About This Teaching
Ajahn Chah urges patience with samadhi: after years of letting the mind run after everything, a couple of months is not long. Even the wish for the mind to be quiet is craving, and it stirs up agitation. He compares practice to minding a water buffalo near rice plants: let it roam but watch it, shout a warning, and use the stick if needed, never dozing off. The one who knows watches the mind and throws every sense object into the three pits of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and not self.
He teaches the middle way between indulgence and self-torment, likening the swinging mind to a bell clapper struck on both sides. The mind is a single seat; mental states are visitors who find it already occupied by the one who knows. He warns against vows to sit until a set hour or watching an incense stick like a monkey, and against chasing visions, which three long breaths can cut off. Physical seclusion, a teacher's guidance, and firm Vinaya matter more than textbooks.