This episode is a talk given by the forest meditation master Ajahn Gunhah Sukakhamo and is titled “How to give and renounce”. It was published as part of Jai Dee - Jai Sabai - Delivery 42. You can find links to the original text in the description below.
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Welcome to the forest path podcast, a podcast sharing the teachings of awakened meditation masters of the modern era. This episode is a talk given by the forest meditation master, Ajangana Sukakamu, and it's titled how to give and renounce. It was published as part of jade jai sabai delivery '42. You can find links to the original text in the description below. May you all benefit from hearing this gift of dhamma.
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How to give and renounce by Ajangganha. Today, the group Chomron Tien Jayapatna made merit by offering food, candles, robes, and other requisites. Yesterday, they also offered and dedicated a building to the public school. These are very good things. These things are right and excellent.
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Our world will be happy, peaceful, and pleasantly cool due to everyone renouncing and giving. Loving kindness is a support for the world. His majesty, the king of Thailand, was born for doing good, to build parami, to be a giver, someone who renounces. We are following the path of his majesty the king and of the noble Sama Sambhudha. We who were born as humans can be regarded as precious beings who have an exalted heart, as those who should do only virtuous good things and give things up.
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If you renounce in your family, there will be happiness in your family. If you renounce in the village and society, they will be happy. When you are staying at a temple and in the Lord Buddha's dispensation, both will also be happy. Human society and all beings will progress and flourish. The Lord Buddha taught you to be a person who renounces, who spreads and shares happiness with many others.
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There will be happiness while doing your duties and work. There has to be happiness in your work because you renounce and help your family and your employees at the same time. The Lord Buddha wants you to be happy in doing your work because all work is an act of renunciation. You let go of selfishness, dukkha and difficulties in your work. The Lord Buddha only lets you have physical dukkha and difficulties but no dukkha in the heart.
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The body is a tool and object that allows you to do good. Happiness and suffering are a matter of your heart. When you think there's no suffering, then there's no suffering. When you think it's dukkha, then there is dukkha, because there is clinging right in your own heart. The Lord Buddha wants you to solve this in the heart and put it right, because those problems are in your heart, in your thinking, and in your attachment.
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There has to be peace and the end of suffering in your heart every day in your daily life. If you practice correctly, everything will become peaceful and good all by itself. The Lord Buddha taught that you don't yet understand in your heart the path of practice that leads to the end of problems. You like to allow yourself to follow your usual habits the way your parents or your friends did things. You still can't correct yourself in body, speech, and mind in order to enter the noble path that is the highest path.
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The Lord Buddha wants you to change your body, speech, and mind to become a person with a good foundation and with virtue so that you gain wealth, boast the noble wealth and gain and the worldly fame and praise of the right sort that is not malicious and full of bad kamma. The five precepts are everyone's virtue and treasure. If everyone keeps the five precepts, we call this having both wealth and noble wealth. The five precepts are your virtue and wealth, not anybody else's. If you don't keep the five precepts, you are regarded as a deficient person, a person who is dangerous.
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On one hand, you are dangerous to yourself, on the other hand, you are also dangerous to others. The five precepts are the triple gem, which comprises the Lord Buddha, the noble Dhamma, and the noble Sangha. The four kinds of samana will be in yourself in your daily life. If you are able to practice the five precepts, you will reach the first kind of samana, which means to reach peacefulness, the ending of suffering. Peacefulness translates as the ending of suffering.
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When you eat or do anything, you have to make the heart peaceful. When it is peaceful, suffering can cease. If you are rich, have rank, reputation and fame, have employees, followers and servants, but your heart is not peaceful, can you be without suffering? You can't stop suffering because you have many issues and problems, because you don't know how to make the heart peaceful. In your life, you are dominated by greed, hatred and delusion and burnt alive by them.
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The heart is not cool. It has no air conditioning because there is no samadhi. The lord buddha wants you to keep the five precepts. If you keep them, they say, you love the lord buddha, you revere the lord buddha. If someone does not see the importance of the five precepts, he also doesn't see the importance of the lord buddha.
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If someone does not see the importance of goodness and doing what is right, that is evil and bad karma. Regardless of whether you are a ruler, a monastic, or a layperson, you are bound to face problems. These five precepts are important. They are a noble treasure, a superb kind of wealth. Your actions are your kamma.
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Regardless of what you are thinking, good or bad thoughts, it registers it like a computer that saves everything you are doing. It is possible to hide your good and evil from other people, but you can't hide it from yourself. Such a dhamma is truth. It's unforgiving and doesn't give discounts. Everything has to go according to the law of nature.
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If you are a good person, you must have got a good heart already. When you have developed your heart well, everything will be good. Everyone around you in your workplace and in your daily activities needs love, pity, forgiveness, and compassion from you. Everyone has dukkha in body and mind, has dukkha regarding their relatives and families. Everyone struggles for happiness and for ending suffering.
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You have to turn inward and look at yourself thus: Are we givers, people who make sacrifices, or do we add to other people's burden? If you are very selfish, it is likely that you don't see the suffering and hardship of other people. If your families are to be happy, if your companies, factories, society, and your countrymen are to be happy, you have to improve things in the heart first. You have to improve your speech. Don't do as you like.
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You have to stop yourself. Because everyone has a lot of habitual tendencies, you have to stop yourself. If you have Samadhi, increase it further, because people generally have little Samadhi, but have a lot of panna they can't abstain and renounce. What most people are lacking is sama samadhi Make your sati quick, develop your endurance, Persevere even when it makes you feel really frustrated and indignant. When others are not skilled like you and their ability doesn't match yours, you have to turn a blind eye towards it.
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If they are skilled, they may be high and mighty like you. Overlook whatever shortcomings they have. Praise and encourage them for the things they are good at. That way they will be happy. The Lord Buddha taught that it is dry and barren to let good things go unnoticed and to only blame and scold people whenever they are not doing good.
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It makes things dry up so that they will die in the end, like rice and animals without water. Know how to praise your family, children, grandchildren, officers, and employees at your workplace. If you are rich with status and fame, but your family is not happy, then your life will not be happy because there has to be happiness and peace in your home and your workplace. The Chomron Tien Jayapatthana group came together here to make merit and practice virtue. Very good.
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Well done. The wise are rejoicing and praising you. Even the fools are praising you. Metadhamma is a support for the world. By the virtue of the Lord Buddha, the Dhamma, Sangha, and all good things, may you be happy in body and mind.
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May you have gain and wealth, be in good health, and may your family be safe. May your current affairs prosper and develop until you reach your full potential as human beings. Go to heaven and attain nibbana. That concludes the dharma teaching, how to give and renounce by the venerable Ajahn Ganha. If you'd like to hear more talks by Ajahn Ganha and other meditation masters of the forest tradition of Theravada Buddhism, subscribe to the forest path podcast using your favorite podcast app.
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