(Dhamma Talk 4) Stop Chasing Shadows: Discovering “True Happiness” in a Fast-Paced World (Lessons from the Pāsarāsi Sutta)
Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Samma Sambuddhassa (3 times)
May blessings be upon all of you, laypeople and good folks. Whether you are the energetic new generation or the experienced elders who have seen much of the world, all who have gathered here together or are listening online right now.
Today, I would like to invite us all to sit and rest for a moment, and then let’s reflect on our lives a little, amidst this world that spins so incredibly fast in our current era.
Have you ever felt tired? Tired… even though you haven’t been carrying anything heavy physically, but why does your heart feel so heavy? Have you ever asked yourself: waking up early, rushing to commute, working like a machine until late at night, competing with time, competing with others… what are we doing all of this for?
What exactly are we running after?
Many people might answer: “Well, chasing money, Venerable. Chasing stability, a bigger house, a newer, flashier car, a higher position at work, or chasing perfect love.”
Are these things wrong? Not at all. They are normal parts of the world. But the important question I want to throw into your hearts right now is… Is the thing we are chasing “true happiness” that will stay with us forever, or is it just a beautifully disguised “trap”?
Today, I would like to bring a core teaching from the Tipiṭaka called the “Pasara Sutta,” also known as the “Ariyapariyesana Sutta,” to share with you. This Sutta is like a large mirror that will reflect the image of our own lives most clearly.
The Buddha was a supreme psychologist. He understood human nature profoundly. In this Sutta, He divided our ways of life, or our “searches,” into two main types. Listen and consider which type your life is currently in.
Type 1: He called it “Anariyapariyesana,” which translates to “The Ignoble Search.”
The name sounds harsh, but the meaning is profound and very real. What is the ignoble search? It is when we ourselves… by nature, are subject to birth, aging, sickness, and death, isn’t that right? No one escapes this.
But… we spend our entire lives, dedicating our physical and mental energy, running to chase, to seek things that are also subject to “birth, aging, sickness, and death” just like us.
We run after wealth, money, possessions… Can these things decay? Yes. We run after love, clinging to spouses, children… Must these beloved people age, get sick, and die, leaving us? Yes, they must depart. We run after gain, fame, praise… Do these things last forever? Not at all. Today they are here; tomorrow they might be gone.
The Buddha collectively called these things “Upadhi,” which simply translates to “attachments” or things that bind our hearts to suffering.
Try observing this: The more we have, the more we worry, right? The more we love, the more we fear loss, right? We work exhaustingly hard to get it, then we work exhaustingly hard to keep it, and finally, we suffer exhaustingly hard when it leaves us.
This… is the ignoble search. It is when a person who is already suffering goes out to seek more suffering to add to themselves, mistakenly thinking it is happiness.
Now let’s look at Type 2: He called it “Ariyapariyesana,” which translates to “The Noble Search.”
This type is for the wise person… who realizes the truth: “Oh! I am subject to suffering, aging, sickness, and death.” Knowing this, they don’t waste time running after things that will die along with them. Instead, they turn to seek that which is “unborn, unaging, unailing, and undying.”
What is that thing? It is liberation. It is true, cool peace. In Dhamma language, it is “Nirvana.”
The noble search doesn’t mean you have to throw everything away immediately. It means changing the “ultimate goal” in your heart from relying on fleeting external happiness to building stable internal happiness.
This is not easy. Even the Buddha himself, when he was still Prince Siddhartha, was once just like us. In this Sutta, He recounts His “personal diary” for us to hear.
Before His enlightenment, He admitted that He too used to fall into “the ignoble search.” Imagine, Prince Siddhartha had everything: three seasonal palaces, immense wealth, a beautiful wife, a lovely son, royal power… In our modern terms, his life was “complete,” perfectly perfect. Everyone would want it.
But why… amidst that perfection, did He not have true happiness?
The turning point was a thought that flashed in His mind: “Why do I, who am subject to aging, sickness, and death, still seek things that are subject to aging, sickness, and death like this? What am I doing?”
This thought shook His very soul, leading Him to make the greatest decision: to renounce everything that the world dreams of. He recounted that He shaved His hair and beard, donned the yellow robes, and went forth into homelessness, even while His parents wept with tear-stained faces.
This was not running away from problems, but “daring to face” the biggest problem of life: the suffering of the cycle of rebirth.
He went to study with the greatest teachers of that time, Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta. He finished their curriculums, attaining the highest states of meditative absorption they could teach. But He still found that “This is not yet the true path to the cessation of suffering.” It was just being reborn in higher, more refined realms, but eventually, when that merit ran out, one would have to return to the cycle of rebirth, looping again.
Finally, He had to turn to search on His own until He attained enlightenment as the Supreme Buddha, discovering the truly “noble search.”
