Được dạy bởi Sư Yuttadhammo Bhikkhu Dịch Việt: Việt Hùng
Lời người dịch: Trong các bài Hỏi & Đáp như vậy, tôi sẽ chủ yếu dịch thoát ý, chứ không chặt chữ. Một mặt đây là việc tôi làm để có thể nghiền ngẫm phần trả lời của Sư Yuttadhammo. Một mặt, tôi chia sẻ lại đây, và hy vọng nó hữu ích cho các thiền sinh Vipassana tham khảo.
Bài pháp ngắn này được đăng tải trên Youtube vào ngày 25/08/2010. Phần English transcript ở cuối bài. Link Youtube của bài nói ở đây: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVlJVsYRK0c
Mặc dù đã cố gắng tốt nhất trong khả năng của mình, tôi chắc chắn không thể ghi xuống được một cách chính xác 100% tất cả các từ ngữ, đặc biệt là các từ Pali mà Sư đề cập trong bài pháp. Tôi sẽ tiếp tục cập nhật bản ghi, bất cứ khi nào tôi thấy được những điểm còn thiếu sót.
Con xin thành kính đảnh lễ tạ ơn Sư Yuttadhammo về bài pháp thoại ngắn quí báu này. Con nguyện cho Sư được mọi thuận lợi và sức khoẻ trong hành trình tâm linh của Sư.
Các bạn có thể tìm hiểu thêm thông tin của Sư Yuttadhammo Bhikkhu và các lời dạy của Sư tại trang web: https://www.sirimangalo.org/.
English Transcript (quickly jotting down)
Question: Hi, welcome to Ask a Monk. Today, I have a question from Gunisowe. Hey, Yuttadhammo, I find it easy to meditate if there is a droning noise in the background. I eventually tune it out. But it helps me start. Is this an efficient way to meditate?
Short answer, no. Sorry. Meditation is to see things for what they are, to understand things for what they are. First of all, when you say something makes it easy to meditate, you have to understand that it’s not necessarily a good thing. Meditation works because it’s not easy, because it challenges you, because it pushes the mind to become straight, to stop clinging to things. And a very good analogy is training the body, the physical workout. If it’s easy, if you find some way to make it easy, you know, like taking all the weights off or so on, you don’t really gain anything. And it’s through the difficulty of the practice of having to bear with things that are unpleasant and uncomfortable that you actually train your mind to let go.
Second of all, the idea that an external stimulus might somehow help in meditation, at any rate, is really… I would say, a sign of a misunderstanding of Buddhist meditation. Because meditation would be to understand the droning noise itself and to understand what’s going on with your mind that that makes it seem like it’s making you more meditative, you know. Does that mean it’s bringing a peaceful state or does that mean it’s making you happy or does that mean it’s putting you to sleep or so on? It’s generally a case that it helps your mind to get into a rhythm. So you don’t have to think. So, you don’t have to deal with the bumps and you know, the rocky road of experience. You’re able to smooth it out so that you feel comfortable and you feel calm. And there’s a sense of liking and attachment and clinging and therefore eventually, instead of compartmentalizing reality into this is acceptable and that is not acceptable. This is good and that is not good. And therefore suffering. I get a lot of questions like this about, you know, is this helpful for meditation? Is that helpful for meditation? There’s nothing really that’s going to help you in your meditation, except meditating and meditating on everything, meditating on the bad stuff, meditating on the good stuff, helping you to see how your mind reacts to things and helping to straighten your mind so that you no longer cling to things. You no longer judge things. You’re able to see things for what they are. Your response to life is one of wisdom and understanding. You don’t look at something and say, oh, that’s good, and I’m attracted to it. You say, oh, that is that, you know what it is. And when you know what it is, you react accordingly. You react in a way that doesn’t lead you to suffering and doesn’t cause you to hurt others as well. So it’s important to understand that the meditative state is simply the clear awareness of something. When you have an unfocused state of mind, meditation is to understand the unfocussed state of mind and understanding the causes of it, understanding the nature of it, and seeing that you’d be better off without it. So that, you never give rise to that sort of state of mind and don’t give rise to the causes, because you know what they’re going to lead to. If you avoid it by, you know… A droning noise is just another drug. It’s like saying, you know, why don’t you take marijuana? That helps you to feel calm and peaceful. Why don’t you take alcohol? Because it makes you lose your suffering, your pain. But it’s an addiction. You can sit and watch TV, you can plug yourself into music and so on. And all of these things are going to give you that sense of… you couldn’t say of meditation where your you feel comfortable, you feel focused, but it’s not meditation. Because you’re not really seeing things as they are.
So I would say the fact that you need a droning noise is a sign that something’s wrong. It’s a sign that you’re not able to accept reality for what it is. You’re addicted to something. And that’s normal. That’s natural for all of us. We’re in this state. And that’s what we’re working on, in our practice. So I would turn the droning noise off and figure out what’s wrong and look at that. If you’re distracted, say to yourself, distracted, distracted, just learn about it. If you feel agitated or whatever, just focus on the phenomenon as it is and come to see what are the causes and the effects. What is the nature of it? And eventually do away with it for real, rather than avoiding it. OK, so I hope that helps and I think that’s a good question. Because I get a lot of questions like that. So I hope this helps. Several people who are maybe wondering about aides to meditation. I guarantee there isn’t one. OK, well, thanks for all the questions and keep an eye on.
All I can tell is that I'm just an ordinary person and what I'm trying to do is to share all of the good things I've ever learned or any happy moments I've ever experienced in my life. By doing that, I would hope to encourage and shed a little happiness to anyone who hear the stories. The other note is that I'm very much interested in all discussions about personal development and how to be happy in life. Connect, if you want to discuss about those topics.
Books I wrote: The Happiness Journal (https://tinyurl.com/5ddharsr), Tản mạn về Hạnh phúc (https://tinyurl.com/8ev8sa5x), NGẪM CAFÉ (https://tinyurl.com/ycya5vy2)
View all posts by Viet Hung