Inner Strength - Access to Insight

As for the friend who went to the temple: While he was placing food in themonks’ bowls, taking the precepts, and listening to the sermon, all he could thinkwas evil thoughts: “Will my friend catch any fish for us to eat this evening, Iwonder.” As he thought about this, he developed a strong desire to eat fishcurry, made from the fish his friend was out killing in the stream. That’s all hecould think about as he was putting food in the monks’ bowls and listening tothe sermon. He wasn’t thinking about the killing. He simply thought, “If myfriend catches some fish, I’ll get to eat.” As for the friend who was out catchingfish, all he could think about was, “I wonder if my friend has put food in themonks’ bowls yet…. By now, he’s probably taken the precepts…. By now he’sprobably listening to the sermon and getting lots and lots of merit.” That’s all hecould think about. Now, through the strong meritorious power of his thinking,not a single fish got caught in his net. Every time he heard the gong being struckat the temple, he’d put down his net, raise his hands, and say, “S›dhu!”—all dayuntil darkness fell. Because his thoughts were so lost in doing good, his efforts todo evil didn’t succeed.As for the friend who went to make merit in the temple, his thoughts werelost in eating fish with his friend, so he ended up getting hardly any merit at all.The returns on his merit weren’t worth all the time and effort that had gone intofixing food for the monks, taking the precepts, and listening to the sermon withhis hands folded in respect. In other words, his state of mind canceled out hisgoodness, so he ended up no match for his friend who was out doing evilwithout really wanting to. Thus his state of mind turned into a demon andharmed him in two ways: The first was that he wanted to eat fish but didn’t get asingle bite. The second was that even though he did gain some merit from thedonations he had made to the monks, it was only a little bit. He simply wentthrough the motions of putting food in the monks’ bowls, taking the precepts,listening to the sermon, but his mind was focused on eating murrel-fish currywith his friend. So he didn’t get any of the good results that he should have fromhis actions.This is why it’s said that evil thoughts cancel out our goodness. Even if we’redoing good, thoughts of this sort cut off our goodness, like a palm tree or acoconut tree with its crown cut off. Or a banana tree that has borne fruit: it won’tbe able to grow any further, to bear flowers or produce any more fruit. Peoplewho think in ways that are evil, even if they do good, don’t meet with anyprogress in life. They meet with nothing but failure. This is called demeritoriousfabrication, another kind of demon that prevents us from succeeding at givingrise to goodness.The third kind of mental fabrication is thinking that’s neutral, that isn’t yetgood or evil. This kind of thinking can also be a demon of defilement. Say, forinstance, that we plan to work on our farm. “We don’t have time to go to themonastery,” we tell ourselves. “We don’t yet have enough to eat.” Or if we planto go selling things. “If we go to the monastery, we won’t have time to get agood return.” Or we spend our time thinking about some important business wehave to do, that we’ll have to do this and say that. Or we think about going outto cruise around and relax a bit. When we think in this way, it takes up the time71