On the day of Magha Puja that has passed,
We will have learnt the teachings that the Sama Sambuddha,
The perfectly self-awakened one,
Gave on this important day.
On Magha Puja,
The Sangha of monks who listened to the discourse given by the Buddha were all Arahants already.
So we think and reflect that this Sangha had already understood the fundamentals of the Buddha's teachings.
They had all purified their minds.
They had abandoned wrongdoing,
Cultivated merit and cleansed the mind.
They were witnesses to the Dhamma of the Buddha.
So the Buddha laid down the fundamentals of the practice to teach those of future generations,
To teach all the monastics,
To all the laymen and laywomen with minds of faith,
For them to learn these fundamentals.
Even though the Buddha has passed away to Parinibbana for 2,
568 years now,
But there are still people practicing by those teachings and understanding them and knowing and seeing the Dhamma.
They are able to end the suffering in the heart.
So let us reflect that to give up bhāva,
Wrongdoing or bad and unskillful acts,
You need to have wisdom.
This wisdom is samādhiti,
Right view.
It is the wisdom that sees dukkha,
Samudaya,
Nirodha,
Magga.
It sees suffering,
The cause for suffering to arise,
The cessation of suffering,
And the path of practice leading to the cessation of suffering.
The Buddha taught of abandoning wrongdoing.
To be able to give up wrongdoing,
It needs wisdom.
To have right view.
There is wrongdoing which arises by actions and speech,
And there is wrongdoing that arises in the heart.
Within the Noble Eightfold Path,
There is having right livelihood,
Correct work and occupation which doesn't harm others.
This is sila-dhamma,
Moral and virtuous conduct.
And speech is contained within samāvacca,
Right speech.
Speech that is correct,
That doesn't harm,
That has no ill will.
The speech that isn't harsh,
Gossip,
Divisive speech and lying.
So this is within the Noble Eightfold Path on samāvacca,
Right speech and is about sila.
To not drink intoxicants and all of the five precepts is about practicing to be within sila and is about abandoning wrongdoing.
So one that is only trying to satisfy one's selfish desires,
It will lead to all sorts of suffering,
Troubles and difficulties,
And one will break the moral precepts.
So when we are aware of this,
Then we need to train and practice dhamma,
And to have patience and forbearance.
And for us to develop merit,
Good acts,
We have to have effort in giving up wrongdoing.
The wrongdoing that hasn't arisen,
We don't let it arise.
Not letting it arise in body,
Speech or mind.
But is it possible to not let this wrongdoing arise?
For dhamma practitioners,
The monks and laity,
We have the wisdom to see the negative side of how wrongdoing is no good.
So in the beginning,
We know it's not good,
And we know that sila is good.
Sila is meritorious,
It's peace and coolness,
And has the benefit that one can get to Nibbāna.
There are Krupa Ajahn's enlightened teachers who teach that,
With the five precepts,
One can practice to becoming a Sotapanna,
The first level of enlightenment,
Or a Sakadagami,
The second level of enlightenment.
And with the eight precepts,
One can practice to Anagami,
The third level of enlightenment.
So we want to have peacefulness and be inwardly at ease.
We want a mind that is brightened and that has inner happiness.
So we put in the effort and diligence to give up the wrongdoing.
But we may see that however much effort we have to give up wrongdoing,
In the beginning we just have the wisdom to be able to control our actions and speech to be kept within sila.
Here,
There is bhāpa,
The wrongdoing,
Unskillfulness in the mind as well.
These are thoughts and proliferations that are of ill-will,
And cruel thoughts.
It's within the aspect of samma-saṅkhapu,
Right thoughts.
Right thoughts are free of ill-will,
Free of cruelty,
And no thoughts of the way,
Of moods and mind states of sensual delight.
So this is a high level to practice where mind states of sensual delight are not okay.
These are thoughts that are wrong.
But just being within sila-dhamma,
We will have those types of thoughts and we can't stop them.
The more we want to not have bad thoughts arise,
To not have thoughts of cruelty arise,
To not have thoughts of ill-will arise,
Then they arise even more.
When we don't want them to arise,
And they do arise,
Then we suffer again.
