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 25/09/2010. Phần English transcript ở cuối bài. Link Youtube của bài nói ở đây: https://youtu.be/ZOgHruzSqtA
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: Next question from [CLL 24]. Sometimes in my meditation, I notice a feeling of itch or something, and if I try to investigate it, saying to myself, itchy, itchy, it immediately goes away. When I returned the main object, it comes back. That bothers me a little. What should I do?
Yeah, welcome to the world of meditation. Life has a rhythm to it. And our problem is we’re out of rhythm with life, our inability to accept reality. That’s what it means. It means we’re not in tune. We don’t jive. We don’t harmonize with the way things are. We can’t accept reality. We generally think that we have some kind of control over reality. And this is why we don’t accept. We live our lives thinking that we’re in control and that the objects of the sense belong to us. And so, we go about our lives trying to influence things. Now, there is a process of cause and effect by which the mind is able to, on a microscopic scale, change things. And so we get this idea that we’re able to do that on a macroscopic level, that we’re able to say no more itching, we’re able to say no more pain or so on. We’re able to get the things that we want. But the reality of it is we’re only able to move in a certain direction. We can build up to the point where there is no itching. You can develop yourself in a way that you’re able to put off itching for some time. And on the microscopic level, you can see that. When you say itching, itching, it goes away for a second. But, you know, that’s a microscopic. They call it a process, one intervention in quantum physics. And so one of the things I’m reading a book. But, you know, it’s so minuscule that all you’ve done is put it aside for a second. Once you come back to the main object, it comes back.
Now, the point is not to build up some kind of state where you’re no longer itching. Because that in and of itself is still temporary. It has a certain power that you’ve built up in the brain to to shut these things off. And it doesn’t last. And because there’s so many other factors, physical factors involved, that it’s unsustainable. The point is to stop living our lives in this way and stop trying to control things and to get ourselves to the point where we’re simply observing. The problem is not the itching. The problem is the bothering that what you’re seeing is the way things work. Reality is not under your control. What you’re doing there is you’re turning off the itching for a moment. You’re altering the function of the brain so it doesn’t experience it. And then turning that functioning off by going back to the rising and falling, the itch comes back. You know, you go back, the itch goes. You come back, the itch, it comes back and that’s reality. That’s the way things work. That’s how the mind works. All you could do, as I said, force the itch away for a long time, force the unpleasant situation away by building up these mind state and these interventions. That’s not an ultimate solution.
The ultimate solution is to accept and to say, OK, now I’m itching. And if it goes, it goes. If it comes, it comes. Practising pretty much exactly the way you’re doing it and changing the way you react to it. Because what you’re practicing correctly, when you practice this way, you start to see your anger, you start to see your frustration, your inability to accept the way reality works or the way things are as you see it again and again and again. And as you straighten out your mind, you know, acknowledging as well, frustrated, frustrated, angry, angry, upset, upset, you start to see that you’re doing something that’s creating suffering for yourself. You’re reacting in a way that’s unpleasant. Now, no one wants to create suffering for themselves. And this is very true, even on an ultimate level of the brain that our minds don’t want to create suffering for ourselves. We do it because we don’t see things clearly. Once you show yourself again and again and again and prove to yourself that what you’re doing is directly creating suffering for yourself by getting angry, by getting upset, you won’t get upset anymore. Until eventually the itching, itching, it goes away, come back rising from the itching comes back. You go back and say, itching, itching. And there’s no frustration. There’s no upset. You become in tune with reality and you’re in tune with the rhythms. So it’s like itching, itching, rising, falling into it. And it’s not rhythmic. It’s not like that. But as of course example… You have to think of it like a rhythm. That’s the way it is. That’s natural in the same way that a rhythm is natural. And though it’s not rhythmic, it is what it is. And that’s reality. And you you have two choices. You can always be trying to change it, to be in some specific set way. This is the way it shouldn’t be in no other way. Or you can accept everything for what it is the path and Buddhism is to accept things as they are. So keep going. Your practice is fine. The problem is the frustration and that will go as you acknowledge the object and as you acknowledge the frustration, saying to yourself, frustrated and frustrated and itching, itching, your mind will ease up and you’ll be able to see it just for what it is. OK, thanks for the question.