that in his own childhood, elders spoke constantly about merit, go and make merit, don't do that, it will cost you merit, yet today this understanding has faded, even though our ability to remain in human form, and any happiness or success we hope for, all depend on merit.
The Baby Turtles: Evidence That Something Is Guiding Our Lives
Phra Ajarn turned to what he called one of the most essential teachings in all of Buddhism: that something is guiding our lives whether we realize it or not. Without understanding this, we act carelessly, families fall into conflict, couples cannot stay together, and even meditation centers end up arguing that their own way is better than another's, all, he said, arising from this same underlying nature.
He used baby turtles as an example. Hatched from eggs with no parents to teach them, with nothing at all in their heads, every single hatchling turns and crawls straight to the sea, never toward the forest or the hills. How does it know the sea is there? How does it know it won't drown? How does it know how to survive once it reaches the water? When Phra Ajarn put this question to people, everyone answered the same way: .
He then tested whether the Thai language itself carries dhamma truth within it, by breaking the Thai word for instinct, sanchat-tayan, into sanchat (the origin of one's birth) and yan (inner knowing). Together they mean an carried from the very beginning. Every turtle, whether hatched in Thailand, China, Japan, or the Americas, behaves identically, proof that some controlling program must be at work; such uniform behavior could not otherwise exist.
He extended the example: teenagers everywhere in the world, regardless of nationality, struggle with strikingly similar problems, even parents from different countries compare notes and recognize the same patterns. Newborn puppies, kittens, and other mammals, eyes not yet open, instinctively struggle toward their mother to nurse. All of this, he said, confirms that some program truly governs both people and animals.
The Three Natures: Wholesome, Unwholesome, and Neutral
Phra Ajarn moved to a harder question: why do some baby turtles die young, some in middle life, and some live to old age? Here people could no longer answer. The Buddha taught that this guiding nature does exist, but comes in three entirely distinct kinds, each with a different aim: dhamma, dhamma, and abyakata dhamma.
Kusala means wise. Its aim is to give us correct understanding, goodness, happiness, and success, it holds as many as 84,000 aspects of dhamma dedicated entirely to helping us flourish.
Akusala means unwise. Its aim is to destroy our lives utterly, concealing the truth behind , distorting reality so we see wrong as right, and even after death dragging us down into the lower realms.
Abyakata takes neither the good nor the bad. It leaves us unaware of the value of either, simply carrying us day after day through eating, playing, and wandering, like a child sent to school who has no interest in lessons, plays when he wants to play and sleeps when he wants to sleep. This nature does no active harm, but it offers no real growth either.
Phra Ajarn noted that these three natures do not merely shape outward behavior, they guide us continuously through an inner voice.
The Voice Within: A True Story of a Man Whose Home Was Ransacked
To demonstrate that this inner voice is real, Phra Ajarn told the story of a man, standing in for all of us. One day, while he was at work, a call came from home telling him to rush back, a relative he had long been at odds with had come and torn the house apart. He raced home, found belongings scattered everywhere, and was overcome with fury. Immediately one inner voice cried out: he had to kill him. Another warned that he could not, if he killed him he would go to prison, and what would happen to his wife, children, and parents? Yet the provoking voice did not let up; it shifted instead to gathering his friends and dealing with the man that way. A er, better voice pushed back again: if he attacked the man and the man gathered people to retaliate, how would he live then?
Phra Ajarn asked his audience whether they had ever heard voices like these in their own minds, everyone nodded in recognition. These voices, he explained, have guided us since childhood, sometimes toward things we should not do, and sometimes toward good things, studying diligently, doing our homework, working hard, encouraging us and lending us strength for good deeds. At the same time, other voices wear down our spirit, accusing and stirring jealousy, all tangled together until we can no longer tell which voice is which. When the harmful voices grow loud and constant enough to become uncontrollable, people end up seeking a psychiatrist.
