About This Teaching
In Seattle, Ajahn Chah's first public talk in America surprised listeners by dwelling on sila rather than meditation or emptiness, though one attendee later came to see how accurate he was. He warned that there were too many meditation teachers and few people really meditating, and that teachers not free of craving would indulge their students' desires.
He told of a seeker in the Buddha's time who kept comparing teachers until his doubts multiplied; the Buddha told him the more he listened the more he would doubt, and to investigate body and mind in the present instead. Wisdom, Ajahn Chah said, never comes from much knowledge or from jumping between methods. Asked about Zen's advice to live naturally, he replied that living by laziness or sleepiness would leave people as monkeys, not humans; the Buddha taught going against the grain of greed, anger and delusion.