Three Cups of Medicine and the Crazy Beings
revised on 2019-09-12
Dhamma Talks by Mogok Sayadaw; 29th November 1961
I’ll talk about the differences between wise attention and unwise attention (yoniso and ayoniso). By the parental traditions, mostly we were taught with the unwise attention. New unwholesome things arise from unwise attention which increase the old ones.
Whenever you are looking at this khandha, it’s arising and passing away. It’s the dukkha khandha and oppressed by ageing and sickness. It is anatta khandha and out of our controlling.
It’s asubha khandha (foulness) which excrement, urine, etc. are coming out from it. In daily life we are greeting and serving each other with impermanence as permanence, dukkha as sukha, anatta as atta and asubha as subha (we are doing all these with unwise attention).
In the world inversions (vipallāsa) are overwhelming. (Therefore in the world we encounter with a lot of unwholesome matters.) With unwise attention beings are far from Nibbāna, which is the ending of dukkha. Because of that all will fall into the planes of misery, is becoming evident.
Therefore in the world is there anything more frightful than unwise attention? Unwise attention includes inversions of perception, mind and view dhammas. (Perceive, know and view things wrongly.) Therefore the crazy worldlings of the world are opposed to the Buddha.
The Buddha seemed to be arisen among the crazy people. All are crazy with taṇhā, māna and diṭṭhi. The worldly dhamma and Buddha’s dhamma are opposite. All the dead ones are the funerals of the crazy people because no one dies by curing their craziness.
Therefore going to the planes of misery are too many. These dhammas will always resist to the insight knowledge. You can’t reach towards Nibbāna if you can’t get the insight knowledges. Craziness for lust and diṭṭhi is the outcome of unwise attention.
Only clear away all these will arrive to Nibbāna. With entering of the stream and inversion of wrong view is cured. These are twelve inversions that I have to teach for more days. Unwise attention is covering up the three dhammas of anicca, dukkha and anatta to Nibbāna.
If you practice vipassanā and craziness becomes lighter. If you are only doing merits and craziness will not cure. There are four cups of medicine for the cure of craziness. These are anicca, dukkha, anatta and asubha medicines. Without taking them craziness for lust and diṭṭhi are not cured. In reality there are three types of craziness; lust, wrong view and delusion (raga, diṭṭhi and moha).
The Buddha had arisen in the world for giving us the three cups of medicine; i.e., anicca, dukkha and anatta medicines. Therefore he was called Satthādevamanussānaṁ — teacher of gods and humans. The medicines let the poisons of nicca (permanence), sukka (happiness) and atta (self) to vomit out. You are choosing and changing the time for taking these medicines.
If I urge you to practice vipassanā and the response is let me continues to be in craziness, or I’ll do it later. Your thinking is not different from a crazy person and taking the fire as gold and excrement as rice. This is psychotic — mental illness. Natural craziness or global craziness is craziness of lust, anger and delusion.
In the whole saṁsāra nobody is a good one. The Buddha was using many ways, sometime in soft way, by force and in normal, etc. to give the medicine for the treatments.
Even people are worshipping the Buddha, they ask in prayers with craziness; asking in prayers with lust for blissful existences (sugatis). It’s the craziness of lust (raga). Don’t know them as dukkha is the craziness of delusion (moha). I do it so I get it; this is the craziness of wrong view (diṭṭhi).
Therefore they will never end of the craziness. They are developing their inversions in front of the Buddha image. You couldn’t even find the beginning of when living beings were becoming crazy. It time span of craziness was quite a long time now. With the unwise attention the twelve inversions come in.
(Sayadaw gave some examples in the daily life, how the three inversions of perception, knowing and viewing are arising continuously).
In this way craziness is not cure only but increasing like a disease. There is nothing more valuable than the three cups of medicine for curing craziness. The Buddha himself offered his bones, blood and flesh to fulfill the perfections (pāramīs) for four incalculable aeons (4 asaṅ kheyya kappa) and 100,000 eons (kappa) and discovered these three cups of medicines.
Now, you are getting it very easily and should drink it or not? The Buddha told us that after seeing, hearing, etc. not to continue forwards. You become crazy if you do it. Just stop at seeing, hearing, etc. or contemplate their impermanence. Except these three cups of vipassanā medicine, there is no other refuge.
The Buddha himself was arisen with these three cups of medicine. Seeing the impermanence is vomiting the poisons of inversion. Don’t think that you are not developing in your practice. If you are seeing fewer impermanence and the poison are vomiting in fewer.
If you want to vomit a lot, then drink it a lot (practicing a lot). You are vomiting the dhamma of craziness. The Buddha’s medicines were sure for its cure. They are sure for the cure if you really take it. It doesn’t like the worldly medicines.
He himself had been cured with it that gave it to living beings. He was not hearing it from what other people had said. If you drink little will better little and with more will get well. Don’t look for the medicine in other places (from other faiths). You’ll not find it.
I am only worry that you don’t know your craziness. Then you’ll not look for the medicine. After you are taking the medicine and will know that you are crazy (by seeing impermanence). Who constructs the four planes of misery? Unwise attention builds them. Are you unlucky? Or simply you built it by you yourself.
If you make a mistake and a home is built there. It’s quite frightening. Human beings are using the twelve inversions of tools and machines to build their homes. They go and live in the homes built by them themselves; from where they build the hells.
It is from the human world. You understand it now (This point is interesting. When living beings are still alive doing all sorts of kamma and it already starts taking form. During the dying moment one of them is making the decision).
Nandiya upāsaka built monastery and dwellings in the human world and started taking form in the celestial world. Is it not sure to build these things from the human world? (He told the story). After you were born, parents were teaching you the inversion dhamma.
You also have to go and stay there where you build your homes (Dwellings of hell, hungry ghosts and animals). But don’t become in low spirit. And also don’t make a show of nothing will happen to you. There is still have time. Medicine and teacher still exist, and you have time.
Don’t waste this time. Unwise attention is like a manager and the twelve inversions are like carpenters. With the Path Knowledge arises, the Great Eight Hells and the 120 small hells are disappeared.
revised on 2019-09-12; cited from https://oba.org.tw/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4091&p=35847#p35847 (posted on 2019-01-18)
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