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144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
It is said, "This world of beings, ruled by aging and impermanence, is not long-lasting." "Beings" means us. We are called human beings. There are beings different from us, such as animal beings, cattle and fowl, for example. But for all of them, aging is a fact of their existence, the decay of the various constituents of their physical bodies. These things are always changing. They don't have freedom to remain, but must follow the way of sankhara, conditioned phenomena. The world of beings is thus, and we find ourselves always dissatisfied. Our emotions of love and hate never bring us satisfaction. We never feel we have enough, but are always somehow obstructed. Simply speaking, as we say in our local idiom, we are people who don't know enough; we aren't satisfied to be what we are. So our minds waver endlessly, always changing into good and bad states with the different phenomena we encounter, like a cow not satisfied with its own tail.
In later years, as Ajahn Chah's pace became slower, he would go for almsround to the village nearest the monastery. Usually when the line of monks got to the end of the village, when the last donors had offered their rice, a novice or junior monk would relieve him of his bowl, and most of the entourage would walk on ahead, bowing their heads slightly and putting their palms together in a gesture of respect as they went by him. Often he was accompanied by one of the older monks, but occasionally he walked alone. Sometimes as you ducked your head to pass, he would call your name, so you would fall in step behind him.
The disciples of the Buddha awakened to the truth of impermanence. From awakening to impermanence, they experienced detachment and weariness with things, or nibbida. This weariness is not aversion. If there is aversion, that is not really weariness, and it does not become a path. Nibbida is not what we think of as world-weariness in the ordinary way. For example, living with our families, when we are not getting along well, we might start thinking that we're really becoming disenchanted in the way the teachings mention. That's not it; that's merely our defilements increasing and oppressing our hearts. "I'm really fed up - I'm going to leave it all behind!"
It's really not so difficult to make wisdom arise. It means looking for the causes and understanding the nature of things. When the mind is agitated, you should realize, "This is not certain. Impermanent!" When the mind is calm, don't start thinking, "Ah, really peaceful!" because that is also not certain.
When someone asks, "What kind of food do you like best?" don't get too serious about that. If you say you really like something, what's the big deal? Think about it - if you eat it every day, will you still like it so much? [...]"
Sexual desire was a great problem for him when he was a young monk. "When I practiced alone in the forest, sometimes I'd see monkeys in the trees and I'd feel desire. I'd sit there and look and think, and I'd have lust: 'It wouldn't be bad to go and be a monkey with them!' This is what sexual desire can do - even a monkey could get me aroused."
Worldly knowledge and accomplishments on whatever level still leave you in this realm of suffering. Whatever happiness there may be comes about in dependence on external things. It's not the happiness of freedom, the happiness that doesn't depend on anything external. What is it that we depend on? We depend on possessions, on pleasure, on reputation, on praise, on wealth. We lean on all these things, like leaning on a rotting old tree trunk. After we lean for too long, it breaks and falls, and we fall with it.
In the way of Dharma, we say there is no one to solve problems, and there are no problems. That's how we can make an end of it; that is the way of peace. If there is someone solving problems, there will always be problems. If we perceive problems, then there is someone solving problems.
To give a small example, in the past, conditions were pretty simple here. We rarely had floods because there were no dams. Now, poverty has become a concern. People can't grow enough food, so the rivers are dammed everywhere. A lot of trees have been lost. When there's heavy rain, the water overflows the dams, so it has to be released, and the villages and towns below are flooded. In the past, we let nature be as it is, and water flowed evenly, without flooding. Like this, when there is progress, some kind of loss follows. If nothing is done, people suffer from poverty and want. If steps are taken to alleviate it, some other troubles spring up. The world is like this; there is no way to resolve things once and for all and make an end of it.
Even the Buddha, after he attained awakening, felt weary at heart when he considered this. When he was first enlightened, he thought it would be too hard to explain the way to others. But then he realized that such an attitude was mistaken.
If we don't teach such people, who will we teach? This is my question, which I used to ask myself at those times I got fed up and didn't want to teach anymore: who should we teach, if we don't teach the deluded? There's really nowhere else to go. When we get fed up and want to run away from others, we are deluded.
Student: How about if we aspire to be pacceka buddhas (the "solitary realizers" who attain enlightenment without a teacher and don't teach others)?
"[...] We were all sick with malaria, but one monk was in a really bad way, with high fever, and was afraid he would die. [...]" We didn't have any medicine.
