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Only one book is worth reading: the heart.

Ajahn Chah

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Ajahn Chah
Age: 73 †
Born: 1918
Born: June 17
Died: 1992
Died: January 16
Bhikkhu
Ajahn Chah Subhaddo
Reading
Book
Heart
Worth

More quotes by Ajahn Chah

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Do everything with a mind that lets go. Do not expect praise or reward.
Ajahn Chah
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You say that you are too busy to meditate. Do you have time to breathe? Meditation is your breath. Why do you have time to breathe but not to meditate? Breathing is something vital to peoples lives. If you see that Dhamma practice is vital to your life, then you will feel that breathing and practising the Dhamma are equally important.
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 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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Of course there are dozens of meditation techniques, but it all comes down to this - just let it all be. Step over here where it is cool, out of the battle. Why not give it a try?
Ajahn Chah
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You should know both the universal and the personal, the realm of forms and the freedom to not cling to them. The forms of the world have their place, but in another way, there is nothing there. To be free, we need to respect both of these truths.
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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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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Do not be a bodhisattva, do not be an arahant, do not be anything at all. If you are a bodhisattva, you will suffer, if you are an arahant, you will suffer, if you are anything at all, you will suffer.
Ajahn Chah
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If we see suffering then we don't have suffering.
Ajahn Chah
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Some people are afraid of generosity. They feel they will be taken advantage of or oppressed. In cultivating generosity, we are only oppressing our greed and attachment. This allows our true nature to come out and become lighter and freer.
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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Practicing meditation is just like breathing. While working we breathe, while sleeping we breathe, while sitting down we breathe... Why do we have time to breathe? Because we see the importance of the breath, we can always find time to breathe. In the same way, if we see the importance of meditation practice we will find the time to practice.
Ajahn Chah
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There are two kinds of suffering. There is the suffering you run away from, which follows you everywhere. And there is the suffering you face directly, and so become free.
Ajahn Chah
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Mental activity is like a deadly poisonous cobra. If we don't interfere with a cobra, how poisonous it may be, it simply goes its own away.
Ajahn Chah
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If it isn't good, let it die. If it doesn't die, make it good.
Ajahn Chah
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Know and watch your heart. It's pure but emotions come to colour it.
Ajahn Chah
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Look at your own mind. The one who carries things thinks he's got things, but the one who looks on sees only the heaviness. Throw away things, lose them, and find lightness.
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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We don't meditate to see heaven, but to end suffering.
Ajahn Chah