Find your real home By Ajahn Chah

Find your real home
By Ajahn Chah

Thinking that you’d like to go on living for a long time will make you suffer. But thinking you’d like to die right away or die very quickly isn’t right either. It’s suffering, isn’t it? 

Conditions don’t belong to us, they follow their own natural laws. You can’t do anything about the way the body is. You can prettify it a little, make it look attractive and clean for a while, like the young girls who paint their lips and let their nails grow long, but when old age arrives, everyone’s in the same boat. That’s the way the body is, you can’t make it any other way. But what you can improve and beautify is the mind.

Anyone can build a house of wood and bricks, but the Buddha taught that that sort of home is not our real home; it’s only nominally ours. It is a home in the world and it follows the ways of the world. Our real home is inner peace. 

An external, material home may well be pretty but it is not very peaceful. There’s this worry and then that, this anxiety and then that. So we say it is not our real home, it is external to us. Sooner or later we’ll have to give it up. It’s not a place we can live in permanently because it doesn’t truly belong to us, it’s part of the world.

Our body is the same: we take it to be self, to be “me” and “mine,” but in fact it’s not really so at all. It’s another worldly home. Your body has followed its natural course from birth until now; it’s old and sick and you can’t forbid it from doing that. That’s the way it is. Wanting it to be different would be as foolish as wanting a duck to be like a chicken. When you see that that’s impossible—that a duck has to be a duck, that a chicken has to be a chicken and that bodies have to get old and die— you will find strength and energy. However much you want the body to go on and last for a long time, it won’t do that.

Conditions are impermanent and unstable; having come into being they disappear, having arisen they pass away. And yet everyone wants them to be permanent. This is foolishness.

As soon as we’re born, we’re dead. Our birth and our death are just one thing. It’s like a tree: when there’s a root there must be twigs. When there are twigs, there must be a root. You can’t have one without the other. It’s a little funny to see how at a death people are so grief-stricken and distracted, fearful and sad, and at a birth how happy and delighted. It’s delusion; nobody has ever looked at this clearly. 

I think if you really want to cry, then it would be better to do so when someone’s born. For actually birth is death, death is birth, the root is the twig, the twig is the root. If you’ve got to cry, cry at the root, cry at the birth. Look closely: if there were no birth, there would be no death. Can you understand this?

Don’t think a lot. Just think, “This is the way things are.” It’s your work, your duty. Right now nobody can help you; there is nothing that your family and your possessions can do for you. All that can help you now is correct awareness.

So don’t waver. Let go. Throw it all away.

Even if you don’t let go, everything is starting to leave anyway. Can you see that, how all different parts of your body are trying to slip away? Your eyes, ears, nose, tongue—everything is trying to leave because this isn’t their home. You can’t make a permanent home in a sankhara; you can stay for a short while and then you have to go. It’s like a tenant watching over his tiny little house with failing eyes. His teeth aren’t so good, his ears aren’t so good, his body’s not so healthy, everything is leaving.

To put it simply, impermanence is the Buddha.

So you needn’t worry about anything because this isn’t your real home, it’s just a temporary shelter. Having come into this world, you should contemplate its nature. Everything there is, is preparing to disappear. Look at your body. Is there anything there that’s still in its original form? Is your skin as it used to be? Is your hair? It’s not the same, is it? Where has everything gone? This is nature, the way things are. When their time is up, conditions go their way. This world is nothing to rely on—it’s an endless round of disturbance and trouble, pleasures and pain. There’s no peace.

So understand this point that all people, all creatures, are about to leave. When beings have lived an appropriate time, they go their way. The rich, the poor, the young, the old, all beings must experience this change. To put it simply, impermanence is the Buddha. If we see an impermanent phenomenon really clearly, we’ll see that it’s permanent, in the sense that its subjection to change is unchanging.

This is the permanence that living beings possess. There is continual transformation—from childhood through youth to old age—and that very impermanence, that nature to change is permanent and fixed. If you look at it like that, your heart will be at ease.

Let go, relax, and let your family look after you. Those who nurse the sick grow in goodness and virtue. One who is sick and giving others that opportunity shouldn’t make things difficult for them. If there’s a pain, or some problem or other, let them know and keep the mind in a wholesome state.

One who is nursing parents should fill his or her mind with warmth and kindness, not get caught in aversion. This is the one time when you can repay the debt you owe them. From your birth through your childhood, as you’ve grown up, you’ve been dependent on your parents. That we are here today is because our mothers and fathers have helped us in so many ways. We owe them an incredible debt of gratitude.

So today, all of you children and relatives gathered here together, see how your parents become your children. Before you were their children, now they become yours. They become older and older until they become children again. 

Their memories go, their eyes don’t see so well, and their ears don’t hear. Sometimes they garble their words. Don’t let it upset you. All of you nursing the sick must know how to let go. Don’t hold on to things; just let go and let them have their own way. When a young child is disobedient, sometimes the parents let it have its own way just to keep the peace, to make it happy. Now your parents are like that child. Their memories and perceptions are confused. Sometimes they muddle up your names or you ask them to give you a cup and they bring a plate. It’s normal, don’t be upset by it.

Let the patient remember the kindness of those who nurse and patiently endure the painful feelings. Exert yourself mentally, don’t let the mind become scattered and agitated, and don’t make things difficult for those looking after you. Let those who nurse the sick fill their minds with virtue and kindness. Don’t be averse to the unattractive side of the job, to cleaning up mucus and phlegm, or urine and excrement. Try your best. Everyone in the family give a hand.

These are the only parents you’ve got. They gave you life; they have been your teachers, your nurses and your doctors; they’ve been everything to you. that they have brought you up, taught you, shared their wealth with you and made you their heirs is the great beneficence of parents. 

Consequently the Buddha taught the virtues of katannu and katavedi, knowing our debt of gratitude and trying to repay it. These two dhammas are complementary. If our parents are in need, they’re unwell or in difficulty, then we do our best to help them. This is katannukatavedi; it is a virtue that sustains the world. It prevents families from breaking up; it makes them stable and harmonious.

Today I have brought you the Dhamma as a gift in this time of illness. I have no material things to give you—there seems to be plenty of those in the house already—and so I give you the Dhamma, something which has a lasting worth, something which you’ll never be able to exhaust. 

Having received it from me, you can pass it on to as many others as you like and it will never be depleted. That is the nature of the Truth. I am happy to have been able to give you this gift of Dhamma and hope it will give you strength to deal with your pain.

First published on January 1, 1994