“Most of us, when we hear the words, “awakening to the Dhamma,” understand that it’s something so high and far away that we probably won’t awaken in this lifetime. That’s how we understand things. Actually, if something is evil and we don’t clearly see that it’s evil, then we can’t abandon it. That means we haven’t awakened much to the Dhamma. But if we listen, contemplate, and practice until we see it clearly, we’ll see the drawbacks for sure that that thing is evil and we won’t dare ever do it again. We won’t dare store it up as seeds to plant again. We’ll have to throw it away because we’ve seen the harm it does.
Before, we heard that it was evil, and we even said that it was evil, but we still did evil. We still did things that were wrong. That was when we hadn’t yet awakened to the Dhamma.
When someone awakens to the Dhamma, it’s like seeing a cobra, a poisonous snake slithering past. We know that this snake is poisonous, and its poison is dangerous. If it bites anyone, that person will die or suffer horribly. If we see a cobra or a banded krait, we know that its poison is fierce. Anyone it bites will have to die; if he doesn’t die, he’ll be close to death. This means that we know the snake for what it actually is. We don’t dare catch hold of it. No matter who tells us to catch it, we wouldn’t dare. This is called awakening to the Dhamma—awakening to the cobra, to the banded krait. We awaken to its poison.
It’s the same with all forms of evil. If we clearly see the harm they do, it’s not hard. We know for ourselves. All I ask is that you keep on practicing, contemplating, and you’ll know for yourselves. When you awaken to the Dhamma, the mind will be Dhamma. You’ll know the Dhamma.”