About This Teaching
Asked how a Western lay person might practise, Ajahn Pannavaddho starts with morality. There is no god writing in a black book, he says; we record our own actions, which return as results and shape character. He calls the five precepts a kind of mental hygiene that keeps one human and sane.
He presents the Four Noble Truths in terms of discontent, his preferred rendering of dukkha, caused by craving rooted in ignorance and ended by morality, a trained mind and wisdom. Lay people can develop calm, though fewer do. He recommends sitting upright and feeling the breath at the nostrils as an anchor, treating images as distractions, and keeping attention inside the body.
Contemplating death gives urgency and loosens attachment to possessions; contemplating the body shows it is not oneself, almost a prison house. Buddho is useful but suits those raised Buddhist. On fear in meditation, he says beliefs, not images, drive people crazy, and tells how Tan Ajahn Chob walked straight at a tiger. Duties one dreads should be done oneself. He ends on the kilesas, greed, hatred and delusion, as the root of the world's troubles, now fed by advertising.