Namo tassa bhagavato arahato sammāsambuddhassa · Buddhaṃ saraṇaṃ gacchāmi · dhammaṃ saraṇaṃ gacchāmi · saṅghaṃ saraṇaṃ gacchāmi.
I bow in homage to the Buddha, perfect and fully awakened, to the Dharma and to the Sangha, the sublime refuge and support. I, Kruba Noi Yanwichai, respectfully ask leave of the Triple Gem and of all my teachers, and set down these notes as a gift of Dharma, for those who, moved by faith, seek the truth: that the mind may be led out of suffering in the round of Samsara and reach Nirvana, the end of all suffering.
The refuge in the Three Jewels
We who follow the Buddha are people of merit, blessed with the most precious opportunity: to be born human, to have met the Buddha’s teaching, and to have a heart full of faith. The Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha — the Three Jewels — are our refuge and support, the anchor of the heart and a call to mindfulness, that we may not stray onto the many paths of evil. They are the force that drives the heart to conduct itself as a good person, endowed with virtue, concentration and wisdom, and to carry itself beyond suffering.
The Buddha awoke by himself and then, out of great compassion, taught others so that they too might come to know. The true Dharma keeps in happiness those who practise it: yet it protects us only when we ourselves keep it; if we do not, we shall not escape a decline of the heart. Let us take it, then, as a lamp to light the road of our life. And the Sangha are the disciples of the Buddha, who hand down the Dharma and remind us to tell good from evil. So we take all three as refuge: the Buddha as the guide of life, the Dharma as the map for the journey, the Sangha as the counsellor who shows the right way to go.
The three cannot be separated: if we have one of them, we have all; if one is missing, all are missing. They are bound together like three sticks leaning against one another, standing only by supporting each other: take one away, and the other two fall with it. «Buddha» means calm, bright, clean and pure: when we have this nature in the heart, we have the Dharma there too, for that limpid calm is the very quality of the Dharma; and the Sangha is included as well, for whenever we practise the Dharma, that practice itself is the Sangha. If we keep the precepts, that keeping is like having the Sangha within us; the precept we practise is the Dharma; and the peace that arises from it is the Buddha itself. But where there is no practice, there is no Sangha, no Dharma, no Buddha — and the heart of one who does not have them easily declines.
Therefore whoever keeps the Three Jewels does not fall into the «states of woe»: so is called the heart that falls under the power of all that is evil — greed, anger, delusion, envy, ill will, every bad thought — which make it gloomy, agitated and joyless. Let one who practises the Dharma recollect the virtues of the Triple Gem and keep the mind firmly established: this reaching of the Triple Gem is already the beginning of the path toward Nirvana.
The Four Noble Truths
I write now of the truth to which the Buddha awoke: foremost of all, the Four Noble Truths. May you who seek the truth and Nirvana incline the heart toward the Dharma and draw it into you, resolved to study and to practise for release from suffering.
The first Noble Truth is suffering. The Buddha taught us to comprehend it fully, for suffering is the truth, the reality of the world: in this world only suffering arises, only suffering persists, only suffering ceases; apart from it, nothing arises and nothing ceases. One who does not understand this will think that to speak of suffering is to look on the world darkly; in fact it is to see it in the light of truth — as it is, not as we wish it to be. If we look on it too darkly, we grow weary of everything; if too favourably, we become infatuated and cling, forgetting what is real; and when the workings of the world strike us, we cannot bring the heart to accept them, and great suffering arises.
Suffering is real; happiness is not. What we call «happiness» is only suffering diminished. It is as in the science we study at school: in this world heat is real, cold is not — what we call cold is only heat diminished, greatly or slightly, but the heat is always there. So with suffering: if it diminishes greatly we call it great happiness, if slightly, slight happiness, but it remains, more or less of it, and in the end returns. It is like sitting a long while until the legs ache: we shift our posture, the pain eases, and we call that relief happiness — but the suffering is only lessened for a moment, waiting to return. To see things as they really are is to see with wisdom; and as our understanding of the truth grows, suffering diminishes step by step.
