Dear Dhamma Friends,
I am happy to see you here and thank you for your attendance at this ceremony. On this occasion I would like to take an opportunity to give a dhamma talk which is originally taught by The Lord Buddha.
What I am talking about today is some of the Buddha’s words from Dhammapada pali. Dhammapada is a collection of sayings of the Buddha recorded in Khuddaka Nikaya. Those Buddha’s sayings were compiled in the form of verses or ဂါထာ.
Today, I want to tell you about the verse no 35 in Dhammapada pali. May I recite this pali verse first.
ဒုန္နိဂ္ဂဟဿ လဟုနော ယတ္ထကာမ နိပါတိနော
စိတ္တဿ ဒမထော သာဓု စိတ္တံ ဒန္တံ သုခါဝဟံ
Lord Buddha said –
- It is good to tame the mind, which is difficult to restrain.
- It flies after fancies wherever it likes.
- A disciplined mind brings happiness.
Dear Dhamma Friends, Lord Buddha said ‘‘A disciplined mind brings happiness’’.
Keep this word in your mind. ‘‘A disciplined mind brings happiness’’
So, we can say ‘Undisciplined mind brings unhappiness’.
Everybody wants happiness and we are seeking it. We don’t like unhappiness and try to avoid it. Therefore, to avoid unhappiness and attain happiness our mind must be disciplined, Lord Buddha said.
Why should the mind need to be disciplined in order to attain happiness? Because mind is undisciplined in nature. It is so swift and difficult to restrain or control (ဒုန္နိဂ္ဂဟဿ လဟုနော). It flies after fancies wherever it likes (ယတ္ထကာမ နိပါတိနော). Mind is invisible and subtle (သုဒုဒ္ဒသံ သုနိပုဏံ). Mind naturally tends to indulge in evil and sinful things (ပါပသ္မိံ ရမတိမနော ).
Dhamma friends, we think we are happy when we get what we want. But it is not a real happiness. It is an illusion. Since the mind is clouded by moha မောဟ. delusion or avijja အဝိဇ္ဇာ. ignorance we naturally incline to entertain ourselves in pleasurable sensual objects and become attached to them. We grasp them and hold onto them. It is simply greed, loba လောဘ or craving, tanha တဏှာ. But when we come across the unpleasant or disliked sensual objects or undesirable circumstances we naturally react with anger or aversion, dosa ဒေါသ. These are negative emotions which will drain your energies. Eventually you will find yourself in an unhappy or negative state of mind. If your mind is tamed to be disciplined you will be able to avoid these negative emotions and reactions. Then real happiness will come.
Lord Buddha said စိတ္တဿ ဒမထော သာဓု ‘‘It is good and profitable to tame the mind’’ If the mind is well tamed it will be disciplined and real happiness will naturally follow after. When the mind is ultimately tamed and it is ultimately disciplined, ultimate happiness, Nibbana, will come. Buddha also said in another Dhammapada verse စိတ္တံဂုတ္ထံ သုခါဝဟံ that means ‘‘well guarded mind is a source of great joy’’. Lord Buddha said ‘‘Well guarded mind is a source of great joy’’. This is another beautiful word of Buddha. We should keep these words in mind. A disciplined and well guarded mind is a source of true happiness. That is why we should tame and guard our mind. In fact taming and guarding go together. Here, the question is ‘how do we tame our mind to be disciplined?’
Generally speaking, all the teachings of Lord Buddha are about how to tame the mind and finally attain ultimate happiness, Nibbana. Lord Buddha taught it in so many discourses, သုတ္တန် in various occasions at different places throughout His holy life. Basically these teachings can be summarized into three practices. These are morality, moral discipline or right conduct called (sila), concentration or onepointedness of mind (Samadhi) and wisdom or insight in the truth (panna ပညာ). So to tame your mind to become disciplined you must practice these three practices, sila, samadhi and panna. Dear dhamma friends, First I want to talk about morality. Sila or morality is a self-restraint from doing evil or sinful physical and verbal actions. Sila is wholehearted commitment to what is wholesome with the motivation of nonviolence or freedom from causing harm. Sila is also one of the ten paramitas (ပါရမီ), perfection or completeness. Paramitas must be fulfilled or perfected. There are two aspects of sila which is essential in taming the mind. These are (စာရိတ္တသီလ) Caritta sila, right performance and (ဝါရိတ္တသီလ) Varitta sila, right
avoidance. In taming our mind we must restrain ourselves to avoid unwholesome deeds and perform wholesome ones.
Honouring the precepts of sila or observing them is considered a great gift or mahadana (မဟာဒါန) to others because it creates an atmosphere of trust, respect and security. A person who is practicing sila poses no threat to another person’s life, his property, his family and his well being etc. So to tame your mind, you need to practice sila, both caritta sila (စာရိတ္တသီလ) and varitta sila (ဝါရိတ္တသီလ). You need to restrain yourself to avoid evil actions and perform wholesome actions too.
In other word Sila or morality is mentioned in the Noble Eightfold Path (8 Maggangas ). Noble Eightfold Path can be divided into three sections. They are Sila magganga သီလမဂ္ဂင် morality, Samadhi magganga သမာဓိမဂ္ဂင် concentration and Panna magganga ပညာမဂ္ဂင် wisdom. Sammavaca သမ္မာဝါစာ right speech, Sammakammanta သမ္မာကမ္မန္တ right conduct and Sammaajiva သမ္မာအာဇီဝ right means of livelihood. These noble threefold path is called Sila magganga သီလမဂ္ဂင် or morality. Therefore to perfect your sila paramita (သီလပါရမီ) you have to commit yourself to refrain from evil actions and to do virtuous actions with the motivation and intention of nonviolence and freedom from making harm to yourself and others.
