BHIKKHU HEARS A RUSTLE. The sound generally comes from the iguana hovering about beside the kuṭi. Nose-ploughing the ground shrouded in dry leaf litter, this creature is forever foraging. Wherever it digs the earth, it is sure to snatch an earthworm, a centipede, a scorpion. Each time it preys upon such a creature it always does so with a volition of killing. Just like in humans, in this iguana, too, arise the five clinging aggregates (pañca-upādānakkhandha).[1]  But the animal knows nothing of these phenomena. It has fallen into heedlessness, into laxity (pamāda).[2]  Why has this heedlessness befallen it? Purely for want of moral conduct―sīla―in its previous life.

No belief in karma and karma-results does this animal have. Yet the volition of killing forms. With every creature it preys on, an unwholesome karma―an unwholesome action―of killing is committed. Similarly, what each creature falling prey to the iguana experiences is a karma-result of an unwholesome action of its own. As one engenders unwholesome karma-formations, another bears the results of past unwholesome karma-formations. This is what the world is all about. One generates anew. Another bears results [of its own]. In a world comprised of the ebb and flow of tear and smile, we seek only pleasure.  

Being a lizard, how ever can it understand now what it couldn’t understand when born as a human being in the previous life? This iguana, committing unwholesome actions and bearing the results of unwholesome actions committed, is going to journey through the ‘becoming’ (bhava) for many more eons. If you were skilful to wisely reflect upon the precariousness of the journey of ‘becoming’ lurking in this iguana’s life, it would lend you the insight for you to escape, in this very life, from being liable to fall into the fourfold hell again.

What revered-you tend to do first is meditate. This is where we go wrong. First cultivate faith and confidence―saddhā―in the Triple Gem. Secondly, practise a set of moral precepts. Without fulfilling these two things, neither insight meditation (vipassanā) nor the meditation of tranquillity (samatha) would develop. Only once you become upright in faith and confidence towards the Triple Gem and in moral conduct should you turn towards meditation. If that purity [in saddhā and morality] hasn’t yet formed in you, meditation will not develop. Rather, under the guise of meditation, only self-view (sakkāya-diṭṭhi) and conceit (māna) would develop.

The problem here is revered-you haven’t grasped the proper meaning of having saddhā in the Triple Gem. There was one meditation instructor Bhikkhu knew. He was a teacher conducting meditation classes for scores of people. This meditation teacher wore covertly across his abdomen a charmed white thread, a form of protection. Bhikkhu asked him why he wore this white thread on his body.

“I have an awful lot of enemy-related trouble,” he replied. “So, I got this thread charmed as a protection from them.”

Look, this meditation master is someone who has not so much as saddhā in the Triple Gem. He lives in hypocrisy. He honestly doesn’t even know that saddhā hasn’t formed in him. Alas, a real tragedy it is. Has deluded himself and deceived his pupils as well.

Hitherto in the round of rebirths, the most crucial point where we invariably went wrong was we failed to comprehend the truest meaning of saddhā―faith and confidence―in the Triple Gem. If one were to revere empty rites and rituals outside the Dhamma, expect protection through means born of fallacious views, or have misgivings about the qualities of the Triple Gem, be it clergy or laity, they would do better to admit, out of compassion for oneself, that they have never yet reached saddhā in the Triple Gem. What you have in you then is an unfounded saddhā that hasn’t taken root. A saddhā melded with delusion. A saddhā that continually wavers in the face of trials and tribulations. How society abounds with myriads of people who make a living out of sorcery, black magic, horoscopes and witchcraft, or benefit from them! It has to be said, for the sake of true Dhamma, that they all remain beset by the above malady.

By reading sutta-discourses[3] of Buddha, one could gain a proper understanding of the above matter, to be sure, but correcting oneself thus would be among the rarest of things in the world. On an occasion as this where you have chanced upon an exalted dispensation of a buddha, endeavour to be such a rare person yourself. To arrive at saddhā in the Triple Gem, at once, cut all ties with empty rites and rituals outside the Dhamma and fallacious means of seeking relief. Ward off enemy-related trouble solely by means of moral conduct, loving-kindness, giving alms and placing trust in the Triple Gem. Try to see the problems and tribulations that life is confronted with as a mere manifestation of karma-formations―saṅkhāras. And, with insightful understanding, try to become disenchanted with the world, using those very trials of life as objects for wise contemplation. I attest to you that the triumphant result of the problems, dashed hopes, travails the Bhikkhu who writes this had to face during lay life is this monkhood. Problems crop up in life only for us to make them a blessing. So, through problems, see the reality of the Dhamma. Life is a problem to which no answers have been found. If so, you can’t avoid problems. Rather, you’re on course for curtailing birth (jāti).

Dogged by problems during that time of life as a lay householder, how much this Bhikkhu had wept by himself, unbeknown to the world! For hours or days on end, how much I used to rack my brains, brooding, until it gave a headache! How I would trudge on from one deity’s shrine to another! Bhikkhu isn’t ashamed to recount these things. But when none of these could provide a solution to the problem, in the end I went before Lord Buddha; went before the jewel of Dhamma set forth by Buddha. Only then did I realize that neither suffering nor happiness is a thing that belongs to me, that it isn’t something I could wield authority over, that it is something arising due to a cause. It was but craving―tanhā―that caused suffering.

Do away with the craving for form―rūpa. Then suffering would die away. If craving doesn’t die, even if you die, suffering will hound you. Wherever there is suffering, it’s the craving that you must insightfully realize. Suffering is but a thing that can only be eradicated through insightfully penetrating.

[1] Although rendered ‘five clinging aggregates’ for the sake of readability, it is not the aggregates that cling. Rather, the five aggregates are the objects of clinging. That is, one clings to the five aggregates―namely, corporeal form, feeling, perception, volition and consciousness.

[2] pamāda means heedlessness or laxity to strive to do the needful to escape suffering (i.e. opposite of appamāda = diligence, zeal).

[3] ‘Sutta Piṭaka’ is the first of the three divisions of the Tipiṭaka (Pāli Canon), the Pāli collection of Buddhist scriptures. ‘Sutta’ may closely translate as ‘teachings’ of the Buddha.