About This Teaching
Addressed to monks and novices, this talk sets out the whole path from restraint to the most refined letting go. Taking on the robes is compared to a soldier going into battle: one must be fully committed to ending defilements. Sila (moral discipline) gives composure, and samadhi gives the strength to separate the mind, the knower, from its objects, so that liking and disliking at the senses can be seen and released. Mindfulness kept through the whole day is like walking a path and picking up each piece of glass or nail along the way.
Ajahn Dtun describes contemplating the body through death, the 32 parts and the four elements until its emptiness is clear and greed and anger end. Even then subtler attachment to feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness remains, like faint discoloration in water that needs a finer filter. He says teachers advised destroying even the knower. Monks should test how much sleep and food support calm, work longer than lay people's eight hours, and give this one life to practice.