Dispassion
May 20, 2018
There’s a passage in the Canon where a group of monks are going off to a distant land, so they go to take leave of the Buddha. He tells them to take leave of Sariputta, too. So they go to see Ven. Sariputta and he asks them, “When you go to this distant land and people ask you, ‘What does your teacher teach?’ how are you going to answer them?” So the monks ask Sariputta, “What would be a good answer to give?” And the first answer he gives is, “Our teacher teaches dispassion: the ending of passion.” Then he goes on to say, “If the people are intelligent, then they will ask, ‘Dispassion for what?’” That shows a big difference right there between people in that time and people in our time. Most people now, when they hear the word “dispassion,” lose interest immediately. They don’t care about what you might be advocating dispassion for. The idea that dispassion would come first is something that’s not all that appealing.