The Importance of Saving Oneself

revised on 2024-07-10

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Dhamma Talks by Mogok Sayadaw; 28th July 1961

Not practicing vipassanā and wasting time with worldly matters is like watering the poison tree. The task of saving oneself is to listen to Dhamma and practice. When you are young, you have no chance to save yourself. As you grow up, it also increases with family matters. Therefore, coming to this human world is like being a human beast (animal). Only by conquering the kilesas will one become a sotāpanna to an arahant.

Kilesas are hiding in the khandha. Do kilesas die if you don’t know the dangers (ādīnavas) of them? Without discerning the anicca khandha, not knowing the dukkha, ungovernable anatta nature, and unable to contemplate the asubha nature, kilesas will not die. You’ll conquer kilesas if you can contemplate and discern one of the four factors. If you never cut off the khandha process, the khandha will continue. When the khandha stops, taṇhā stops, which is Nibbāna. With the two vaṭṭa saccas (dukkha and samudaya) stop, and two Vi-vaṭṭa saccas (nirodha and magga) arise, the problems will finish.

If you don’t know about the khandhas and kilesas, you live with blindness and craziness. In past lives, you were also living as blind and crazy people (Seeing the majority of humans, this point is quite clear).

Because of that, we had encountered many dangers and difficulties. Don’t be lazy in the practice. If you discern anicca, there is no need for any pāramīs. Anicca and magga will send you to Nibbāna. Leave your family and business behind, because they can’t save you. In the stomach is filth (urine and excrement), and on the khandha, body sweat. You’re carrying around this asubha body and think of it as graceful. Practice vipassanā without any concern for the khandha. The kammas controlled by taṇhā and upādāna are disgusting. All humans who die with no understanding of D.A are dying with wrong view. They die with the three wrong factors of wrong perception, knowing, and view.

According to the Buddha, those who die with no chance to listen to suññatā-dhamma are dying with wrong view. How terrible is that? Is there any upward way ? If you penetrate suññatā, you are closer to suññatā Nibbāna. Never discerning suññatā, you have fallen down to apāyas. To have the holy Dhamma is not easy. Each day, the unwholesome kammas arising from the six senses are one’s own enemies. If you fall down to apāya even once, it’s not easy to come up again (to the human realm). Here there are more people near dying, so they’re more important. Bhāvetabba means vipassanā magga (insight knowledge has to be developed many times). You have to make friends with vipassanā magga; living beings make friends with good or bad kammas, but the real friend is ñāṇa.

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revised on 2024-07-10

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• Content of Part 16 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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According to the translator— Ven. Uttamo's words, this is strictly for free distribution only, as a gift of Dhamma—Dhamma Dāna. You may re-format, reprint, translate, and redistribute this work in any medium.