Today is the first day of this, June, 2025, seven day seshin, going to be reading from a book entitled being Dharma, The essence of the Buddhist teaching by Ajahn Chah you,
this book has both a forward by Jack Kornfield and a preface from the translation. Translator, Paul brighter both of whom studied with Ajahn Chah in Thailand. Thailand. He was a Thai Forest master, and Paul Brightman says a little bit about him. Says among contemporary Thai Buddhist masters, perhaps none have been as influential with Western students of dharma as Ajahn Chah 1919, to 1992 one reason for his popularity is certainly the clarity and accessibility of his words to people of widely diverse cultural backgrounds and to followers of different Buddhist lineages. Hopefully, some of this will come across in the translation set forth in this book. Long poor as he was known to his disciples, could teach using the traditional concepts of dharma, but he also put the true truth into analogies and fables, using animals, trees and the events of everyday living in a way that penetrated the hearts of his listeners. He did so with much warmth and humor and without sacrificing anything in the way of profundity, simple yet profound has perhaps become an overused and hackneyed phrase, but it applies to much of Ajahn Chah teaching you.
Then moving to the forward. Jack Kornfield says, when the first western disciples arrived at Wat Pa Pon in the 1960s Of course, that was the name of his temple, if you could call it that forest monastery. Ajahn Chah did not give them the special admiration and treatment that Western monks often received in Thailand. He did not excuse them from any of the demanding challenges and strict training of the monastery. Seated on a wooden bench at the foot of his cottage in the center of a huge forest, he peered at them like a watchmaker taking off the cover of an intriguing new peace, and demanded to know whether they understood suffering or how to find peace in this world, that he would laugh and welcome and bid them to listen and if they dared to join him in practice for a while. In those years, the monastic community was relatively small and Ajahn Chah was still unknown as a teacher, relatively unknown. 25 years later, he had become one of the most honored and revered forest masters of the century. And in 1993 that would be a year after his death, nearly a million people joined the king and queen of Thailand at his funeral in order to pay their last respects at his temple. It's pretty amazing the million people his temple was not anywhere that anyone could get easily get to was in a remote corner of Thailand in really primitive conditions, said by then, his influence had spread worldwide, and 100 branch monasteries and respected. The site with 100 branch monasteries and respected disciples teaching internationally, a number of Westerners. Who later became teachers who studied with him. Ajahn sumedho is one of them read from him in the past. You
it goes on Ajahn Chah, natural wisdom expressed itself in the wide range of skillful means used to bring students to freedom. The demanding discipline and mindful dignity of the monastery were his first line of practice in the community. This is among the people living around the monastery, around the Forest Temple, most mostly farmers, locals in the community. He also taught by anecdote and example by story and piercing koan like questioning. He used humor and poked fun at the delusions of the world and those he mentored. He taught by close knit relationship by compassionate understanding and by insightful no holds barred dialog. Though his way of practice involves strict training of virtue precepts, renunciation and concentration. He taught them with a light heart, and all were done in the service of wisdom and freedom,
reflects the way that traditional Buddhism has always been taught we begin with morality, with virtue, begin with the precepts. Begin by giving up the things that we habitually do that cause harm to others, and having done that, then concentration can come more readily.
Seems too simple, sometimes to sophisticated Westerners like ourselves. But it goes it's it has a lot behind it. It's interesting how many of the great Chinese Zen masters began their monastic career studying the Vinaya, the monastic rules and regulations, monastic precepts. It was with that foundation that they went On to go deeply into the mind and
he says, From the start, his teaching of meditation focused on this freedom. While he instructed students in many traditional practices of mindfulness and concentration, he deliberately chose not to emphasize remarkable meditation experiences, samadhi, jhana or special insight stages. A lot of times in Theravadan Buddhism, there's a lot of laying out a map of all the different mental states that one can get into. And they're put in an order, and theoretically, you go from the simpler to the more profound. It's a bit unnatural, really, and with Ajahn Chah, things were more direct.
Meditation was a tool, a means to sit and examine ourselves, to quiet the mind and open the heart. He instructed students, to, quote, abide in the one who knows, to discover the natural peace within from a base of inner stillness. He pointed out, we can more directly see the truth. Quote, The way things are that inner stillness is so central and.
Ramana Maharshi, the Indian sage, quoted the Bible, said, Be still and know that I am God. Stillness is central to every mystic tradition, every tradition that's changing the way we use our minds.
