Luang Por Liem: The Ways of the Peaceful - Wat Pah Nanachat

Different from Ordinary People
A teaching given at Wat Nong Pah Pong after the
patimokkha on August 26 th , 2003.
Now we have reached the half-way point of the pansah. The
ceremony of entering the rains was 1½ months ago. Another 1½
months and the rains period is over. If we all practice continually
and make a habit of putting forth effort, this will be sufficient to
change our behaviour to some extent. At least the practice with
the conditioned physical form of our bodies is well within our
abilities to change. But it takes time for us, who have just come
here to this lifestyle, to follow the principles of the Buddha with
all the methods of practice for leading this life. It takes time,
especially if one has been closely linked to friends and relatives,
to free oneself from worries. We have become acquainted with
and accustomed to places and people, so it takes time before we
can change. It is only after a long time that we can see that we
don’t need to worry about the situations that our old friends and
relatives are in. It is very difficult to develop this unconcerned
feeling towards people we have been closely linked to. It is not
easy. When we study how the Buddha trained himself in his
practice, we see that it takes a long time to abandon these feelings
of being bound up and tied to ones old life. So for us, it should be
similar: it will take us some time until we can let go of the things
that bind us to people and places that we used to relate to.
So I’d like all of us to develop a mind that doesn’t follow
wrong courses of perception (agati-dhamma). Normally we do
have these mistaken perceptions. Our views are not the true
108