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

arises, exists and ceases. This weakens our desires, our grasping
onto and giving importance to the self.
When the assumption of a self has weakened, our mental
reactions that come from having to interact with other people in
the world will also be weakened – regardless of the kind of
situation that we are in. If it is one where we are accepted and
receive praise, we won’t feel happy about it, and if it is a situation
where we are blamed, we won’t feel hurt. Not having feelings of
either liking or disliking will allow us to understand ourselves
better. Liking and disliking are what is called “Worldly
Dhammas” 6 , the qualities that rule over those people who still
have dust in their eyes – the average unenlightened beings that are
still immature. Worldly people will see these mind states as
something worth wishing for, but, as we are practitioners who
aspire to lessen the desires staining our minds, we reflect on
seeing such states of mind as merely an experience of feelings that
arise, stay for a while and then cease – both pleasant and
unpleasant feelings (sukhavedana and dukkhavedana). The
Buddha called happiness somanassa, which is considered a mode
of sukhavedana, and sadness domanassa, which is a mode of
dukkhavedana. Dukkha and sukha are expressions of reality that
cause emotions to arise. The Buddha taught us to focus our minds
on them and know any feeling as being simply a feeling. The
emotions of liking or disliking we know as simply feelings. There
is nothing that could be firmly established and enduring, lasting or
6 in Pali: lokadhamma, the eight Worldly Dhammas are:
praise and blame, fame and disrepute, gain and loss, happiness and suffering.
Often these are simply expressed as two aspects: wished-for and unwished-for
phenomena (ittharamana and anittharamana).
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