The Supreme Attainments (Part 2)

I ask that you as meditators take the well-taught Dhamma as your guide and compass and put it into practice until you give rise to knowledge and vision from within yourselves. That knowledge will then become your own personal wealth. This way you will come to know that although your work is on one level, and the work of the Noble Ones on another, the results in both cases are of the same sort. Just as with external work: Whatever the work, the resulting income in each case is money of the same sort. Whether it’s a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, or more, you know clearly that the money is the fruit of the work to which you have devoted your efforts. Whatever the amount, it’s a source of security to you – better than guessing at the amount of money in someone else’s pocket or arguing among yourselves about how much other people have, which serves no purpose either to the winner or to the loser of the argument and reduces the worth of your right to see the Dhamma directly for yourself, a right which was granted by the Buddha as his legacy to those who practice.

Uncertainty – the second fetter – refers to doubts, specifically doubts about whether there is rebirth or annihilation after death. If there is rebirth, will we be reborn on the same level as before? As something else? Can a person be reborn as an animal? Can an animal be reborn as a person? When people and animals die, where do they go? Is there really such a thing as good and bad kamma? When kamma is made, does it yield results? Is there really life after death? Are there really heavens and hells? Are there really paths, fruitions, and Nibbãna? All of these questions lie in the realm of doubt and uncertainty. Stream-enterers can abandon them because they have seen the basic principles of the truth in the heart that these questions have as their underlying cause.

Concerning the principles of kamma and its results, Stream-enterers are convinced of them in a way that is firmly implanted in their hearts and can never be removed. At the same time, they have the same sort of firmly planted conviction in the Buddha’s Awakening and in the fact that the Dhamma is well-taught and capable of leading those who practice it to release from all suffering and discontent, step by step.

The principal truth of the laws of nature is that nothing in the world disappears without a trace. There is simply the continual change of every type of formation (sankhãra) which is not in its original, elemental form back into those original elements which constitute its own natural state. These basic elements then transform themselves from their original nature back into disguised forms, such as animals and beings. These beings, which are driven by the force of defilement and have differing senses of good and evil, must then be constantly performing good and bad actions (kamma). Their good and bad actions can’t be erased; and in the same way, the results of their actions – which those who do them will have to experience as pleasure and pain – can’t be erased either. Only those who have eliminated all seeds of becoming and birth from their hearts will be done with the problems of birth and death, because the doing of good and evil actions and the experiencing of their good and evil results have as their basic source the seeds of becoming and birth buried deep in the heart. Except in the cases where these seeds are removed, the principles of action or kamma lie beyond the power of people to affirm or negate them, in the same way that night and day lie beyond the sway of the events of the world.

The third fetter – sïlabbata-parãmãsa – is usually translated as fondling at precepts and practices. This fondling comes from the fact that one’s precepts and practices are undependable. To express this with an analogy to sons and daughters, the term ‘parãmãsa’ or fondling would apply to sons and daughters who can’t be trusted by their parents and who keep causing them worry and suffering. One example would be a daughter who doesn’t preserve her honour as a woman and reduces the worth of her sex. She likes to go out and attract men, selling before she buys. She falls for whoever admires her beauty and spends herself freely without a thought for her future value as a wife. Wherever she goes she leads men around on a string, like the strings of fish and crabs they sell in the market, but in the end this parãmãsa woman is the one who gets caught up on her own string. A daughter of this sort is called a parãmãsa daughter because men all over the place get to fondle her, her parents have to be burdened with scolding and teaching her over and over again, because she likes to engage in selling herself, which is a cause for shame and embarrassment to the family.

