(Ajahn Ganha speech on 24 Dec 23, translated by Ajahn Tilo on 7 Jan 24. All mistakes by PJ.)

  1. The Buddha wanted us to have right view and right understanding. The Buddha wanted us to see the danger in samsara, so that we can stop making new karma, so that we can stop creating pain and trouble for ourselves, so that we can stop creating new karma for ourselves. That’s why the Buddha wanted us to come out of sensual pleasures. Sensual pleasures are nothing else than avijja, delusion.

  2. The Buddha wanted us not to let our mind dwell in sensual pleasures. We have to stop thinking about sensual pleasures. We have to stop pondering about sensuality. We have to stop recollecting old memories in our head. Don’t let your mind dwell and abide in sensual pleasures. The Buddha wanted us to really see the danger in Samsara, in the circle of birth, death and pain. So that we can stop planting and seeding new karma. So that we can stop watering it, giving fertilizer to it and supporting it.

  3. Because in this world, nothing happens without a cause: everything is caused. When this is, another thing that will be. When you have a cause, there will be always an effect. If you plant seeds in the ground, you water them, you fertilize them, you look after them and you support them, they will grow, and you will have fruits from this.

  4. That’s why we cannot let ourselves consider about it, ponder about it, think about it. We have to stop always thinking about sensual pleasures. Because these are the plants, these are the seeds for new karma, bad karma. We definitely cannot let our mind dwell in sensual pleasures, and think about it constantly. Look at this: whatever we think about, whatever we ponder about it, this is how it will be. Because if you do this, this will have an effect for sure. When this is, that will be. There is only cause and effect.

  5. That’s why the Buddha wanted us to know suffering. To know the cause of suffering. To know how to end and escape from suffering. And he wanted us to know the path of practice, to end and escape from our suffering. If you do it in this way, this will make you stop. The same as you would stop breathing. Stop thinking about sensual pleasures and ponder about sensual pleasures. This is the starting point for our practice. So you have to stop in the same way as you would stop breathing.

  6. 3:12

  7. We don’t need to connect to sensual pleasures. We don’t need to connect in our mind, in our head, to sensuality. We don’t need to have a relationship to sensual pleasures. If you think about sensual pleasures, it can be considered as would you have sex mentally. Sex with your thoughts, with your emotions, with your stories in your head, with your moods and sex with sensuality, all the time.

  8. The mind from all of us doesn’t really understand the Four Noble Truths yet. It doesn’t understand what is suffering. It doesn’t understand the cause of suffering. Our mind doesn’t understand the escape and the end of suffering. Our mind doesn’t understand the way of practice, to escape and end our suffering. Our mind doesn’t understand, yet, the teachings of the Buddha. We don’t understand the basis, the foundation and the real way to practice and train our mind.

  9. We all just take the delusion as principle to live our life. All of us. We are immersed and absorbed in delusion. Because we don’t understand, we have wrong view and wrong understanding. Our heart and the one who knows are one and the same thing. Don’t let the knowing be deluded.

  10. 4:35

  11. We have to come out of this delusion. If we want to do this, we have to take the Buddha as a principle, as a guideline to live our life. We have to take on the characteristics and the habits of the Buddha. We cannot rely and take our own habits as basis to live our life. We have to stop ourselves, so that we can stop making new bad karma. We have to rely on a vehicle for this. The vehicle is a strong determination, a strong will to practice. A strong determination, a strong will, will stop ourselves. Being the one who is seeing the danger in Samsara, in the circle of old age, of sickness, pain and death, again and again: we have to see the danger in this. We have to stop ourselves getting born in this misery, again.

  12. 5:37

  13. We cannot allow ourselves to stay and rest in sensuality and sensual pleasures. Because this is the energy of delusion. This is the energy, the power that keeps you going on in Samsara. The Buddha said you have to practice continuously in every posture. You have to practice to stop ourselves. Let all what you are doing becom(e) the Noble Eightfold Path. It take at least seven days; in the middle, seven weeks, or seven months; and at most, seven years, that our mind will change. If you are practicing this path, then there is a cause, there will be an effect. If you put the causes in place, the effect that your mind and your heart will change has to happen.

