About This Teaching
The Buddha's teaching, Ajahn Pannavaddho says, deals first with one's own problem: a discontent that is always present, in small things and large. We only want something because we lack it, so wanting is itself a sign of dissatisfaction. People try to solve this by cause and effect but lack wisdom, so their remedies often make things worse, as any newspaper shows. Without wisdom they act on feeling, like a goat nibbling one plant after another to see what works.
Until wisdom develops, he advises taking up the precepts and the Buddha's teaching on trust, as a code of conduct that carries one through. Those who have gone that way confirm from experience that it works. Practised steadily, it brings calm, and from that calm one sees clearly what drives the restless searching in others. In time faith in the sense of belief is no longer needed, because one sees for oneself that the practice works and why.