As for a son, he can cause worries to his parents in other ways. One example is when he behaves irresponsibly. Instead of going to class at school, he likes to go roaming about looking for women wherever his friends may take him, without letting his parents or teachers know of his whereabouts. He looks for the sort of fun and amusement that is called “sneaking the fruit from the tree before it’s ripe.” After a while the teachers sense that something is up. Because the boy hasn’t shown up for classes a number of days running, they suspect that he’s playing truant at home. When they go to his home and ask his parents, the parents are stunned and answer in surprise, “We thought he was with you. We didn’t pay any attention because we assumed he was at school.” So the issue gets all blown up because neither the parents nor the teachers know what the boy has been up to. The fire he started for his own pleasure and amusement thus spreads to consume both his parents at home and his teachers at school. This causes his parents not just a little pain and distress. For this reason, a son of this sort is called a parãmãsa son. His parents have to suffer repeatedly, to scold and teach him repeatedly, with never a moment when they can close their mouths in peace. They have to keep worrying in this way without ever being able to eat or sleep peacefully.

If we were to apply this term to husbands, it would mean a husband who can’t be trusted. His wife is always afraid that he’ll have an affair with another woman whenever he’s out of her sight; that he’ll go hitching up with a woman in the back alleys, and then bring nuclear fission home to burn his wife and children. This is because men in general are opportunists. They like to go out and attract women, talking advantage of any woman who’s heedless and gullible. Men who don’t regard their wives as important tend to be the type who are weak in the face of their sexual appetites. At first they see any bait, any woman, that comes floating along as their chance for a snack, but they forget to think of the fish that dies on the hook because it was attracted by the bait. So they let things follow their own course until they eventually come to ruin. If a man with a wife and family lets himself be ruled by his lusts and desires, he brings about not only his own ruin, but that of his family as well. Any woman with a husband who likes looking for snacks like this ends up with a heart heavier than a whole mountain. She can’t live, eat, or sleep in peace. So a snacking husband like this should be called a parãmãsa husband because his wife must swallow tears together with her food since she is driven to constant suspicions by his behaviour. She can never ever let go and relax.

If we apply this term to wives, it’s the same sort of thing – a wife who can’t be trusted by her husband. She is as fickle as a monkey and squanders his earnings. She’s both his greatest love and his greatest enemy. After going out and searching for snacks at strange hours, like a bat, she comes home to raise a storm with her husband, accusing him of all sorts of things so that she can have an excuse to leave him and go live with her lover. Instead of doing her work as a housewife, she dolls herself up and casts furtive glances here and there, looking for new boyfriends. If things get really bad, she takes the family’s money and gives it to her lover to hire someone to get her husband out of the way so that she and her lover can then live together openly. A wife like this should be called a parãmãsa wife because she creates endless suffering and misery for her husband’s heart. At the same time, she’s a threat to his life, waiting to have him done in whenever she can get a chance.

If we apply this term to belongings, it refers to things, such as automobiles, that can’t be depended on. Wherever you drive them, there’s fear of danger. You have to check the motor every time you take them anywhere and keep taking them to the repair shop. Otherwise you can never tell when or where they’ll flip over on you and trap you inside. All of this comes under the term parãmãsa or fondling.

If we apply this term to precepts and virtues, it refers to the sort of precepts that stumble and fall because the people who observe them stumble and fall. People like this take their precepts, then break them, then take them again – taking them and breaking them over and over until they themselves aren’t sure whether they’re observing precepts or not, even though they keep taking them repeatedly. All of this refers to the precepts of ordinary people in general. Today they take the precepts, and not too long from now they’ll be taking them again. This is called the fondling of precepts and practices because they fondle their precepts the same way they’d pick at the scab on a wound.

Noble Ones on the level of stream-entry, even when they are lay people, are steady and firm in the precepts they observe. They don’t have to keep taking them over and over again like people in general because they trust their intentions and maintain their precepts with care. They’re not willing to let their precepts be broken or stained through any intentional transgressions. Even if they lead groups of people in the ceremony of taking the precepts, they do it simply as part of their social duties and not with the intention to take the precepts anew to make up for any breaks or stains in their old precepts. Intentions like this don’t exist in Stream-enterers at all.

Once-returners, according to the texts, have reduced the amount of passion, aversion and delusion in their hearts. Practical experience doesn’t raise any issues about these points, so we needn’t discuss them any further.

(Ajahn Maha Boowa “A Life of Inner Quality”)