The Teaching of Ajahn Chah 

If we teach people but they can’t practice properly, we shouldn’t be getting angry with them. 

Don’t do that! Don’t criticize them, but rather keep on instructing them and leading them along. 

Whenever their faculties have ripened sufficiently, then they will want to do it. Just like when we are selling medicine, we just keep on doing our business. When people have ailments that trouble them, they will buy. Those who don’t see a need to buy medicine probably aren’t suffering from any such conditions. So never mind.

Keeping at it with this attitude, these problems will be done with. There were such situations in the Buddha’s time too.

We want to do it right, but somehow we can’t get there yet; our own faculties are not sufficiently mature. Our pāramī are not complete. It’s like fruit that’s still growing on the tree. You can’t force it to be sweet – it’s still unripe, it’s small and sour, simply because it hasn’t finished growing. You can’t force it to be bigger, to be sweet, to be ripe – you have to let it ripen according to its nature. As time passes and things change, people may come to spiritual maturity. As time passes the fruit will grow, ripen and sweeten of its own accord. With such an attitude you can be at ease. But if you are impatient and dissatisfied, you keep asking, ‘Why isn’t this mango sweet yet? Why is it sour?’ It’s still sour because it’s not ripe. That’s the nature of fruit.

The people in the world are like that.
makes me think of the Buddha’s teaching about four kinds of lotus. Some are still in the mud, some have grown out of the mud but are under the water, some are at the surface of the water, and some have risen above the water and blossomed. The Buddha was able to give his teachings to so many various beings because he understood their different levels of spiritual development. We should think about this and not feel oppressed by what happens here. Just consider yourselves to be like someone selling medicine. Your responsibility is to advertise it and make it available. If someone gets sick, they are likely to come and buy it.

~ Ajahn Chah