About This Teaching
Visiting Abhayagiri Monastery again after three years, Ajahn Dtun opens by expressing his respect for Ajahn Pasanno and the Sangha, and recalling their shared connection through Luang Por Chah's lineage.
Most people seek happiness in material things, status and praise, but such happiness is temporary. The Buddha has already shown the way: sīla as the foundation, samādhi in the middle and paññā at the end. Sīla is like an army of Dhamma retaking the cities of body and speech from the defilements; samādhi retakes the city of the mind; then wisdom hunts down the defilements hiding there. When the mind is calm, the mind and its moods separate, and wisdom can let go of liking and disliking by seeing their impermanence.
But letting go of moods each day is like cutting one branch of a tree each day of the week: by the next Monday the first branch has regrown. To kill the tree one must uproot it, and the root is attachment to the body as self. So one contemplates the body, which cannot be ordered not to fall ill, age or die, as the four elements and as unattractive, letting go of attachment one part at a time in three stages; greed, ill will and sensual desire weaken and finally cease.
Even then a subtle delusion remains, taking the clean, peaceful knowing itself to be the mind. Wisdom must examine feeling, perception, formations and consciousness arising and ceasing until avijjā is destroyed and the mind becomes pure, like a director who is dismissed and can no longer direct the play of birth. He closes by urging his listeners to do their duties well and not let time pass in vain.