Release Mind into Freedom

~ By Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu ~

Mind must look to see in this way so it doesn't grasp physical matters as being mine or about me. Let physical saṅkhāras get sick or decay naturally, so that they aren't clung to as my pain, my illness, or my death. Mind won't be bound up with illness and death. Instead, mind is freed from pain, illness, and death. In this freedom there's no going and returning within the cycles of saṃsāra.

This is the warning that illness brings us, so that we will be smarter. Illness doesn't visit to make us suffer. It doesn't demand that we suffer. It merely reminds us to be fully prepared for remainderless quenching of feeling there is Ego and Mine. It challenges us to quench Ego and Mine. It doesn't tell us to hurry up and kill ourself, which would be pointless. Instead, it reminds us to quench clinging to 'me' and to quench clinging to anything as 'mine.' This is what I mean by warning us to quench without remainder. When clinging to 'me' and 'mine' is quenched, there is nobody to be born, age, feel ill, and die.

(From 'Dharma for Ordinary Sick People,' a talk addressed to a general audience, many of whom were in their elder years. At the same time, July 1982, Tan Ajahn's own health was up and down. Translated from the Thai by Santikaro Upasaka.)

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Photograph from the Buddhadasa Indapanno Archives collection (C01436)