Cattāri Brahmavihārā

Theravadin Buddhist monk ] Ajaan Fuang Jotiko rarely allowed his talks to be taped, and he was even more adamant about not allowing anyone to tape his conversations.
Somehow, though, the following conversation was taped with his permission.
In it, he’s giving advice to some of his students — young women in their late twenties and early thirties — who were being pressured by their parents to settle down, get married, and start having children.

There were other occasions on which, when asked, he gave advice on how to lead a happily married life to any of his students who were planning on marriage, but it’s easy to see from this discussion where his heart really lay.

Student: When I see someone carrying a child and I give it some thought, all I can see is that it’s a lot of suffering.

Ajaan Fuang: That’s right.
Give it a lot of thought.
Once there’s birth, there has to be suffering.
We’ve all suffered in this way.
First there’s your own suffering, then you take on the sufferings of others.
Look at a baby.
What is it?
Where does it come from?
The Buddha says that it’s suffering; it comes from the power of craving and defilement [mind-defiling unwholesome mental qualities, delusion, hate ,lust ,anger, greed,etc.].
First you have to carry it around in your womb, then when it’s born you have to carry it around on your hip, and then when it starts to walk you have to lead it by the hand.

When you see this sort of thing your heart just…

Student: Withers.

Ajaan Fuang: Yes. It withers.
This is what gives you a sense of samvega.
[Saṃvega is a Buddhist term which indicates a sense of shock, anxiety and spiritual urgency to reach liberation and escape the suffering of samsara. According to Thanissaro Bhikku, saṃvega can be defined as:”The oppressive sense of shock, dismay, and alienation that come with realizing the futility and meaninglessness of life as it’s normally lived; a chastening sense of our own complacency and foolishness in having let ourselves live so blindly; and an anxious sense of urgency in trying to find a way out of the meaningless cycle.” ]
This is the sort of thing you want in your practice.
It’s your teacher.
They call it your teacher.
Ask yourself: “Is this what you want out of life? Is this what you want, this sort of thing?”
Not really.
“Then if you don’t want this sort of thing, don’t get involved.”
How many times have you been through this already?
This isn’t the first time, you know.
You’ve been doing this holding-carrying-weighing-yourself-down routine for a long, long time — hundreds of thousands of eons.

If you keep getting involved, there’s no way you’ll get free.

Birth, aging, illness, and death: these things are normal.
Birth is the normal way of things, aging’s the normal way of things, illness and death are the normal way of things.
Get so that you can see clearly that this is the way things normally are.
That’s when a sense of disenchantment can arise.

You’ll be able to loosen the grip that these things have on you. You’ll be able to pull them out, root and all.

We’ve suffered as the slaves of defilement and craving for how long now?
Can you remember?
Ask yourself.
Can you remember all you’ve been through?
And how much longer are you going to let it keep on happening — this holding and carrying and weighing yourself down?
How many eons have you been doing this?
Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of eons.
Can you count them all?
Of course you can’t.
And how much longer will you have to keep on suffering in this way? I
f you’re still stubborn, still unwilling to listen to the Buddha’s teachings, this is the kind of reward you’ll have to expect out of life. Do you want it?
Do you like it?

If you don’t want it, then you’ll have to develop the goodness of your mind so that you can see your way out of this, so that you can see your defilements, so that you can see the suffering and harm they cause.

Look at suffering.
Look at the rewards of suffering.
When people feel that we don’t have much suffering, they find more suffering for us.
Even just the five aggregates provide us with more than enough suffering — the suffering we have just on our own.
So when they talk about the happiness of taking on another person, exactly what happiness is there?
Nothing but more suffering.
“Treasures” that bring you suffering.
Our parents want us to get married, to have a spouse and a family. They’ve had plenty of suffering raising us, and yet it’s not enough.
How many children has your mother carried around in her womb?

And now she’s looking for more suffering for her children.

Student: Than Phaw [Venerable Monk in Thai language], is it true what they say, that a woman gains of lot of merit in having a child, in that she gives someone else the chance to be born?

Ajaan Fuang: If that were true, then dogs would get gobs of merit, giving birth to whole litters at a time.

No, that’s just propaganda from those who want to see more and more beings getting born in this world.

Student: When people want to get married, it’s because they have a lot of bad karma with each other. Isn’t that right?

Ajaan Fuang: Of course that’s right.
Just look at what they’re doing. There’s no need to explain. It’s nothing but imposing on each other, causing each other affliction and pain.
There’s no real happiness there; nothing but suffering.
Getting married is no way to escape suffering.
Actually, all you do is pile more suffering on yourself.
The Buddha taught that the five aggregates [The five aggregates are: form (or matter or body) , sensations (or feelings, received from form) , perceptions , mental activity or formations , and consciousness .They are called aggregates as they work together to produce a mental being] are a heavy burden, but if you get married, all of a sudden you have ten to worry about, and then fifteen, and then twenty.
And that’s not the end of the matter.
As soon as a child is born, it comes down with this, then comes down with that.
It’s not the case that from the moment it pops out it doesn’t need to take medicine, that we can just leave it alone and it’ll grow day and night.
Oh, all the things you have to do for it until it’s grown!
It starts out so small and can only lie there. T
hen think of what it needs until it can sit up, and then what it needs until it can stand, and then what it needs until it can walk.
When was it ever an easy thing, raising a child?
And that’s not all.
As soon as you want to lie down for a little rest, it cries.
You lie down for a little bit and it cries.

There’s nothing wonderful about it at all.

When people pressure you to get married and have children, it’s like someone who walks along and steps in a pile of excrement and then tries to figure out how to get other people to step in it, too, to make up for his own mistake.
Yes, it’s karma that makes people want to get married.
Karma is what obscures their vision.

They can’t see that what they want is a form of suffering. To them it’s something wonderful — because that’s the best they know. The best they have. They don’t know anything better than that.

When your parents want you to get married, it’s because that’s all they know.
Get them to meditate, and then they’ll realize: “Oh! What we’ve been through is suffering!”
To see this sort of thing, though, you have to meditate.
If you don’t meditate, you won’t see.
If you don’t meditate, you’ll have to see things the way they do. Even when you do meditate, you still see things the way they do.
It’s not easy to pull yourself out of that way of thinking.
It’s not easy at all. If the power of this defilement won’t surrender…

Only when your views are straight and you really let go: only then will you be done with the matter.

A Single Mind
by
Ajaan Fuang Jotiko
translated from the Thai by
Thanissaro Bhikkhu