About This Teaching
We have been born and died countless times, Ajahn Dtun begins, and defilements of greed, hatred and delusion have led beings to seek happiness only in sights, sounds and other sense objects. Without the wisdom to see suffering in body and mind, no one looks for a way out. Unwholesome thoughts, speech and actions bring suffering now and later, so the first step is to keep the five precepts, which guard body and speech.
Samādhi then gives the mind strength to endure greed and anger without acting on them, and to replace anger with mettā. Thinking, speaking and acting well makes the mind happy. With samādhi, mindfulness and wisdom arise, and the mind sees that emotions are only conditions that arise and pass, separate from the mind itself.
He then turns to the body. If the body were the mind, we could stop it from ageing, sickening and dying; since we cannot, body and mind are separate. Contemplating the body as earth, water, fire and air, and as a corpse that decays, weakens attachment to it; when that attachment is fully released, greed, anger and sensual desire cease. The mind is then clean but not yet pure, still attached to the subtle happiness of the mind, so feeling, perception, formations and consciousness must be seen as impermanent too. When this attachment is let go, the mind is free: the end of greed, hatred and delusion, which the Buddha called the highest happiness. He closes by noting that this path is within human reach, and all Buddhas awakened as humans.