Understanding Meditation and Merit : หน้า 13/164

Suzanne Jeffrey never been a groupie to anyone so I am not exactly sure what I am supposed to do with that. After he congratulates Joy on her birthday and speaks with her about her university studies, he looks at each person in the room and takes a breath. With this slight hesitation, Jon immediately interjects a question. "Could we talk about meditation?" Jon asked. "Why should people meditate? And how can we stop our mind from constantly thinking?" "There are two types of teaching," he begins. I am slightly puzzled with this way of answering Jon's question, but I will eventually learn that Luang Por never starts where you think he should start, but starts to answer the question that you really wanted to ask and allows you the opportunity of honest-to-goodness learning. You know the expression, "Those who have the ears to hear will hear?" Well, that's Luang Por for you: He's hoping that everyone who talks to him has the ears to hear. "The first type of teaching is about the things that we are able to prove. The second type is about things that we are unable to prove. Creation, for example, is one thing that people think we cannot prove. Buddha, however, teaches that people need to prove everything for themselves. 'Don't believe me, he says, just try it out for yourself.' Along with this, there are three types of learning: One is listening and/or reading, one is thinking, and one is meditating. It's like this," he says, narrowing his eyes, holding up his arm with a slight wave and adjusting his robe. "Meditation is just quieting the mind so that we can, in essence, become a blank slate in order to learn more quickly." Then I ask him: "Could we talk about merit, or boon? Would you explain what it is and tell me if intention plays any part in it?" He looks at me and smiles. He begins: "Boon or Boonya is not Merit. There is, in reality, no translation for it. Boon is Boon!" He laughs and then instantly gets serious. "Boon is a kind of energy, but it is pure energy. For example, Sunlight is not pure. Electricity is not pure. Steam is not pure. But Boon is pure energy within your mind. Nowhere else."