About This Teaching
Wherever one lives in the world, Ajahn Dtun says, one should keep the five precepts and train in meditation every day, sitting and walking, whether or not the mind becomes calm. Frequent practice makes the mind strong enough to contend with the world and with its own thoughts.
When the mind is peaceful, mindfulness and wisdom arise, and wisdom sees that the mind and its moods are separate. Previously the mind believed that its emotions were the mind itself, and this identification brought suffering. Moods are only activities of the mind. With mindfulness and wisdom one replaces wrong view with right view, and uses them to reduce greed, anger and suffering; to the extent that these lessen, the heart finds true happiness.
He compares this to walking with a heavy load on one's shoulder that grows heavier the further one goes; putting it down brings ease. The moods the mind has clung to are that burden, and the task is to lift them off the mind.