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

suffering, one changes from being an ordinary person in an
unusual way. In the ordination ceremony, when a young man
enters the new gender of being a celibate, he is required to be a
‘complete male human being’ (puriso). But this only refers to the
common features and conditions of an ordinary male human
being. Strangely enough, real completion actually goes against
one’s biological nature. One isn’t misguided any more by one’s
own biological conditioning.
The same is true for the mind with its various moods. If one is
able to change and leave behind the emotions of an ordinary
person, that’s something extraordinary. One can’t say one feels
good, because one doesn’t see anything ‘good’ there. And instead
of feeling bad, one sees that there isn’t anything ‘bad’ there either.
One merely sees these feelings as modes of being, states that are
neither good nor bad. One’s mind doesn’t behave in terms of
approval or disapproval. This is an effect of experiencing
seclusion – seclusion from the world.
This is also something unusual: if one trains in being
continuously observant, then even while one is asleep, one is able
to remain watching. Those experiences that concern the body,
relate to the body. Whatever ‘the one who knows’ experiences,
relates to the ‘one who knows’. One eventually needs to separate
it out: what concerns the body is just a matter of the body, and
what concerns the mind is just a matter of the mind. Following the
Buddha’s guidelines indeed leads one in very unusual directions.
This is the nature of this training. It leads all the way to becoming
awake, to the arising of maturity and to fulfilment and
completion. Therefore we try to take every opportunity, to study
and to observe. We study right at our six senses. The Buddha
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