About This Teaching
Like spices combining in a curry, sila, samadhi and panna (virtue, concentration and wisdom) were for Ajahn Chah three aspects of one process, his way of teaching the Noble Eightfold Path. Meditation at Wat Pah Pong was embedded in a whole way of life of celibacy, forest seclusion, sense restraint and contentment.
Ajahn Chah rejected the idea that training the mind alone would make speech and action follow. Like making a smooth wooden pillar, one first cuts the tree and removes the rough roots and bark: work through the coarse to reach the refined. Keeping sila means catching the outlaw and making him village headman, turning the intention to transgress into the intention to refrain.
As a coconut palm draws plain water from the earth and turns it sweet, so the coarse beginnings of the path are gradually refined into one true path.