About This Teaching
A spider spins its web in a convenient corner, then waits silently at the centre. When a fly touches the web, it pounces, wraps the insect in thread, stores it away and returns to stillness. Ajahn Chah offers this image as a complete picture of practice: the mind sits at the centre, surrounded by eye, ear, nose, tongue and body, and whenever a sense contact shakes the web, the mind knows it, examines it and returns to the centre.
Coming back to the centre means living with mindfulness and clear comprehension, alert and precise in everything. This is not a licence for carelessness about sitting and walking meditation, yet practice need not mean forcing meditation day and night; one does what one can according to one's strength.
Just as the spider binds its catch, the mind binds sense impressions with anicca, dukkha and anattā: impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and not-self. Seen this way, they become nourishment for the mind. Knowing these things are impermanent and not oneself, it would be foolish to chase them. When the mind sees this, it lets go, no longer attached to happiness or suffering, and practice keeps maturing wherever one is.