Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Simple Path
JaySon
Florida Veteran
Source: http://www.dhammatalks.net/Books2/Ajahn_Chah_A_Still_Forest_Pool.htm
The heart of the path is SO simple. No need for long explanations. Give up clinging to love and hate, just rest with things as they are. That is all I do in my own practice.
Do not try to become anything. Do not make yourself into anything. Do not be a meditator. Do not become enlightened. When you sit, let it be. When you walk, let it be. Grasp at nothing. Resist nothing.
10
Comments
I really love this quote and will have to follow up on the link and book. Perfectly sums up my thoughts and ideal practice. Thanks for sharing
If only it were as simple as it sounds.......
I guess simple ain't always easy!
When I first read it, I didn't understand it at all. Now I have a hunch that I only barely understand it. I went from thinking it's brilliant stuff to living it (as best as I can).
It's really easy to identify when I realize I'm being a self-centered jackass. That's when I know I have really clung to something, more like welded to it. It's the hot iron of what I believe to be self that I know I need to let go of.
Then there will be times in my car when I'm driving down the road and I'll become aware of impermanence moment to moment. It's a more subtle experience. And I practice sensing it all flow without clinging to anything. It's actually pretty "pleasant" not grabbing at both what is pleasant and what is not pleasant.
But... I have decades of attachments and I fail most of the time.
It is @Bunks
but our conditioned mind is so complex...It's a honey trap of accumulated old habits, all designed to entice an ongoing sense of self importance ....
....and from what "I" gather, to experience Anatta is to experience a mind no longer tempted/swayed ....
It would seem that when one get down to the nitty gritty of the Dharma, the teachings all point to the cessation of self, the freeing up of the clinging aggregates that bring this self into being...
Self awareness steps onto the raft to cross the ocean of Samsara, but it's Awareness alone that steps off on the other side....
Thus have "I" heard.....but what would "I" know... "I" am just the messenger.....
Every platitude religious path is simple in essence. Is it skilful? In other words does it provide more than slogans and sound bites to convince the mind and heart? We know Buddhism does. Though many practice a simplified dharma, we usually require a range of stories, experiences, impacts, exposures, studies, practices etc as a permanent Middle Way.
http://www.buddhisma2z.com/content.php?id=381
The instant paths of mahamudra, chan and other fast paths
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shattari
... are best started with, then abandoned if not workable as quickly as possible ...
I think he was being ironic, there...
Like @Bunks, simple but not easy as it sounds. I guess that is Samsara. However, at least we all did start at some starting points following the Buddha's path, so that is first simple or not step we did in the path :-).
A Mi To Fo