  14. So all of us have to practice the holy life. What is the holy life? The holy life means: stop letting this old bad karma come up. And stop making new karma. Let everything become Dhamma. Let everything become the Dhamma, the truth in the present moment. A prNothing else, but just the present moment. Be the one who has the Buddha, the one who knows, who is awakened, who is cheerful. Have this one in the present moment with you in your heart at all the time.

  15. 7:30

  16. Sila, virtue, samadhi, stillness. And Panna, wisdom, have to work together in the present moment at all the time. In this way we will develop our spiritual qualities, our parami. This will develop our heart, our spiritual qualities of all Buddhists, for all who are practicing the holy life. It doesn’t matter if you are ordained or if you are a lay person: all of us have to practice the holy life. We cannot live our life coming from a place of a sense of self, coming from a place of an ego.

  17. But the whole world just turns around us. This is the cause for Samsara. This keeps you getting born again in the circle of pain, old age, sickness and death.

  18. If you want to travel far, you have to use an airplane. When we have an airplane, we can cross over the ocean, we can cross over mountains, we can cross over countries. We can go all around the whole world.

  19. If we want to get out of samsara, we have to rely on this vehicle, which is right view, right understanding and right practice. We all have to come to enter the path of practice. Walking this noble eightfold path means to bring us out of sensual pleasures and sensuality, to bring us out of aversion and ill will. This is nothing else than stopping your likes, and your dislikes. Desire and aversion, like and dislike, are the same, and this is delusion. Like and dislike, this is the house of delusion: this is where it lives. If you build such a house, this will not be happiness: this will be exclusively suffering. And this is nothing else than pure delusion.

  20. 9:30:

  21. All of us, we still really don’t understand. We are taking this delusion as happiness. That’s why we allow ourselves to ponder about it, to think about it, to recollect it in our head and to create stories in our head and mentally proliferate it. In this way, we will be completely immersed and absorbed in sensual pleasures.

  22. Sensual pleasures, desire and ill-will, aversion are actually the same: they are not that different. All your negative mind states, restlessness, and thinking, anger, depression, aversion, craving, and so on, they all have sensual pleasures as a cause. That’s why all of us, we really need right view. We really have to understand properly. We need right understanding as we have to practice in the right way. We cannot waste this resource of a human birth. We cannot let this chance pass by. We have to make the best out of this human life, so we can practice the Noble Eightfold Path, we can practice the Dhamma. We have to make use of this resource of a human body.

  23. 10:45

  24. We have to use the material world in the right way. Please don’t cause yourself suffering. Please don’t destroy yourself. Don’t let this material world persecute you. Don’t let them destroy the Buddha within you. Don’t allow yourself to ponder about it, to consider about it, to think about it and to mentally proliferate it. Don’t get drowned in this material world. Don’t build a house for this. Don’t build a boat for this. Stop building your own samsara. Stop creating your own cycle of birth and death. Samsara is very personal.

  25. 11:28

  26. All of you who are ordained over here, you are not really ordained. You just ordained the body. You didn’t ordain the mind and the heart yet. Actually, nobody really attains The Dhamma. All you attain is the ego and the sense of self. This is all what you attain. So please, all of you understand, don’t allow yourself to think, to consider, to ponder and mentally proliferate sensual pleasures. Once you are ordained, you cannot just ordain the body. You really have to ordain your mind and your heart too. If you don’t ordain your heart and your mind, this means you still have children, you still have a wife in your heart and in your mind.

  27. 12:15

  28. Everybody who takes this body to be yourself, to take Vedana, your sensations and the feelings you get, to be yourself; sañña, your memories, your perceptions, to be yourself; sankhara, your thinking, your will, to be yourself; and to take your consciousness as to be yourself. These people are considered to have a wife and children and a husband, at all the time.

