About This Teaching
Ajahn Dtun explains that for countless lifetimes our thinking has been a slave to moods. Greed, anger and delusion dominate the heart, and the defilements trick us into doing what is wrong. In this life we should rise up against them and overcome them.
Without samādhi, the mind and its moods are one and cannot be separated, so the mind is carried along by greed, anger, liking and disliking. When anger arises, the heart suffers, yet no one wants suffering. We suffer because we hold the anger as ourselves. Seeing this, we should turn to wisdom and resolve to end anger in the heart.
He recalls that when he was young he once stopped two friends quarrelling. He felt no anger himself, but it pained him to see anger in both their hearts and be unable to help, and he resolved to end anger in his own heart. We must become the enemy of the anger within us.
The mind is easily lost in moods because it lacks strength, like a person who cannot lift a heavy load until exercise and sport have made the body strong. The exercise for the mind is samādhi; once the mind is strong, sati and paññā can lift the moods out of it.