Let this be left as a reminder: do not be complacent. Our lives will not exceed one hundred years, and we must all eventually depart from this world. Therefore, what must be attended to with urgency is this — strive to correct your own character and accumulate as much goodness as possible.
In the matter of self-correction, I myself am well aware of each of my own less wholesome habits, and have been working to correct them one by one in due order. Yet they have not been fully overcome. It is no easy matter at all.
One day, I raised this concern with the Master Nun Khun Yay Ajarn. She smiled gently and offered these most encouraging words: “If in one lifetime you can correct even a single unwholesome habit, that is already a remarkable achievement.”
What the Master Nun meant was this: be aware of which habits are unwholesome and strive to correct all of them — but to eradicate any one of them completely and decisively is no simple thing. Let this be borne in mind.
Therefore, if over the course of an entire lifetime one manages to eradicate even a single unwholesome habit completely and decisively, one should rejoice — for it requires great and sustained effort. Some habits we believe we have fully overcome, yet they still surface in our dreams. This shows that the root has not yet been fully extinguished.
Hence there is a saying of the Great Master: all unwholesome habits and all defilements must be subdued and eradicated down to the very root, leaving not the slightest trace. We may believe the root has been extinguished — yet a remnant still remains.
May 12th, 2014
