..续本文上一页 I hadn”t received permission to take any. Later on a villager came by with a basket and seeing that I was staying there, asked me for permission to pick the fruit. Perhaps they asked me because they thought I was the owner of the trees. Reflecting on it, I saw that I had no real authority to give them permission to take the fruit, but that if I forbade them they would criticise me as being possessive and stingy with the monastery”s fruit trees -- either way there would be some harmful results. So I replied to the layperson: "Even though I”m staying in this monastery, I”m not the owner of the trees. I understand you want some of the fruit... I won”t forbid you from taking any, but I won”t give you permission either. So it”s up to you." That”s all it needed: they didn”t take any! Speaking in this way was actually quite useful; I didn”t forbid them, but I didn”t give them permission either, so there was no sense of being burdened by the matter. This was the wise way to deal with such a situation -- I was able to keep one step ahead of them. Speaking that way produced good results then and it”s still a useful way of speaking to this day. Sometimes if you speak to people in this unusual manner it”s enough to make them wary of doing something wrong.

　　What do they mean by temperament (carita)

　　Bhikkhu A.: Temperament

　　 I”m not sure how to answer that.

　　Ajahn Chah: The mind is one thing, temperament is another and the wisdom faculty another. So how do you train with this

　　 Contemplate them. How do they talk about them

　　 There is the person of lustful temperament, hateful temperament, deluded temperament, intelligent temperament and so on. Temperament is determined by those mental states within which the mind attaches and conceals itself most often. For some people it”s lust, others it”s aversion. Actually, these are all just verbal descriptions of the characteristics of the mind, but they can be distinguished as distinct from each other.

　　So you”ve been a monk for six years already. You”ve probably been running after your thoughts and moods long enough -- you”ve already been chasing them for many years. There are quite a few monks who want to go and live alone and I”ve got nothing against it. If you want to live alone then give it a go. If you”re living in a community, stick with it. Neither is wrong - if you don”t reflect in the wrong way. If you are living alone and caught into wrong thinking, that will prevent you benefiting from the experience. The most appropriate kind of place for practising meditation is somewhere quiet and peaceful. But when a suitably peaceful place is not available, if you are not careful your meditation practice will just die. You”ll find yourself in trouble. So be careful not to scatter your energy and awareness by seeking out too many different teachers, different techniques or places to meditate. Gather together your thoughts and focus your energy. Turn attention inwards and sustain awareness on the mind itself. Use these teachings to observe and investigate the mind over a long period of time. Don”t discard them; keep them with you as a subject for reflection. Look at what I”ve been saying about all conditioned things being subject to change. Impermanence is something to investigate over time. It won”t take long before you gain clear insight into it. One teaching a senior monk gave me when I was new to meditation that has stuck with me is simply to go ahead and train the mind. The important thing is not to get caught up in doubting. That”s enough for now.

　　The five khandhas: the five groups or aggregates that the Buddha has summed up all physical and mental phenomena of existence, and which appear to the deluded person as a self or personality. They are physical form (rupa-khandha), feeling (vedana), memory and perception (sanna), mental formations (sankhara) and sense consciousness (vinnana).

　　Thudong (Thai Language) generally refers to the practice of wandering. It is derived from the Pali word dhutanga, which refers to the thirteen austere practices. These are strict observances recommended by the Buddha to monks, as a help to cultivate contentedness, renunciation, energy and other wholesome qualities. One or more of them may be observed for a shorter or longer period of time. They include the vows of: wearing patched-up robes, wearing only three robes, going for alms, not omitting any house while going for alms, eating at one sitting, eating only from the alms-bowl, refusing all further food, living in the forest, living under a tree, living in the open air, living in a cemetery, being satisfied with whatever dwelling and sleeping in sitting position.

　　Generally the monks living in the village and city monasteries in Thailand will spend more time studying the Pali language and the Buddhist scriptures than training in the rules of discipline or meditation, which is more emphasized in the forest tradition.

　　The four asava or taints include: the taint of sense-desire (kamasava), of desiring eternal existence (bhavasava), of wrong views (ditthasava), and of ignorance (avijjasava).

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