About This Answer
Continuing on the temperaments (carita), a monk asks whether one person can be all types at once. Ajahn Plien says yes, though some tendencies dominate. Greed and anger come as a pair: if someone steals a bag he is attached to, anger follows. As in a battle where capturing the enemy leader makes the troops surrender, removing one removes the other. The intellectual type should contemplate impermanence, suffering and not-self in everything around, or steady the mind by gazing at an object such as a picture of Luang Por Chah, used like a tree to hold onto.
He stresses that the mind is the chief and the body its servant; bad speech and action point back to the mind. One should not believe too easily but test causes and results, knowing for oneself as one knows heat, cold or hunger. The mind runs out to America or England and back until it tires; thinking less means suffering less. Even desire can be used rightly, wanting freedom from desire. The body itself gives a Dhamma talk through toothache, knee pain and the crying newborn, and the whole effort to earn money is to look after it.