Monday, January 07, 2008

A Still Forest Pool

The Insight Meditation of Achaan Chah
Part II Correcting Our Views

Let The Tree Grow


The Buddha taught that with things that come about of their own, once you have done your work, you can leave the results to nature, to the power of your accumulated karma. Yet your exertion of effort should not cease. Whether the fruit of wisdom comes quickly or slowly, you cannot force it, just as you cannot force the growth of a tree you have planted. The tree has its own pace. Your job is to dig a hole, water and fertilize it, and protect it from insects. That much is your affair, a matter of faith. But the way the tree grows is up to the tree. If you practice like this, you can be sure all will be well, and your plant will grow.

Thus, you must understand the difference between your work and the plant’s work. Leave the plant’s business to the plant, and be responsible for your own. If the mind does not know what it needs to do, it will try to force the plant to grow and flower and give fruit in one day. This is wrong view, a major cause of suffering. Just practice in the right direction and leave the rest to your karma. Then, whether it takes one or one hundred or one thousand lifetimes, your practice will be at peace.

Thursday, January 03, 2008

A Still Forest Pool

The Insight Meditation of Achaan Chah
Part II Correcting Our Views

Why Do You Practice

A group of travelers came to visit Achaan Chah with three elegant questions: Why do you practice? How do you practice? What is the result of your practice? They were sent as a delegation by a European religious organization to ask these questions to a series of great masters throughtout Asia.

Achaan Chah closed his eyes, waited, and then answered with three questions of his own: Why do you eat? How do you eat? How do you feel after you have eaten well? Then he laughed.

Later, he explained that we already understand and that teaching has to direct students back to their own inner wisdom, to their own natural Dharma. Therefore, he had reflected the search of these men throughout Asia back to the greater search within.