Compiled by
Dr. Dayananda Bodhinayake
Dr. (Mrs) Chandrani Bodhinayake
Practice exercise by Thimytrang LE
For example, if a child has never drunk tea or coffee before, what would their reaction be the first time you give it to them? Whether it’s tea or coffee, they won’t accept it the first time and have no concept of good or bad. However, through continuous influence from their parents, teachers, neighbors, friends, and the surrounding social environment, and numerous attempts to give it to them, telling them that coffee tastes good, how it’s good for the body, or how coffee is bad, or how tea is good for the body, etc., the child gradually forms their own concept of tea or coffee based on the ideas they are exposed to, defining it as good or bad, and thus choosing whether they like to drink it or not. But tea and coffee themselves are neither good nor bad; they simply have their own flavors.
Mentor’s instruction by Bennie Spirit.
Why do we have such ingrained views? Why? Because adults do it this way, neighbors do it this way, schools do it this way. Are these views correct or incorrect? Actually, we have already laid the groundwork, but we haven’t explained it thoroughly. For example, sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy flavors. When a child is born, if you put these flavors on their tongue, they don’t think any of them are good; they think all of them are bad. They don’t crave them and find it hard to accept these strange tastes. But through influence, they develop definitions of which flavors are good and which are bad. Eventually, they might dislike certain flavors, but through repeated exposure, they might gradually come to like them. For instance, some families eat spicy food and say it’s delicious. A child might find it unbearable at first, but over time, they get used to it. This is similar to the caffeine example. If they don’t have it, they feel like something is missing. Just like you, if you don’t eat a big plate of food, it feels like you haven’t eaten at all.
So, these concepts are established later on, and the concepts themselves are incorrect. The correct view is that sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy flavors are neither good nor bad; they just have their unique tastes. Once a person gets used to them, they feel they can’t do without them. If you don’t develop the habit, it doesn’t matter; there won’t be any suffering. Therefore, if you want to truly be free from suffering and truly awaken, this is fundamental. Whether it’s Mahayana or Theravada Buddhism, you need to awaken to it. You explore the root of suffering, and eventually, you explore the views. When you transform your views into correct views, you can overcome all suffering. Without correct views, you can’t overcome all suffering. With correct views, you will have right thinking, right speech, right action, and the Noble Eightfold Path will be complete.
So, with the right view, you only know suffering. Where does suffering come from? In reality, if you don’t depend on it, there is no suffering. Without dependence, there is no suffering. First, you believe it truly exists; second, you believe you must depend on it. This way, you can never break free from this situation. From the fundamental definition, it’s wrong. There is no good or bad. For example, sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, and salty have no good or bad; they are completely defined by people. Even these tastes don’t truly exist. If you investigate to the end, they are just frequencies. Various colors are also just different frequencies. So, what do you like about red, yellow, or blue? They don’t really exist. The same goes for tastes. Sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, and salty are perceived by your tongue, but they are not inherently like that.
If you haven’t studied chemistry, you wouldn’t know. Chemical substances react with each other, and different substances have different reactions. For example, air is the most common. Various metals react differently when exposed to air; some can even catch fire. Have you heard of that? So, all these substances are perceived by your six senses, which are polluted. They are formed by pollution and are inherently wrong. Using this wrong perception to build new wrong perceptions, your six senses’ perception of the six dusts is also wrong. Therefore, the colors you see may not be colors, and the tastes you perceive may not be those tastes. But within the scope of your karma, you perceive them as such.
Once you don’t have this platform, your mouth, for example, if your tongue is completely dry, you won’t be able to taste the sourness of the olive, nor its aftertaste or sweetness. How does the sweetness come back? It’s because your saliva reacts with its substances, creating a chemical reaction. So, the aftertaste is deceptive, and the sourness is also deceptive because this platform only manages this. Therefore, the whole world is completely mistaken, with a bunch of people thinking they know this or that. So, when you explore to the end, you’ll find that it’s all wrong.