  29. Because the body, Vedana, sañña, sankhara, viññana, the Buddha said, is nothing else than the material world. It’s all just connected to the material world. It’s nothing else than matter or elements. It’s nothing else than the five khandhas and the sense bases within. It’s nothing else than sakaya-ditthi, to believe this body is who you are. You make a sense of self, a me, a mind out of this physical body.

  30. But the Buddha said, you have to know and understand the body. You have to know and understand Vedana; you have to know and understand sañña; you have to know and understand sankhara and viññana.

  31. You have to understand: they are not me, they are not mine, they are not a self. It’s nothing else than matter which comes into existence out of causes. They come into existence because: out of delusion, out of not knowing and not understanding. This delusion is karma. So we all have to stop avijja: we all have to stop our delusion. We have to come out of this. We have to come out of desire and we have to come out of ill will and aversion. We have to stop building a house, building a boat, to build for delusion, to (stop) building our samsara again and again for us. We cannot let our heart get born in sensual pleasures and sensuality again. We cannot allow our heart to get immersed and absorbed. and sensual pleasures and karma again. We cannot let our heart go in the freezer of karma and sensual pleasures.

  32. 14:33

  33. All of us who practice the holy life, to practice the path, have to stop everything through investigating the material world, the matter. Seeing all of this in the mirror of the three characteristics: Anicca, Dukkha, Anatta. Everything is Anicca: impermanent, uncertain, not sure, unreliable; Everything!

  34. When we think about it, when we ponder about it, when we consider it, we proliferate it, when we create stories, if we admire it: this will be the cause that we go on in samsara…
  35. that we go on in the cycle of birth, old age, sickness, pain, losing everything you like, again, and death again.
  36. We have suffering, we get born, we get old, we get sick, we get pain, we lose everything, and we die.

  37. Again and again and again.

  38. There. is. no. end.

  39. So all of us, we have to stop thinking about it, pondering about it, considering about it, proliferating it and creating stories.
  40. We have to pull us out of samsara.
  41. We have to pull us out of delusion.
  42. We have to pull us out of sensual pleasures, of desire, and aversion.
  43. We are all immersed and absorbed in the sense of self.

  44. We all live with this ego.

  45. That’s why we (are) all constantly create bad karma, sin. Because we don’t have a Buddha in our heart.
  46. We don’t have right understanding, right view and right practice.

  47. We see the right as wrong. We don’t understand the Four Noble Truths at all.

  48. 16:30

  49. So, We all have to look at our role models and the true leaders, the acharyas, the noble ones. Everybody needs to sit meditation, samadhi. Why are you sleepy when you are sitting meditation? Because your mind, your heart is usually completely immersed, immersed and absorbed in sensual pleasures. It’s immersed in the sense of self, it’s immersed and absorbed in this ego. That’s why you are sleepy when you are sitting meditation and you are restless when you meditate. Wherever we let our mind abide, our heart abide and dwell in, there it will be.

  50. That’s why the Buddha wanted us not to dwell, to abide in the sense of self, to dwell and abide in this ego.
  51. He wanted us to dwell and abide in Dhamma.
  52. You cannot dwell and abide in the sense of self, in this wrong view of a ‘me’, of a ‘mine’ and of a self.

  53. You cannot take this ego as an abiding place, because this is where delusion lives.

  54. We all have to lift up our mind, our heart to the Dhamma. We have to raise up our mind. We have to understand the body is one thing and the mind is another. The body, Vedana, sañña, sankhara, viññana, they are one thing. You have to know the body. You have to know Vedana, you have to know sañña, you have to know sankhara and you have to know viññana. They are nothing else than matter, the material world. The one who knows (these), is Dhamma, is Vinaya, (and) is the Buddha.

