..續本文上一頁elude people by the fact that he started [teaching] from a very high place. Most people, even if they think about what he is teaching, cannot understand it.
It is something one knows through letting go -- even of believing in Krishnamurti, or of trying to figure out what he is talking about. One has to come down to a very low level of humility, what Ajahn Chah calls an earthworm, just being very simple and not expecting any results. Doing good and refraining from doing evil with body, speech and mind, and being mindful.
RW: Why do religions degenerate
AS: Because they are only conventional truth. They are not ultimate truth.
RW: But people do not practise. They practise mechanically. When a teacher conducts a course here, the question often arises, ”Buddhism is known as a peaceful religion, and it is said that a war has never begun in the cause of Buddhism.” But look at Tibet and Cambodia. People were massacred. In Laos the monks are working in the field. One visiting Cambodian monk said that, basically, people do not practise, and that is why it falls apart, why there is so much trouble.
AS: Well, why is the world as it is
Why did they annihilate two million Cambodians
One can speculate. But the only thing that one can know is that the conditions of one”s mind -- greed, hatred and delusion -- are the reflection of the world, the way it is. The world has murders, death, atrocities and destruction because we do it all the time in our minds, too.
What did you do before you ordained, or even while you are ordained
You try to annihilate a lot of things out of your mind, don”t you
If you have anger, jealousy, nasty thoughts, you annihilate them, because you think that is the way to solve the problem. One annihilates that which one thinks is the cause of one”s suffering.
Now apply that to a country like Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge government believed that the middle class bourgeoisie was the cause of all suffering so the government annihilated it. It works on the same principle.
Buddhist teachings are non-violent. One does not annihilate the pests, but understands that even the pests of the mind are impermanent and non-self. They will disappear on their own.
Many things that we are frightened of are really our best friends -- like fear itself. We are afraid of the unknown, but the unknown is the way to enlightenment. Not-knowing is what brings terror into people”s lives. Many people spend much of their life just trying to find security in some form or another, because of fear. Fear drives them to become this, or get hold of that, to save up a lot of money, to seek pleasure or a safe place to live, or to find some ideal person they hope will make them happy forever. That is fear of being alone, fear of the unknown -- of that we cannot know. In meditation, when one is mindful, that very fear -- seeing it as it really is -- leads us into the deathless, the silence. Yet fear is something that we react to very strongly.
So, if one cannot be at peace with the pest of one”s mind, one cannot very well expect a stupid government like the Khmer Rouge, or most elements of the world, to be any better. We have no right to point the blame at such things as big as society. To find fault with America -- that is easy to do -- or with Cambodia or Tibet... because the monks did not practise hard enough or the Cambodian people were not good Buddhists... that is a bit silly, actually.
What are you doing about it
That is what I am saying. I cannot help Mr.Pol Pot”s screwed-up version of the world. How he intended to solve the problem was idiocy. But I have seen that very same idiocy in myself: the desire to wipe out that which I do not like or that which I think is the cause of the world”s or my own suffering. That is where one can see what th…
《Ajahn Sumedho Interviewed》全文未完，請進入下頁繼續閱讀…