When it has arisen,
Then we want to have it cease quickly,
Because we're scared of wrongdoing,
So it's even more chaotic in the mind.
So here we come to practice where we need to make an effort to give up wrongdoing,
The unskillful states that have arisen already.
The actions and speech we're able to control,
But the unskillful states arising in the mind,
We have to make an effort to abandon it.
And we make an effort to develop kusala,
Skillfulness,
Goodness.
The unskillful states that have not yet arisen,
We have effort to not let it arise.
We need to use effort here.
So this is within the Noble Eightfold Path of the Aspect of Right Effort.
To give up the unskillful that has arisen,
And the unskillfulness that hasn't arisen yet,
To not let it arise.
And we build kusala.
Kusala is to make merit,
To accomplish goodness.
This is from the small acts of goodness.
To give dana and to keep precepts is all about goodness.
Up to the level of bhavana,
Mental cultivation.
To meditation.
Dharma practitioners are training and instructing the mind to have peace.
So training in developing the mind to have peace,
One is already a dharma practitioner.
We learn about the 40 kamatthana,
The meditation objects.
There are the 10 anusatis,
The recollections.
There is the recollection of the buddha,
Dhamma and sangha.
Recollection of generosity.
Recollection of the devas.
Recollection of death.
Recollection of the breath.
These are methods to make the mind peaceful in samadhi,
Concentration,
That we call samatakamattana,
A tranquility meditation object.
So may we understand this first.
Vipassana,
Insight meditation,
Is that which knows clearly and sees the truth.
Seeing into the dhamma that one should know and see.
Seeing rupa and nama,
Material and mental phenomena,
As being aniccang dukkhang anatta,
Impermanent,
Unsatisfactory and not self.
So here we learn that wisdom will arise like this.
The object that brings up wisdom to arise is aniccang dukkhang anatta,
Impermanence or being suffering.
The word impermanent means that it changes.
It is not stable.
It changes according to causes and conditions,
Whether material or mental phenomena.
The word dukkhang means unsatisfactory,
That it can't endure.
All which is impermanent is then something that cannot endure.
It changes.
It's not a self,
Not an I.
It is anatta,
That which has gathered and compounded together as a heap.
When we separate it out,
There isn't anything.
In reality,
There is nothing there.
There is no material phenomena.
There is no mental phenomena.
So this is the object that will give rise to wisdom,
Using impermanence,
Unsatisfactoriness and not self.
But in the beginning,
It's sanya,
Memories and perceptions.
So we use our perceptions first.
We think that life is not sure,
Death is certain,
We have to die for sure.
The certainty of life is death.
We then feel we can cut off and abandon the moods or central objects.
We can cut off all the attachment and clinging,
Because we have to die.
So here they say it brings benefit.
There is the benefit of anicca sanya,
The benefit to see the perception of impermanence.
And it brings up peace as well.
It's not yet wisdom,
But it is close to it.
It's peace first.
The mind is peaceful.
The body and mind are buoyant.
We are inwardly at ease.
It's similar to having wisdom.
Because we can abandon things,
We put things down.
This is a mind object that brings up peace.
And the benefit is that we can let go.
We have the feeling and perception that it's not us.
And so we practice a method to bring the mind to peace.
But here we have a problem.
That when we leave the peace,
The mind is still turbulent.
So we need to have mindfulness to follow and look over the mind.
The bodily movements,
The going here and there of the body,
We have mindfulness to know and be aware of it.
We are in the present moment.
So samadhi may reduce somewhat.
Here in samma samadhi,
Right concentration,
There is khanika or momentary samadhi,
Upajjara or access samadhi,
And apana or one-pointed,
Full samadhi.
So in the beginning,
We leave the meditation,
And we may not have much samadhi.
But when we have more samadhi,
Then in the present,
We may have a little samadhi.
We enter samadhi,
And we may be able to get to access samadhi.
But it takes time to get there.
When we have left the meditation,
It goes down to momentary samadhi.
Though we do have some samadhi.
And with the strength of samadhi that we could enter into,
We contemplate the body.
We may see it as not beautiful or attractive.