The Mind Is Not Us: Lessons From an Acquaintance and a Foreign Student
Phra Ajarn pointed out that if these voices truly belonged to us, simply choosing to stop thinking should make them disappear, yet it does not; if anything, they push harder to be heard. This is because they are not our own voice, and the same is true of feelings: a feeling that suddenly weighs on us for no apparent reason is likewise not truly ours.
He recalled an acquaintance who experienced exactly this. One day, out of nowhere, he felt a heaviness of heart he could not explain. Soon after, driving out to run an errand, he was in an accident in which his grandchild died. Phra Ajarn explained that when negative kamma is about to take hold, its very nature is to create a state that is difficult to bear, manifesting first as this unexplained heaviness before its full result arrives.
He gave a further example: a foreign student who had suffered from panic disorder since his teenage years. Researching online, he learned that meditation could help, and travelled to Thailand to ordain and train in meditation. During his time as a monk, his symptoms surfaced, a burning sensation in his head, together with an inner voice insisting he was going to die, which sent him into terrified panic and tears. He was taken to a psychiatrist, who could only offer medication to ease the symptoms. Eventually he had to leave the program, and his supervising monk brought him to Phra Ajarn for care.
Phra Ajarn asked whether he wanted to be free of it. When he said yes, Phra Ajarn a to help him, on the condition that he stop taking the medication. He then explained that this condition was the result of kamma set in place from the moment of conception, like a blueprint written into him, and that when its appointed time arrives, the sphere of negative kamma releases its current at the exact point the blueprint specifies, producing bodily reactions such as substances connected to the fire element that generate heat. Because the amount of energy released is actually very small, an inner voice is needed to amplify it into full-blown terror.
Phra Ajarn told him that once the mind has been frightened, one must never cry along with it, the mind is like a child, and if the child cries and the parents cry with it, who is left to comfort the child? We must comfort our own mind instead, because the defilement causing the burning sensation is genuinely tiny and will pass on its own. The next time the episode arose, Phra Ajarn sat with him and repeated gently: it's alright, it will pass, it's alright, until his mind settled and the burning sensation subsided, the first time in his life he had been able to control the situation. Phra Ajarn told him this was only treating the symptom; the true root lay in the sphere of negative kamma itself, which could only be addressed by drawing in merit through meditation to gradually dilute the defilement. From then on the student sat in meditation daily, following his breath. After about three months his condition improved enough that he could return home.
From both stories, Phra Ajarn drew the same conclusion: the mind is not us, and we are not the mind. Once we truly understand this, when something disturbs the mind we need not panic along with it, it will pass on its own. But if we mistake the mind for ourselves, then when the mind suffers, we suffer with it; when someone irritates us, we take offense, and small matters swell into large ones.
Right View: The Heart of the Buddhist Teaching
Phra Ajarn said that whether life feels easy or hard comes down to right view, sammaditthi, the very essence of the Buddhist teaching rests entirely on it. Once right view is fully complete, we know exactly how to live and can attain arahantship; but as long as it remains incomplete, problems keep surfacing endlessly, solve one, and another appears in its place.
Among the orious action, the final one is ditthujukamma, straightening one's views to match reality. Whatever else we do, keeping precepts, meditating, showing humility, working diligently for our own and others' benefit, rejoicing in merit, studying and discussing dhamma, teaching dhamma, it all comes down in the end to correcting our view. Until our view is corrected, problems remain, though the more our view improves, the fewer problems we face.
The story of the baby turtles that we heard earlier, he said, is itself part of right view, recognizing that something lies behind our lives, and that it is not simply our own inner voice.
Life as Hardware, Software, and Energy
Phra Ajarn illustrated this with the analogy of a mobile phone, made of three parts: hardware, software, and energy. Our lives work the same way. The body is the hardware; the mind, with its feelings and thoughts, is the software; and energy is our physical and mental strength, physical strength from the food we eat, mental strength from the merit that sustains life. This mirrors how science describes the universe as ultimately composed of matter, wave, and energy, again just three things.
