Don’t Obey Your Desire
Teaching of ThaBarWa Sayadaw U
Ottamasara
Delivered at Wat Ananda
Metyarama Thai Buddhist Temple
Singapore, March 2014
Part - Three
Animals cannot
understand about mindfulness and detachment so they have no choice but to keep
on doing in this way. But human beings have intelligence and we can understand
about Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha. This is why we can change our actions,
we can change our lives; and we can change ourselves. We should try to
represent the Truth of Ever New Impermanent Nature, which is not something, not
someone.
The idea of someone
makes trouble for us all the time. We are always thinking about ourselves, our
family, our problems and our health. The cause is attachment for something or
for someone. This is why the practice of mindfulness and detachment is
necessary for everyone, but most people don’t understand. This is why they
don’t want to be mindful, don’t want to detach.
In Myanmar there are a
lot of meditators. I made a permanent meditation center. Everyone can come and
stay for his lifetime. In the beginning only a few people were interested in
meditating all the time because they didn’t want to lose their family, their
job. Although they practiced meditation they continued their family life
and their job.
That is why my teaching
emphasizes detachment. Later more and more people will be able to detach.
This is why there are many people in my center, over 2000. More and more people
are interested in doing good deeds all the time and investing their
lives, their intelligence and their abilities in Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha.
Doing good, not doing bad and purifying the mind is the most important work.
First we must try to do
this and then we can teach others how to detach from themselves and their
actions. If you can detach from yourself, no need to worry, no desire.
Desire comes from the idea of someone: you want to do, you want to go, you want
to eat, you want to know. This comes from the idea of someone. If you can
detach from the idea of something or someone, no more desire. If there is
no desire, there will be perfection. There will be freedom, freedom from
desire, freedom from fear, freedom from worry, freedom from the society also.
Now you are seeing from
the side of a human. You are representing the human being. You are using the
intelligence of a human being. What you are using is not complete. If you think
like this you will believe there is no need to meditate, no need to detach. For
human beings, 'something', 'mine' and 'yours', 'someone', 'I' or 'you' are
essential. Something is necessary, something which we own; our own life or our
own belonging, our own place, our own family; it is necessary for human beings.
That understanding is not complete. We strongly believe: 'I am right', 'it is
right', 'something is right', 'someone is right'. We strongly believe like
this. This belief is wrong.
If you see from the
wrong view, mindfulness and detachment is just non-sense, you will see no need
to detach or to be mindful. To be free from the idea of something or of
someone, you must detach from the idea of something or someone. You can never
understand the Truth of no something, no someone if we see from the view
of something or someone.
Besides you must be able not to pay attention to
yourself and to what you are doing. We can speak, we can read, we can learn
because of attachment to something. We are paying attention to one action. A
lot of people are studying. A lot of people are speaking. A lot of people are
thinking. We can do but paying attention to one action is wrong.
There are a lot of
people in the world but we pay attention especially to ourselves and to our
friends. This is using with the idea of something. This idea of something is
wrong. This idea of someone is wrong. Why are we paying attention to someone?
Why are we paying attention to something? Why are we paying attention to one
action? There are a lot of actions, speaking, eating, thinking. There are many
actions like this but while doing like this we should be able not to pay
attention to one action. This is the practice of detachment.
To be free from
attachment we must abandon our own habits, the habit of someone. If we are
grasping our habits, it means that we are misusing our life, misusing with the
ideas of 'mine', 'yours'. That understanding is wrong. In fact, the life is to
use-only. We might be young or old, sick or healthy, male or female. All lives
are to use-only, to experience-only, not to reject nor to attach. Attachment is
the cause of all problems. Our mind should be mind-only.
Human mind is not
free. We pay attention to living beings because of attachment for living
beings. We are studying about the universe because of attachment for the place.
Using with attachment is wrong. It will never end.
If we can detach from
place, from time, from living beings and non-living beings, our mind will be
pure and complete, peaceful, silent, still. Because nothing is stable, even the
world is not stable, no man is stable, so if our mind is paying attention to
someone, our mind will be unstable. We cannot stop the nature of things, the
nature of living beings but we can detach from them. The practice of detachment
is concerning our mind.
An
excerpt from the book 'The Practice of Detachment' by Sayadaw U Ottamasara