About This Teaching
Everyone wishes for happiness, Ajahn Dtun observes, yet most seek it in wealth, status, praise and sense objects, all of which are temporary and come with their opposites. If no suffering ever arose in the mind, there would be no need to practise. Defilements have great power over the mind and drive people to think, speak and act in harmful ways, and the small pleasures of the senses hide the suffering of body and mind.
Sīla restrains bodily and verbal action, so that even when greed or anger arise one does not harm others. Samādhi makes the mind cool and peaceful, and from that peace mindfulness and wisdom arise. Defilements do not arise in any particular country but in the deluded mind that takes the body and emotions as self. With mindfulness and wisdom one sees that the mind is one thing and emotions another, and lets go of greed, anger, liking and disliking. If one cannot reflect a bad thought away, one returns to the meditation object for a short while until it fades.
When the mind is free of emotions, the body should be contemplated: it is made of earth, water, air and fire, and the mind cannot order it to stay healthy, young or alive. Not wanting to die is a wrong view. Seeing the body's impermanence and absence of self, the mind gradually releases attachment, greed and anger lessen, and true happiness appears. He urges patience and heedfulness in developing sīla, samādhi and paññā.