Serving A Purpose

　　November 4, 1958

　　My own motto is, "Make yourself as good as possible, and everything else will have to follow along in being good." If you don”t neglect yourself for the sake of external things, you”ll have to be good. So you shouldn”t neglect yourself. Develop your inner worth to your own satisfaction.

　　The world says, "Don”t worry about whether you”re good or bad, as long as you have money." This is just the opposite of the Dhamma, which says, "Don”t worry about whether you”re rich or poor, as long as you”re a good person."

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　　Your good qualities, if you don”t know how to use them, can hurt you — like money, which is something good but, if you don”t know how to spend it wisely, can lead to your ruin; or like a good sharp knife that, if you don”t know how to use it properly, can do you harm. Say, for instance, that you use the knife to kill someone. When you”re caught, you”ll have to be thrown in jail or executed, which means that you used the knife to kill yourself.

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　　Each of us has four kinds of valuables: the goodness of our deeds, the goodness of our words, the goodness of our manners, and the goodness of our thoughts. For this reason, we have to care for these valuables as best we can.

　　Most of us have good things to our name but we hardly ever bring them out to put them to use. Instead, we like to bring out only our worst things to use. In other words, we keep our goodness to ourselves and show only our worst side — like the plates, cups, and saucers in our homes: The good ones we keep in the cupboard, and only the chipped, cracked, and broken ones get put on the table, because we”re afraid the good ones will break. As for our best clothes, we don”t dare use them because we”re afraid they”ll get old, stained, or torn. So we end up keeping them packed away until they get so moldy or moth-eaten that they can”t be worn and have to become rags. As a result, we don”t get any good out of our valuables in line with their worth. In the same way, if we have any goodness within ourselves but don”t put it to use, it serves no purpose at all, either for ourselves or for others — like a knife you keep packed away until it gets rusty: If you finally bring it out to slice some food, the rust will poison you. If you happen to cut your hand or foot with it, you may come down with tetanus and die.

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　　An intelligent person knows how to use both good and evil without causing harm. Arahants even know how to use their defilements so as to be of benefit. When sages use common language, it can serve a good purpose. But when fools use fine language, it can be bad. If they use bad language; it”s even worse. An example of a person who used common language to serve a good purpose is Chao Khun Upali (Siricando Jan). One time he was invited to give a sermon in the palace during the weekly funeral observances for a young prince whose death had caused a great deal of sorrow to the royal relatives. On the previous weeks, some very high-ranking monks from Wat Debsirin had been invited to give sermons and they had all gone on about what a good man the prince had been, and how sad it was that he had come to such an untimely end that prevented him from living on to do more good for the world. This had caused the relatives to cry all the more.

　　When it came Chao Khun Upali”s turn to give a sermon, though, he didn”t carry on in the same vein at all. Instead, he started out with the theme of mindfulness of the body, describing the ugliness and foulness of the body, which is full of repulsive and disgusting things: snot, spit, dandruff, sweat, etc., etc. "When the body dies, there”s not one good thing about it," he said, "but people sit around weeping and wailing with tears streaming in tracks down their cheeks and mucus run…

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