About This Teaching
When a senior monk confessed that he had fallen in love and wanted to disrobe, Ajahn Chah advised him to transform possessive sensual attachment into a wider love for living beings, like the care of a parent for a child or a teacher for disciples. Sensuality, he said, has to be washed out of love just as poison is soaked out of certain foods before they can be safely eaten. Ajahn Chah did not pretend sexual desire was easy to overcome. He urged the monk to contemplate the suffering bound up with desire and use wisdom to weaken its intoxicating power. Family life was described vividly as bringing responsibilities and constraints different from monastic freedom. Sensual pleasure is compared with the taste of food on the tongue—pleasant but brief—whereas a mind made calm and lucid through Dhamma can experience a deeper well-being. The teaching also rejects helplessness. If a monk falls in practice, he must learn to stand up again. Other forest monks had faced similar crises and used strenuous effort, contemplation of the body, fasting, and renewed meditation to regain balance. This is advice to someone who had already chosen monastic training. Ajahn Chah’s central message is to investigate desire rather than immediately surrender to it. Love purified of possession becomes broader and freer.