Right Practice - Steady Practice¹

Therefore, understand the importance of sati, practice constantly. Right practice is steady practice. Whether standing, walking, sitting or reclining the practice must continue. This means that practice, meditation, is done in the mind, not in the body. If our mind has zeal, is conscientious and ardent, then there will be awareness. The mind is the important thing. The mind is that which supervises everything we do.

When we understand properly then we practice properly. When we practice properly we don't go astray. Even if we only do a little that is still all right. For example, when you finish sitting in meditation, remind yourselves that you are not actually finishing meditation, you are simply changing postures. Your mind is still composed. Whether standing, walking, sitting or reclining you have sati with you. If you have this kind of awareness you can maintain your internal practice. In the evening when you sit again the practice continues uninterrupted. Your effort is unbroken, allowing the mind to attain calm.

This is called steady practice. Whether we are talking or doing other things we should try to make the practice continuous. If our mind has recollection and self-awareness continuously, our practice will naturally develop, it will gradually come together. The mind will find peace, because it will know what is right and what is wrong. It will see what is happening within us and realize peace.

If we are to develop sīla (moral restraint) or samādhi (firmness of mind) we must first have paññā (wisdom). Some people think that they'll develop moral restraint one year, samādhi the next year and the year after that they'll develop wisdom. They think these three things are separate. They think that this year they will develop, but if the mind is not firm (samādhi), how can they do it? If there is no understanding (paññā), how can they do it? Without samādhi or paññā, sīla will be sloppy.

In fact these three come together at the same point. When we have sīla we have samādhi, when we have samādhi we have paññā. They are all one, like a mango. Whether it's small or fully grown, it's still a mango. When it's ripe it's still the same mango. If we think in simple terms like this we can see it more easily. We don't have to learn a lot of things, just to know these things, to know our practice.

When it comes to meditation some people don't get what they want, so they just give up, saying they don't yet have the merit to practice meditation. They can do bad things, they have that sort of talent, but they don't have the talent to do good. They throw it in, saying they don't have a good enough foundation. This is the way people are, they side with their defilements.

Now that you have this chance to practice, please understand that whether you find it difficult or easy to develop samādhi is entirely up to you, not the samādhi. If it is difficult, it is because you are practicing wrongly. In our practice we must have ''right view'' (sammā-ditthi). If our view is right then everything else is right: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right recollection, right concentration - the Eightfold Path. When there is right view all the other factors will follow on.

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.