The
Mother taking
Class in playground
|
Now,
you are like a withered leaf, the messengers of
Yama await you. It is the eve of your departure,
and you have made no provision for your journey!
Quickly
make for yourself an island of refuge, strive
hard and become wise. When you are cleansed and
purified of all impurity, you will enter the heavenly
home of the Noble Ones.
Now
your days are numbered, you are in the presence
of the God of death. You have no resting-place
on the road, no provision for the journey.
Quickly
make for yourself an island of refuge, strive
hard and become wise. When you are cleansed
and purified of all impurity, you will be reborn
no more, you will no more be subject to decay.
Just
as the smith refines the silver, so also, little
by little from moment to moment, the wise man
purifies himself of his impurities.
When
rust appears on iron, the iron itself is corrupted
by it. So also, a man's evil actions corrupt him
and lead him to his doom.
Lack
of repetition impairs the effect of mantras.1
Neglect impairs the solidity of houses.
Indolence impairs the beauty of the body. Lack
of attention is the downfall of one who watches.
Misconduct
is the taint of a woman. Meanness is the, taint
of one who gives. Wrong-doing is a taint in this;
world and the other.
The
greatest of all taints is ignorance. Cleanse your-,
selves of that taint alone and you will be free
of all taints, 0 Bhikkhus.
Life
is easy for one who is impudent as a crow, malicious,
boastful, presumptuous and corrupt.
Life
is hard for the modest one who seeks purity, who
is detached, unassuming and whose judgment is correct..
Already
in this world he is uprooted, the one who destroys
life, who lies, who takes what he has given,
who covets the wife of another and who directed
to drink.
Know
that evil things are difficult to master. Let
not cravings and wickedness subject you to
endless suffering.
Each
one gives according to his faith or his liking; if
you are discontented with the food and drink offered
by another, you will not achieve concentration
by. night or by day.
But
the one who uproots and destroys in himself
the very root of such a feeling of resentment,
achieves concentration by night and by day.
There
is no fire like the fire of craving, no grip like
that of hatred. There is no snare like that of
delusion no torrent like desire.
It
is easy to see the faults of others, but difficult
to perceive our own shortcomings. We winnow
the faults of others like chaff, but we hide
our own like the wily gambler concealing his
foul throw.
One
who always criticises the faults of others and is
irritated by them, far from becoming free of faults,
increases his own vices.
There
is no track in the sky, no Samana1
outside the true path. Man delights in vanity.
The Tathagatas2 have overcome
these obstacles.
There
is no track in the sky, no Samana outside the
true path. No conditioned thing can last, but
the Buddhas remain for ever immutable.
|
I
have read your notes on the control of speech. Some have
tried very seriously. I am happy with the result. I believe
it will be good for everyone if you continue.
Someone has written me something which is very true:
that when one begins, one has no reason to stop, one begins
with one hour a day, but this becomes a kind of necessity,
a habit and one continues quite naturally.
If your exercise truly has this result, then it will
be an excellent thing.
We can select three things from what I have read this
evening. The first is that you must persist in what you
do if you want to get a result. The Dhammapada tells us,
for example, that if you have a mantra and do not repeat
it sufficiently, there is no use in having it and that if
you are inattentive, you lose, the benefit of vigilance,
and that if you do not continue in the good habits that
you acquire, they are useless - that is to say, you must
persevere. As for example, with the exercise which I as
You to do last time; I asked you to do it with the idea
that you form the habit of doing it, that will help you
much in coming your difficulties.
Already someone has told me, quite rightly, that while
practising this half-silence, or at any rate this continence
of speech one achieves quite naturally the mastery of numerous
difficulties," in one's character and also one avoids a
great many frictions and misunderstandings. This is true.
Another point to remember from our reading concerns
impurity and the Dhammapada gives the example of bad will
and wrong action. Wrong action, says our text, is a taint
in this world as well as in others. In the next verse it
is said that there." is no greater impurity than ignorance,
that is to say, ignorance is considered as the essential,
the central fault, which urgently needs to be corrected,
and what is called ignorance is not simply not knowing things,
not having the superficial knowledge of, things, it means
forgetting the very reason of our existence, the truth that
has to be discovered.
There was a third thing?... Yes, you must not cherish
illusion that if you want to follow the straight path, if
you modest, if you seek purity, if you are disinterested,
if you want to lead a solitary existence and have a clear
judgment, things' will become easy.... It is quite the contrary!
When you begin, to advance towards inner and outer perfection,
the difficulties start at the same time.
I have very often heard people saying, "Oh! now that
I am trying to be good, everybody seems to be bad to me!"
But is precisely to teach you that one should not be good
with an' interested motive, one should not be good so that
others will be;, good to you - one must be good for the
sake of being good.
It is always the same lesson: one must do as well as
one can, the best one can, but without expecting a result,
without doing it with a view to the result. Just this attitude,
to expect a reward for a good action - to become good because
one thinks that this will make life easier -takes away all value
from the good action.
You must be good for the love of goodness, you must
be just for the love of justice, you must be pure for the
love of purity and you must be disinterested for the love
of disinterestedness; then you are sure to advance on the
way.
1 Words charged with spiritual
power.
1 Ascetic.
2 The Buddhas who, according to tradition, came
on earth to reveal the eternal Truth.
13
June 1958
|
Search
Engine
-