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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

See the world as a mirror. It is all a reflection of the mind. When you know this, you can grow in every moment, and every experience reveals truth and brings understanding.
AJAHN CHAH

Experience Mind Mirror Moment Reflection Reveal Truth Understanding
We protect virtue so that virtue will protect us.
AJAHN CHAH

Protect Us Virtue
The ladle is in the soup pot every day, but it doesn’t know the taste of the soup. You must reflect and meditate.
AJAHN CHAH

Day Every Ladle Meditate Pot Reflect Soup Taste
To give up doing evil is more important than making merit.
AJAHN CHAH

Doing Evil Give Up Important Merit Mke
These days people don’t search for the Truth. People study simply in order to find knowledge necessary to make a living.
AJAHN CHAH

Knowledge Living Make Necessary Order People Simply Smart Study Truth Wise
If you want a chicken to be a duck, and a duck to be a chicken, you will suffer.
AJAHN CHAH

Chicken Children Duck Suffer Want
Raise families and look after themselves, that’s all. To them, being smart is more important than being wise!
AJAHN CHAH

Family Important Look Raise Smart Themselves Wise
If you haven’t wept deeply, you haven’t begun to meditate.
AJAHN CHAH

Begun Buddhist Deeply Feeling Freedom Meditate
Isn’t it wonderful how the sky can take that dirty water and change it into pure, clean water? Your mind can do the same with your defilements if you let it.
AJAHN CHAH

Change Clean Defilement Dirty Let Mind Pure Sky Water Wonderful
If you listen to the Dhamma teachings but don’t practice you’re like a ladle in a soup pot.
AJAHN CHAH

Pot Practice Soup Teaching
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.
AJAHN CHAH

Effort Happen Meditation Overcome Particular Proper Something
I am like a tree in a forest. Birds come to the tree, they sit on its branches and eat its fruits.
AJAHN CHAH

Bird Branch Come Eat Forest Fruit Sweet Tree View
People go through life blindly, ignoring death like revellers at a party feasting on fine foods. They ignore that later they will have to go to the toilet, so they do not bother to find out where there is one.
AJAHN CHAH

Blind Bother Death Feast Fine Food Idea Ignore Party People Toilet
Steady practice is keeping mindful in every posture, whether sitting, walking, standing or lying down.
AJAHN CHAH

Down Every Keep Lying Mindful Posture Practice Sitting Stand Steady Walk
Don’t think that only sitting with the eyes closed is practice. If you do think this way, then quickly change your thinking.
AJAHN CHAH

Attitude Close Eye Lying Practice Quick Sit
Why are we born? We are born so that we will not have to be born again.
AJAHN CHAH

Again Born

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Ajahn Chah Quotes