"We had borapet (a horribly bitter medicinal vine). We boiled it to drink. It was all we had, for refreshment or for medicine. Everyone had fever and everyone drank borapet. [...]"
The Buddha's teaching is that first we should give up evil, and then we practice what is good. Second, he said that we should give up evil and give up the good as well, not having attachment to it, because that is also one kind of fuel. When there is something that is fuel, it will eventually burst into flame.
When the body is born, it doesn't belong to anyone. It's like our meditation hall. After it's built, spiders come to stay in it. [...] Anything may come to live in it. It's not only our hall; it's everything's hall.
These bodies are the same. They aren't ours. We come to stay in and depend on them. Illness, pain, and aging come to reside in them, and we are merely residing along with them. When these bodies reach the end of pain and illness and finally break up and die, that is not us dying. So don't hold on to any of this, but contemplate clearly, and your grasping will gradually be exhausted.
We can use explosives to level a mountain and then move the earth. But the tight grasping of self-conceit - oh man! Our wrong ideas and bad tendencies remain so solid and unbudging, and we're not aware of them. So the wise have said that removing this view and turning wrong understanding into right understanding is about the hardest thing to do.
For us who are worldly beings (putthujana) to progress on to being virtuous beings (kalyanajana) is not easy.
Like water in a basin: if we keep putting things in it and stirring it up, it will always be murky. If the mind is always allowed to be thinking and worrying over things, we can never see anything clearly. But if we let the water in the basin settle and become still, then we can see all sorts of things reflected in it. When the mind is settled and still, wisdom will be able to see things. The illuminating light of wisdom surpasses any other kind of light.
There is the peace of living in the forest: there is calm when the eye doesn't see and the ear doesn't hear. The mind is pacified of seeing and hearing. But it is not pacified of the defilements. The defilements are still there, but at that time they aren't appearing. It's like water with sediment in it: when it is still, it's clear, but when something stirs it, the dirt rises up and clouds it. You are the same in your practice. When you see forms, hear sounds, have disagreeable experiences, or have bodily sensations that are unpleasant, then you are disturbed. If these don't occur, you are comfortable; you are comfortable with the defilements.
Hearing these words, I finally got it: just dukkha itself is hell. Oh! But even something this obvious I wasn't able to figure out by myself. Suffering is hell. Someone who is doing wrong and creating suffering for himself is a hell-being. Thinking it over, I could understand that this is where hell is. It's so close and immediate like this.
Two other teachers Ajahn Chah spoke of with reverence were Ajahn Kinnaree and Ajahn Tongrat (whose teaching style is displayed in "A Fish Story"). And there were patron saints of the lineage, such as the reclusive Ajahn Sao, Ajahn Mun's mentor and senior companion, who during Ajahn Chah's childhood once came to stay in the nearby forest where Ajahn Chah later founded his monastery.
"My father went to hear the Dharma from him. I was a child, but the memory stuck in my mind always," Ajahn Chah recalled.
Ajahn Mun (1870-1950) was certainly the most renowned master of his day and is largely credited with reviving the meditation tradition of forest-dwelling monastics. Ajahn Chah spent only a few days with him but afterward always spoke of himself as a disciple of Ajahn Mun, saying, "If a person with good eyes stands close to something, he sees it. If his eyes are bad, it doesn't matter how long he's there."
The lineage of Ajahn Chah, and Ajahn Mun before him, is called the Forest Tradition. Not too long ago, Thailand was 70 percent forested; at present, it's probably closer to 10 percent. Ajahn Chah watched the forests disappear during his lifetime.
But there was some point to this ascetic life. When we aren't yet skilled in practice, if the body is too comfortable the mind gets out of control.
He also spoke of it as uncertainty, pointing out this quality of existence when reminding people not to take things too seriously: ups and downs, gain and loss are unavoidable, and our own perceptions of what is good and what is bad can change, so such an understanding can bring equanimity in the trials of daily life as well as in meditation. When all is unstable and unreliable, how can it be considered real? Leaving ourselves at the mercy of changeable phenomena and relying on them for happiness is a sure formula for disaster.
He often emphasized monastic life as the best way to practice, pointing out its many advantages, yet he gave profound teachings to laypeople and showed real respect for anyone with a sincere interest, anyone who made effort in practice, saying on many occasions that ordaining or not ordaining is beside the point.