Within our sphere of dhamma sits a sphere of elements, representing matter; six spheres of wave, representing software; and two spheres of energy, merit and negative kamma, sharing a single center. Whichever sphere is larger envelops the other. When the sphere of merit is larger, negative kamma cannot function, and merit releases a current that draws good circumstances into our life, bringing happiness and progress. But as merit is spent, the two spheres draw closer in size, and life begins to feel murky, neither clearly good nor clearly bad. Once negative kamma grows larger and envelops merit instead, it releases its own current, drawing in poor circumstances, difficult people, and unfortunate situations, including accidents and illness.
Where the Three Natures Are Found: From Prisons to Temples
Phra Ajarn observed that the proportion of these three natures exists within every one of us. At times we feel proud of our own goodness; at other times we frighten ourselves with our own capacity for harm. Severity escalates in step with the proportion of unwholesomeness present, from harming small creatures, to larger animals, and potentially escalating further still.
Where the proportion of unwholesomeness runs highest, he said, is in prisons. Where neutrality runs highest is in shopping malls, cafes, and public parks, where people casually pass their time. And where wholesomeness runs highest is in temples and places of education, since all learning and progress in the world ultimately traces back to wholesome dhamma. As we gradually reduce the share of unwholesomeness and neutrality within us, the share of wholesomeness naturally grows in its place.
The Law of Kamma Can Be Predicted; the Law of the Three Characteristics Cannot
Phra Ajarn drew a parallel with a long-running scientific debate between those who hold that everything is predictable and those who hold that it is not. He explained that the Buddha taught can be predicted, because it is a cause we have already set in motion, fixed into a blueprint awaiting its result. The law of the three characteristics, however, cannot be predicted, because it concerns the ongoing contest for dominance among the three natures at every moment. What many people know as the three characteristics, impermanence, suffering, and non-self, are simply particular features within that law, describing qualities of side.
The Three Kinds of Feeling, and a Mind That Works Like a Computer
Phra Ajarn explained that feeling comes in only three kinds: pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. When wholesomeness takes hold of feeling, happiness and ease appear; when unwholesomeness takes hold, a pressing, oppressive suffering arises immediately, just as we feel instantly on edge when a dangerous person walks in, and instantly at ease when someone we respect and admire does.
He compared the mind to a computer or phone: switching it on starts an operating system, which pulls information from memory, processes it at what he called the sphere of mental formations, like a CPU, then sends the result out to an external screen and speaker. Our mind works the same way, taking in information, processing it, then expressing it through body and speech. When one of the three natures takes hold of the mind, it is as though someone else has fed us the data we then act on, without our even realizing it.
Once that information is expressed through the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and body, it produces liking, disliking, or indifference. Unwholesomeness often uses liking as an opening for greed, and disliking as an opening for anger, self-blame, or blaming others. Wholesomeness, by contrast, guides us toward , keeping the mind balanced and considering things according to cause and condition. Trace any cause back far enough, he said, and in the end only the three natures remain standing behind it.
Question and Answer: Mind, Mental Factors, and Refinement Through Time
Someone asked whether the refinement he described as bound up with time could also let us perceive time itself. Phra Ajarn answered that meditation practice can indeed make the mind progressively more refined, though standing entirely above time is possible only for an arahant.
Another asked the difference between (mind) and (). He compared it to a stage actor: the script the actor speaks is the citta, while the feeling the actor must convey to move the audience is the cetasika. Citta is the inner voice and data that direct us to act; cetasika is the emotional charge that rides along with it. Without that emotional charge, we would not act at all, just as without any desire to eat, we simply would not eat.
Within the mind, only three things can appear: images, sounds, and feelings. Images tend to appear unclear because the mind itself is still dim; as meditation brightens the mind, images grow correspondingly clearer.
Question and Answer: Telling the Three Voices Apart
Someone asked how to distinguish which nature a given inner voice belongs to. Phra Ajarn advised watching how the voice behaves. A wholesome voice, when questioned, will explain its reasoning, laying out the advantages and disadvantages clearly, then leave the choice to us, without pressure, because it trusts that we now have enough information to decide for ourselves.
