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If you let go completely you will have complete peace.
Ajahn Chah -
We practice to learn how to let go, not how to increase our holding on to things. Enlightenment appears when you stop wanting anything.
Ajahn Chah
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Why are we born? We are born so that we will not have to be born again.
Ajahn Chah -
Sati is life. Whenever we don't have sati, when we are heedless, it's as if we are dead.
Ajahn Chah -
The one who recognizes the uncertainty of phenomena is the Dharma within you.
Ajahn Chah -
If it isn't good, let it die. If it doesn't die, make it good.
Ajahn Chah -
Where does peace arise? Peace arises whenever we let something go.
Ajahn Chah -
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
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When we sit in meditation and hear a sound, we think, 'Oh, that sound's bothering me.' If we see it like this, we suffer. But if we investigate a little deeper, we see that the sound is simply sound. If we understand like this, then there's nothing more to it. We leave it be. The sound is just sound, why should you go and grab it? You see that actually it was you who went out and disturbed the sound.
Ajahn Chah -
Do everything with a mind that lets go. Do not expect praise or reward.
Ajahn Chah -
Don’t be attached to visions or lights in meditation, don’t rise or fall with them. What’s so great about brightness? My flashlight has it. It can’t help us rid ourselves of our suffering.
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 peoples lives. If you see that Dhamma practice is vital to your life, then you will feel that breathing and practising the Dhamma are equally important.
Ajahn Chah -
If we want to really see the Buddha, we should observe his virtuous qualities. Whatever he taught, we should practise it. Only bowing to him is not enough. We need to renounce, give up, stop, so that we may see the Buddha.
Ajahn Chah -
At some point your heart will tell itself what to do.
Ajahn Chah
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Regarding this Dhamma, it is not something that we can simply talk about or take another's word for it. We need to develop meditation so that the understanding arises clearly within oneself. It is not the case that merely by listening to another's explanation our defilements will disappear. When we gain some understanding we need to chew on it again so that we see it for ourselves with certainty: paccattam.
Ajahn Chah -
If you see certainty in that which is uncertain, you are bound to suffer
Ajahn Chah -
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 -
Time is our present breath.
Ajahn Chah -
The heart is just the heart; thoughts and feelings are just thoughts and feelings. Let things be just as they are.
Ajahn Chah -
Peace is within oneself to be found in the same place as agitation and suffering. It is not found in a forest or on a hilltop, nor is it given by a teacher. Where you experience suffering, you can also find freedom from suffering. Trying to run away from suffering is actually to run toward it.
Ajahn Chah
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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.
Ajahn Chah -
The Dharma Path is to keep walking forward. But the true Dharma has no going forward, no going backward, and no standing still.
Ajahn Chah -
If you listen to the Dhamma teachings but don't practice you're like a ladle in a soup pot. 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 -
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