Though we don't yet see it as an image,
It's still a perception.
The perception that the body is not permanent like this.
It dies.
The body is made up of the four elements.
A heap of earth,
Water,
Air and fire.
It decays and disintegrates.
When the air element is gone,
The fire element is gone.
The body breaks apart.
It is something that is not beautiful or attractive.
This is a perception of it.
When we contemplate like this more and more,
Then samadhi becomes more stable.
And we see more of an image that we can bring up.
An image appears.
One then has more clarity in one's knowing and seeing.
Later we see the sankhara.
The compounded body that decays and breaks apart from the power of the mind.
Which has samadhi.
And then wisdom arises.
There is wisdom that knows clearly.
Oh,
It's not a self.
Not me.
From abandoning wrongdoing to building merit.
Samadhi is merit.
It is a great goodness.
And the wisdom which arises,
It cleanses one's mind to be purified.
It uses wisdom which is simply right view.
Through having mindfulness that is continuous and samadhi that is firmly concentrated.
See,
It's in the Noble Eightfold Path.
Of the aspects of right effort,
Right mindfulness and right concentration.
The three aspects are in here.
We make the mind firmly established.
We put forth effort to make goodness to arise.
And we maintain the goodness that is there.
And we have wisdom arise.
Mindfulness arises.
The knowing that the body is just a body.
Feeling is just feeling.
Mind and mind object is just mind and mind object.
Wisdom arises.
Clear knowing arises.
This wisdom is wisdom from meditation.
It is a direct knowing arising.
The wisdom that is right view is that which knows clearly into the cessation of suffering.
And the path of practice to get to that cessation of suffering.
So we walk the Noble Eightfold Path and clear seeing arises.
Or we begin to see.
Material and mental phenomena are changing.
They are impermanent,
Unsatisfactory and not self.
Like this.
There is the seeing of conventional reality and ultimate reality.
All the material things are not there.
They are empty.
The mind has rapture arise.
There's feelings of bliss and brightness.
All the things in the world,
There is nothing at all there.
It's just natural like this.
People who are born need to die just like this.
The mind accepts this.
And rapture arises.
Samadhi arises.
Wisdom arises.
One understands the teachings of the Buddha.
Here on Maghaputra,
The Buddha taught and laid down the fundamentals of the practice.
But the Arahants knew clearly into them already.
So the Buddha was laying down the fundamentals just for us.
For the future generations of monks,
Novices,
Laymen and laywomen to learn them.
So when this annual commemoration of Maghaputra comes around,
Then we learn it again.
We learn deeper than we did last year.
We reflect on our walking of Sila,
Samadhi,
Bhanya.
How much goodness have we attained too?
The wrongdoing,
The unskillfulness of actions and speech.
How much have we let go of it?
We look at our actions,
Speech and mind.
Has our thinking reduced?
In the beginning,
It's suffering and hard because of these thoughts.
We are perpetual thinkers.
Whatever is unskillful,
We are skilled at thinking of it.
Why?
Because of avicca,
Ignorance.
It leads the mind like that.
And this is for every mind to varying extents.
The ignorance instructs the mind like that.
And then one will go on thinking about it.
So Venerable Ajahn Chah taught,
That we may think of it,
But don't act on it.
He said it already,
So we don't act on it.
We throw away that which gives us no benefit.
Thoughts like this are bad,
Has no benefit.
And so we throw them away.
We have lots of things and that which we don't use has no benefit.
We have to throw it away,
Right?
We don't use them.
The teachings of the Buddha taught on the full moon day of Magha,
May we contemplate on it deeply and understand them,
And be able to practice them in this life.
Those who have to study and learn,
Then be determined and diligent to study,
Learn and be successful in those various subjects.
Have effort,
Perseverance and interest.
Have the mind be focused on it.
And then you can learn.
For those practicing Dhamma,
You have the four pathways of success.
The chanda,
Desire,
Viriya,
Effort,
Citta,
Application of the mind,
Vimamsa,
Investigation.
Make sure to do it and be able to get to your goal that you have set.
Then like this,
You will truly see the results of Dhamma practice.
May you all set your hearts on this.
