Dhamma for all.
The Best
By Buddhadasa Bhikkhu
When you arrive at this stage, you ought to be familiar with what we call "the good" or "the best". You all have idea about "the best" and think that you deserve to get and have "the best". Your hunger only goes as far as "the best..!!" Whatever you identify as "the best" - whether a day on the beach or five minutes of rest from the turmoil in your head - is where your hunger grasps. Even while basking in God's radiance, the hunger for the best doesn't stop. We desire one kind of 'the best', but as soon as we get it our hunger reaches after a better 'the best'. This has no end as long as there's self that wants 'the best'. "The best" has no end point; we can't take it as our final goal. We continuously talk about "the best" or about the summum bonum, but our meanings are so very different: the best of children, of teenagers, of adults, of old folks; the best of the world and of religion. Yet each of these visions of "The best" make us "the hungriest" - hungry in refined, profound, subtle ways. We can never stop and rest in any "the best", for they are all lokiya-sukha.
"The best" cannot stand alone. It doesn't go anywhere without its mate "the worst". Through our grasping at "the best" we're burdened also with "the worst". Thus, our fixation on "the best" is merely self-perpetuating hunger. There's only one way out. If we keep searching for sukha in the world, we'll never find it. We must turn in the other direction, toward lokuttara-sukha. Hunger, must end, even hunger for 'the best'. Evil is one kind of busy trouble. Good is just another kind of trouble. To be free of all dukkha, the mind must be beyond good and evil, above best and worst-that is , it must dwell in voidness. This is the opposite of worldly happiness. It's the lokuttara-sukha of freedom from the self that hungers. There's no other way out of dukkha than from evil to good and then from good to voidness. In voidness hunger stops and there is true happiness.
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