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 to be proficient, I wanted to train. There wasn’t anybody giving any teaching in those monasteries but the inspiration to practice arose. I traveled and I looked around. I had ears so I listened, I had eyes so I looked. Whatever I heard people say, I’d tell myself, ‘Not sure.’ Whatever I saw, I told myself, ‘Not sure,’ or when the tongue contacted sweet, sour, salty, pleasant or unpleasant flavors, or feelings of comfort or pain arose in the body, I’d tell myself, ‘This is not a sure thing’! And so I lived with dhamma.

Ajahn Chah

quoted in the book Forest Recollections: Wandering Monks in Twentieth-Century Thailand

Read a random quote or see all quotes by Ajahn Chah.