About This Teaching
Given to lay visitors during the 1981 rains retreat, this talk by Ajahn Chah begins with his own weakened body. Everything compounded declines, he says, like a lump of ice left in the sun that soon becomes a puddle of water. The body is only earth, water, fire and wind, yet people fear the skeleton hanging in the hall while sleeping and eating with one every day.
He explains why new monks are taught head hair, body hair, nails, teeth and skin: to see them as they really are. A large hall is only temporary shelter, shared with pigeons and geckos; the true refuge is one's own heart. Without wisdom, wealth and family become burdens. He jokes about tending a hundred buffaloes, the berry-picker who wastes the day saying "beats me," and the word household as a circle of confinement.
Recalling how he polished his teeth with charcoal as a buffalo boy, only to have sixteen pulled at once, he urges people to practise while young rather than wait for old age. Seeing suffering in advance is like spotting a snake on the path. He leaves them with homework: why was I born, and what can I take with me?