Understanding Boon, Kilesa, and Mara in Theravada Buddhism : หน้า 20/164
The Meeting with a Dhamma Master : หน้า 20/164 A conversation about Theravada Buddhist concepts, including boon, kilesa, and Mara, alongside a significant Dhamma discourse.
In this excerpt, Suzanne Jeffrey shares her dialogue with a Theravada monk, discussing important Buddhist concepts such as boon, kilesa, and Mara. The monk provides insight into the 'Treasure Store Discourse', emphasizing the importance of accumulating virtuous actions and good deeds as a true treasure that cannot be stolen or lost. The text reflects on the nature of spiritual wealth compared to material possessions, highlighting that moral virtues provide lasting benefits in one's spiritual journey. The wisdom shared by the monk serves as guidance on maintaining a store of boon through relationships and community contributions, assuring followers of an unlosable treasure in their spiritual lives.
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.