Words of Wisdom for September 29, 2025

Ajahn Chah would put the same “Where do you go?” question to people for a few months. As they got used to it, he would switch questions. Throughout his teaching career, he posed a number of different ones. The very last questions he came up with before his health deteriorated were in the form of a little series: “Have you ever seen still water?”
They would nod, “Yes, of course, we’ve seen still water before.” At the same time, they were probably saying inwardly, “Now that’s a pretty strange question.” But outwardly everyone was very respectful to Ajahn Chah, as he was one of Thailand’s great meditation masters.
Then he would ask, “Well then, have you ever seen flowing water?” And that also seemed a strange thing to ask. They’d respond, “Yes, we’ve seen flowing water.”
“So, did you ever see still, flowing water?” In Thai you would phrase that as nahm lai ning. “Have you ever seen nahm lai ning?”
“No. That we have never seen.”
He loved to get that bewilderment effect.
Ajahn Chah would then explain that the mind’s nature is still, yet it’s flowing. It’s flowing, yet it is still. He would use the word “citta” for the knowing mind, the mind of awareness. The citta itself is totally still. It has no movement; it is not related to all that arises and ceases. It is silent and spacious. Mind objects— sights, sounds, smell, taste, touch, thoughts, and emotions—flow through it. Problems arise because the clarity of the mind gets entangled with sense impressions. The untrained heart chases the delightful, runs away from the painful, and as a result, finds itself struggling, alienated, and miserable. By contemplating our own experience, we can make a clear distinction between the mind that knows (citta) and the sense impressions that flow through it. By refusing to get entangled with any sense impressions, we find refuge in that quality of stillness, silence, and spaciousness, which is the mind’s own nature. This policy of noninterference allows everything and is disturbed by nothing.

– Ajahn Amaro, Small Boat, Great Mountain, (Abhayagiri Monastic Foundation, 2003), 23 – 24.

May you be free from suffering and the causes of suffering!

All my best,

–Jerome