About This Teaching
This biographical section tells how the young Ajahn Chah, wandering in northeast Thailand, was given a cracked bowl with no lid. He set out to weave a lid from vine strips, as he had seen boys weave hats while herding buffalo. Driven by craving, he worked day and night by torchlight and burned his hand, and while meditating his mind kept returning to the lid. In a drowsy moment he saw a vision of a great Buddha. The Buddha taught him that requisites are merely accessories of body and mind.
From this he drew a principle of training: do not hurry to finish anything. Do a little, put it down, and watch whether the mind is still turning around the unfinished work. He made work and rest separate, so that putting down the task in the mind became a practice of letting go. The account ends with further trouble over varnishing his iron bowl, which he lowered into a well to dry for over a month without success.