พระอาจารย์อธิบายว่าความแก่ เจ็บ และตายไม่ได้เกิดขึ้นเอง แต่มีพญามารและธรรมชาติฝ่ายอกุศลคอยบงการผ่านกาย เวทนา จิต ธรรม ทางออกคือการเจริญเมตตาธรรม ประกอบเหตุที่ดี และหมั่นกำหนดรู้ในแต่ละขณะปัจจุบันจนเกิดความเข้าใจที่โต้แย้งไม่ได้Phra Ajarn explains that aging, sickness, and death are not random — Mara and unwholesome forces direct them through body, feeling, mind, and mental objects. The way through is cultivating loving-kindness, building good causes, and observing each present moment until understanding becomes unshakable.
Someone once asked: is the aging and dying that everyone goes through simply natural, or is there someone behind it — and if so, where?
Mara Is Behind Aging, Sickness, and Death
This same question runs through the whole of Jambudipa, through the hundred thousand koti of universes, the boundless universes, and all three realms up to Nibbana. Very few people know the reason. But at Wat Paknam it has been known why. What makes age and fall apart like this doesn’t just happen on its own — someone does it. That someone is Mara. He is the one who makes beings age, fall ill, and die — makes birth itself happen in a ruinous, painful way, bringing grief to whole families: sometimes the father lives but the mother dies; sometimes the child dies, then the mother, and the father is soon to follow, drowned in grief. All of this is Mara’s doing.
For those on the side of the , Mara harasses them without let-up, one way or another — sometimes driving people to kill each other, to take poison, to drown themselves, to hang themselves. All of this, too, is Mara’s work, no one else’s. No one knows how many times over, across the hundred thousand koti of universes, the boundless universes, all the way to Nibbana, Mara has pressed down on beings to bring about birth, aging, sickness, and death in this ruinous way — faces twisted with anguish, both sides suffering, if not dying then coming close to it.
Ordinarily, none of this should happen. Birth shouldn’t be so distressing — giving birth should be as ordinary as relieving oneself, causing no real trouble at all. That it is instead so painful and ruinous is because Mara sends his power, his authority, his sacred craft, to command that it happen this way.
Three Forces Direct Us Through Body, Feeling, Mind, and Mental Objects
We’ve already learned about the three natures — the forces behind everything that control people and all beings, every thought, every feeling. Never think you’re clever: the moment you think that, you’ve already lost the thread. As Luang Pu said, everything belongs to “them.” We human beings don’t have much ability of our own — it’s the nature behind us that steers and directs, making us think, speak, and act through body, feeling, mind, and mental objects.
We can only come to know this by turning to examine body, feeling, mind, and mental objects directly, just as the Buddha taught: monks should contemplate the body in the body, feeling in feeling, mind in mind, and mental objects in mental objects, in order to remove and grief toward the world. He taught monks to know body, feeling, mind, and mental objects; once known, to contemplate them again, one layer deeper — body within body, feeling within feeling, mind within mind, within dhamma — and only then will we see how that force directs a human being’s body, feeling, mind, and mental objects.
It harasses us through the heart. The wholesome and unwholesome forces compete to take the seat of the house — whichever is quicker becomes “master of the house,” and from there directs us through body, feeling, mind, and mental objects. The wholesome side lifts us up toward what is noble and good, drawing in to clear away defilements and bring about and freedom. The unwholesome side seizes the same four doors to press the elements down, dragging us toward what is low, drawing in demerit and steering us downward. All of it lies within that force’s control — it carries a program that it sends in to govern and command.
When we’re within program, birth happens easily. Within one, birth is difficult, arriving together with suffering for both mother and child, and distress arrives layered over our own thoughts and feelings. Those thoughts are not ours; those feelings are not ours — they belong to the force. When it takes hold, its feelings and thoughts appear as though we thought them ourselves, and it steers us to accept them, to believe them, and distress follows: quarrels with this person and that. The wholesome program leads to right understanding, the unwholesome to wrong understanding, turning nothing into something and something small into something large — all of it the fruit of unwholesome states. It can drive a person to poison themselves, to hang themselves, to drown themselves, because grief eats away inside until it can no longer be borne, and death comes in one form or another — even taking one’s own life, the thing one loves most, because suffering consumes the heart entirely.
The unwholesome force uses whatever craft it has, building it into a program laid over us; our bodily and mental behavior, our thoughts and feelings, follow that program. Whatever technique works, it keeps using, unchanged. That’s exactly why we need to examine our own mistakes and correct them. But once we correct one, the force doesn’t give up — it assembles a new craft, a new program, to keep pressing us, on and on, stirring quarrels even between people who truly love each other, until even loved ones can no longer stay together and are driven apart.
Loving-Kindness and the Law of Kamma Are the Way Through
We have to rely on (metta). All Ten Perfections matter, from the first to the tenth — metta among them. Whatever kind of society we want to live in, we have to cultivate the causes that fit it. If we want to live among people of and goodness, we have to cultivate accordingly — stay within the wholesome system and keep practicing those causes, and that is the society we’ll end up in. But if we instead dwell in unwholesome causes and still hope to be reborn somewhere good, that’s unreasonable — impossible, even — because the unwholesome gathers its causes and gives its results, drawing the right conditions together to bear fruit at every moment. All of it is simply at work.
The law of the Three Characteristics governs one layer further, moment by present moment. Truth appears only within each present moment; to perceive it, to learn and understand it, we have to stay within that present moment — only then do we see the truth showing itself at the body, at feeling, at mind, at mental objects: the four stations of the present moment, and nothing more than these four. This is exactly where that force plants its program to control us. To know this for ourselves we have to test it — test what Luang Pu taught — and once tested, it becomes unmistakably clear. And once understood with that clarity, it can’t be argued away. Without that it stays contested, argued back and forth endlessly; once understood, no argument can touch it. This is what we truly need to understand, exactly as it is.
Ceto-Vimutti and Paññā-Vimutti: Build the Cause, Watch the Result
Freedom depends on ceto- ( of heart) and paññā-vimutti (), which arise as we adjust our practice of and . Ceto-vimutti shows itself moment by present moment — something to be watched for daily. There are only these two: ceto-vimutti and paññā-vimutti. Ceto-vimutti develops what we’d call EQ; paññā-vimutti develops IQ. Both require samatha and vipassana together.
Luang Pu taught: when we stay aware within each present moment, if we build the cause and observe the result — take real interest in it — it’s excellent. Build the cause, watch, watch, watch the result, take it seriously, and it is truly excellent. He repeated this teaching three times, on three separate occasions — proof of how much it matters — telling us to observe the result in each present moment. Then we’ll see the truth of that hidden nature showing itself, see the change that comes from building the cause, and that will give us the heart to keep building it. Without seeing that, we lose heart — we sit and nothing seems to change, we grow drowsy or restless. So we have to keep sitting, building the cause, watching the result, and in that way come to understand the truth that directs us from behind, through our own thoughts and feelings. And when we build the right, good causes, merit flows in and washes away the defilements that cloud the heart.