Struggle for cessation of suffering,
The Buddha taught the path to attain the cessations of suffering. Without the attainment of cessation of suffering, we cannot be peaceful. Cessation of suffering is just Nibbana. Many Buddhist people have to practice for attainment of Nibbana. Nibbana is final liberation, final cessation of suffering. But without struggle we cannot attain Nibbana. Nibbana cannot be attain without systematic effort. Great effort is needed to attain Nibbana. So in order to struggle for Nibbana, the Buddha explained the way in အပဏ္ဏကပဋိပဒါသုတ္တ. အပဏ္ဏကပဋိပဒါသုတ္တ that means practice with the certainty or sure course. In this sutta the Buddha explained three practices.
1. The first one is ဣန္ဒြိ ယေသု ဂုတ္တဒွါရတာ. We must guard the door of sense faculties, that is one of the important practice,
2. The second is ဘောဇနေ မတ္တညုတာ. We must be moderate in taking food. We must have moderate eating.
3. The third one is practice of watchfulness ဇာဂရိယာနု ယောဂ or wakeful practice.
In this sutta, the Buddha gave meditation technique in full ways & taught how to follow the meditation practice in our daily life.
If you follow these three ways, you are practicing with certainty, you are following the sure course for cessation of suffering, အပဏ္ဏကပဋိပဒံ ပဋိပန္နော ဟောတိ၊. You are walking on the path which leads to the cessation of suffering with certainty.
Not only that, Buddha said ယောနိ စဿ အာရဒ္ဓါ ဟောတိ အာသဝါနံ ခယာယ if you follow these three ways with great effort, you are struggling for the destruction of asava. The Buddha promise by these two words, that you are on the right path, အပဏ္ဏကပဋိပဒ, your practice is for cessations of asava. ယောနိ စ
In our daily life, the first important point is to guard our sense faculties or sense organs; these are eye, ear , nose, tongue, body and mind. Through the sense faculties, craving(loba) hatred(dosa) and delusion(moha) flow into the mind. Since these are evil flux we must try to guard our sense faculties first. We have eyes and we see desirable and undesirable visible objects in our daily life.
we have ears, so we can listen desirable sound or undesirable sounds,
we have sense of nose, therefore we get desirable smell or undesirables smell,
we have sense of tongue, therefore we have a taste which is desirable or undesirable,
we have sense of body, therefore we feel desirable tangible object or undesirable tangible object,
we have mind, therefore we have thoughts evil or good.
If we cannot guard these sense faculties, all evil state of mind or mental impurities will flux into our mind and they will influence our mind.
When the mental impurities such as လောဘ ဒေါသ မောဟ, ဣဿာ မစ္ဆရိယ, influence our mind, we cannot see what is true so we cannot find the way to cessations of suffering.
Therefore the most important to do is we must guard our sense faculties. To guard these sense faculties is not so easy for everybody, because for the most people their mindfulness is very weak. With weak mindfulness we cannot guard them when the sensual objects come into contact with the sense doors. The sensual objects would influence our mind when we are not mindful. So how do we guard our senes faculties? This teaching does not mean that we should not look at visible object, we should not listen to sound, we should not smell or taste. This is not such a advice. We have eyes, therefore we will see visible objects which are desirable or undesirable. Whatever may be, whenever we see the visible objects, desirable or undesirable , we must be mindful on the object, we must not let craving arise, not let hatred arise, that is how to guard sense faculties.
To clarify this, on seeing desirable visible object, there may craving arise , we should not let craving arise, we must be mindful not to let the craving enter, not to let the craving influence our mind. This is a very important practice, it is called ဣန္ဒြိယေသု ဂုတ္တဒွါရတာ.
On seeing undesirable visible object, there may arise a hatred, people hate undesirable visible object.So we must be mindful not to let hatred arise within us with regard to the undesirable object. In this သုတ္တ and မဟာသတိပဋ္ဌာနသုတ္တ the same thing is given by the Buddha, the same advices is given and မဟာသတိပဋ္ဌာနသုတ္တ used ဝိနေယျ လောကေ အဘိဇ္ဈာဒေါမနဿံ. အဘိဇ္ဈာဒေါမနဿံ here အဘိဇ္ဈာ mean craving. The other meaning of အဘိဇ္ဈာ is a covetousness. Here အဘိဇ္ဈာ means thinking toward the object with craving, thinking with the craving for the object, that is craving for desirable object. ဒေါမနဿ means unhappiness. When we see undesirable object with unhappiness, hatred arises, hatred is ဒေါသ. ဒေါသ follows unhappy feeling. In this sutta and မဟာသတိပဋ္ဌာနသုတ္တ it is not directly mentioned ဒေါသ, it is mentioned unhappy feeling ဒေါမနဿ. အဘိဇ္ဈာ ဒေါမနဿာ ပါပကာ အကုသလာ ဓမ္မာ အနွာဿဝေယျုံ. If you cannot guard your eye faculties. အဘိဇ္ဈာ craving for desirable object and ဒေါမနဿာ unhappiness regarding to undesirable visible object will arise. We must try to guard sense faculty of eye, not to let craving for desirable object arise, not to let hatred or feeling sad with regard to the undesirable object. In this practice mindfulness is the most important. To practice သမ္မာသတိ right mindfulness on seeing we must be careful.
