Craving like a Tailor

revised on 2019-06-14

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Dhamma Talks by Mogok Sayadaw; 30th Nov. to 1st Dec. 1959

Most Buddhists afraid of unwholesome kamma which will give the future result. The main cause is not kamma, taṇhā (craving) is the connector from one life to another to infinity. No birth anymore if taṇhā is eradicated. After taṇhā extinct all the kammas become fruitless, as an example, the great serial killer Aṅgulimāla (the fingers garlanded bandit of the Buddha's time). Therefore, the Buddha said that in the Four Noble Truth the cause of dukkha is craving, and not mentioned as kamma. Craving is sticking at 12 places. It's sticking with the 12 āyatanas; i.e., form, sound, smell..., ideas and eye-base, ear-base, nose-base..., mind-base, sticking with the external and internal phenomena, and also in the middle. It’s really not easy to deal with it. With the contact of eye and visual object, eye-consciousness (seeing) arises. So it's also sticking with the eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness (hearing), nose-consciousness (smelling)..., mind-consciousness. So taṇhā is sticking at 18 places (6 sense-objects+6 sense-bases+6 consciousness=18 elements). Even you can say sticking with the whole body. Therefore, we have the usage of I can't even let one of my head hairs to fall off. Again it's sticking with the 18 feelings (6-sense-doors x 3 types of feeling; i.e., pleasant, unpleasant and neutral). The 18 elements (dhātu) are connecting with the 3 types of feeling. So if you can contemplate the three types of feeling, it’s enough to kill taṇhā. If feeling can be contemplated, then craving is not arising. So the Buddha gave the contemplation of feeling (vedanānupassanā).

Whatever name you are calling to the living beings such as human, god, brahma, etc., in reality dukkha starts and dukkha ends (birth and death). Only these things are continuously happening. It exists only as dukkha connecting to dukkha without any goodness in it. After his enlightenment the Buddha observed the world with the eye of truth and said that I would never praised to any life of existence as good. Even became a non-returner (anāgāmin) was only one more life to go on but still not good yet. It was like the 4 piles of excrement and still one pile left behind. It was good only with all were gone.

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revised on 2019-06-14; cited from https://oba.org.tw/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4031&p=35591#p35591 (posted on 2018-12-15)

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• Content of Part 3 on "Dhamma Talks by Mogok Sayadaw"

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• Content of "Dhamma Talks by Mogok Sayadaw"

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• Content of Publications of Ven. Uttamo

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