An unwholesome voice relies purely on emotion. It gives an instruction and then applies pressure if we resist, producing a state that is genuinely hard to bear, as when desire arises and presses us relentlessly toward acting on it.
A neutral voice simply repeats information we already know, adding nothing new and offering no real benefit.
Phra Ajarn explained further that when each nature takes hold of the mind, it overlays its own set of body, feeling, mind, and mental object onto ours. A wholesome overlay brings finer citta and cetasika, making us naturally courteous without any pretense. An unwholesome overlay brings the citta and cetasika of lower states of being, producing coarse behavior, greed, aversion, delusion, or desire that we suddenly cannot control. This, he said, is exactly why the Buddha taught in the Satipatthana Sutta to clearly contemplate the body in the body, feeling in feeling, mind in mind, and mental objects in mental objects, in order to remove and displeasure regarding the world, because only at that level can we discern which nature has taken hold. He recalled that his own teacher, Luang Pu, therefore instructed students to invoke the Triple Gem to reside at the sense-doors, the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind-door, since consciousness must pass through these very gateways to reach sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.
A Story From Wat Paknam: The Body Within the Body
Phra Ajarn told a story from many years ago at Wat Paknam. A practitioner had reached the inner kaya. A friend asked whether he could use it to see winning lottery numbers, and out of curiosity he tried, and saw them. He passed the numbers to his friend, who bought a ticket and won; they split the winnings. The next time he sat in meditation, everything went dark. Using what he already knew, he searched through the darkness and made out a thin, blackened figure, a reflection of himself, even though he had previously reached refined bodies: the astral body, the form-Brahma body, the formless-Brahma body, and . He went to his own teacher for guidance, who told him to go for refuge in the Triple Gem once more and begin his meditation again from zero, what had once come easily now had to be rebuilt from scratch.
Phra Ajarn said this shows clearly that the body within the body arising within us can genuinely take hold of a person's mind and life, and that only by contemplating body in body, feeling in feeling, mind in mind, and mental object in mental object can we know which nature has taken over. He added that when some meditators reach jhana easily, it is often because merit from a past life, where jhana had already been attained, comes into effect, manifesting refined bodies such as the astral or Brahma body that help purify the dark elements within, making it easier to bear physical strain and progress through the first, second, third, and fourth jhanas. For those whose merit has not yet ripened to that point, gradual, step-by-step training remains the way forward.
Every Religion Under the Same Wholesome Guidance
Phra Ajarn observed that the proportion of the three natures within each person shapes their behavior. Whether wealthy, middle class, or living hand to mouth, anyone with a strong share of wholesomeness tends to wake and chant, meditate, radiate , set an intention, and give alms. Regardless of religion, Christian, Muslim, or Hindu, people are guided by wholesomeness toward the good taught within their own . Even someone with no religious affiliation, so long as they hold to universal goodness, still has merit flowing into their life.
Why We Came Down to Build Perfections
Phra Ajarn closed by returning to right view as the single most essential teaching in Buddhism. Before any of us were born human, he said, we all once dwelt in Tusita heaven as bodhisattvas. When Luang Pu attained the inner dhamma and brought forth the Dhammakaya of the Buddha, attainable, he said, only by a Silent Buddha or a Fully Enlightened Buddha, everyone in Tusita heaven rejoiced, knowing that once reborn they would be able to reach the Triple Gem within and live with greater safety.
Luang Pu then called everyone together to come down and build perfections. Each of them made the same resolve: that this birth would build merit and perfection greater than in any past life, gathering as much as could possibly be gathered. Yet upon being born, all memory of that resolve was wiped away, leaving only an unseen guardian watching over our stream of dhamma across every lifetime, which is why, Phra Ajarn said, we find ourselves drawn again and again to study and practice dhamma, even without knowing why.
He shared that he had been in discussion with his students about founding a school, aspiring to reunite students from the same special circle of merit so they could learn and practice together once more. His aim was to teach a simple, approachable way of meditating that draws in merit without becoming so difficult that students grow discouraged, covering both through concentration, , and liberation through wisdom, pañña, both paths he intends to continue teaching.