About This Teaching
During evening talks in London, Ajahn Chah reminded listeners that doubts about the Dhamma cannot be removed by study alone, since the Dhamma lies beyond language. Asked about samatha and vipassanā, he said they can be separated in theory but in practice are qualities that emerge as the mind matures, like one fruit that is unripe, ripening and ripe. Keeping precepts makes the mind clean, at ease, peaceful, and then wisdom arises.
The middle way, which he liked to call "just rightness", is found by recognising and letting go of the incorrect. He compared it to a pair of scales: tipped one way the buyer complains, the other way the seller; only when balanced is everyone satisfied. Grasping at the pleasant and rejecting the unpleasant is samudaya, the cause of suffering.
He stressed that Buddhist mindfulness is not merely dwelling in the present. A cat, goats and sheep have mindfulness, but not sammā sati, right mindfulness. True mindfulness knows right from wrong, abandons the wrong and cultivates the good, supported by sīla, samādhi and paññā.