56. Examine Your Own Defilements
By Luang Pu Thate Desaraṅsī
June 29, 1988
Today I will teach you to examine the matter of "defilements" (kilesa). There's nothing else to it — just investigate and search for the defilements themselves. Defilements aren't far away; they're right here on the surface, but we don't look at them. Laziness is one defilement — being too lazy to study and learn, too lazy to recite and memorize, too lazy to make effort, lazy about everything. That's what we call total laziness.
Look at your mind. What is it lazy to do? It's lazy about everything. That very thing is the defilement — the thing we must abandon. But we don't really want to abandon it. If it's lazy, we just go along with it, even falling into a stupor and sleeping. That defilement is enormous, colossal.
So it turns out that we didn't ordain to cleanse defilements. At home we didn't cleanse them, in the monastery we don't cleanse them, in the forest we don't cleanse them, wherever we go into solitude we don't cleanse them, in any town or city we don't cleanse them. The defilements follow right along, riding on the owner's neck — that's why we don't see them. They have fun dominating us. So what shall we do now? What did we ordain for? It wasn't to abandon defilements. To ordain just to sleep and eat — aren't you ashamed before the laypeople? They see a monk, a venerable one, and they raise their hands in respect and worship, but we ourselves are drowning in defilements, never abandoning them. Be ashamed of yourself — not just before laypeople, but before your own self. You intended to ordain to abandon defilements, but instead you let defilements dominate your head and neck, never abandoning or uprooting them.
They are right here in this body, not anywhere else. No matter what monastery, what town, what village you go to, defilements cling around your neck. They follow you to every home, every city, every direction, every group, every crowd. It's the same wherever you go. So if you don't see this defilement, then go ahead — go anywhere, ordain anywhere, be anything. Be a monk or a novice, study, recite, memorize — you should memorize and chant. But not knowing defilements, you just memorize and chant, look at texts. You see defilements, but you don't understand, don't truly see them. You just look passively, listen passively. When there's a Dhamma talk, you listen endlessly, never finishing. The talk is always about the same old defilements — there's no time to actually encounter and see them.
You don't want to chant, don't want to memorize. Listening to external things is just listening to defilements. So consider whether we are right or wrong. Remember this: if you don't understand the Pāli, then remember the explanations given in the Navakovāda (basic instruction manual). You've studied it, so remember it. When you hear monks reciting the Pātimokkha, you just want it to be over, to finish — too lazy to listen. You're bored with Dhamma altogether. Your eyes wander, looking at the ceiling, looking around — then how can you have concentration? How can you have Dhamma? The eyes are for receiving defilements, the ears for receiving defilements, the nose, tongue, body — all for receiving defilements. Our entire faculties are set up to receive defilements. We don't know them for what they are. They dominate us. Eyes see forms and get lost in them, lost in sounds, smells, tastes — never turning inward to examine ourselves.
The eyes see various forms for us to consider: good or bad, coarse or refined — but instead, we don't, we just get lost following the moods. So day by day defilements only increase. We ordained only to increase defilements. Ordained, we have no work, no duties — just lying around, eating while delighting in tastes. It's fun. Living in a monastery, in a dwelling, we have great fun. We don't engage in any work — just eating and delighting in tastes, seeing forms and delighting in forms, in sounds, in tactile sensations, in mental objects. There's no work or duties.
Laypeople have work to do — they have to earn a living, so they have no time. But we have no burdensome work, no need to pursue a livelihood — so we just get lost delighting in moods. That's how defilements multiply day by day. They'll never end. Even after ordaining for 9 rains, 10, 20, 30 rains, if you disrobe, defilements will be even greater than before. Not seeing your own defilements, you just get more and more immersed. If you did see them, you would feel shame, feel that as a monk you ordained to cleanse defilements, to engage in the work of religion to purify the mind. Seeing that, you would feel shame, fear of wrongdoing, and you wouldn't be so lost. But here, hearing sounds from outside the monastery, you even send your attention further outward. Eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body — it's all the same. When will defilements ever end? Who knows in what existence, in what life they'll end? Ordaining as a monk for a long time only makes them increase. When will they ever end?
You don't think about your own life. Being born as a human being in this life and having lived this long is already good. So keep scraping, scratching, chipping away at defilements — gradually you'll become a better person. But here, there's no chipping away at all. Instead, you wrap them up tighter every day, increase them every day. Ordaining as a monk increases them even more than before. So what benefit is there in ordination? Ordination is useless. So it is said: you increase your harmful kamma while living in a monastery, in the Buddha's dispensation, and moreover you don't even see the virtue of the dispensation — it gets even heavier. You increase your demerits day by day. The food you eat every day — how much has it cost? It all belongs to others, all given by others as offerings and alms. Think of the monetary value in just one day.
People who are not restrained, who don't guard the six sense doors — they only increase their bad kamma. The robes, the food, alms, lodgings, medicines — these four requisites depend on laypeople. The Buddha compared them to fire, like a lump of red-hot charcoal. Eating that red-hot charcoal is better than eating the laypeople's food. Truly, eating a lump of red-hot charcoal is better, because if you eat a red-hot lump, it burns your mouth, you swallow it, it burns through your intestines, you die, and then it's over — no sin, no bad kamma. But when a person consumes the laypeople's food day after day, defilements increase every single day. What benefit is that? It's even worse than eating a red-hot charcoal. Dying without harming anyone, that's the end of it. But this way, you increase both merit and demerit every day, every moment.
You should reflect on yourself. Having ordained, you should reflect. Don't think only of decline and loss. Think about your own living body and life — especially the life of a monk. Especially this monastery — it's a meditation monastery. Everyone praises its name: "This is a meditation monastery." But having come to live here, what kind of meditation do you do? What meditation object do you have? Think about that! What meditation object do you keep with you constantly? What do you contemplate every day? You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Enough.