Sometimes, when a fruit tree is in bloom, a breeze stirs and scatters blossoms to the ground. Some buds remain and grow into a small green fruit. A wind blows and some of them, too, fall! Still others may become fruit or nearly ripe, or some even fully ripe, before they fall. And so it […]
Mindfulness is the nurse and protector of samādhi. It is the dhamma which allows all other wholesome dhammas to arise in balance and harmony. Mindfulness is life. At any moment that you lack mindfulness, it is as if you are dead. Lack of mindfulness is called heedlessness, and it robs your words and actions of […]
Normally the mind isn’t still, it’s moving all the time. We must strengthen the mind. Making the mind strong and making the body strong are not the same. To make the body strong we have to exercise it, to push it, in order to make it strong, but to make the mind strong means to […]
The buddha dharma is not to be found in moving forwards, nor in moving backwards, nor in standing still. Ajahn Chah
Meditation is like a single log of wood. Insight and investigation are one end of the log; calm and concentration are the other end. If you lift up the whole log, both sides come up at once. Which is concentration and which is insight? Just this mind. Ajahn Chah
The Buddha told his disciple Ananda to see impermanence, to see death with every breath. We must know death; we must die in order to live. What does that mean? To die is to come to the end of our doubts, all our questions, and just be here with the present reality. You can never […]
People have suffering in one place, so they go somewhere else. When suffering arises there, they run off again. They think they’re running away from suffering, but they’re not. Suffering goes with them. They carry suffering around without knowing it. If we don’t know suffering, then we can’t know the cause of suffering. If we […]
Actually in my own practice I didn’t have a teacher to give as much teachings as all of you get from me. I didn’t have many teachers. I ordained in an ordinary village temple and lived in village temples for quite a few years. In my mind I conceived the desire to practice, I wanted […]
If you look for the Dhamma, you will find that it has nothing to do with the forests, the mountains, or the caves – it exists in the heart. The language of the Dhamma isn’t English or Thai or Sanskrit. It has its own language, which is the same for all people – the language […]
Meditation means to make the mind peaceful in order to let wisdom arise. This requires that we practise with body and mind in order to see and know the sense impressions of form, sound, taste, smell, touch and mental formations. To put it shortly, it’s just a matter of happiness and unhappiness. Happiness is pleasant […]
If you have time to be mindful, you have time to meditate. Ajahn Chah
Whenever we feel that we are definitely right, so much so that we refuse to open up to anything or anybody else, right there we are wrong. It becomes wrong view. When suffering arises, where does it arise from? The cause is wrong view, the fruit of that being suffering. If it was right view […]
The real foundation of the teaching is to see the self as being empty. But people come to study the Dhamma to increase their self-view, so they don’t want to experience suffering or difficulty. They want everything to be cozy. They may want to transcend suffering, but if there is still a self, how can […]
With even a little intuitive wisdom we will be able to see clearly the ways of the world. We will come to understand that everything in the world is our teacher. Ajahn Chah
You say that you are too busy to meditate. Do you have time to breathe? Meditation is your breath. Why do you have time to breathe but not to meditate? Breathing is something vital to people’s lives. If you see that dhamma practice is vital to your life, then you will feel that breathing and […]
To define buddhism without a lot of words and phrases, we can simply say: Don’t cling or hold on to anything. Harmonize with actuality, with things as they are. Ajahn Chah
The forest is peaceful, why aren’t you? You hold on to things causing your confusion. Let nature teach you. Hear the bird’s song then let go. If you know nature, you’ll know Dhamma. If you know Dhamma, you’ll know nature. Ajahn Chah
We say that a meditator should not walk the way of happiness or unhappiness, rather he should know them. Knowing the truth of suffering, he will know the cause of suffering, the end of suffering and the way leading to the end of suffering. And the way out of suffering is meditation itself. To put […]
All bodies are composed of the four elements of earth, water, wind and fire. When they come together and form a body we say it’s a male, a female, giving it names, and so on, so that we can identify each other more easily. But actually there isn’t anyone there – only earth, water, wind […]
There are people who are born and die and never once are aware of their breath going in and out of their body. That’s how far away they live from themselves. Ajahn Chah