Silence is something that grows during the course of the seven day. Seshin, everybody sheds more and more the stillness rises in the Zen. Doh, that's almost palpable you
out of that stillness comes insight.
One doesn't resolve a koan till the mind is really, really settled become one, pointed, looking directly, simply openly and it. Jack Kornfield goes on, we can recognize the impermanent, ungraspable, ungraspable nature of life. We can study suffering, its cause and its end. He taught that meditation is a way for us to let go, to stop the war, to put down the struggle to be at peace, no matter what the circumstances.
We see, a lot of the struggle in our zazen, especially when we're beginning. But I don't know that can say that it completely ever stops every time we accidentally fall back into dualistic thinking, fall back into trying to get something that somehow we're assuming isn't here. We're back in that war. We're not at peace.
He says we need to recognize the impermanent, ungraspable nature of life. Go through life thinking everything is the way it looks on the surface, the way that society lays it out. Here's what you do get, what you want, succeed. How happy they must be of realized riches and fame. You
going on, he says each day the monastery had periods of chanting and mindful work, walking and sitting meditation, silence and community practice, all interspersed with informal guidance from the master. On occasion, usually after evening, chanting, Ajahn Chah would close his eyes and give a more extensive Dharma talk, instructions to his monks, nuns and others devoted disciples. These discourses could last from one to five hours. The new monks would call the longer ones endurance sessions. Usually when I or Dhara sensei or Roshi, Bodin Roshi before us, give a teisho, it's 40, maybe 50 minutes. Remember going back and selecting ta shows of Roshi Kapleau. We usually play a recorded ta show on the the day we on a day we honor his his death, his birth and death. And it's hard to find one that's less than. An hour long, he could go he could go on, he could go on and on. I suppose we all could, if we just kept going
the workshops that the center gave, more recently, a full day workshop that we have begins around 930 and we're wrapping it up at 330, or four o'clock now. We're more commonly doing a half day workshop that begins around nine and ends at noon, when workshops were given at the center back in the late 60s, early 70s. They I'm not sure when they started. I think they started earlier and they ran until 6pm so it was, it was quite a slog for new people coming to learn about Zen. Perhaps it was a way of separating the wheat from the chaff. I
further on, he says it is a blessing to have these teachings the meat and potatoes of Ajahn Chah Chah Dharma, the evening trainings where he would take the gloves off and challenge us to look squarely at human life as you read these pages, you can imagine yourself deep in the forest in the early evening, after two hours of meditation and sonorous, sonorous chanting, the light is flickering from the candles. There is a quiet rustling of forest creatures settling down. The evening. Cicadas are singing. Time has come to reflect on your commitment to a life of wakefulness and truth. Now the master address addresses you sincerely describing the nature of this existence. He knows that you too can awaken and he quotes, all situations are uncertain. This is the central truth in this worldly realm. Live with things as they are. Don't get drunk, carried away, lost in your desires, intoxicated by your situation, by ideas, plans, the way you think things should be, he expresses the truth in simple ways. You don't own anything. Even your thoughts and body are not your possessions. They're mostly out of your control. You must care for them with compassion, but all things are subject to the laws of change, and not your wishes for them. When you truly understand this, you can be at peace in any surrounding the truth of impermanence. The Buddha, of course, enumerated three characteristics of existence, impermanence, suffering, what was called dukkha and not self, no self in
in speaking to the nuns and monks at his temple, Ajahn Chah urged them to live up to the nobility of their station, to uphold the monasteries reputation as sincere followers of the Buddha's way. He urged a determination in their practice and a fearless self honesty. He asked them to reflect. Have I truly taken the teachings to heart? Am I willing to remove all forms of greed, hatred and delusion, to let go to be free? Do I unwaveringly honor the practice of virtue and compassion, no matter how difficult am I. One was easy to speak to easy to reach, not proud or rigid. Don't take the teachings for granted. He went on, they're not philosophy or ideals. Examine yourself, examine your heart and mind. Release your entanglement with pleasure and pain and rest in the middle way, in the heart of freedom, you
I had a number of years, as I've recounted in the past, when I was not doing very much the zazen at all, I had sort of drifted away. From the center, imagine from an objective outside viewpoint. It was unlikely that I would be back, but gets in, you knew I had to come back, and I happened to come to the end of my drinking career and found my way into AA meetings.
And there was a lot, there's a lot in the 12 Steps about virtue and morality, making amends, and some of that really clicked for me all of a sudden, things That seemed difficult seemed straightforward and good to do.
The third step, if I've got it right of AA is made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as we understood him.
