by Ajahn Chah
When we work, we have to experience obstacles. If there are no obstacles, there is no suffering. If there is no suffering, we don’t think about things, isn’t that so? Thus the Buddha spoke of the truth of suffering.
If you think according to Dharma, you can come to have ease of mind, gradually teaching yourselves. Think about this a little. You plant a mango tree with the desire to get fruit. But will every single mango be edible? When you’re enjoying ripe mangoes, do you ever consider how many were lost or rejected?
If you get discouraged by considering this, you might not want to plant the trees in the first place. Many of the mangoes fall and rot before they are ripe. Others never ripen well, so what’s the use? Well, it’s like this: some fall and some you will have to throw away, but you plant and take care of the trees. You can eat mangoes today just because it is like this. If you think, Who wants to plant fruit trees when the mangoes just fall off prematurely? you won’t be eating any mangoes.
You have to keep coming back to look for the cause of things. But you live in a nice comfortable place, so you won’t feel like doing this. You need to live in a place that is not full of conveniences and make real convenience arise. In truth, if you practice correctly, there will always be a way. When people slander you, you have to be able to bear it. If you can’t resolve it, you will live with suffering right up till the day you die.
Some people ask me, “Luang Por, if we don’t kill any living creatures, how can we survive? If we stop killing mosquitoes, they will bite us.”
Hey, how many years have you been killing mosquitoes?
“I’ve been doing that since I was a child.”
Well, are the mosquitoes all gone yet? Even if you spend this whole lifetime sitting here killing mosquitoes, they won’t be finished.
If the mosquitoes won’t stop, it’s better for you to stop trying to kill them. Then there won’t be anything. If you want to keep on struggling and competing, you will always be losing. The way of the animal realm is that when they sense a source of food, they go to feed. They don’t see things the way people do. So let’s elevate our minds above the level of animals. If we want to play with the mosquitoes like this, we are always losing.
I’m just saying these things for you to think about. If you want to kill, go ahead and kill. But you won’t make an end of mosquitoes; I guarantee it. If you want to contend with something that can’t be finished, when can you reach an end of it? Killing mosquitoes won’t make an end of mosquitoes. In a place that has mosquitoes, such as Thailand, I recommend that since they won’t cease and desist, we should do so. Then it’s finished. Escape in this way.
What will we do if we can’t kill mosquitoes? We might think that the Buddha’s teaching is too refined, telling us not to kill mosquitoes. What use are mosquitoes? Right. That’s our thinking. If we could know the feelings of mosquitoes, they might be saying, “What use are humans?” So what should we do?
I’m just speaking off the top of my head. But we have to think things through, back and forth, and we can come to understand better. What use are mosquitoes? They just come to drink our blood. This is their use. They have to seek their food.
If we build a house for ourselves, really it is not only our house. Lizards come to stay. Mice come to live here. They don’t know whose house it is. They only see it as a place of shelter, so they come to live here. Then we get angry: Hey, the mice are biting my pillows and mats! The mice don’t know anything about it. They see some usefulness in doing that. They can make a nest, a place for their young. That’s just their way. They aren’t trying to steal anything from us. If we have wisdom beyond the animal level, we will take care of ourselves and gain some understanding. There will be no problem. Dharma should get to the root of things like this.
Tanha is craving. If we think things through like this, we can quell it. In the books it’s called craving. But in my meditation system, I call it “open wide.” Open without shutting. This is tanha in meditation practice. It is said, “There is no river equal to craving.” Open wide without shutting—there is no end to suffering. Desire is not of the mouth or the stomach. They can be satisfied. If the stomach doesn’t have enough, you can eat some rice. That which is tanha is not the stomach or mouth. Craving has no form or self; it is open wide.
I’ve compared this to a dog. A dog is given some rice and eats it. One bowl, two, three, or even five. Its stomach will be full, but its craving is still there, open wide. Put some more rice in front of it, and it will lie there guarding it. If another dog shows up, it will growl—grrr; a chicken comes and grrr. It shows that the stomach is not the place of craving, the mouth is not the place of craving. They can be full. But the thinking and feeling that craves is continuously open wide. The Buddha thus said, “There is no river like craving.” If it is open like this, it can never be satisfied or filled. If it’s closed, when you pour the water, it flows off. If it’s open, the water goes in and never fills it, it just keeps on flowing in. It’s like this, never satisfied, wanting all manner of things.
Consider a person who is enamored of life and doesn’t think about death. When she is seriously ill, she moans and pleads, “Please give me a little more time, if you’re going to take me, make it sometime in the future.” Then she recovers. She falls ill again and again begs, “May I have a little time? Please don’t take me yet.” When we’re strong and healthy, we don’t think about death. We don’t feel that we are in danger. Of course we are not beyond danger, because we haven’t died. Then when we’re sick, “Please, I need a little more time. It’s not right to go now.” This can happen many times, and still we say, “Please, not just yet!” The truth is, we are afraid. We don’t want to die; that’s all there is to it. It’s a matter of blind craving, people being attached to life. This is an example of desire. If we don’t develop wisdom to know this craving, we are always in a state of suffering.
