Dharma from Ajarn Chah

Magic

There is only one real magic, the magic of Dhamma. Any other magic is like the illusion of a card trick. It distracts us from the real game: our relation to human life, to birth, to death and to freedom. (Para 21, p. 8)

Contacting the Dhamma

The Buddha wanted us to contact the Dhamma, but people only contact the words, the books, and the scriptures. It is contacting that which is ‘about’ Dhamma, and not contacting the ‘real’ Dhamma as taught by our Great Teacher. How can people say that they are practicing well and properly if they only do that? They are a long way off. (Para 26, P. 9)

Peace

Know what is good and bad, whether traveling or living in one place. You can’t find peace on a mountain or in a cave. You can even go to where the Buddha attained enlightenment without getting closer to the truth. (Para 101, p. 27)

Heart and Mind

There are those who do battle with their defilements and conquer them. This is called fighting inwardly. Those who fight outwardly take hold of bombs and guns to throw and to shoot. Conquering others is the way of the world. In the practice of Dhamma we don’t have to fight others, but instead conquer our own minds, patiently resisting all our moods. (Para 41, p. 13)

Impermanence

Sometimes I’d go to see old religious sites with ancient temples. In some places they would be cracked. Maybe one of my friends would remark, “Such a shame, isn’t it? It’s cracked.” I’d answer, “If they weren’t cracked there’d be no such thing as the Buddha. There’d be no Dhamma. It’s cracked like this because it’s perfectly in line with the Buddha’s teaching.” (Para 49, p. 15)

Dhamma Practice

Some people get bored, fed up, tired of the practice and lazy. They can’t seem to keep the Dhamma in mind. Yet, if you go and scold them, they’ll never forget that. Some may remember it for the rest of their lives and never forgive you for it. But when comes to the Buddha’s teaching, telling us to be moderate, to be restrained, to practice conscientiously, why do they keep forgetting these things? Why don’t people take these things to heart? (Para 160, p. 42)

Purpose

We must learn to let go of conditions and not try to oppose or resist them. And yet we plead with them to comply with our wishes. We look for all sorts of means to organize them and make a deal with them. If the body gets sick and is in pain, we don’t want it to be so, so we look for various sutras to chant. We don’t want the body to be in pain. We want to control it. These sutras become some form of mystical ceremony, getting us even more entangled in clinging. This is because we chant them in order to ward off illness, to prolong life and so on. Actually, the Buddha gave us these teachings in order to help us know the truth of the body, so that we can let go and give up our longings, but we end up chanting them to increase our delusion. (Para. 162, p. 43)

Madness

People outside may call us mad to live in the forest like this, sitting like statues. But how do they live? They laugh, they cry, they are so caught up that at times they kill themselves or one another out of greed and lust. Who are the mad ones? (Para. 166, p. 44)

Why like that?

When someone asked Ajahn Chah why there was so much crime in Thailand, a Buddhist country, or why Indochina was such a mess, he said, “Those aren’t Buddhists who are doing those unwholesome things. That isn’t Buddhism doing those things. Those are people doing those things. Buddha never taught anything like that.’ (Para 169, p. 44)

Price to Pay

You say you love your girlfriend one hundred percent. Well turn her inside out and see how many percent of her you still love. Or if you miss your lover so much when she’s not with you, then why not ask her to send to you a vial of faeces in it. In that way, whenever you think of her with longing, you can open the vial and smell it. Disgusting? What is it, then, that you love? What is it that makes your heart pound like a rice pounder every time a girl with a really attractive figure comes walking along or you smell her perfume in the air? What is it? What are these forces? They pull and suck you in, but you don’t put up a real fight, do you? There’s a price to pay for it in the end, you know! (Para 173, p. 45)

Label

It was Christmas and the foreign monks had decided to celebrate it. They invited some laypeople as well as Ajahn Chah to join them. The laypeople were generally upset and skeptical. Why, the asked, were Buddhists celebrating Christmas? Ajahn Chah the gave a talk on religion in which he said, “As far as I understand, Christianity teaches people to do good and avoid evil, just like Buddhism does, so that is the problem? However, if people are upset by the idea of celebrating Christmas, that can be easily remedied. We won’t call it Christmas. Let’s call it ‘Christ-Buddhamas.” Anything that inspires us to see what is true and do what is good is proper practice. You may call it any name you like.” (Para 176, p 46)

Enlightenment

Someone once asked Ajahn Chah to talk about enlightenment; could he describe his own enlightenment? With everyone eagerly waiting to hear his answer, he said, “Enlightenment isn’t hard to understand. Just take a banana and put it into your mouth, then you will know what it tastes like. You have to practise to experience realization, and you have to preserve. If it were so easy to become enlightened, everyone would be doing it. I started going to temple when I was eight years old, and I have been a monk for over forty years. But you want to meditate for a night or two to go straight to nibbana. You don’t just sit down and – zip! – there you are, you know. You can’t get someone to blow your head and make you enlightened either.” (para 180, p. 48)

Theory and Practice

Theory and practice – the first knows the name of a medicinal plant, and the second goes out to find it and uses it. (Para 87, p 24)

Smile

A madman and an Arahant both smile, but the Arahant knows why while the madman doesn’t. (para 134, p. 36)

Towards true faith.

Outward scriptural study is not important. Of course, the Dhamma books are correct, but they are not right. They cannot give you right understandings. To see the word ‘anger’ in print is not the same as experiencing anger. Only experiencing for yourself can give you true faith. (Para 137, p. 36)

Source: Excerpts from:

ON AJAHN CHAH ‘REFLECTIONS’

Compiled and edited by Dhamma Garden, Buddhist Fellowship, Burmese Temple, Singapore.

On Countering Superstition

‘On of the characteristics that Ajahn Chah was most well known for was his keenness to dispel superstition in relation to Buddhist practice in Thailand. He strongly criticized the magic charms, amulets, and fortune-telling that pervaded so much of the society. He rarely spoke about past or future lives, other realms, visions, or psychic experiences. If anyone came to him asking for a tip about the next winning lottery number (a very common reason why some people go to visit famous ajahns), they would generally get very short shrift. He saw that the Dhamma itself was the most priceless jewel, which could provide genuine protection and security in life, and yet it was continually overlooked for the sake of the promise of minor improvements to samsāra.’ (Chah, p. 33)

According to Ajahn Chah, Buddha images and sacralized water have no inherent power; that ghosts and deities have existence only in our minds; that monasteries should not be the venues of festivals, fairs, games, and idle gossip; and that meditation and direct contemplative experience are more important than the study of books. The Dhamma of the Buddha is not found in books. (pg. 138 – Tambiah, S.J. 1988, The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets)