Understanding Boon, Kilesa, and Mara in Theravada Buddhism : หน้า 20/164

Suzanne Jeffrey We start to talk about general stuff like the weather and his health and how Jon and I are enjoying the Wat experience. I decide to start the questions, believe it or not, and so I hand him my notes that I have written from the last meeting (yeah ... I know ... I’m a little obsessive that way). Ok. So I don’t just HAND him my notes, I set the paper on his desk, and he picks it up. After all, Theravada monks cannot take anything directly from the hands of a woman. At any rate, I have tried to figure out a definition of boon, kilesa, and Mara – at least I have TRIED to figure out a definition for them. He laughs and holds out his arm. “Just a minute,” he says, as he gets up, adjusts his robes, and hurries out of the room. Many minutes roll by, while I sit there thinking, “Yikes. What have I done? I hope I haven’t offended this person, because that would definitely be some baap I WOULD have to live with the next time around… assuming that I HAVE a next time around.” When he returns, he tells us that he has asked a monk to copy something for us from the Dhamma, which follows. Number VIII, The Treasure Store Discourse: A man a treasure store lays by, Deep in a water-level pit: He thinks ‘If need arise for aid, It will be there to aid me then For my discharge, from kings were I denounced, or from a brigand else If held to ransom, or of debts, in famines, or in accidents’; With suchlike aims, what in the world is called a store will be laid by. Though be it ne’er so well laid by deep in a water-level pit, Not all of it will yet suffice to serve him all the time; and then The store gets shifted from its place, or he perhaps forgets the marks, Or Naga-Serpents hale it off, or spirits fritter it away, Or else the heirs he cannot bear abstract it while he does not see; And when his boon is consumed, the whole will vanish utterly. But when a woman or a man shall have with gifts or virtuousness Or with refraining or constraint a store of boon well laid by In shrines or the community, or in a person or in guests Or in a mother or a father, even in an elder brother, This treasure store is well laid by, a follower unlosable: Among what by abandoning have to be gone [to] he goes with this. No others have a share in it, and robbers cannot steal this store; So let the steadfast boon make, the store that is their follower.