About This Teaching
Ajahn Chah explains how sīla, samādhi and paññā grow together from the same root. Consistent restraint of body and speech is sīla; steadiness in that restraint is samādhi; the faculty that sorts right from wrong among mind objects is paññā. Early on, practitioners may become anxious, fault-finding and obsessed with correctness, but he says it is better to practise too much than too little. Like a coconut palm drawing up plain ground water and turning it sweet, the coarse beginnings of the path are gradually refined.
As attention turns inward, one comes to contemplate the mind and its objects. The original mind, he says, is like a flag on a pole or a leaf on a tree, still unless moved by the wind; in itself it holds no loving or hating. Happiness and suffering are just states, with no owner. Taking criticism to heart is like stabbing oneself, while hearing it as mere sound is like being scolded in a language one doesn't understand. He closes with someone stepping across a stream with one foot on each bank, who knows the far side exists yet steps back to keep practising.