About This Teaching
Ajahn Dtun pictures the defilements of greed, anger and delusion as an army that has captured three cities: one's actions, one's speech and one's heart. Generosity lets one slip quietly into enemy territory. Keeping sīla (moral virtue) retakes the cities of speech and action, and the defilements retreat into the heart. Concentration then moves the army of Dhamma inward, where mindfulness and wisdom hunt them out: generosity against greed, mettā against anger, equanimity where one cannot help.
He explains that the mind deludedly attaches to the body and to its thoughts and emotions. Contemplating death, the parts of the body or the four elements shows that the body cannot be commanded and is not the mind, which only lives in it for a while. To illustrate mindfulness, he describes sitting on a chair at the front door to see every guest who comes and goes.
He closes by noting that houses, wealth and even the body are left behind at death. Only the goodness one has developed travels on, so the spiritual perfections should be cultivated in every life.