Well, I'm not a god person, but I knew what they meant, and I found that where previously expressing condolences to someone or speaking to someone in pain, I'd felt awkward and not genuine, and worried that I might be embarrassed or they might be embarrassed. All of a sudden, it just seemed easy to just speak from the heart. Somehow, through that process, I become a little simpler, still pretty complicated. I
again, release your entanglement with pleasure and pain and rest in the middle way, in the heart of freedom. Middle Way, of course, is what the Buddha discovered the end of his ascetic career, between asceticism and indulgence, but between all extremes. It's the characteristic of Buddhist practice, reasonable, straightforward. You
you. I want to go back to the translator's preface. This is Paul brighter. I
and he says, over the course of some 25 years of teaching and training, Ajahn Chah was able, as his senior Western disciple, Ajahn sumedho put it, to teach the ideas of Buddhism in a way that even an uneducated rice farmer could understand. Yet he was also able to answer the questions of upper class Thai people and attract and train skeptical Westerners, many of whom stayed under his guidance for 10 years or more and still continue the monastic life today,
Ajahn Chah constantly pushed people past what they were likely to consider their limits. The practice in his monasteries did not always follow what might seem to be reasonable, and the routine was always changing. He sometimes recounted his own difficulties in practice and the resolve with which he faced them and spurred himself on. This is Ajahn Chah says, Before I started to practice, I thought to myself, the Buddhist religion is here, available for all. All yet. Why do only some people practice it while others don't, or if they do practice, they only do so for a short while and then give it up. And those who don't give up still don't knuckle down and do the practice. Why is this? So I resolved to myself, Okay, I'll give up body and mind for this lifetime and try to follow the teaching of the Buddha down to the last detail, I'll reach understanding in this lifetime, because if I don't, I'll be sunk in suffering. I'll let go of everything else and make a determined effort, no matter how much difficulty or suffering I have to endure. I'll persevere if I don't do it, I'll just keep on doubting, thinking like this. I got down to practice, no matter how much difficulty I had to endure. I did it. I looked on my whole life as if it were only one day and a night. I gave it up. I'll follow the teaching of the Buddha. I'll follow the Dharma to understand why this world is so wretched. I wanted to know, I wanted to see the truth, so I turned to the practice of dharma.
This is the resolution of a remarkable human being.
Paul brighter says while he was most tolerant of people's shortcomings and limitations, he always wanted his disciples to make as much effort as they possibly could, simply for the goal of escaping from the clutches of Mara, the evil one who holds us prisoner in this realm of suffering. This is the traditional sort of Buddhist combination devil, tempter and ruler of the of the hell realm, escaping from the clutches of Mara. He did not see this as something easily accomplished. If practicing Dharma were easy, everybody would be doing it. He often said, but as really the only thing worth doing with a human life, the worldly way of living generally involves filling life with busyness, distractions and amusements in an endless pursuit of happiness and an effort to avoid boredom, but constantly distracted And excited mind is a tired and worried mind. Our busyness and distractions only increase year over year and amusements. It's like fast food leaves you unsatisfied after you wolf it down, empty calories, we could say, pursuit of happiness and effort To avoid boredom. Anytime you're bored, it's a signal, where is your mind? What are you grasping for? There's, there's. Now in this society today, there is something to treat your board of boredom available around every corner. Doesn't always work, though, despite all the amusements, people are still bored. One of the one of the benefits of learning to meditate is that you can be sitting alone in a doctor's or dentists office not have anything to amuse yourself and be comfortable, rather pleasant. See the mind quiet you
again, he says, A constantly distracted and excited mind is a tired and worried mind. When a person makes a commitment to undergo Buddhist training, he or she is setting out to free the mind from all such dependence, it can be an extremely painful and frustrating process as accumulated habits, hopes and fears start to surface in the new open space of non distraction. Ajahn Chah pointed out that there are people who think monastic life is some kind of escape, but one is actually a. Undertaken facing oneself for the first time with nowhere to hide can be like walking into a raging storm.
First time we do Zazen, we suddenly realize how turbulent, what a current is flowing through the mind. When you just flow with it, when you follow one thought to another, let your mind do what it will. When you're heedless, as not John Chah would put it, you don't notice that just seems normal, just like everybody else. It takes an effort. Takes a real effort. Ongoing effort goes on a long period of time to stem that tide, to have the willpower, the renunciation, the strong desire to let that stuff go see What's there when you're not distracted.
