Ajahn Chah 29th Anniversary

Ajahn Chah 29th Anniversary 1918 - 1992

Today 16 Jan marks the 29th anniversary of the passing on of Ajahn Chah, the founder of Wat Nong Pah Pong in Ubon, the poorest of provinces in Thailand.

His directness of teaching is sharp like the tip of a needle and legendary too and his humour is simply infectious.

In one teaching, he said a chicken saw a duck. The chicken wondered why the duck does  not "chip chip" like itself, and the duck wondered why the chicken does not "quak quak" like itself.  It is their nature, each to itself. He was simply showing we are no different, but our perception.

Of his talks compiled in The Collected Teachings of Ajahn Chah, the shortest is so aptly titled 'Just This Much' which I endeavour to summarize and share to honour and remember this great and wonderful teacher.

He commenced asking: Do you know where it will end? Or will you just keep on studying like this? Or is there  an end to it?

He pointed out that it is ok to study but it is just external not internal (meaning realization). External study is hard to finish. The real study is internal.

Alluding to what is internal study, he posed the question when our sense faculties are in contact with the sense objects, what sort of reaction takes place (for each of us)? More directly, he asked us to reflect: are greed, aversion and delusion still there? This is the internal study. It has a point of completion.

He illustrates that it is like a man who raises cows, taking them out to pasture in the morning and bringing them back to the pen in the evening. But he never drinks the milk. Study without practice is like this man; he never drinks the milk.

Humour flows naturally like water and certainly endears his audience to him. His next example of one who studies but not practise: It's like a man who raises chickens, but doesn't collect the eggs. All he gets is the chicken dung! And he used this to tell his listeners who raise chickens back home. 

I dont know how his listeners at home felt, but for me it is a walk down memory lane. As a kid, I lived in a kampong and life was hard for most people then. Our family had may be 4 chickens, reared primarily for purpose of egg collection and when these chickens were not any more egg laying, perhaps become food on the table during festive time. 

Everyday when I came back from school, these chickens would run around my feet as though they missed me. When they could not lay eggs anymore, the family decided to let them go. I have heard of parents disillusioned by their ungrateful children and sometimes I wonder would they not be better off keeping chickens and collecting eggs?

Back to Ajahn Chah, he reminded that when we learn the scriptures, we must know how to push out the greed, aversion and delusion from our mind. Otherwise one only collects the chicken dung and not the eggs.

The real worth of mankind, Ajahn Chah reminds us, will come to fruition thru our deeds, speech and thoughts. 

Even if one does good deeds but the mind is still not good, this is still not complete.

Turning to the Noble Eight-Fold Path, Ajahn points out that the 8 factors are nothing other than this very body: 2 eyes, 2 ears, 2 nostrils, 1 tongue and 1 body.  

This is the Path and the mind is the one who follows the Path. 

Therefore both the study and the practice exist in our body, speech and mind.

Ajahn asked us to consider if the scriptures teach about anything other than the body, speech and mind. Defilements are born here, they die right here. This study n practice exist right here. 

Just this much, and we know everything. For example, our speech. One word of truth is better than a lifetime of wrong speech.  One who studies, he says, and doesn't practise is like a ladle in a pot. It's in the pot everyday but it doesn't know the flavour of the soup. And his final message in this talk

: If you don't practise, even if you study till the day you die, you'll never know the taste of freedom.

May all be well n happy!

🙏🙏🙏