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 17/04/2012. Phần English transcript ở cuối bài. Link Youtube của bài nói ở đây: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5VCvVs_tpE
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: What should one do, if the mind continues to resist being tamed? If I feel like no progress is being made.
[Bhikkhuni] Continue meditating. Just be patient and don’t get frustrated. But if you do, then note frustration and note everything that is going on. You are living out there in this world with all these temptations and all these distractions and so on. So it is when you are not meditating regularly or when you are too much out there in the world and have not learned yet to to seclude your mind, then you might not be able to to feel that the mind starts to be tamed or that it has been tamed already. Sometimes you don’t even notice, because it’s progressing little by little. And you don’t even notice that your mind changed and that your mind has become more silent and more still, and that you can direct your thoughts much better than you could before. But you are not aware of it. It can of course be that. You don’t… That you can’t tame your mind, really. And then the most efficient solution were to come on retreat, to get a good foundation and then go home and continue practicing. And in the meantime, as I said earlier, note everything that is arising and then you might be able to see the changes in your mind.
[Yuttadhammo Bhikkhu] I would like to add one thing. It’s not quite the advocate, but kind of smarmy. Well, what should I do if the mind continues to resist being tamed? Well, I want to ask you questions in return. How does it feel to have your mind resist being tamed? Does that make you want to cling to the mind or does that make you feel like the mind is a good thing? And as [the bhikkhuni] said, does that make you frustrated? And of course, that would be one answer is to acknowledge the frustration. But the real question is so frustrating that the real question is what does that mean about the mind? In that case, is the mind stable or unstable? Is it satisfying or unsatisfying? Is it controllable or uncontrollable? Because we read about the very core of the Buddhist teaching, some people don’t even but I think and this is a person who has been involved, who was quite his name, Gothic, Buddhist. And so, you know something about Buddhism. But when we actually experience these things, impermanence, suffering, non self, we still fall back into the trap of thinking something’s wrong. Because the truth is that that in and of itself is an incredible progress, to see that the mind cannot be tamed, to see that you can’t tie the mind down and and expect it to sit still and say, sit down and expect your mind at any point be under your control.
This is the the danger involved in being complacent about tranquility, meditation. Because even if you enter into tranquility meditation, which the Buddha recommended, which is a great thing, if you stop there, if you become complacent about it, you’ll still fall into a great amount of suffering and stress. When it changes, when when it disappears, you will still be liable to fall back into a state of impermanence or a state of instability of mind. The mind can still become distracted again. The story that I used to tell all the time about this monk who had magical powers. He could fly through the air and he was looked after by this king because the king had the greatest esteem for him. And one time the king had to go away to fight the war. And so he gave his queen to be in charge of looking after the monk. And so the monk would come on arms round and whereas before the king would give him food, now the queen would give him food. And he would fly in through the palace window, stand there and take the food. At one time the queen and take a shower or a bath. And she was lying, lying with her robe. And she said, I’ll lie down and wait for the monk to come. And she fell asleep. And when the monk came in, he made a noise, touching, coming in through the window or touching the floor, or else. He cleared his throat or something. And she woke up and stood up and the robe fell off. And he saw this beautiful queen and totally naked. And he totally lost his tranquility and lost his magical powers as well. So when he took the food, he turned around to fly out through the window and he found that he couldn’t fly anymore. And he’s like, up, up and not away. And so he walked out the door and totally lost everything and the story goes on. And eventually the king, uh, the queen explained to the king how to solve the problem. She said, give me to him. Give me to him as much as his wife. And so the king called the ascetic and said, OK, you can have my queen and take her away. And they went away and the queen really made a fool out of him. She said, OK, so we’ll have to go and get a house. The king has given us this house to live in and she said, oh, go back to the palace and fetch me my my slippers. So he went back all the way back to the palace. Let me go and fetch me my purse or go and fetch me this pillow or go and fetch me that and go and fetch me this back and forth and back and forth. He had totally lost his mind. And so when he came back, finally, she grabbed him by the beard. Because he has a bearded ascetic and said, look at you, you’re an anesthetic. And she woke him up and made him realize what a fool he was being. But the only point, the reason why I tell that story often is to remind us how there is no stability of mind. Even this powerful state that allows you to read people’s minds, fly through the air and so on, it’s not permanent. And so in a roundabout way that I think that is an important part of the answer, that your realization, your insight into the nature of the mind as being difficult to tame is an important vipassana insight. And then the last question we can ask is, what then does that or how does that make you react or act in the future, will that make you more keen to control the mind in the future? How are you going to be more keen to OK, let’s try again and tie the mind down. No, you’re more likely to be, um, disinterested, dispassionate about it or even averse to getting involved with it at all. And you’ll find that when the mind does go crazy, when the mind starts thinking about many things, you’ll be far less inclined to follow after it or even to become upset about it to try to control the mind. Because the controlling of the mind is out of ignorance. We tried to control our lives. We tried to control ourselves. We tried to control our minds out of ignorance, of the fact that these things are impermanent, unsatisfying and uncontrollable.
So I would say this is a common question that people ask because of a misconception of or really an inability to see our own defilement in our own nature of the nature of our own mind. So what you’re seeing is actually what you should be seeing. The problem is at that moment, you don’t realize it. And so there arises frustration. And then on top of that, there arises worry and doubt about whether you’re practicing correctly or whether this practice is actually any good. When, in fact, that’s really you know… That’s why the Buddha was so clear about this and so explicit about the fact about these qualities of reality as being impermanent, unsatisfying and controllable. So. Yeah, despite the constant fight to become more mindful about a few more things than I was even gained outside of meditation by paying more attention to what I’m doing and thinking, which is another important point. Another thing that you’ll realize is that you have to be careful. Because whereas you can’t control the mind, you do create the mind through habits. You know, at every moment you have a choice you can make. And if you choose the same thing again and again and again, it will develop a habit in the mind. And that’s what you’ve done. That’s why the mind is out of control. So instead of trying to force it to be tamed, you have to change your habits. You have to start acting in a different way, one that doesn’t develop that. And definitely one hundred percent you have gained from that experience. You there’s no question that someone who can come up with this sort of question has already gained something, has already gained the benefit, and that’s helped them to let go. It’s up to them to say I don’t need to control things. What I need to do is be careful and not let my mind develop in that way again. OK.