Sayadaw U Zaw Tika - I am tired but not discouraged

I'm tired but not in a good mood.

There are many elderly monks and nuns among the audience who come to listen to the sermon. Whenever I meet elderly monks and nuns, there is a sermon that I always preach.

During the Buddha's time, there were two great and great-grandmothers, Nakulpita and Nakulmata. They loved the Buddha very much. They had many previous lives with the Buddha, both as sons and daughters... According to the text, there were nearly (500) lives in which both Nakulpita and Nakulmata were fathers and mothers at the same time. Nakulpita married someone else and became his father. Nakulmata married another husband and became his mother. There were also nearly (500) lives in which both Nakulpita and Nakulmata were fathers and mothers.

Having been blessed with many lives, Nakula Pitara and Nakula Mata loved the Buddha as much as a son when they first met him. The intensity of their love from life to life was endless. This is what really happens.

When they saw the Buddha, they called him ' son ' . When the other monks heard this, they heard that the Buddha's father and mother were King Suddhodana and his mother Maya. Now, when these old and young monks saw the Buddha, they asked the Buddha why they called him 'son'. The Buddha explained that they had been fathers and mothers for many lives, and so in this life, although they were not their real parents, they were like real parents and children.

It will hurt my heart.

One day, the great monk Nakula Pitadaka came to the monastery to see the Buddha. When he arrived, he said to the Buddha, “Venerable sir... my disciple, I would like to see the Buddha every day, and I would like to see the monks every day, but I am old. When I am old, my body changes from time to time. I am well now, but it has been a long time since I got sick again. I would like to come every day, but I cannot.”

So the Buddha replied, “He who says he is healthy for a moment is speaking with a lack of intelligence.

"This body is always full of suffering and pain."

He continued to address the Buddha, “Venerable Sir, your disciple is old, and if you preach the Dhamma at length, he will not remember it. So please preach it briefly so that it is easy to remember.” So the Buddha really preached the Dhamma very briefly.

He preached, “Batura kayassa me satav cittam anaturam bhavissati,” which means, “Even if the body is in pain, practice so that the mind is not in pain.”

Although simple, the essence of this Dhamma is extremely profound, and it is one of the monks' favorite Dhammas.

Feelings of discomfort are always present in the body. It is not called a disease because it is still present when we move around. Feelings of heat in the heart, feeling tired, and sometimes feeling dizzy in the head are common to all. Young people are not so aware of it, because their minds are active and their bodies are very active, so they are not aware of it. Because they have so many things to do, they are only interested in what they want to do and do, and they are not able to pay much attention to the discomfort that occurs in the body. In fact, the feeling of discomfort has been present since birth.

“Everyone has a tendency to be sick, so anyone who says for a moment that they are healthy and have no sickness is speaking with a lack of intelligence. If they were intelligent, they wouldn’t say that.”

Therefore, the Buddha's teaching, "Even if your body is in pain, your mind should not be in pain," is short and very profound.

I want to look at the face of the Vedas with a calm mind.

This morning, a monk came to ask about his meditation practice, and he told me... "When you are very mindful and concentrated, you feel unbearable pain in your body. But when you pay attention to that pain and become aware of it, pain is different from pain, and knowing is different from knowing." The body is in pain, but the mind that knows is not in pain at all. The mind that knows is free. The mind that is not satisfied with pain does not become "sadness."

When you look at it with mindfulness, the knowing mind does not get involved in the pain. The feeling of pain and suffering is separate from the feeling. The knowing mind is sitting at a distance, watching from a distance, not getting involved, not getting involved.

When you are mindful, there is no thought. When mindfulness is really good, concentration is very good, right? When concentration is good, there is no thought. When there is no thought, whatever feeling arises, whether it is a happy feeling, a sad feeling, or a feeling of indifference, it seems to have nothing to do with you. It becomes impersonal. If you think about it, it gets mixed up and becomes personal. So it hurts more, it is unbearable.

If the mind thinks, “I feel sick, I can’t take it anymore,” then suffering and pain arise. Suffering and pain cause suffering. The nature of suffering is to want to quickly get rid of the pain that has arisen, not to accept it, not to tolerate it, not to be able to bear it. The nature of suffering does not have the ability to bear it.

When mindfulness and concentration are good, the mind does not automatically react to the arising sensation. It can observe the arising sensation as if it were sitting aside. If it is observed in this way, then there is pain. I do not think that the pain is painful. If my leg hurts, when I observe it carefully and mindfully, the leg disappears. There is only pain. I am only aware of that pain.

When you are not involved in this, when you are not thinking about it, the nature of that pain is no longer the same as it was before, the nature of that pain is no longer the same as it was before. You don't think about how to make it go away, can it go away, or is it so unpleasant? When you are thinking, the nature of the pain is a kind of feeling.

When there is no thought at all, when there is pure awareness, the nature of the pain experienced changes to another.

If you are sick and you need to take medicine to relieve the pain, you should take it. But even though you are taking the medicine, you are no longer resisting the pain in your mind. You no longer resist it, whether you want it to go away or not, you have done what you should have done. If you look at it carefully, the nature of the pain changes. When you are not really thinking about it, when you are not naming the nature of the pain, when you are truly and directly aware of it, the nature of the pain changes.

Whatever the feeling, whether it is pain, pleasure, suffering, numbness, tingling, or stinging, if you can just relax your mind and be aware of it without any resistance, its nature will change. If you can relax your mind and be aware of it with a gentle mind, you will find relief.

The nature of pain is that the more you resist it, the more it hurts. The stronger your desire to resist it, the harder it is to bear.

Do the medical treatment you should do. Apply it if you should. Drink if you should, drink if you should, inject if you should. After you have done what you should, look at him with a small mind and know him, and live. If you can see him as an emptiness, a lot of suffering will be relieved.

To be honest, it only hurts in the body. It can't hurt in the mind. The mind doesn't want to accept it, it doesn't like it, it hates it, it doesn't want it to exist, it wants to get rid of it quickly, it wants to get better quickly. The more you resist it, the more you attack it, the more tension you have in your mind. The mind becomes tight and you become tired and miserable.

If you can keep your mind soft without resisting, you will be at peace. If you relax your mind and look at it gently without resisting at all, then looking at it like this will make your mind calm and even peaceful. This is what you will find when you are truly mindful and have good integrity.

Therefore, no matter what kind of pain arises, we need to look at it calmly. If a person develops the habit of looking at the pain they are currently experiencing with mindfulness and calmness, this ability will gradually improve even if they encounter worse pain.

Some pains will go away with medical treatment. I can't say, but it's important to have the right attitude towards the pain that arises.