Question: Sayadaw, how do you manage to move from the side of thinking from the side of someone to thinking from the side of no one. From believing to be someone existing to believing there is nobody who exist?

As a lay person, I grew up with the limited understanding of a human being. As a human my understanding has limits, my intelligence and abilities are limited, not free; I cannot go beyond the limit or discipline that is why I was not satisfied; I couldn’t understand beyond the limits of a human being, I could not do beyond the limits of other living beings, other human beings. If I tried to go beyond the limits I wouldn’t be allowed, this is why I wasn’t satisfied. I can think about helping the others but I could not help the others as much as I wanted. I could think about doing good deeds beyond limits but I couldn’t do as I wished in the society because I had not enough ability and intelligence to break the rules of human beings. Therefore I had to rely on Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha. When I went to the meditation center, I had chance to rely on Dhamma; when I rely on Dhamma I can use the power of Dhamma. Because of doing good deeds or Dhamma I could detach from the others, no need to copy the others; just need to continue doing good deeds. To be doing-only. If you are doing like this your mind and your life will change for sure. Many people are staying here and they have the chance to do good deeds freely. We emphasize on the most needy people in the society. Most of the people are old and sick, monks and nuns because they are the most in need in the society. This is why we emphasize on them. Because of working for the others we can detach from ourselves. The more we can detach from ourselves the more we can do for the others. The more we can detach from our daily activity the more we can do good deeds.

Question: my ego was telling me I should be famous….what should I do?

We need to understand that we cannot rely on ourselves; we need to rely on doing good deeds to fulfill our needs. If we are relying on someone or something that is not complete. We can work hard in our job tring to be famous in our carrier, this is not sure; if you don’t have enough power of merits or good deeds you can never get successful. Doing good deeds like this is the most important to fulfill our needs. You can become what you want if you are doing good deeds like that. Many people are satisfied at Thabarwa center because doing good deeds is easy to do here at Thabarwa center because we don’t emphasize on the time, the place, the person to do good deeds; we just emphasize on continue doing good deeds more and more. This is the right understanding so gradually you become able to do good deeds more and more in this place.

Sayalay Khema Cari transcribes