The motivation to practice

Question : we are advised to avoid foolish people, what if they are our parents or our siblings?

Tan Ajahn: If you can live in a different place, move out. If you don’t have to live with them, move out. But if you have to stay with them, don’t let them influence you—that’s all. If they want to tell you to do things that you know are inappropriate, you just don’t have to do them. It is not disrespectful or ungrateful.

If your parents tell you to cheat or lie, you don’t have to do it. If they ask you to drink alcohol, you don’t have to do it. You can live with people, but you must not let them lead you down the wrong path. Of course, it will be easier just not to live with them, but if you have to, make sure that you don’t let them influence you or lead you astray.

Question : Sometimes I am affected by doubt. What I mean is occasionally when I make a decision about something, after some time, the thoughts will arise questioning the decision that I have made, trying to convince myself that I have made the wrong decision. Why is this so?

Tan Ajahn: Because when you do something, you are not sure what you are doing. You don’t know the reason behind it. So before you do anything, you should think carefully and make sure you know exactly what to expect from your actions.

Once you know, you won’t have any doubt. But if you are not sure what you are doing, then all sorts of doubts will come up. So think before you do anything.

Question : Does the desire disappear because we are resisting it or because we use paññā to eliminate it?

Tan Ajahn: When you resist your desire without knowing the reason why you resist it, you will not be able to eliminate it entirely or permanently. You have to see that your desire does not bring you happiness but suffering. It is like when you have the desire to take drugs, you have to see that taking drugs does not bring you true happiness, but it will surely bring you immense suffering.

When you can see that, then you will stop. When you resist it, you might resist it from time to time, but when your resistance is low, you might not be able to resist it again. So you have to see the cause and effect of your actions following your desire that will not take you to contentment but only to more desire, eventually killing you if you take drugs.

And then it will take you to a new birth to suffer more aging, sickness, and death. So you have to see the cause and effect of following your desire and not following your desire. It is like taking poison; if you know that what you are taking is poison, will you take it?

Everything that we take, every single thing that we desire, is poison, but the problem is we don’t see the suffering that ensues. We only see or remember the transitory happiness that follows. When we buy something, we are happy for a spell, but we don’t see the suffering that follows when we run out of money and when we want to buy more things but cannot buy them.

Question : After listening to Tan Ajahn’s Dhamma, our saddhā (faith) and viriya (effort) increase, but the motivation to practice and to see the urgency to practice has been going up and down. I can apply this motivation in my daily routine only to a certain degree. Can Tan Ajahn give advice on how to use a skillful means to remember this urgency and not to lose focus in our practice?

Tan Ajahn: You need to be around people who practice, you need to have a good environment. If you stay around people who practice, they will constantly remind you to practice. But if you live with people who don’t practice but who do other things, they can distract you from practicing.

If you cannot live in the company of people who practice, like living in the temple, then you must constantly think about your practice and constantly think about the fact that you are getting sick, getting old, and dying. This will spur you into action. But I think the best thing is to leave your present environment if it is not supporting your practice.

The distractions are a hindrance to your practice. That is what I said in my last talk; you have to use vimaṁsā, analytical thinking. You have to differentiate what supports your practice, what pushes you forward, and what pulls you back. Whatever pulls you back, you should eliminate or get away from.

Whatever pushes you forward, you should keep them around you. And the Buddha said the environment that will push your practice forward is to live in seclusion, to be alone where no one will distract you from your practice, to only be with your own desire/kilesa.

But that is only one part. If you live with other people and you live in a bad environment, then you have five other things that pull you away from your practice: sight, sound, smell, taste, and tactile objects will keep pulling you away from your practice. So you need to go live in seclusion, and live near a meditation master, a teacher who will constantly remind you, who will constantly energize you.

By Ajaan Suchart Abhijāto