Endurance Against Defilements and the Roads to Ruin : หน้า 17/207

squeezes us, controls us and wears us down to perform all kinds of bad deeds shamelessly. Then when we perform the bad deed, defilements let us suffer, receive punishments, experience all kinds of distress, which causes us to feel regret and later criticize our actions. Some people who are unable to withstand the control defilements have on them become people who have a habit of doing bad deeds. In the end, those people will no longer have any goodness within them and may develop addictions along the Roads to Ruin, which are harder to correct. The Roads to Ruin or Apâyamukha are external stimuli that always incite the defilements to advance in our minds until they turns into entrenched bad habits that are very difficult to reverse. The most dangerous Road to Ruin is associating with fools, because fools spread infections of ‘badness’, without exception, to those around them. The defilements in the mind will control them until they become slaves at performing bad deeds without thinking about the suffering of others. Associating with fools is similar to adding the dangerous infections of the mind to ourselves. Good habits from the past are repeatedly destroyed by defilements, and they will transform into bad habits instead. Because defilements affect good habits, a family’s stability and safety depends on our ability to endure defilements by rigorously training ourselves in two areas: 3.4.1. Endurance in controlling bad habits within ourselves to prevent them from influencing others. If they are unable to endure this, then a husband and wife who choose to stay together will develop more bad kamma with each other. That could lead them to commit aggressive acts against each other, break apart their unity, take sides, and exploit one another. 3.4.2. Endurance to resist the temptations of the six Roads to Ruin, which are: Drinking alcohol, enjoying the nightlife, going out to places of entertainment, gambling, associating with fools, and laziness towards work. If one is unable to have the endurance to resist the six Roads to Ruin, the family’s financial situation will fall apart, as it is unable to maintain a stable foundation. If everyone in the family can train themselves to have endurance in these two areas, then our individual habits will improve. The family’s financial situation will stabilize. Only good people will be in our company and fools will stay away. The Roads to Ruin will be distant from the family. Therefore, in order to have a stable foundation for the family, family members must have endurance or khanti as their third habit.