“Yes, I Am, But I’m Not"

Power, possessions, status, praise, happiness and suffering - these are the worldly dhammas.

These worldly dhammas engulf worldly beings. Worldly beings are led around by the worldly dhammas: gain and loss, acclaim and slander, status and loss of status, happiness and suffering. These dhammas are trouble makers; if you don’t reflect on their true nature, you will suffer. People even commit murder for the sake of wealth, status or power.

Why? Because they take this too seriously. They get appointed to some position and it goes to their heads, like the man who became headman of the village. After his appointment he became ‘power-drunk’. “If any of his old friends came to see him, he’d say, ‘Don’t come around so often. Things aren’t the same anymore.’”

The Buddha taught us to understand the nature of possessions, status, praise and happiness. Take these things as they come, but let them be. Don’t let them go to your head. If you don’t really understand these things, you become fooled by your power, your children and relatives, by everything! If you understand them clearly, you know they’re all impermanent conditions. If you cling to them, they become defiled.

All of these things arise afterwards. When people are first born, there are simply nāma and rūpa; that’s all. We add on the business of ‘Mr. Jones’, ‘Miss Smith’ or whatever later on. This is done according to convention. Still later there are the appendages of ‘Colonel’, ‘General’ and so on. If we don’t really understand these things, we think they are real and carry them around with us. We carry possessions, status, name and rank around.

If you have power, you can call all the tunes … ‘Take this one and execute him. Take that one and throw him in jail.’ Rank gives power. Clinging takes hold here at this word, ‘rank’. As soon as people have rank, they start giving orders; right or wrong, they just act on their moods. So they go on making the same old mistakes, deviating further and further from the true path.

One who understands the Dhamma won’t behave like this. Good and evil have been in the world since who knows when. If possessions and status come your way, then let them simply be possessions and status - don’t let them become your identity. Just use them to fulfil your obligations and leave it at that. You remain unchanged. If we have meditated on these things, no matter what comes our way, we will not be mislead by it. We will be untroubled, unaffected and constant. Everything is pretty much the same, after all.

This is how the Buddha wanted us to understand things. No matter what you receive, the mind does not add anything to it. They appoint you a city councillor, ‘Okay, so I’m a city councillor, but I’m not.’ They appoint you head of the group, ‘Sure I am, but I’m not.’ Whatever they make of you, ‘Yes I am, but I’m not!’

In the end what are we anyway? We all just die in the end. No matter what they make you, in the end it’s all the same. What can you say? If you can see things in this way, you will have a solid abiding and true contentment. Nothing is changed.

This reflection by Ajahn Chah is from the book, The Collected Teachings of Ajahn Chah - Single Volume, (pdf) pp. 188-190.