A Noble Choice

When the Buddha introduced his teachings to people who hadn’t had any background in the Dhamma, he’d give what’s called a graduated discourse. He’d start with the topic of generosity, talk about what a good thing it was to develop that quality: being willing to share, being willing to give what you have to others. It opens your heart, expands your heart, and in terms of karma, it has good long-term results. People respect you, people love you. It’s a cause for wealth — wealth of a relatively solid and reliable sort.

Then he would move on to virtue. The same sort of thing: what a wonderful thing it is to live a life where you’re not harming anybody. No killing, no stealing, no illicit sex, no lying, no intoxicants. It’s a life you can be proud of. You’re not searching for happiness in a way that harms yourself or harms others. It’s great for self-esteem.

Then he would move on to the rewards of generosity and virtue, not only in this life, but also in the future life: the pleasures of heaven. It’s interesting, there’s very little in the Canon to describe those pleasures. He just says that they’re far more extensive than even the pleasures of a king here on earth.

But then he’d talk about the drawbacks of those pleasures, both sensual pleasures in the human realm and sensual pleasures in the heavenly realm. They don’t last. You get used to them and you get spoiled. This is one of the great ironies of samsāra. You work hard to develop good qualities in the mind— generosity and virtue—but then their rewards erode those qualities. You get lazy, you get a sense of entitlement, you stop creating the causes for your heavenly pleasures, and then you fall. And you fall hard. Very few heavenly beings, the Buddha said, return to the human realm or to the heavenly realm. Many of them fall deeper than that.

When he had you realize the drawbacks of those pleasures, then he would point out renunciation as an alternative. Now, renunciation here doesn’t mean you renounce pleasures, period. It’s just that you look for a different kind of pleasure: the pleasure of the mind in concentration. You can settle down inside, be at ease with your breath, at ease with your body. Your mind is at ease. There’s a sense of well-being that comes with that, and it’s a solid sense of well-being that goes deep down inside.

When you see that this is a better pleasure than the pleasures of sensuality — our constant fascination with dreaming about what kind of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations we’d like to have — you begin to content yourself with the pleasure of the concentration you’ve got. You’ve got your awareness of the present moment; you’ve got the body as you feel it from within, the breath as you feel it.

But being content doesn’t mean you just sit there with whatever you’ve got. You learn the skills to make the most of what you’ve got here. How do you make the most out of the breath? You find different ways of breathing and see the impact they have on your sense of well-being. You learn that you can breathe in ways that are energizing when you’re tired, relaxing when you’re feeling tense, soothing when you’re feeling frazzled. You think of the breath not only as the air coming in and out of the lungs, but also as the flow of energy that allows the air to come in and go out. If you get really sensitive, you realize that with the connections through your nerves and your blood vessels and the fascia, there’s a sense of energy flow throughout the entire body as you breathe in and as you breathe out. It can get very, very satisfying. And it takes nothing, just the ability to sit there and breathe with skill.

Once the mind had attained that state, then the Buddha would explain his teachings on the four noble truths: how there’s suffering and stress in life, and it’s caused by your craving: craving for sensuality, craving for what he calls “becoming”—where you think of something you want, then you identify that it’s in a particular world, and then you go into that world. This happens both outside, in the world outside, and in your worlds of the mind. Then there’s craving for non-becoming—the craving that once you’ve got something like that but you don’t like it anymore, you want to see it destroyed.

All these forms of craving cause you to cling, and it’s in the clinging that there’s the suffering. You cling to the form of your body, you cling to your feelings, you cling to your perceptions—i.e., the labels you use to identify things as to what they are, what they mean. You cling to thought-constructs: the thoughts you put together, the intentions you put together. And you cling to consciousness.

Now, those things on their own have nothing really wrong with them. It’s just that they can’t provide a happiness that would be really satisfying.

The Buddha says it is possible to put an end to that suffering, put an end to that clinging. You do it through the practice of the path, which boils down to virtue, concentration, and discernment.

Now, some of the Buddha’s listeners, when they got this far, would actually be able to let go of that clinging, at least for a while. When they let go of that clinging and craving, they had a taste that there is a deathless element inside, which can be found by following this path of virtue, concentration, and discernment. It’s said to be visible here and now, right here, next to the present moment. It’s not in the present moment, because the present moment is in time. This is something outside of time, but it’s accessible right here, right now.

Now, some of the people listening to this and attaining this glimpse of the deathless would go back to their regular lives, but with a new perspective on their regular lives. Others would want to devote their lives fully to this dimension, seeing that this is the ultimate happiness. This is the one kind of happiness that does not disappoint, because it’s outside of time, outside of time, outside of space. Nothing in space and time can change it. It’s the one reliable thing there is in life. And it’s totally harmless.

So some people want to devote their lives to it, and it’s an honorable choice. And it is a choice. No one is ever forced to take on the life of a renunciant. To be ordained, you have to request ordination. Once you’re ordained, you stay as long as you want. It’s harder to get in than it is to get out. So it’s a totally free life. You’re not being hired or forced by anybody to do this.

As Ajaan Fuang used to say, “Nobody hired us to practice. It’s something we do of our own free choice.” And there’s an honor that goes with that. We’re not being paid. We’re not wage earners. We’re not being paid to do something we don’t want to do but somebody gives us some money and we swallow our pride and do it. We do this because we see true value of this happiness. Even if we haven’t perceived it yet, hearing about it, it makes sense. And it’s a noble life. So it’s a choice that should be honored.

In this world, with so many people just grubbing around, doing what they have to do because they’re paid to do it, here’s someone who’s not being paid, someone who’s making sacrifices. You do have to sacrifice a lot of sensual pleasures to find the ultimate pleasure, the ultimate happiness, of the deathless. But it’s a free choice, and it brings you into a free association with other people.

The people who support you here are doing it of their own free will. The people who supply support from outside give it of their own free will. Nobody forces them. It’s an economy of gifts. It’s one of the few noble things that are left in the world. And it’s aimed at a noble goal, something that doesn’t age, doesn’t grow ill, doesn’t die.

The Buddha, when he was still a young prince, saw that so many things in life that we aim at, that we strive for, will end up passing away, going away, going away. We ourselves pass away. Is there something that does not pass away? He didn’t have anybody to teach him that there was. But he’d seen enough of the drawbacks of the pleasures of the world that he felt that his life would be wasted if he didn’t at least try to see if there was something deathless.

So he made lots of sacrifices. He tried many false paths before he found the true path. But then he found that there was a deathless dimension, and it was something that could be attained through human effort. Human effort didn’t cause it—because, after all, it is outside of space and time, so it has to be uncaused—but human effort can take you there, in the same way that a road to a mountain doesn’t cause the mountain to be, but it can take you to the mountain.

He spent the rest of his life teaching—again, teaching for free. This Dhamma has been handed down for free, for free, for free, for many generations. People choose to follow this Dhamma for free. It’s a noble community freely joined, focused on a noble goal.

So the choice to join this community is a noble choice. The choice to carry through the path is even nobler. And of course, finding the ultimate goal where you’ve totally reached full awakening, full freedom, is the noblest thing there is. As the Buddha said, it’s the highest noble truth. It’s all founded on freedom: freedom of choice, the freedom to pursue your highest goals, your highest aspirations.

So it’s a choice to be admired. But regardless of whether anyone else admires it, if you make that choice, admire it in yourself. Don’t let anyone take that away from you.