Tanha is called desire. It means not being satisfied, that’s a better way to put it. Someone can be free of tanha. He will still have desires, but he can be satisfied. Tanha cannot be satisfied. We carry it along and complain all the way. We complain of the heaviness, but don’t want to put down the heavy thing. If we want a lot of things, it gets really heavy. People want a lot, but they don’t want it to be heavy. This is not seeking out the facts of the matter. If we understand, there isn’t a whole lot to it. It’s not a big deal. We can get to the end.
I think Dharma is something difficult. It’s troublesome. But if we really contemplate it, it is something that can make an end of our problems. The things the Buddha taught are not impossible to practice. Among all the things the Buddha taught, that which is beyond being practiced by people does not exist. He only taught that which benefits us and benefits others. Things that are of no benefit to us and others he did not teach. Please consider this.
If suffering occurs in your daily life, you should consider why this is happening. It might be that your children don’t listen to you. Well, who made these children? If you are suffering because of your children, actually the cause resides with you. You have to think like this, returning to the origin. If you just want to try to fix the situation by forcing them to be a certain way, it will be beyond your means. You won’t be able to accomplish it, and you’ll end up in tears over your children. In truth, what is the reason? There’s a cause. You have to pay attention and see what it is. Things don’t just bubble up and appear without cause; but we don’t really search it out very seriously.
The Buddha taught us to realize that the world is like this. He could find peace because he knew things according to the truth. What is this about? Let’s use an analogy. Have you ever seen monkeys? Are they calm and peaceful? Are there any calm monkeys? That’s the way monkeys are, climbing around all the time. Wherever there are monkeys, they act that way. But maybe you get upset when you see them; you feel they should sit still and not be climbing and jumping all over. It might make you so angry you’re even ready to kill them. But have you ever seen
a tranquil monkey, one that can be still, the way we can train humans to meditate and behave calmly? There’s no such thing, apart from a monkey that is dead.
So what should you do? Should you try to force them to be otherwise? You should realize that this is just the way monkeys are. Every monkey in the universe will carry on like this. If you see one and understand it clearly, you know all monkeys. You will let it be what it is because that is the way of monkeys. Whether or not the monkey is calm, your own feeling about it is another matter, and that can be calm. Let monkeys be monkeys without getting emotionally involved. Peace can be born within you because you know the way monkeys are. Knowing the manner of monkeys, you will let go and be at peace, not getting tied up in monkey business. You see them and realize monkeys are like that. You go somewhere else and see monkeys, and you think, Monkeys are like that. There’s no ill will on your part, because monkeys are like that. That’s all.
But you want monkeys to be calm, and so you reap suffering. That is not how the Buddha wanted you to resolve things. You should resolve them by knowing according to the truth. If you keep looking into it, you will come to realize that it is beyond your ability to alter things, so you have to release them, let go. Wisdom that knows the way phenomena are, knowing they are thus and letting them be thus, brings peace to the mind. There will be no doubt.
The world is the same. The Buddha is said to be the one who knows the world clearly. Just as we know monkeys clearly. The world has to be like that.
Usually people come to recognize this because nature has ripened for them; they have had a lot of experiences. Then they may hear just a little Dharma, and they look back with great regret: “Oh! I’ve been suffering for so many years, just because I wanted to make things a certain way”. And not just many years; it’s possible to go on until you die if you keep thinking in the same old way and don’t let go. You will never see the place of peace.
You will never see the place where you can let go. Things are a certain way, but you want them to be otherwise and it can’t happen. Whatever is the truth of phenomena, that is what you need to see.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
STUDENT: Suppose a monkey starts playing with fire. If we just let it be the way it will be, it could burn down our house.
AJAHN CHAH : No, no, it’s not like that. That’s a different matter. We know monkeys, and we should have greater wisdom than monkeys. Will you let them get hold of fire and burn down your house? When there is a crisis, you will know how to deal with it.
For example, everyone has to die, but still we take care of our lives. But taking care of it the way you doctors do, curing and controlling illness, not to prevent death. There is no such thing. There is no such medicine. If you know this, you care for your patients and treat illness like this.
Maybe a criminal comes to the hospital. He was involved in a robbery and got shot. The hospital has to take care of him. Some will then say that the doctors are supporting a thief, saving him so he can go rob houses. It’s not like that. It’s the responsibility of the doctors to take care of people. If you take care of them and when they recover they go and commit crimes, that’s not your fault. You take care of people according to your function and responsibility as doctors. It’s not that you are treating them to continue their careers as criminals. You are only doing your duty to relieve suffering and treat illness and injury.
When people get sick, they rush to find a doctor. Likewise, if a monkey is about to set our house on fire, we will do something to stop it. We have to take care of things and employ caution. But speaking of our house, we don’t need a monkey to burn it down; there is already the demon living there. “We don’t need to take care of it. Having been born, people must die, so why should we take care of our lives?” There is this question. We should take care of our lives just as doctors treat sick people: to get some temporary relief. Worldly people always complain, saying things like, These doctors are no good. They treated me but I didn’t get better; furthermore, you can see that people are always dying. They indulge in this kind of mad talk. Doctors do not treat people to prevent death. They don’t have medicine to prevent death. No matter what level of study they go through, they never learn such a thing. That is not the province of doctors. Their responsibility is to alleviate suffering from illness and help people survive one day at a time. That’s all. So that’s called not letting the monkey burn down your house.
