Open and Honest, Knowing for Ourselves

Upāsikā Kee Nanayon

Open and Honest, Knowing for Ourselves

If you’re the sort of person who’s open and honest, you’ll find your window for disbanding suffering and defilement right where you’re honest with yourself, right where you come to your senses.

You don’t have to go explaining high level Dhamma to anyone. All you need is the ordinary level of being honest with yourself about the sufferings and drawbacks of your actions, so that you can put a stop to them, so that you develop a sense of wariness, a sense of shame.

That’s much better than talking about high-level Dhamma but then being heedless, complacent, and shameless.

…We have to figure out how to use our own mindfulness and discernment to look inwardly at all times, for no one else can know these things or see these things for us. We have to know for ourselves.

These reflections by Upāsikā Kee Nanayon are from the Thai Forest Ajaans section book, An Unentangled Knowing–The Teachings of a Thai Buddhist Lay Woman, “Pure & Simple” chapter, translated from the Thai by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu.

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