Teaching of Ajahn Chah

Teaching of Ajahn Chah

"If we don’t clearly know in accordance with the truth then we get annoyed at sounds of people, cars, electric drills and so on. 

This is just the ordinary, untrained mind acknowledging the sound with annoyance. It knows in accordance with its preferences, not in accordance with the truth. We must further train it to know with vision and insight, ñānadassana, the power of the refined mind, so that it knows the sound as simply sound.

 If we don’t cling to sound there is no annoyance. The sound arises and we simply note it. This is called truly knowing the arising of sense objects.

 If we develop the Buddho, clearly realizing the sound as sound, then it doesn’t annoy us. It arises according to conditions, it is not a being, an individual, a self, an ‘us’ or ‘them’. It’s just sound. The mind lets go. This knowing is called Buddho, the knowledge that is clear and penetrating. 

With this knowledge we can let the sound simply be sound. It doesn’t disturb us unless we disturb it by thinking, ‘I don’t want to hear that sound, it’s annoying.’ Suffering arises because of this thinking. Right here is the cause of suffering, that we don’t know the truth of this matter, we haven’t developed the Buddho. 

We are not yet clear, not yet awake, not yet aware. This is the raw, untrained mind. This mind is not yet truly useful to us."

~ Ajahn Chah