Just know what is happening in your mind – not happy or sad about it, not attached. If you suffer see it, know it, and be empty. It’s like a letter – you have to open it before you can know what’s in it.
AJAHN CHAHThe Dharma Path is to keep walking forward. But the true Dharma has no going forward, no going backward, and no standing still.
More Ajahn Chah Quotes
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When you sit, let it be. What you walk, let it be. Grasp at nothing. Resist nothing.
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You are your own teacher. Looking for teachers can’t solve your own doubts.
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Raise families and look after themselves, that’s all. To them, being smart is more important than being wise!
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Therefore we have to train our mind. The meditation practice in Buddhism is all about training one’s own mind.
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Things are simply the way they are. They don’t give us suffering. Like a thorn: Does a sharp thorn give us suffering?
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Try to be mindful, and let things take their natural course. Then your mind will become still in any surroundings, like a clear forest pool.
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We should conquer ourselves, rather than conquer others. Whether coming or going, standing, sitting or lying down, our mind should be focused in this way.
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Proper effort is not the effort to make something particular happen. It is the effort to be aware and awake each moment, the effort to overcome laziness and merit, the effort to make each activity of our day meditation.
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Some people are afraid of generosity. They feel they will be taken advantage of or oppressed.
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What’s so great about brightness? My flashlight has it. It can’t help us rid ourselves of our suffering.
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You will have a steady awareness within yourself.
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Read yourself, not books. Truth isn’t outside, that’s only memory, not wisdom. Memory without wisdom is like an empty thermos bottle – if you don’t fill it, it’s useless.
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Even if the water is falling right on it, it only touches the outside and not the inside. In this way the bowl will never get full.
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One man watches a river flow by. If he does not wish it to flow, to change ceaselessly in accord with its nature, he will suffer great pain.
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Once you understand non-self, then the burden of life is gone. You’ll be at peace with the world. When we see beyond self, we no longer cling to happiness and we can truly be happy.
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Why are we born? We are born so that we will not have to be born again.
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If it isn’t good, let it die. If it doesn’t die, make it good.
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I am like a tree in a forest. Birds come to the tree, they sit on its branches and eat its fruits.
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If you want a chicken to be a duck, and a duck to be a chicken, you will suffer.
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If you haven’t wept deeply, you haven’t begun to meditate.
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Practicing meditation is just like breathing. While working we breathe, while sleeping we breathe, while sitting down we breathe…
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All kinds of wonderful, rare animals will come to drink at the pool, and you will clearly see the nature of all things.
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When we conquer ourselves, then everything will be conquered: oneself, others, and all the sense objects as well, coming in by way of the eyes, ears, nose, tongue and body — it will all get conquered like this.
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You should know both the universal and the personal, the realm of forms and the freedom to not cling to them.
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When suffering arises, where does it arise from? The cause is wrong view, the fruit of that being suffering. If it was right view it wouldn’t cause suffering.
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When one does not understand death, life can be very confusing.
AJAHN CHAH