We have to use wisdom to take care of things. When we know what monkeys are all about, if a monkey is bringing fire to the house, will we just sit by and watch? We know the traits of monkeys, and we are able to watch out for them and exert control. Just like with children. We have to know their ways, and we have to take care of them. If we know how children are, we will watch over them carefully. They could burn or cut themselves or fall into ditches—we can’t just leave them to themselves. Someone who employs equanimity here is not someone who understands children. Someone like that will let the monkey burn down the house.
You may feel that living at home is troublesome, but when you leave for a while, you start to feel homesick. What should you do? It’s strange, isn’t it, the way of humans? It’s only because when you go somewhere, you don’t really reach the place of satisfaction; your thinking doesn’t get there. This is what the Buddha called “the cycle.” So you come to this monastery for training, to do something worthwhile, but the feeling is still not the same as being at home; no place can be as pleasant and enjoyable as home for you, so you’re always thinking of home. It means that the business of good and evil is not yet finished. You are still doing things in a worldly way, so it isn’t finished. If it isn’t finished, it means you haven’t put things down. If you have not put them down, you are still carrying them. Carrying them, you feel the heaviness, and you can see the fault of it.
It comes down to practicing patient endurance. There isn’t really anything to it. It is said that patience is the mother of all Dharma. Patience brings good results; but then, when good comes, we are often deluded by it. Strange, isn’t it? We should be able to reach a conclusion to all of this. Things are good, but we get deluded, then there is more suffering.
Good and evil, love and hate don’t go beyond, but always remain within their limitations. We really ought to think about the Dharma and internalize it to resolve these matters. If we are suffering, we expect another person to cure it for us. But this is not something another person can do. She can explain the path for curing suffering, only that. The matter of really ending suffering is something to be accomplished personally. The Supreme Teacher said, “The Tathagata is only the one who points out the way.” He tells you to pick this up from here and put it there, pick this up from there and put it here. He teaches you how to swim. It’s not that he swims for you. If you want the Tathagata to swim for you, you are only going to drown.
Last year, some officials came here for a meeting to learn the “right way.” Why? Because things were not going well, and they didn’t feel good about it. So they came to learn about right understanding. But to get beyond feeling good when things seem right and suffering over things not going well is something not generally understood. The world is like this. Toward the sufferings we create, the heaviness, we need to have some patience and endurance. We know things are heavy, but we have desire, so we pick them up. They will be heavy, so then we really have to endure.
When we were students, we saw adults and thought how happy they must be. We saw them doing all kinds of things, people such as teachers, merchants, employers, or administrators, and we wanted to be like that. So we worked at our studies with the hope of becoming just like them, but now that we are in the same positions, we don’t really have such great happiness, do we? The suffering and difficulty are still there. We haven’t escaped from that condition of unsatisfactoriness. We haven’t escaped now, and we don’t really know if we can escape in the future. Things just keep getting heavier as we go along.
This place is called the world. World, or l
oko in Pali, means “darkness.” However much the world progresses and develops, darkness develops just that much; the progress of the world is just the progress of darkness. People talk enthusiastically about how the world is progressing, but it is only darkness spreading.
In our monastery, we previously had no electricity. People used to say, “It’s really dark here! How comfortable it would be if we had electricity, if we had running water!” But these things don’t appear by themselves. They take a considerable investment of money. The ability to get them comes from difficulty. And then when we do have the bright electric lights, it actually enshrouds the mind and darkens it further. Convenience covers the mind in darkness, because it is the nature of people to want everything the easy way. The easier and more convenient things are, the lazier people get.
In the past, when the country was not materially developed, people would build their toilet way out in the forest, and they would have to make some effort to walk out there and use it. Now this can’t be done. People won’t go out. Wherever they sleep, there must be a toilet right there. I don’t know what they want. Does that really bring well-being? The bedroom is here and the bathroom is here, too. People expect this will make for convenience and happiness, but it isn’t really so. Being too comfortable just leads to heedlessness. And people want to take it much further than this. But there is never any satisfaction. It’s never enough, and then they complain about their suffering.
Speaking of the way we make use of our resources, mostly we feel that we don’t have enough money to get by. What should we do to make it enough? It seems to me there is so much money, but it’s never enough. That’s why I say there are no rich people. At least I’ve never seen any; I only see people who feel they don’t have enough. The Buddha taught about earning and spending money. Earning it is not so hard. The way we use it is what’s really important. We should earn our living in a way that is right livelihood. Having earned money, we should make the best use of it, conserving it for meaningful ends. Whatever you may need, don’t let it go to excess. The Buddha taught extensively about this, but we don’t really pay heed. Whatever we see others getting, we want to match them. However much we earn we are ready to spend.