  55. 18:18

  56. If we have a sense of self, if we have an ego, we will be immersed and absorbed in sensual pleasures and desire and diversion. We will be just a role model of delusion. If we are living, with this delusion, we might have a feeling: “birth, old age, sickness, pain, losing everything you like and death,,. This is me. This happens to me. This is myself.“ If you think in this way, this is wrong thinking. This is wrong understanding. That’s why our mind, our heart get born again and again all the time.

  57. So we have to bring our heart out of a sense of self. out of the ego, out of delusion, out of desire, out of aversion, out of sensual pleasures and sensuality. Sensuality is nothing else than the ego and the sense of self. Being pleased and satisfied, dissatisfied and frustrated with all your moods, your emotions, being the owner of your emotions, being completely controlled by your moods and by your emotions. This is all your proliferation, your stories in your head.

  58. 19:25

  59. That’s why the Buddha said this mental proliferation is the biggest suffering in the whole world. Stilling this proliferating mind, stilling these sankharas, this is the end of suffering. That’s why we need to practice the Noble Eightfold Path continuously. Anapanasati, the mindfulness on breathing: this is your true home, your real home. This is the home of your heart, the home of your mind. So, may all of you find back to your breath. May all of you find back to Anapanasati. May all of you find back home, so that we are able to let go and delete our past, to make our past zero, not existing, so that we can stop thinking about our past and creating a future, so that we can stay with Vinaya, the precepts, with virtue, with emptiness, to be empty of a sense of self, to be empty of an ego, having sati sampajanna, having mindfulness and wisdom, focused within, knowing what you are doing in the present moment. Sati Sampajanna, mindfulness and wisdom, is Dhamma and Vinaya.

  60. To practice in this way is for developing our spiritual qualities continuously. Because the body, Vedana, sañña, sankhara and viññana, they could not control the Buddha, they could not govern over the Buddha. They had no power over him because he didn’t think about it, he didn’t consider it, he didn’t ponder about it, he didn’t proliferate it. He was not lost in sensual pleasures. He was not lost in wrongdoing and creating bad karma. He was not lost in like and dislike. He was not lost in desire and aversion.

  61. What is with you? How much do you get controlled by these? How far are you in charge of your life? Of your mind?

  62. What happens to you if you see an attractive person? Can you stop thinking about it? Can you stop proliferating it? What happens to you? You have delicious taste, nice sound, unpleasant sound, good people, difficult people, all your likes and your dislikes. How much are you in charge? How far are you able to stop yourself?

  63. All of us have to arrive in Dhamma. All of us have to arrive at the truth of the present moment, of the Dhamma of the present moment. So when you can become in charge of your mind, of your heart and of your life. This has to be continuously: Sila, Samadhi and Panya, they have to work together, continuously, in the present moment. It has to become an automatic process for you. The Samana 1, 2, 3 and 4, they all exist. The Sotapanna, the Sakadagami, the Anagami and the Arahat, they all exist. They exist in the one who has right view, right understanding and right practice. So that’s why everybody has to follow the footsteps of the Buddha. The Buddha is Dhamma, the Buddha is Vinaya, Virtue. The Buddha is with Dhamma and the Dhamma is with Buddha. He is not an entity, a being or a separated self. He is not an ego.

  64. He is Virtue. He is Samadhi. And he is Panya, in the present moment.

  65. So, Sila, Samadhi and Panya: This is stillness. This is the peacefulness of your mind.

  66. Sila, Samadhi and Panya: This will stop samsara. This will stop your wandering around in the circle of birth, old age, sickness, pain and death.

  67. All of you. What do you want to get? What do you want? Why do you want anything? Because nothing stays. Nothing persists. Everything has to pass by. What can you get? What can you achieve? Everything comes and everything goes.

  68. But because out of avijja, out of delusion, we want to have, we want to be, we want to get, we want to achieve. All of this is nothing else than lokadhamma (worldly principles). This is nothing else than the world. The world in our heart and our mind. This is where the world exists. This is nothing else than the world of delusion.

