Ajahn Chah says that if you want to transform the mind, you must to know and transform the heart. And when the practice gets uncomfortable and you want to quit, that’s when you know you’re on the right track. The whole reason for studying the dhamma, the teachings of the Buddha, is to search for a way to transcend suffering and attain peace and happiness. Whether we study [...]
Advice for Someone Who is Dying
Ajahn Chah's simple, profound advice to an aging student approaching her death. Today I have brought nothing material of any substance to offer you, only Dhamma, the teachings of the Buddha. Listen well. You should understand that even the Buddha himself, with his great store of accumulated virtue, could not avoid physical death. When he reached old age, he relinquished his [...]
Nibbana Is Giving Up, Letting Go, and Being Free
Ajahn Chah compares awakened knowledge to counting fruit. Once you've got it, you don't have to count again. Better we should focus our energy on giving up what is evil, practicing what is good, and purifying the mind. The Buddha taught to see the body in the body. What does this mean? We are all familiar with the parts of the body, such as hair, nails, teeth, and skin. So [...]
Queer Eye, Right View
The queer eye sees what it’s not supposed to: alluring curve of hip or neck on the wrong type of body, band of colored light in a thundercloud, rain bowing like a bodhisattva’s back. Likewise, the Dhammapada tells us that the wise see with the inner eye. This secret eye is how we grasp the wheel of dharma, which turns and turns despite whatever sensation we might have of [...]
Just Do It
Whether you’re learning to meditate or ride a bike, says Ajahn Jayasaro, it’s not about how good you are or how far you get. The point is simply to practice with a sincere and consistent effort. As I remember, the majority of the teachings that Ajahn Chah gave were not startlingly profound. They didn’t consist of things that you’d never heard of before, where you would say, [...]
Wise Heart: A profile of Jack Kornfield
Jack Kornfield's brilliant synthesis of deep Buddhist practice and modern psychological insight has made him one of the most influential spiritual teachers of our time. Steve Silberman tells the fascinating story of Kornfield's voyage — both literal and philosophical — from West to East and back. Jack Kornfield is dancing. With a fluid arc of his left hand, he plucks a sheet [...]
Be a Lamp Unto Yourself
The freedom that Buddhism offers can’t be found if you don’t ask questions—about the teachings, the teachers, and yourself. Larry Rosenberg on how to cultivate a spirit of inquiry, even skepticism, to illuminate your path. The practice of the dharma is learning how to live, and it is both a joyful and challenging path. It asks that you open your mind to take a fresh look at [...]
Already Broken
There is an often-told story in my tradition about the Thai Forest tradition master Ajahn Chah and his apparent attachment to a certain drinking glass. Sitting around with some other Buddhist monks, nuns, and lay students discussing dharma and enjoying some tea, someone asked Ajahn Chah something like, “You’ve been teaching us about impermanence and how everything is constantly [...]
Like Oil and Water
There is a quality of pure awareness that is not fazed by fleeting thoughts, emotions, or sense impressions, explain Ajahn Amaro and Ajahn Pasanno. Even when they are together, pure awareness and the conditioned realm are always separate. Enlightenment, liberation, depends on the recognition of the radical separateness of awareness—“the one who knows” as Ajahn Chah would [...]
Profile: Forest Sangha
A humble man of small stature, living simply in a kuti (meditation hut) in the remote and impoverished northeast of Thailand, grew to be one of the most influential figures in Buddhism in the West. Ajahn Chah was not only an important teacher for the founders of the Insight Meditation Society, a largely secularized group devoted to vipassana meditation, he also left a legacy of [...]