Chapter 8 - Ignorance And Intelligence

If a certain man or woman does not ask questions as to what is good or evil, or how he or she ought to practise, and is ignorant and has done evil in deeds, speech and thought, such a person will be born in Hell (Niraya). if born again in the human abode, such a person will become an ignorant person. But if one asks questions as to what is good or evil, what deed is faulty or faultless, what ought to be practised or otherwise, what deed will bring disadvantage and suffering or advantage and happiness, one will be born in a happy celestial (Deva) plane: if one comes to be born as a human being one will be wise and intelligent.

Regarding the above mentioned differences, the Buddha has clarified as follows: "Owners of their deed, young man, are the beings, heirs of their deeds, their deeds are the causes that bear them, their deeds are their relatives, their deeds are their refuge. Their deeds differentiate the being into low and high states. Here one would like to know who create Kamma to prolong Samsara and why it is going on like this. A being is bound to go round in Samsara through the consequences of his or her moral or immoral deeds. And these moral or immoral deeds are motivated by ignorance (Avijja) and craving (Tanha) . As long as these two defilements are latent in one's mind, Kamma is being generated in the process of Samsara and thus one can never attain Nibbana. In order to dispel the two latent defiled tendencies of ignorance and craving, one must concentrate to combat or eliminate the craving and meditate to dispel the ignorance. Here we can fulfil the two tasks of concentration and meditation simultaneously by just being aware and noting the touch at the tip of the nostrils, of the in-breathing and out-breathing. This concentration and meditation technique will be explained later. When one comes to realize that one is composed of physical and mental phenomena from the notion of touch and awareness it is said that one has reached the Purity of View (Ditthi Visuddhi) or the insight knowledge of realization between Mind and Matter.

By continuing meditation on the arising and passing away of psycho-physical phenomena and knowing them as they really are, the defilements of greed, hatred or anger, and delusion have no chance of penetration into the mind and thus one can gain Ariyan Path, Fruition and Nibbana, in the present life.