The second Truth is the origin of suffering. If suffering is the effect, its cause is craving: desire beyond measure, the wanting that transgresses every right limit. Craving divides into three: the thirst for pleasure, the desire to have — while we do not have it we suffer to get it, having gotten it we suffer to keep it, having lost it we suffer for the loss; the thirst for being, the desire to become — and once become, we suffer under the burdens of the station; and the thirst for non-being, the rejection of what we do not want, which oppresses and torments us all the same. The more we desire, the more we suffer; desiring little, we suffer little; with no desire, there is no suffering.
The third Truth is cessation: once the cause is known, we gain the wisdom to make it cease. And the fourth is the path, the way of practice that frees from suffering: the Noble Eightfold Path — right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. These eight factors, gathered together, come down to virtue, concentration and wisdom: right view and intention are wisdom; right speech, action, livelihood and effort are virtue; right mindfulness and concentration are concentration. This is the way that leads to the end of all suffering and to Nirvana.
Form and mind
I write now of form and mind. This being of ours is made of two parts: form, that is the body, and mind, that is the heart. Form is the whole body, from the hairs of the head to the toes, composed of the four elements — earth, what is solid; water, the liquids; fire, the warmth; wind, the gases and the breath. It arises because the four elements shape it, persists while they sustain it, and ceases when they separate: then the breath ends, the warmth goes out, the liquids flow away, and only the earth remains, returning to nature. Form changes ceaselessly according to conditions, and in the end breaks up: this is impermanence — whatever changes is impermanent.
The mind, by contrast, is what the senses do not touch but the heart knows, and it comprises four things: feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness. Feeling is the sensing: pain, pleasure, or a neutral tone. It arises from the meeting of the senses with their objects. We have eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind — the six inner sense bases, like an electrical socket; and form, sound, smell, taste, touch and mental objects are the outer bases, like the plug. When the plug enters the socket — the eye meets a form — eye-consciousness arises; and the three together are called contact. From contact is born feeling; from feeling, craving, desire or aversion; from craving, clinging, the obsession that broods and builds images in the mind; and if the clinging is not stilled by the Dharma, action follows, the Karma of body and speech. This shaping is very fast: let one who seeks the Dharma be mindful, then, and hold the senses in check, so that feeling does not grow into craving and clinging.
Perception is the recognising and marking-out of things — in short, memory: recalling that a person is named so, that a thing has a certain name. Mental formations, on the other hand, are all that arises in the mind and shapes it. Take a cloth: it was white by nature, then dyed red. The white cloth is the original, true mind of a human being, pure; the red dye is the formations that come to alter it. In truth the mind at its source is pure, but it becomes impure because external things enter it — by eye, ear, nose, tongue, touch — and work it into love and hate, greed, anger, delusion, envy, conceit, according to conditions. Consciousness, finally, is the bare knowing, and takes its name from the senses: eye-, ear-, nose-, tongue-, body- and mind-consciousness. While it is intact, cognition at that sense works; if it ceases — as in the blind or the deaf, who still have eyes and ears — cognition in that part works no more.
The five aggregates
I write now of the five aggregates. This «self» of ours is made of five parts: the aggregate of form, of feeling, of perception, of mental formations and of consciousness — all impermanent and without self, arising, persisting a moment and ceasing, in ceaseless change. To grasp at them is a cause of suffering, for they are without self. Consider this in meditation, so as to loosen the clinging to the «I» until the mind grasps at nothing and becomes pure.
Let one who seeks the Dharma be ever mindful of himself, with the wisdom to examine what arises in him. First, examine so as to see that this «self» is made of the five aggregates. Then, recognise what arises in the mind — greed, anger, delusion, joy and suffering. Then, see from what cause it has arisen. And finally, know how to remedy it and make it cease, so as not to be bound and fettered to suffering. In developing insight, turn the mind to the body and see clearly that, in truth, a «self» does not exist: there are only elements and aggregates gathered for a while, which the formations set flowing, and which, when they separate, break up and cease, as is their nature. Take this constantly as the object of meditation — examine with wisdom, recollect with mindfulness — until the mind lets go of the self, seeing everything as empty, with no «I» and nothing «mine», nothing to cling to, until it is freed from ignorance and the taints, and reaches Nirvana.