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Do not try to become anything. Do not make yourself into anything. Do not be a meditator. Do not become enlightened. When you sit, let it be. What you walk, let it be. Grasp at nothing. Resist nothing.

Ajahn Chah

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Ajahn Chah
Age: 73 †
Born: 1918
Born: June 17
Died: 1992
Died: January 16
Bhikkhu
Ajahn Chah Subhaddo
Walks
Become
Anything
Meditator
Nothing
Grasp
Trying
Resist
Make
Enlightened
Buddhist
Walk

More quotes by Ajahn Chah

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Things are simply the way they are. They don't give us suffering. Like a thorn: Does a sharp thorn give us suffering? No. It's simply a thorn. It doesn't give suffering to anybody. If we step on it, we suffer immediately. Why do we suffer? Because we stepped on it. So the suffering comes from us.
Ajahn Chah
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Wisdom is in yourself, just like a sweet ripe mango is already in a young green one.
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Looking for peace is like looking for a turtle with a mustache: You won't be able to find it. But when your heart is ready, peace will come looking for you.
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When the heart truly understands, it lets go of everything.
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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
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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
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The serene and peaceful mind is the true epitome of human achievement.
Ajahn Chah
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If it shouldn't happen, it wouldn't happen.
Ajahn Chah
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The one who recognizes the uncertainty of phenomena is the Dharma within you.
Ajahn Chah
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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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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
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Anything which is troubling you, anything which is irritating you, THAT is your teacher.
Ajahn Chah
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Know and watch your heart. It's pure but emotions come to colour it. So let your mind be like a tightly woven net to catch emotions and feelings that come, and investigate them before you react.
Ajahn Chah
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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
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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
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The mind of one who practises doesn't run away anywhere, it stays right there. Good, evil, happiness and unhappiness, right and wrong arise, and he knows them all. The meditator simply knows them, they don't enter his mind. That is, he has no clinging. He is simply the experiencer.
Ajahn Chah
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Happiness and suffering do not depend on being poor or rich, they depend on having the right or wrong understanding in our mind.
Ajahn Chah
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If you haven't cried deeply a number of times, your meditation hasn't really begun.
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
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Just know what is happening in your mind - not happy or sad about it, not attached. If you suffer see it, know it, and be empty. It's like a letter - you have to open it before you can know what's in it.
Ajahn Chah