Come and See

Those of us born in these latter days haven’t had the opportunity to see the Lord Buddha. We’ve met only with the Dhamma, the teachings he taught. What he taught wasn’t anywhere else far away. In the list of the virtues of the Dhamma, it says that the Dhamma is ehipassiko: It’s for calling all living beings to come and see. It’s not for calling them to go and see. He wants us to come and see the Dhamma. And so where do we come to see the Dhamma? Right here at our rūpa-dhamma, or physical phenomena, and our nāma-dhamma, or mental phenomena.

“Physical phenomena” means our body. We should come and take a good look at it. Why? We want to look into this body that we hold onto as our self–a “being,” an “individual,” a “man,” or a “woman”–so as to contemplate it. We depend on it. We claim it as our self. So he wants us to look at it. Why? So that we’re not deluded by it. He wants us to know this physical phenomenon so that we can abandon our pride, abandon our passion, aversion, and delusion, ignorance, craving, clinging, becomings, and births. If we don’t come and look at it, we’ll hold onto it as our self. But exactly where is it, our self? Come and look.

This reflection by Phra Ajahn Funn Ācāro is from the book, Come and See, p.18.