About This Teaching
Speaking to monastics and lay people at a Western monastery, Ajahn Dtun opens with the morning's almsround, where a woman in a restaurant offered the monks food straight from her own breakfast plate, and her son gave his bread. It reminded him of the Buddha's time.
He then sets out the whole path. Few people seek Dhamma, like the two horns on a bull compared with its many hairs. Sila (moral virtue) quietens body and speech; concentration is raising a "Dhamma army" to regain control of the mind from the kilesas (defilements); mindfulness and wisdom then hunt the defilements where they actually live, in one's own heart. Asking whether we can command the body not to age or sicken shows the body is not the mind.
The talk traces the stages of awakening in detail: stream entry letting go of a portion of attachment to the body, once-returning weakening greed and anger further, non-returning uprooting greed, anger and sexual desire completely, and the final subtle delusion that clings to feeling, memory, formations and knowing as self. Like a long journey, one rests when tired and keeps walking.