About This Teaching
Ajahn Chah teaches that the noble ones found the truth in this very world, among deluded people, by looking where sense contact arises. Restraint does not mean refusing to see or hear; practitioners who run from things gain no wisdom, and the same problems return.
He describes restless monks who wander from mountaintop to seaside to forest, content for a few days and then bored, until they return with nothing and disrobe. This, he says, is not true disenchantment but a kind of wrong view.
By contrast, a monk who stays put, like an abbot facing an endless stream of problems, grows skilful through meeting and dealing with things. Living in a busy monastery may stir defilements, but it serves wisdom. When suffering arises one should ask who is suffering and why, and come to know it rather than flee.