Ajahn Mun: How to improve and decline

B&B (MTV); Ajahn Mun via Ven. Sujato, Ellie Askew, Dhr. Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

O, Wise One! What should be done and what left undone to rise above the world?

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Let's join the Army, Beavis. - Huh, huh huh.

The traits that people have carried over from the past [countless past lives] differ in being skillful, unskillful, or neutral.

Their potential follows along with their traits -- that is, higher than what they currently are, lower, or at the same level.

Some people have developed a high potential to be skillful (karmically profitable, wholesome, beneficial), but if they associate with fools, their potential will turn into that of a fool.

Some people are weak in terms of their potential, but if they associate with sages (noble friends), their potential develops and they become sages, too.

Some people associate with friends who are neither particularly skillful nor unskillful, who lead them neither up nor down, and so their potential stays at a mediocre level.

For this reason, we are wise to associate with sages and wise people so as to raise the level of our own potential, progressively taking it higher and higher, step by step.