  69. The sickness of the body is old age. As if you have pain. As if you have a fever. You are feeling unwell. This is called the sickness of the body.

  70. The sickness of the mind is called delusion.

  71. The sickness of the mind is being lost in the sense of self, lost in the ego, lost in sensuality, lost in desire and aversion. Being absorbed in all of this.

  72. 25:06
  73. We all have to think very well. We all really have to think good.
  74. If you have a piece of wood and you want to burn a piece of wood and you put it beforehand in water, yet it absorbs and it’s immersed in water all the time, how can this piece of wood ever burn? How can you make use of this piece of wood?
  75. But you usually think: If you die, if you die from your next existence, from your next life, from our life now, you will have suffering.

  76. We dry, we dry out. Seven years, seven months, because there is no rain, there is no water. That’s how you get (dried) out. And you think you will have suffering. You think in this way because you don’t understand the Four Noble Truths.

  77. But if you don’t be immersed, and absorbed in sensual pleasures, in desire and aversion. You dry out. You get dry.
  78. If you don’t think about sensual pleasures, desire and aversion, if you don’t proliferate it, you will be dry. You dry out.
  79. You get like a dry piece of wood and you can burn very well.

  80. You can burn delusion. You can burn defilements. You can burn avijja. You can burn samsara.

  81. So all of you, please look forward: all of you who practice, look forward… and you think you have suffering. You have it, because you don’t understand: you don’t understand the cause of suffering, you don’t understand the end of suffering and you don’t understand and know the path and the practice to end your suffering. You have to stay with a still focused mind in the present moment, and to stop thinking about sensual pleasures.

  82. But if you do this, this will not be the end of suffering. The Buddha said, the beginning is, you have to stop thinking, considering, pondering, proliferating sensual pleasures, desire and aversion. You have to stop thinking in your head about it. This is the first step.

  83. But this is still not good enough. You have need to have wisdom. So we have to burn the defilements, defilements through wisdom. What is wisdom? You know everything is uncertain, not sure, is unreliable and impermanent. We cannot stay and dwell in delusion because this is the sense of self, this is the ego and keeps us going in the circle of birth and death that is going on in samsara.

  84. So we have to lift up our mind. We have to raise up our mind to wisdom.

  85. If you just take samadhi, meditation, this will not be enough. We have to take the stillness and the peacefulness of mind, the tranquility, together with wisdom. The Buddha by himself, he is descendant of a Hindu family. His background is Hinduism. But Hinduism just goes to the peacefulness of mind, to a still mind.

  86. But we have to bring out the wisdom into practice. We have to bring wisdom together with Samadhi: they have to work and cooperate together. That’s why the Buddha wants all of us who are ordained to investigate the Kammatana. You have to investigate everything. You have to see everything that you experience in the mirror of the three characteristics of existence.

  87. To separate the body: we have to separate the body with nutriment and with sense bases, and see them in the mirror of Anicca, of Dukkha and Anatta. This we have to do continuously.

  88. If we lead our heart and our mind to this practice, then the Buddha in us will flourish, will prosper. Everybody who let his mind dwell and abide, being immersed in sensual pleasures of desire and aversion, actually, you are not ordained. Because you have wrong view and you have wrong understanding. You have to let your mind dwell in Vinaya, in all the rules, n the major ones and the small ones. You cannot skip the small rules. In the Thai Vitakka, there are actually 21,000 Vinaya rules we have to observe. We have to let our mind abide in them. But we have wrong view and wrong understanding, that’s why we let our mind dwell in the sense of self and in the ego. If we let our mind dwell in sensual pleasures and desire and aversion, this is not vipassana. This is just vipassanu, the opposite of insight.

