The King's Dhamma
October 15, 2023
Close your eyes and gather your awareness at the breath. Notice when your breath is coming in, when it’s going out. Stay with the breath all the way in, all the way out.
We’ve come today to make merit to dedicate it to the late King Rama IX. We’ve given gifts, and now is the time to meditate. When you give the gift of your meditation, try to make your mind one, because the mind when it’s one has the highest value of all. You’ve got lots of different thoughts, lots of different ideas running through your mind. It’s all scattered all over the place, so it doesn’t have much value. You want to lift the quality of your mind to make a gift that you’re proud to give, to make it one, right here with the breath. Any other thoughts that come in right now, just let them go.
It’s good to think about the goodness that Rama IX left behind. Forty years ago, on the 200th anniversary of the founding of Bangkok, he gave an address to the Thai people. He gave—as the basis for the address—four Dhammas that come from the Pali Canon that the Buddha taught to a yaksha one time, which is said to be the Dhammas of lay people. The basis of these Dhammas is how you can be a true person—true in your duties, true in your determinations.
The list starts with truth, sacca. Whatever you decide is good to do, you actually do it. You don’t go just for appearance’s sake. You do whatever is genuinely good for yourself or genuinely good for others. And you stick with it, regardless of the difficulties that may come.
Then the other members of the list that the Buddha gave expand on that. One of the qualities is dama, which means self-control. In other words, you don’t give rein to your emotions. You don’t give rein to your feelings, especially if they’re getting in the way of doing what you know should be done.
And especially, you don’t give rein to anger. When things come up that are obstacles to doing what’s good, you don’t let yourself get angry about them. If there is anger, then you learn how to control yourself so that the anger doesn’t come out in your words or deed. It’s a little bit much to ask for lay people to be totally free of anger, greed, and delusion, but you can gain some control over how much you express. So you want to make sure you express nothing of any anger that comes into the mind. Nothing of any greed.
It’s as if you have tigers in your house. Well, keep them in the house. Don’t let them go wandering out around in the neighborhood, causing trouble for the neighbors, because that will be trouble for you too.
Then there’s the quality of khanti, which is endurance. Whenever you want to work for something that really is of good value and stick to that, you have to endure lots of difficulties. But you have to learn how to deal with the pain, deal with other people’s unkind words, discouraging words. As the Buddha once, said, when you hear discouraging words just tell yourself, “An unpleasant sound has made contact at the ear,” and just leave it there. Don’t bring it into the mind. In that way, you don’t weigh yourself down. So it’s a lot easier to endure what other people say.
Most of us, though, don’t leave it at the ear. We drag it in, and it reverberates throughout the mind. But the contact ended a long time ago. Whatever suffering you have from what other people have said, once it’s said, then the remaining suffering is basically your responsibility to make sure that you don’t give into that.
The same with physical pain. You learn how to be with physical pain and not let it overcome the mind. Learn how to see the pain as something separate. Your awareness is one thing; the body is something else; the pain is something else. When you learn how to see it in that way, you can endure a lot of pain that otherwise would overwhelm you.
And finally, there’s cāga, the quality of relinquishment. There are things you’re going to have to give up if you want to gain what’s good. As the Buddha said, if you see a greater happiness that comes from letting go of a lesser happiness, you’re willing to let go of the lesser happiness for the sake of the greater one. Most of us, though, don’t want to let go. When we play chess, we want to win and keep all of our pieces. But you have to realize that in order to win there are some things you’re going to have to let go. Otherwise, nothing gets accomplished in life.
So when we have these four qualities working together—truth, self-control, endurance, and relinquishment—then whatever of substance that you want to accomplish in this life can get done. Remember, we’re not here just for appearance’s sake. We’re here for genuine, goodness—something that will be our nourishment both in this lifetime and in lifetimes to come.
So, given that it is your nourishment, you want to fix it well. Make sure that it’s solidly nutritious food that you’re preparing, because that will keep you healthy and strong for a long time to come.
Here, of course, we’re talking about the health and the strength of the mind. The strength of the body someday will have to fade away. The health of the body will fade away. But the strength of the mind doesn’t have to fade. Make sure that you build on that as much as you can. And the more merit you make, the Buddha doesn’t call that greed. He calls it being industrious—something he praises.
Then, when you have a lot of merit, you can dedicate it to others, and they’ll be happy to receive your merit because it has genuine value.
So we think about the goodness of the king. He himself was a person who was true. He exemplified all four of these qualities. Of the working royals of the world, he was the one who worked the hardest—worked the most for the sake of his people. In Thailand, what we have now is really benefit from him. Here at Wat Metta we benefited from what he did as well, because he kept Thailand together all those years when other countries in the area were falling apart. That gave the ajaans had the opportunity to practice. People from other nations came and had the opportunity to practice with the ajaans. Then they could bring the Dhamma out to the rest of the world as well.
So whether you’re a Thai or not Thai, you’re indebted to him. And a good way of acknowledging your debt is to show your gratitude by practicing the Dhamma and remembering the teachings that he left behind. Because, of course, they are the Buddha’s teachings as well. They’re dedicated to making sure that whatever goodness we have in life is going to be genuine goodness, true goodness, because we’re people who are true.