About This Teaching
Endless book learning, Ajahn Chah says, is only external study and hard to finish. Internal study looks at eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind: what happens when they meet their objects, and whether greed, aversion and delusion are still present. That study has a point of completion.
Study without practice brings no results. He likens it to a man who raises cows but never drinks the milk, and to someone who raises chickens and collects only the dung, never the eggs. The Buddha wanted people to study and then give up evil in body, speech and mind and develop goodness in deeds, speech and thoughts.
The eightfold path, he says, is found in this very body, with the mind as the one who follows it. The scriptures teach only about body, speech and mind; defilements are born there and die there when known. One who studies without practising is like a ladle in a soup pot, never tasting the soup, never knowing the taste of freedom.