..續本文上一頁is not fixed. It may improve and become easier by itself. Don”t be discouraged thinking that you have too little merit or spiritual potential (barami or paramita, wasana). Rather think of the fact that you are still young monks, newcomers to Buddhist Religion, and that the practice takes time. It takes the right persons and the right maturing factors (barami). The arising of peace is due to many many conditions.
The coming together of Sila, samadhi and Panya (virtue, concentration and wisdom) depends on the spiritual potential (barami) both of the past and present. If we do what we can in the present, and make the best of every day, whatever we have done in the past doesn”t matter. Whatever we have done that is bad or evil, to whatever extent, if it comes to our minds now, causing us to think that we”d rather not have acted like this in the past, we need to tell ourselves to start anew and that these are things that have already passed, they are over and can”t be changed any more.
This new start is our ordination as monks which the krooba-ajahns (the masters of the forest tradition) or the Buddha called our second birth. Our first birth is the birth as a human being, the second birth the becoming a monk. Still we are only monks on the conventional level, not on the ultimate level, the level of liberation. Being a monk in the conventional sense means that the laypeople give us the yellow robes to wear, but still we have kilesas (impurities) in our hearts. This is called monkhood on the conventional level. But monkhood in the ultimate sense is an embodiement of the essence of Buddhism, the penetration to the roots, for which we all need to train and practice. If we have become monks on the ultimate level, it could rightly be said that we have attained to the heart of the Buddhas teachings.
Luang Por Chah always used to stress that the decline of Buddhism these days is due to the fact that all of our training and practice doesn”t really penetrate to the heart of the Buddhas teaching. If our practice doesn”t really take us to the innermost teachings of our religion, we don”t know it in it”s actual meaning and keep speaking about it following our own thoughts, understandings and feelings. These are Luang Por”s words, not mine. I”m just letting you know what I”ve heard him say, since I had the chance to be with him. The fact that Buddhism is going down today, it is because of each and everyone of us, who hasn”t yet fully put it into practice. But on the other hand, if we haven”t taken the practice to the very end and not yet achieved what is to be achieved, we also need to remind ourselves that it takes time.
When feelings of discouragement come up and we are tired and disheartened we might want to give up our efforts, but once we have given up, there is no chance any more to reap the benefits of the practice. So at least keep trying, everyone. Whether we have already attained peaceful states or not doesn”t matter. Just keep on meditating, sitting or walking. Peaceful or not - don”t care! Try over and over, every day, with all your energy, whether other people see it or not doesn”t matter. We don”t practice to impress others and show off tllat we are practicing for attainment. We practice simply because we”d like our minds to get some peace, not for boasting that we are better than others. We haven”t ordained in order to identify with becoming the teachers of others or the abbot. This is not the way we think.
I don”t know if you were there, at Luang Por Chah”s old kuti close to the bot, when he said: "When I ordained, I didn”t think of becoming the abbot of a monastery or the teacher of anybody. It was when I was a monk for quite some time, and started to get more and more pansahs (rainy-seasons i.e. years in the robes) that o…
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