Similarly, on hearing, on smelling, on tasting,on touching and thinking we must be careful or we must be mindful. If we have mindfulness, knowledge follows သတိ သမ္ပဇည. Without mindfulness no knowledge can arises, therefore န ဟိ သတိ ဝိရဟိတာ ပညာ နာမ အတ္ထိ. Therefore Buddha use this term သတိ သမ္ပဇည. သတိ - mindfulness and သမ္ပဇည wisdom, these are two phenomena in meditation practice which are very important. These two phenomena have different functions, just being mindful is a functions of သတိ but သတိ can not realize nature of the object.
to realize the nature of the objects is the functions of knowledge သမ္ပဇည , these two phenomena must work together. Without သတိ သမ္ပဇည it is impossible to guard sense of faculties. If we can not a guard sense of faculties, there will be influence of mental impurities လောဘ ဒေါသ မောဟ, ဣဿာ မစ္ဆရိယ. With the impure mind we can not understand the nature of object. So to guard sense faculties is important practice. That is why in this သုတ္တ the Buddha taught us, you must have ဣန္ဒြိယေသု ဂုတ္တဒွါရတာ.
#The second is ဘောဇနေ မတ္တညုတာ. Moderate in eating is also important. Without food nobody can sustain their life and bodies in daily meditation practice. Although food is necessary some mental impurities may arise while eating food. The most serious evil is ရသတဏှာ craving for taste. ရသတဏှာ . Therefore to reduce or to remove ရသတဏှာ we must consider with the knowledge while we are eating. The Buddha gave the way how to reduce ရသတဏှာ or how to remove ရသတဏှာ in your daily food, ဘောဇနေ မတ္တညုတာ moderate in food or moderate in eating. Whenever you take a meal you must consider, in correct way,why you are eating.
Firstly you must consider for the purpose of taking meal, why you are taking meal. If you cannot consider the purpose, craving will easily influence your mind regarding to the food, therefore you must consider in correct way.
You should not take the food for playing sports, you should not eat for indulgence, you should not eat for personal charm, you should not eat your food for adornment. ဒဝါယ န မဒါယ န မဏ္ဍနာယ န ဝိဘူသနာယ. For those purposes you should not take meals. If you take meals for such a purpose your practice will be wrong.
So for what purpose do you take meals. ဣမဿ ကာယဿ ဌိတိယာ. To sustain this body. Without food we cannot sustain our bodies. ယာပနာယ. to make the body comfortable. Without a meal we will be hungry. When we are hungry, we cannot concentrate, if we cannot a concentrate, we cannot have right understanding. Therefore food is a necessary to remove hunger. so you must consider that you take your food for being comfortable of the bodies, ဝိဟိံသူပရတိယာ. if you have not the food, you may be tired, therefore to remove tiredness, or to remove suffering. the another purpose is ဗြဟ္မစရိယာနုဂ္ဂဟာယ. you need for food, you need your food for holy practice or noble practice ဗြဟ္မစရိယ. noble practice is eightfold noble path, to follow eightfold noble path. so for these a purposes we must take our daily food. After that you must be careful in dealing with the food. by taking meals, we must be careful to remove the old disease. what is it old disease? without a food, we are hungry, hunger is a kind of disease to remove hunger, that is it ဣတိ ပုရာဏဉ္စ ဝေဒနံ ပဋိဟင်္ခါမိ. again, removed old disease or old discomfortability, နဝဉ္စ ဝေဒနံ န ဥပ္ပါဒေဿာမိ. By taking meal, we should not cause to rise new disease, that is must be careful, new disease, some peoples are by persuasion of ရသတဏှာ. They eat more and more therefore new disease coming to be, some people are usually eat the food which is unhealthy or disagree with their body. but they cannot avoid to take that food and new disease will come. Therefore we must not take whatever food which is not suitable for us. such a food must be avoided. the Buddha said that after taking a meals, we must be comfortable for practice meditation, so that is also great help of meditation practice. therefore it is also needed to follow this way. the Buddha gave this one as a second, ဘောဇနေ မတ္တညုတာ. if you do not follow this practice, there will be a lot of disturbances in your meditation to attain enlightenment. if you are not moderate in food you may have the problems, that is obstacle for meditation practice therefore that is also included in meditation practice that is a kind of struggle for cessation of suffering.
