Your Choice: A Life of Chaos or a Life of Peace

by Luangpor Thong

 

Some people, when they hear of this topic may know or understand what it means since there is both chaos and peace within us. We have experienced and recognized both. We may say there is a chaotic path and a peaceful path.

Nobody wants chaos. When we hear of this topic, we may think we can choose between a peaceful life and a chaotic life. We can say that we want a peaceful life, but if we don't pursue it rightly, we won't find it.

The Buddha said, "there is no chaos here." Those who want peace ought to follow the Buddha's path; those who want chaos can walk away from the Buddha's path. Other paths won't bring us to know, see, and understand ourselves, or to look into the mind, but instead lead us to look outside of ourselves. Therefore, they lead us to chaos. If we look into our life or mind, we will have a peaceful life.

When we look outside of ourselves, we see the right or wrong of others. We don't see the right or wrong of ourselves. We don't see ourselves, so we don't see our mind. When bad things or confusion, or even peace, arises, we don't see it because we are looking outside of ourselves.

The Buddha told us to be with ourselves, to be with our body and mind, with our life and awareness. It's said that we should simply be with sati-samadhi-panna (awareness-attention-wisdom) or that we should be one who knows, one who is awake and joyful as the Buddha taught.

If we follow this way, our lives will be peaceful and normal because greed-anger-delusion or sadness and gladness can't disturb us.

We always forget or lose ourselves. When something happens, we don't look into ourselves or our mind, then suffering arises within us. But we always blame others for our suffering which is actually caused by our not-knowing or lack of awareness. If we have awareness, we will watch ourselves all of the time. When something happens, caused either by ourselves or by others, we won't forget ourselves.

Wise people advise us not to forget ourselves. Don't let delusion or not-knowing or ignorance arise. Actually, there is no delusion or ignorance. It exists or arises when we forget ourselves or when we don't have self-awareness.

Therefore, we talk only about "self-awareness." If someone has self-awareness all of the time, he or she won't be afraid of or discouraged by any problem, whether it is caused by him or herself or by others. When a problem arises, he or she will solve it without suffering because it is solved with sati-samadhi-panna. Regardless of how difficult the problems are, they are solved with a normal mind. Difficult problems are made easy. Heavy burdens are dealt with a stable, pure and confident mind.

The Buddha told us not to be afraid of problems or to run away from them because they will always follow us. But, we can escape with sati-samadhi-panna. If we try to escape without awareness,we will suffer.

The world would be peaceful if everyone solved their problems with sati-samadhi-panna. Everyone should return to themselves to contemplate and find the way to solve their problems with sati-samadhi-panna.