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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

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Ajahn Chah
Age: 73 †
Born: 1918
Born: June 17
Died: 1992
Died: January 16
Bhikkhu
Ajahn Chah Subhaddo
Suffering
Attached
Happy
Letter
Mind
Suffer
Like
Happenings
Happening
Letters
Empty
Open

More quotes by Ajahn Chah

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All that I have said up to now has merely been words. When people come to see me, I have to say something. But it is best not to speak about these matters too much. Better to begin practice without delay. I am like a good friend inviting you to go somewhere. Do not hesitate, just get going. You won't regret it.
Ajahn Chah
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Letting go a little brings a little peace. Letting go a lot brings a lot of peace. Letting go completely brings complete peace.
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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If your mind is happy then you are happy anywhere you go. When wisdom awakens within you, you will see Truth wherever you look. Truth is all there is. It's like when you learned how to read, you can then read anywhere you go.
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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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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We protect virtue so that virtue will protect us.
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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You are your own teacher. Looking for teachers can’t solve your own doubts. Investigate yourself to find the truth - inside, not outside. Knowing yourself is most important.
Ajahn Chah
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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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We don't meditate to see heaven, but to end suffering.
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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Whenever we feel that we are definitely right, so much so that we refuse to open up to anything or anybody else, right there we are wrong. It becomes wrong view. When suffering arises, where does it arise from? The cause is wrong view, the fruit of that being suffering. If it was right view it wouldn't cause suffering.
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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Wisdom is in yourself, just like a sweet ripe mango is already in a young green one.
Ajahn Chah
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When sitting in meditation, say, That's not my business! with every thought that comes by.
Ajahn Chah
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To give up doing evil is more important than making merit.
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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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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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