#The next one is ဇာဂရိယာနုယောဂ. there is meditation timetable the Buddha had given. Meditation timetable according to this is သုတ္တ. you must practice meditation the whole days, the Buddha gave ဒိဝသံ စင်္ကမေန နိသဇ္ဇာယ အာဝရဏီယေဟိ ဓမ္မေဟိ စိတ္တံ ပရိသောဓေတိ. ဒိဝသံ=by day, စင်္ကမေန=walking up and down, walking meditation practice, နိသဇ္ဇာယ=by sitting, အာဝရဏီယေဟိ ဓမ္မေဟိ စိတ္တံ ပရိသောဓေတိ=you wash away the mental impurities.
generally the Buddha said explain the meditation practices, because of in detail, the Buddha explained meditation object, ကာယ ဝေဒနာ စိတ္တ ဓမ္မ in မဟာသတိပဋ္ဌာနသုတ္တ accordingly we must do it, by day walking you must purify your mind, you removed your mental impurities.
what is the mental impurities? especially metal impurities are နီဝရဏ. hindrances ကာမစ္ဆန္ဒ=desire for sensual-pleasure, ဗျာပါဒ=hatred, ထိနမိဒ္ဓ=mental tiredness physical tiredness and sloth and torpor, ဥဒ္ဓစ္စကုက္ကစ္စ=mental restlessness and worry, ဝိစိကိစ္ဆာ=doubt, အဝိဇ္ဇာ=ignorance, these are mental impurities. the other evil states are also mental impurities.
In daytime while you are walking sitting or standing you must try to remove these mineral impurities. when the daytime has gone and night comes , the Buddha taught, a night should be divided into three watchs ပဌမ ယာမ=first watch, မဇ္ဈိမ ယာမ= middle watch, ပစ္ဆိမ ယာမ=last watch, so you must divide the night into three. Suppose the night is twelve hours long, divide it into exactly four hours each, first watch four hours middle watch four hours last watch four hours. the Buddha advice you must continue your meditation practice in first watch as you do in the daytime. you must try to purify your mind in the whole first watch of night of four hours in walking sitting and standing posture without lying down. in the last watch also, you must try to purify your mind in this way, that means you should not lie down. So you should practice eight hours a night without taking a lying down posture in first and third watches of a night.
But you need to take a rest. The middle watch of four hours is the resting time for you. You should have a rest in lying down posture. so how to take lying down posture. the Buddha taught how to sleep and how to make lying down posture to take a rest in this sutta and other sutta too. ဒက္ခိဏေန ပေဿန သီဟသေယျံ ကပ္ပေတိ. Meditators should lie down on their right side to sleep, not the left side. ပါဒေ ပါဒံ အစ္စာဓာယ. One should place the right foot on the left foot without touching each ankles. then continue to be mindful until falling asleep. About your wake up time,Buddha said သတော သမ္ပဇာနော ဥဋ္ဌာနသညံ မနသိ ကရိတွာ၊ you must determine or resolve your waking time before you go to sleep. After four hours of resting I must be wake up at your predetermined waking time. In this way you should systematically go into bed, take a rest for four hours, get up in the early morning and continue meditation practice in the last watch of four hour.
This is a meditation timetable calld ဇာဂရိယာနုယောဂ. watchful practice or wakeful practice which lead to the cessation of suffering or destructions of asava.
In this sutta the Buddha gave three practices,
First one is ဣန္ဒြိယေသု ဂုတ္တဒွါရတာ by mindfulness and knowledge, you must guard your sense faculties, from craving hatred delusion and other impurities coming into the mind.
the second ဘောဇနေ မတ္တညုတာ to remove ရသတဏှာ craving for taste, hunger and discomfort
The third one is ဇာဂရိယာနုယောဂ. timetable for meditation practice for the whole day of 24 hours.
if you practice whatever meditation techniques the Buddha explained in မဟာသတိပဋ္ဌာနသုတ္တ and other suttas, following the teaching in this sutta, mental impurities, kilesa or asava, will influence less and less. when all kind of impurities are removed, your knowledge will be brighter and brighter your understanding will be clearer and clearer. when your understanding is strong enough you will attain, you will see the cessation of suffering, that is a final liberation, Nibbana.
Therefore let me conclude my Dhamma talk by wishing all of you follow the Buddha’s teachings in အပဏ္ဏကသုတ္တ, may all of you walk on the path to liberation that is destruction of asava or cessation of suffering. may you all attain Nibbana, may you all be happy and healthy. May all of you live long and healthy life.