  89. Everybody of you can do it. It doesn’t matter if you are ordained or not. A lay person can do it in the same way. Because the practice is a matter of your heart, of your mind, of your will, of your determination. So let your mind stay and dwell in right practice, let it stay and dwell in right understanding. Because everything arises out of causes. And the causes, when the causes are extinguished and finished, so the effect will be gone. We all have to rely on causes. If you want to progress and go on, then we have to rely on the right causes. We have to give the right causes in place so that we can progress.

  90. 31:00

  91. Like 50 years ago. Lungphu Chah in Vatnam Paphong, he told the monks “during this rainy season, during this (vassa), I will be the only one speaking. All of you, stop speaking, stop talking, so that all of you can develop sati sampajanna, mindfulness and wisdom. Let your mind be with Dhamma and Vinaya. All of you may you develop mindfulness. If should any doubts or questions arise about Dhamma, just come to me, and ask and talk to me. Don’t talk to anybody else, so that we can practice continuously.”

  92. But the ones who didn’t really understand the Dhamma, who didn’t really understand the Vinaya, who didn’t really understand Ajahn Chah, they thought Ajahn Chah just wanted the monastery to be peaceful and still. They thought “Vinaya, we know already. We just will say important things.”

  93. They thought they know everything. Some of them didn’t speak, but they were writing to each other. Everybody who thought and acting in this way, they had wrong view. And they didn’t understand properly. But Ajahn Chah actually wanted them to stop in their heart. To stop: stop in their mind, to stop their habits, so that they can stop being immersed and being absorbed in delusion, in karma, in sensual pleasures.

  94. But they didn’t understand. They all were thinking, considering, pondering, proliferating sensual pleasures, desire and aversion.

  95. But if we think in this way, if we think about sensual pleasures, we still have a wife and we still have children in our heart and in our mind. We don’t understand the teachings of the Buddha. We don’t understand the teachings of Ajahn Chah. He wanted us to practice continuously. We just believed our own thoughts. We believed ourselves, but we didn’t believe Ajahn Chah, we didn’t believe in his teachings.

  96. Don’t take your old habits, your own habits, don’t take your characteristics as a basis to live your life. We all have to take the habits and the characteristics of the Buddha as our principle. How can we go on? How can we progress, if we take the sense of self, if we take the ego as our foundation, as our main principle in life?

  97. Buddhism… Buddhism is nothing else than to stop thinking, stop pondering, stop considering, stop proliferating, stop making stories in your head about sensual pleasures. Stop Avijja, and stop your delusion. Because The Buddha is Dhamma and the Dhamma is a Buddha. It’s not a special entity. It’s not a being. It’s not a self. It’s not an ego. If we don’t stop ourselves, the sassana, the teachings of the Buddha, they cannot go on. They can’t longer exist in this world. If nobody really knows and understands the four noble truths, if nobody really understands the teachings of the Buddha, how can Buddhism go on?

  98. If everybody follows the teachings of the Buddha, there will be nobody who doesn’t attain to be a noble one. Everybody who practices the path will be a noble one. Everybody who practices the noble eightfold path, all of them, will attain the Dhamma, the end of the stream. It has to be in this way. Because a noble one is the one who has right understanding, right view and right practice.

  99. So… May all of you please really understand: this human birth is a very special one. It’s a very noble one. It’s a very sublime one. Please, all of you have right understanding, right view. And may all of you be happy in practicing the path, in following the Buddha.

  100. So that all of you, ordained or not ordained, may all of you come up to a standard. So all of you, everybody has to see the danger in Samsara.

  101. Everybody has to adjust himself to the Dhamma, has to adjust himself to the time. Don’t be somebody who is controlled by these emotions. Don’t be emotional. Don’t let yourself be controlled by your moods. Don’t be the ruler of the world. Don’t be an overlord. Don’t be a control freak. It’s to stop the world, not to control it. How do we stop the world? We stop the world through Sila, Samadhi and Panya, and through the Dhamma taught by the Buddha. This is how we end the world.