About This Teaching
Ajahn Dtun encourages lay people to visit a monastery at least once a month, any monastery that is convenient, so that making merit becomes a habit. Like a chain, by the second or third week of each month the mind turns again to the next offering, and the wholesome mood continues from month to month. Giving removes ungenerous qualities from the heart and turns outer wealth into inner wealth.
Doing good often, one notices lapses and resolves to keep sīla better. Wisdom sees the harm in wrong bodily action and speech, and with giving and the five precepts kept as normal, the mind becomes peaceful to a degree, free of remorse. Yet suffering still arises from greed, anger and delusion, because the mind takes its thoughts and moods to be itself.
So one practises samādhi with patience and effort every day. When the mind becomes peaceful, it is clear that the mind is one thing and mental states another. Mindfulness and wisdom then see the impermanence and not-self of moods and gradually let go. When the mind is free of moods, take up the body for contemplation: whether male or female, it is earth, water, air and fire, which come together, change and break apart. Without this, illness, ageing and death bring suffering.
Keep mindfulness in every posture and activity. He recalls the Buddha's teaching that whoever guards their own mind will be free from the snares of Māra, and urges seeking the cause of suffering and the way to end it, every day.