Right Practice - Steady Practice¹

So I've contended with many aspects of the Buddha's teaching in the past, but I couldn't really beat him. Nowadays I accept it. I accept that the many teachings of the Buddha are straight down the line, so I've taken those teachings and used them to train both myself and others.

The practice which is important is patipadā. What is patipadā? It is simply all our various activities, standing, walking, sitting, reclining and everything else. This is the patipadā of the body. Now the patipadā of the mind: how many times in the course of today have you felt low? How many times have you felt high? Have there been any noticeable feelings? We must know ourselves like this. Having seen those feelings can we let go? Whatever we can't yet let go of we must work with. When we see that we can't yet let go of some particular feeling we must take it and examine it with wisdom. Reason it out. Work with it. This is practice. For example, when you are feeling zealous, practice, and then when you feel lazy, try to continue the practice. If you can't continue at ''full speed'' then at least do half as much. Don't just waste the day away by being lazy and not practicing. Doing that will lead to disaster, it's not the way of a cultivator.

Now I've heard some people say, ''Oh, this year I was really in a bad way.''

''How come?''

''I was sick all year. I couldn't practice at all.''

Oh! If they don't practice when death is near when will they ever practice? If they're feeling well do you think they'll practice? No, they only get lost in happiness. If they're suffering they still don't practice, they get lost in that. I don't know when people think they're going to practice! They can only see that they're sick, in pain, almost dead from fever... that's right, bring it on heavy, that's where the practice is. When people are feeling happy it just goes to their heads and they get vain and conceited.

We must cultivate our practice. What this means is that whether you are happy or unhappy you must practice just the same. If you are feeling well you should practice, and if you are feeling sick you should also practice. Those who think, ''This year I couldn't practice at all, I was sick the whole time''... if these people are feeling well, they just walk around singing songs. This is wrong thinking, not right thinking. This is why the cultivators of the past have all maintained the steady training of the heart. If things are to go wrong, just let them be with the body, not in mind.

There was a time in my practice, after I had been practicing about five years, when I felt that living with others was a hindrance. I would sit in my kuti and try to meditate and people would keep coming by for a chat and disturbing me. I ran off to live by myself. I thought I couldn't practice with those people bothering me. I was fed up, so I went to live in a small, deserted monastery in the forest, near a small village. I stayed there alone, speaking to no-one - because there was nobody else to speak to.

After I'd been there about fifteen days the thought arose, ''Hmm. It would be good to have a novice or pa-kow⁷ here with me. He could help me out with some small jobs.'' I knew it would come up, and sure enough, there it was!

''Hey! You're a real character! You say you're fed up with your friends, fed up with your fellow monks and novices, and now you want a novice. What's this?''

''No,'' it says, ''I want a good novice.''

''There! Where are all the good people, can you find any? Where are you going to find a good person? In the whole monastery there were only no-good people. You must have been the only good person, to have run away like this!''

...You have to follow it up like this, follow up the tracks of your thoughts until you see...

Footnotes

...¹

Given at Wat Keuan to a group of university students who had taken temporary ordination, during the hot season of 1978

... Potiyahn²

One of the many branch monasteries of Ajahn Chah's main monastery, Wat Pah Pong.

... transcendence³

Concept (sammuti) refers to supposed or provisional reality, while transcendence (vimutti) refers to the liberation from attachment to or delusion within it.

...'s⁴

Māra: the Buddhist personification of evil, the Tempter, that force which opposes any attempts to develop goodness and virtue.

... another⁵

The play on words here between the Thai ''phadtibut'' (practice) and ''wibut'' (disaster) is lost in the English.

...attakilamathānuyogo⁶

These are the two extremes pointed out as wrong paths by the Buddha in his First Discourse. They are normally rendered as ''indulgence in sense pleasures'' and ''self-mortification.''

...pa-kow⁷

Pa-kow: an eight-precept postulant, who often lives with bhikkhus and, in addition to his own meditation practice, also helps them with certain services which bhikkhus are forbidden by the Vinaya from doing.