Refraining from evil actions by means of observing moral precepts you can live the life without regret or at least less regret. Life without regret or less regret is a happy life. And performing and doing good deeds you would enjoy and feel satisfied what you have done. That will make you happy too. It is sure that the more your mind is disciplined by means of morality or sila the happier you will be.
Dhamma friends, shall we tame the mind to be disciplined by practicing morality, sila.
Second practice in taming the mind is concentration (Samadhi). Samadhi is onepointedness of mind. When the mind is concentrated it becomes still, peaceful and tranquil. Concentration is a state of mind being totally aware of the present moment. But this concentration must be right concentration, သမ္မာသမာဓိ Sammasamadhi. Lord Buddha repeatedly remind his disciples to cultivate concentration, Samadhi (သမာဓိံ ဘိက္ခဝေ ဘာဝေထ) and he said that သမာဟိတော ဘိက္ခဝေ ဘိက္ခု ယထာဘူတံ ပဇာနာတိ) one who have developed Samadhi will see the true nature. Then how can we develop right concentration သမ္မာသမာဓိ Sammasamadhi? Again we shall go to Noble Eightfold Path (8 Maggangas). In it, right effort Sammavayama သမ္မာဝါယာမ right mindfulness Sammasati သမ္မာသတိ and right concentration Sammasamadhi သမ္မာသမာဓိ are categorized as Samadhi magganga. It means that by cultivating right effort and right mindfulness right concentration develop gradually. So what we have to do is cultivate the mindfulness with right effort.
Here I want to give a brief explanation. Right mindfulness means simply being aware of what you are doing at the present moment. In other word it is being mindful of your physical and mental activities and phenomena at every moment. But it is not really easy. So we need to remind ourselves repeatedly to be mindful again and again. In doing so, right effort is important here. What is right effort sammavayama သမ္မာဝါယာမ , then? It is a diligent effort which guards the mind against unwholesome actions and guides the mind to wholesome actions. Another pali word for effort is Viriya which also is one of the ten paramitas or perfections to be perfected. Through right mindfulness and right effort mind will overcome 5 hindrances (5 nivarana နီဝရဏ) and become still, tranquil, peaceful and finally concentrated. It is right concentration. The higher the level of concentration the more your mind becomes tranquil, peaceful and loving. Peaceful, tranquil and loving mind is a sort of real happiness. So why shouldn’t we practice concentration or Samadhi magganga?. Shall we tame our mind to be disciplined by practicing right concentration, Samadhi.
Dear dhamma friends, Up to now I have discussed 2 practices in taming the mind. Finally I will discuss third and the last practice in taming and training the mind. That is wisdom or insight in truth or panna. ပညာ In Noble Eightfold Path third section is called panna magganga ပညာမဂ္ဂင် or panna. These are Sammaditthi သမ္မာဒိဋ္ဌိ right view and Sammasankappa သမ္မာသင်္ကပ္ပ right contemplation or right thought. What is right view? In the very basic level right view is Kammasakasa sammaditthi ကမ္မဿကဿ သမ္မာဒိဋ္ဌိ, view of Kamma and it’s consequences or rule of cause and effect. We should have a right view that our actions, physical verbal and mental, have consequences not only in this very life but also after this life. If we keep this view in mind our mind will become more guarded and it will tend to wholesome. Our thoughts and contemplation can be easily disciplined and wholesome. With the right view in mind it is easier to practice the former two practices morality and concentration. When the morality and concentration is gradually progress wisdom or insight in truth arises progressively.
After you perfect your Sila morality and well develop your Samadhi, concentration the level of wisdom or insight become higher and higher. Then your mind is tamed to be more and more disciplined. That disciplined mind will bring more and more happiness. Finally when the mind is fully and ultimately disciplined the ultimate and absolute happiness will come and you will realize Nibbana.
Dhamma friends, Now I have discussed how to tame the mind to be disciplined because Lord Buddha said that the disciplined mind brings happiness.
Although taming and guarding the mind is difficult it is not impossible. Lord Buddha never taught impossible things to do. He taught us only after he achieved it by himself. So we should trust in his teachings and practice them.
Before I conclude my dhamma talk, I want to recite the pali verse again because it is so beautiful.
ဒုန္နိဂ္ဂဟဿ လဟုနော ယတ္ထကာမ နိပါတိနော
စိတ္တဿ ဒမထော သာဓု စိတ္တံ ဒန္တံ သုခါဝဟံ
- It is good to tame the mind, which is difficult to restrain.
- It flies after fancies wherever it likes.
- A disciplined mind brings happiness.
Dear dhamma friends, As conclusion of my dhamma talk I would like to advise you to keep some important words of Buddha in your mind. These words are ‘Disciplined mind brings happiness’ ... and ‘Well guarded mind is a great source of joy’. Please don’t forget these beautiful and inspiring words of Lord Buddha.
By keeping these words of Buddha in your mind
May all of you be able to tame the mind.
May all of your mind be disciplined.
May you be happy.
May you reach the ultimate happiness, Nibbana.
Thank you.
Sadhu Sadhu Sadhu
Sayadaw Ven Adiccavamsalankara