Teaching of Thabarwa Sayadaw U Ottamasara
Question and Answer and Dhamma Discussion with
Overseas Disciple
3rd September 2012
Part - Two
KKL : You
always remind people to 'do Good Deeds continuously'. In my personal point of view, Good Deeds
means dana, sila and bhavana. Out of
these three, bhavana, which we traditionally understand is - to keep your body
in correct posture during meditation, observe our breathing closely
(concentrate on your nostril), etc. In
your point of view, what really is the action during meditation and how to
contemplate on? Kindly explain .....
Sayadaw : As
far as practicing meditation is concerned, the traditional understanding of
most of the meditators (yogis) are not so correct because they traditionally
understand meditation as 'doing'. In
truth and reality, practicing meditation means 'abandoning'. Abandoning the doings or actions and doing
the action of 'abandoning' only.
Traditionally, we are taught to 'do'
something during meditation. That is the
reason why most of the meditators always try to do something during
meditation. Moreover, we traditionally
believe that result can be achieved by doing or working hard, so we naturally
try to do something to achieve desired result.
The real meditation is 'abandoning', doing
nothing but 'abandoning', abandon placing central emphasis on living and
non-living things (beings).
Traditionally we use living and non-living
beings with grasping, use living beings as my relatives, my family, my race
(ethnic group or nationality), etc with the mind action of centering and
attachment. In reality, the ability that
can use living and non-living things as abandoning purpose is a real and
genuine 'dana'.
If you do not do 'dana', you will use living
and non-living things with grasping, you will resort to all sorts of methods
and approach to earn money, you will use all sorts of ways and means to widen
up your circle of friends and connections, you will take living beings with the
mind action of grasping, etc. This kind
of understanding is not correct.
Doing real Good Deeds means abandoning the
grasping.
The real and genuine sila is 'abandoning' .....
abandoning power to all physical and oral (verbal) actions.
We normally do not know how to make use of living
and non-living beings for abandoning purpose. That is the reason why we always
use them for grasping purpose.
As far as kaya kamma (physical actions) and
vaci kamma (oral actions) are concerned, we tend to do all sorts of actions
(activities) up to our limits, we tend to say whatever we can say or whatever
we wish to say, we tend to do everything until there is nothing which we do not
know how to do, we tend to learn everything until there is nothing left for us
to learn .... those are the norms of human beings.
The real sila is ... to try to 'abandon' all
those created physical and oral actions without placing central emphasis on
doing or not-doing. Real sila emphasises
only on the power of abandoning. As long
as you carry out your actions with the power of abandoning in mind, there is no
problem. But the problem is that we tend
to do things without the power of abandoning in mind. That is the reason why we cannot live without
doing anything, saying anything, etc. By
doing so, in long term, some might develop signs of mental disorders.
Dana, which we traditionally understand is
also 'doing something' ... human beings possess ability to do donations but
unable to abandon the mind action of grasping on living and non-living beings
along the way. That is the reason why we
always need to work so hard to earn money in order to make donations.
Dana
|
Ability that can use
living and non-living things as abandoning purpose.
|
Sila
|
Abandoning power to all
physical and oral actions.
|
Bhavana
|
Abandoning power to all
mental actions.
|
Panna
|
Abandoning power to any
attachment concerning with physical, oral and mental actions.
|
To be
continued ...