Enjoyment runs out

Mr Hải sat drinking tea with his meditation friends, and the conversation drifted back and forth until it came to answering questions. Mrs Xuyến asked:

• Hải, we are all alike in that our progress in settling the mind is unstable: sometimes we have it and sometimes we lose it, sometimes we advance and sometimes we fall back. Why is that?
  Mr Hải replied:
• Our level of settledness depends on our good, meritorious conduct each day. If in the past few days we have done something good and meritorious, then when we sit to practise settling the mind we feel the mind at ease, with few wandering thoughts, and the body refreshed. But if for the past several days we have done nothing meritorious, the mind finds it hard to settle.
  Another person asked:
• Being able to settle the mind is a great happiness, but it depends on doing good deeds. So do we do good only to enjoy the happy feeling of a settled mind?
  Mr Hải replied:
• If we do good but don't practise settling the mind, we will still enjoy happiness in other areas. Perhaps we'll have wealth, health, power, fame... But whatever we enjoy will eventually run out. Wealth passes, fame fades, authority ends, health declines. Even a settled mind will be lost if we only sit and enjoy it without being willing to throw ourselves into doing good.
  Mrs Xuyến asked:
• If that's so, how can we have something indestructible, a lasting happiness?
  Mr Hải replied:
• To attain indestructible happiness we must not enjoy happiness, and at the same time must do good, meritorious deeds without limit.
• A human life is limited; how can we do good without limit?
• If we had only this one life, then indeed we could do limited good for a few years and then it would be over. But it seems this life is not the only one. We may have to be reborn many more times.
• When we are reborn, we are made to drink some kind of forgetfulness porridge, so we no longer remember the ethics and settled mind and so on to continue doing good deeds. What then, Hải?
• We may forget our previous life, but if in this life we sincerely vow to heaven and earth to quickly find again the principles of good deeds and settling the mind in order to practise, heaven and earth will bring us to meet those principles early. Heaven and earth are fair. What matters is that when we receive merit we do not enjoy it, but know how to keep accumulating merit and cultivating our morality ceaselessly, without limit.
• What is the end of limitless morality, Hải?
• The end of limitless morality is Non-self: no more "I", and so utmost humility and love poured out everywhere. If we have all three of these without limit, we will be saints: settled mind, morality, and meritorious good deeds. If we have only meritorious deeds, we will enjoy the merit and then run out of it. If we have only a settled mind, when the merit runs out we will lose our inner stillness and return to turmoil. If we only think about morality without turning it into meritorious action, and do not practise settling the mind, then that morality will be shallow and ordinary. We need all three, accumulated without limit: a settled mind, meritorious deeds and morality; then we shall become saints. With only a settled mind, however deep, one is not yet a saint, and one will fall back once the merit is used up.

Everyone was silent, reflecting deeply. 🍁

We are often mistaken in thinking that whoever has a concentrated mind and miraculous powers is a saint. They are not. Concentration and miraculous powers are all relative, all gained through merit from the past. When the merit is gone, everything goes back to how it was. Sometimes one falls back even worse than before, because in the time of success this person was excessively arrogant. (He's back, and worse than before.)

Many mystics in sects from the West to the East also have the power of concentration and extraordinary abilities, but are not saints. The reason is that they have not yet attained morality to the level of complete Non-self.

When we hear the phrase "morality reaching complete Non-self", let us not think it is only morality. Without limitless meritorious conduct, limitless morality is not shown. Without limitless settledness of mind, limitless morality is not assured. That is why a saint must forever deliver beings of every kind. The saints are not bound by limits of time, space or realm, nor by the limits of this short life. They do limitless good deeds, cultivate limitless morality and have limitless stillness of mind.