‘There is the knowledge of no more birth.’
This stage is not an assumption or a supposing. It isn’t anything fabricated or conjectured into being, nor is it anything that can be obtained by wanting. It’s something that appears, is, and knows entirely of its own accord. Intense, relentless practice in which we analyze things shrewdly on our own is what will cause it to appear of its own accord.
This can be compared to rice plants. Once we have properly nourished and cared for the rice plant, the results—the grains of rice—are not things that can be obtained by wanting. They will appear of their own accord. If a person who wants to get rice is lazy and doesn’t care for the rice plant, he can keep wanting till the day he dies, but no rice grains will appear for him. The same holds true with the reality of release: It isn’t something that can be obtained by wanting. A person who wants release but who practices wrongly or doesn’t practice—and wastes his time being lazy until the day he dies—won’t meet with release at all.
(Ajahn Mun)
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