After becoming enlightened… He assessed us worldly people too. He compared us humans to “four types of lotus flowers.”
Some people are like lotuses still submerged deep underwater, still blinded, still infatuated and intoxicated by the world’s bait. Hard to teach. Some people are like lotuses level with the water. Teach them a bit, and they might get it. But some people… are like lotuses that have risen above the water, waiting only for the sun’s rays to hit them, and they will bloom immediately. These are people with wisdom, with little dust in their eyes, ready to understand the truth.
I believe that all of you laypeople who intended to come listen to the Dhamma today, or who are watching this clip right now, all have the “potential” of a lotus rising above the water. You are people who have started asking questions about life and are looking for answers deeper than just eating, sleeping, and procreating.
So, how do we live in this chaotic world in a way that is a “noble search”?
At the end of the Sutta, the Buddha gave a superb analogy. He compared it to the story of “the deer and the hunter.”
This world is full of delicious “bait”… beautiful sights, sweet sounds, fragrant smells, tasty flavors, soft touches… these things are the bait. The cruel hunter is “Mara,” or suffering and death, waiting to catch us.
The foolish deer… when it sees the bait, it leaps at it with hunger and thirst, infatuated, intoxicated, eating without mindfulness. Finally, it gets caught in the hunter’s trap and is taken to be killed… This is the life of someone lost in worldly pleasures until they forget death, forget to prepare themselves.
But the wise deer… it knows it must eat to survive. It goes in to eat that bait, but it eats mindfully. Not infatuated, not intoxicated. It eats and knows when to retreat, knows how to be wary of danger. And most importantly… it knows a “hiding place” that is safe, where the hunter cannot reach.
What is that hiding place?
The Buddha said the safest hiding place from Mara is “Mindfulness (Sati) and Wisdom (Panna) born of concentration (Samadhi).”
Training the mind to have mindfulness, to have stable concentration until wisdom arises, seeing the truth that everything in this world arises, persists, and ceases. Nothing is worth clinging to as “mine”… When the mind sees clearly like this, the mind will “let go.”
When the mind lets go… the mind won’t get caught in the trap. When it’s not caught in the trap… Mara can’t find it because there’s nothing left to use as bait.
Laypeople, all of you good folks…
Listening up to this point, I am not telling you to abandon your houses, cars, and families and run off to ordain in the forest tomorrow… Not at all.
We still have to make a living, still have to be responsible for our jobs, our families still need caring for… But the key point is the “attitude of the mind” towards those things.
Try asking your own heart deeply. On the days you are running around frantically working for money… what kind of “search” is your heart engaged in?
If you work for money thinking only, “I must be the richest, I must have power over others. If I don’t have this, I can’t live, my life will collapse”… If you think like this, you are falling into “the ignoble search.” You are building your own prison. You are tying a time bomb to your heart. When those things change, your heart will be blown to bits.
But if you change your perspective… Work for money the same as before, care for your family the same as before, but the heart inside knows the truth: “I do this job to make a living, to create benefit, but someday I will have to retire, or it might change at any time.” “I love this family very much. I will take care of them the best I can while we still have time. But I know that someday, either they or I must depart.”
When the heart has this kind of knowing insight… You will work with responsibility, but you won’t carry pressure beyond measure. You will love your family with all your heart, but not with a love that is scorching attachment.
This is the beginning of “the noble search” amidst the lay life.
And most importantly, you must create a “hiding place” for your own heart too. Don’t let your mind run wild following the worldly current all day and all night. Come back home, before bed, or in the morning… carve out a little time, maybe 10 minutes, 20 minutes, to practice mindfulness, to sit in meditation, to be with your own breath.
Build a “private island” within your heart. A place where the external chaos cannot reach, where gossip and slander cannot harm, where economic ups and downs cannot shake you.
When you have this stable anchor for your heart… you will be like the wise deer that can eat the world’s bait… can live the worldly life… can have happiness with what you have… but “not get caught in the trap.”
No matter how fast the outside world changes, no matter how hard the storms blow, if your heart inside has a “shelter” built well with mindfulness and wisdom… you will find true happiness. It is a cool, stable happiness, and you won’t have to run chasing shadows anymore.
May all of us be those who awaken from slumber, stop seeking in things that are suffering, and turn to start the journey of seeking that which is noble, which is liberation from suffering in the heart, starting from today, this very second, onwards.
At the end of this Dhamma talk… I invoke the power of the Triple Gem and all sacred things in the universe to protect and guard all of you laypeople. May you be people of mindfulness and wisdom, knowing the world, knowing your own hearts. May you experience only happiness and prosperity, both in the worldly sense and in the Dhamma sense. May you find true happiness that does not need to rely on external things, every one of you.
Blessings.
