..续本文上一页ach grow in patience and understanding."
Achaan Chah encourages his students to share what they learn. "When you have learned the truth, you will be able to help others, sometimes with words but mostly through your being. As for conversing about Dharma, I am not so adept at it. Whoever wants to know me should live with me. If you stay for a long time, you will see. I myself wandered as a forest monk for many years. I did not teach-I practiced and listened to what the masters said. This is important advice: when you listen, really listen. I do not know what else ”to say."
He had said enough to last us a long time.
What Is The Best Kind Of Meditation
Achaan Chah is surrounded by visitors most of the day-students, farmers, politicians, generals, pilgrims, devotees. They ask for blessings, seek advice, question him, praise him, challenge him, blame him, and bring him a thousand problems to solve. He teaches this constant stream of people without rest. One day he was heard to remark how he had learned as much Dharma from receiving them as from any other practice.
A Wonderful Meal
Some Students asked Achaan Chah why he so rarely talks about Nirvana but teaches instead about wisdom in daily life. Other teachers speak so often of attaining Nirvana, of its special bliss and its importance in their practice.
Achaan Chah answered that some people will savor a good meal and then go on to praise its merits to everyone they meet. Others will eat and savour the same meal but, once through, will feel no need to go around telling others of a meal already eaten.
Achaan Chah”s Cottage
Achaan Chah says he does not dream any more. He sleeps only a few hours a night, upstairs in a small one-room cottage. Underneath this cottage, which is on wooden pillars in Thai fashion, is an open floor where he receives visitors.
Often these visitors bring him gifts, not just food or robes but also exquisite ancient statues and carefully made folk art depicting Buddhist themes. One Western monk, a collector and appreciator of Asian art, was excited by the possibility of seeing such lovely objects when he was assigned to help with the daily cleaning of Achaan Chah”s cottage. He went upstairs, unlocked the door, and found only a bare bed and a mosquito net. He discovered that Achaan Chah gives these gifts away as fast as he gets them. He does not cling to anything.
Holy Ceremonies and Hot Days
Since the time of the Buddha himself, monks have been called upon to perform ceremonies, to make blessings, or to bring comfort in times of difficulties in the lives of ”lay disciples. The Buddha himself is said to have employed the tradition of soothing the hearts of his disciples with holy water and blessings.
Because the life of study and ceremony has taken the place of genuine practice for most monks in Thailand, Achaan Chah usually jokes about these ceremonies as persions on the Path. Nevertheless, he will also use ceremonies when they are helpful. One very hot afternoon he had been invited to town to give a Dharma talk and a blessing ceremony for some devoted lay students. After the preliminary chanting and Dharma discourse, Achaan Chah proceeded to chant over a brass bowl of water connected by a string through the hands of the eight monks accompanying him (remnants of the ancient Hindu sacred thread) to a large image of the Buddha in meditation. The chanting over the water was completed with an offering of candles and incense, and Achaan Chah stood up with a palm leaf to sprinkle this water as a blessing on the house and on those who came to hear the Dharma.
One young Western monk in the party was growing impatient in the heat and yet more impatient with the ceremony. "Why do you bother with such obviously useless ceremonies like this when th…
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