Listen to the Buddha’s Radio Station
March 17, 2021

There was once a senior monk from Bangkok who came to see Ajaan Mun. This monk’s teacher had been a great admirer of Ajaan Mun, but this monk, in himself, didn’t have much use for forest monks. He didn’t see what people sitting out in the forest with their eyes closed would know, whereas he had been studying all these books for years and years and years in Bangkok, with lots of well-known scholars, well-known preachers, and still there was a lot that he didn’t understand about the Dhamma.

And so he asked Ajaan Mun, “When I’m in Bangkok, there are a lot of problems I have, I don’t know whom to go to even though there are lots of people I can ask. But you’re sitting out here in the forest all alone: Where do you hear the Dhamma?” Ajaan Mun’s answer was: “I hear the Dhamma 24 hours a day, except when I’m asleep.”

The monk was chastised a little bit. He said, “That shows that you really do not know how to listen.”

Because the Dhamma is broadcasting all the time. It’s like a radio station that’s always broadcasting 24 hrs. a day, 7 days a week. The truth is out there; the truth is in here, showing itself very clearly.

But we’re tuned in to other stations: stations that dress things up in different ways to hide the way things are; stations that tell us, “If you want to find true happiness, buy our things.” Or: “You want to find true happiness, have a relationship.” And even though they have to use reality in order to get the message to you, they distort it.

So it’s up to you to decide which station you’re going to listen to. Because the Dhamma is always there. The body is always proclaiming its nature: It’s inconstant, stressful, not-self. That’s a side you can look at that helps you develop some dispassion, because that’s what the Buddha said – the highest of all dhammas is dispassion, because it allows the mind to be freed.

Things do have their constant side and they do have their pleasant and attractive side. And have an aspect that’s under control. But if you focus on those in the wrong way, you’re going to stay a slave to whatever they’re trying to sell you, or whatever you’re trying to sell yourself. So, learn how to look at things that are constant and under your control in a way that you can turn them into a path—because that control is going to be temporary, so you want to make use of it while you can.

But always keeping that other station in mind, the one that says that you want to go for dispassion, you want to outgrow your attachment to things. It’s basically a message to grow up. If you listen to that station all the time, then your mind is in line with the truth. When you’re in line with the truth, what is there to fear? It’s when we go against the truth that there’s always the fear that the truth will sometimes show itself. Then what are we going to do? We’re not prepared.

But if you’re with the truth all the time, then there’s nothing to fear. So, listen to the Buddha’s station, listen to the station of Dhamma. It’s there to help you. See things in such a way that you can make yourself free.