Here he says, Ajahn Chah often speaks about heedlessness. By that term, he means a careless, unaware approach to living, and he notes that it is often compounded by comforts, but it's still until one starts to do without such things, these links remain hidden soft. Living tends to make the mind soft. Spoke about the simple way of life in the not too distant past in Thailand. Quote before, when the country was not developed, everyone built their toilet some distance from the house, often out in the forest. You had to walk out there to use it. But now the toilet has to be in the house city. People even have to have it right there where they sleep. Such a concept struck him as funny laughing. He said, People think that will make them comfortable and happy to have a toilet in their bedroom, but it doesn't really bring happiness. It increases the habit of laziness. Of course, I'm one to speak. At some point we bought a sort of bidet, toilet, bidet, the Japanese are so fond of and when I get up at night needing to go to the bathroom and sit down. It's warm. It's heated. It's nice every now and then not to have that and sit down on a nice, proper cold toilet seat.
No way Chris is ever going to give that up either. So it's not my fault.
He goes on his way of training was not meant to be an endurance test. However, when he saw disciples making great efforts in a mindless, mechanical way, he would correct them. He was never ambiguous about where the emphasis should lie. As the Buddha's years of fruitless asceticism. After the Buddha's years of fruitless asceticism, he came to realize the way deliberation lay in the mind. The body was just a material object incapable of enlightenment. It was also not something evil that hindered spiritual development that needed to be tortured or weakened. This is as much a deviation as trying to beautify the body and seeking happiness through sensual pleasure and social approval. So the role of asceticism is in creating simplicity and non involvement in confusion, not deprivation for its own sake. And statements such as destroy your body or destroy the world do not literally refer to suicide or nuclear weapons, but in the context of meditation and Ajahn Chah lively ways of teaching to destroying attachment to these things
Ajahn Chah was not afraid to test the extremes in his own practice, and he saw this experience as instructional for himself. He sometimes pushed people to very difficult limits and beyond. Such methods can be painful to undergo, but one comes to see where the mind holds on and limits itself, and to see that the real suffering comes from the mind's attachments, fears and. Preconceptions. It's a lesson that we learn in sesshin. Much of the difficulty of a rigorous seshin is our shrinking from it, our fear that it's going to get worse, not going to be able to hold up. The minute you start running? You lost your footing?
He did not recommend fasting, vows of silence or avoiding contact with others. He said, We practice with our eyes open if avoiding people and sense contact were the way to enlightenment. The blind and the deaf should be enlightened. Wisdom is to be found in the Realm of the Senses. The world is transcended by knowing the world, not by avoiding it, living, at quote, close quarters with others in the same routines day after day, which is the way of life in his monasteries, can really reveal a lot about one's habits and the way one creates suffering for oneself. He often said, if it's hot and difficult, that's it. That's the place of practice. I
bring to mind that brings to mind a koan from the hekigan roku in the Blue Cliff Record. In our version, it's translated as tozans, no cold or heat. Tozan is the Japanese pronunciation of Dongshan, great Chinese master, a monk asked Tozan, when heat and cold come? How can we avoid them? Tozan said, why don't you go where there is no cold or heat? Monk said, Where is the place where there is no cold or heat? Tozan said, when cold? Let the cold kill you. When hot, let the heat kill you.
It's the resistance that makes things worse, and that is the virtue of rigorous practice or false forced to confront our own resistance first, people don't even notice it. They just say, this is hard. I can't do this. One of the virtues of having no choice find out, Oh, I can do this. And so much of the difficulty depends on my attitude.
Pain is just pain takes care of itself, but our hatred of our pain, our fear, our avoidance, make it sticky and difficult. I
you find that happening to you, you're not unusual. Must be another human being. But we can learn so much by working with it, by working with our difficulties, by Will, being willing to do things that are hard. I
when you throw the switch and find yourself able to run right into difficulty instead of running away, things change in a pretty wonderful way. Doesn't mean you won't have to throw that switch again. We learn a lesson and then we forget it. We have to learn again and again, and gradually it seeps in. Things become straightforward.
You you
learn to stay in this moment, not to project, not to play with our dread or our hopes. You. Pema children, the Tibetan the Tibetan tradition said that our slogan should be abandoned, hope.
Know what's here. I
And then things unfold.
Things aren't under our control, but because of the law of causes and conditions, the outcome tends to be better when the input is good,
the outcome tends to be better when we surrender Our demands that everything go the way we want and
just do the practice and find out. Okay, our time is up. Stop here and incite the four vows. I.
