About This Teaching
Where is the Buddha? Ajahn Chah says he is still alive: go inside and find him in anicca, uncertainty. If one met a stream-enterer, a once-returner, a non-returner or an arahant and bowed to them, each would say the same thing, that nothing is sure. After more than 40 years as a monk, this is all he says he found, together with patient endurance. Whenever the mind grabs something as certain, he advises telling it "not sure".
He describes his own practice as neither relying on scriptures nor ignoring them, and the end of practice as a point where going forward, coming back and stopping all no longer apply. He then points to nature: mango or jackfruit trees planted close together bend away from the bigger tree, with no one telling them to. Likewise, by investigating craving we grow away from it. Liking and disliking are both suffering and both uncertain; inclining toward the Buddha brings them to an end.