A Useful Practice
Recently I started to reread Ajahn Chah’s talks in Food for the Heart (Massachusetts, 2002). This book helped me a great deal when, years ago, I began the practice of zazen and my study of Buddhism. I had read the whole book, which is quite lengthy, but as, just recently, I reread the first chapter, it seemed to me to encapsulate the whole of Chah’s teaching.
According to Ajahn Chah, the human mind is “intrinsically pure. Within itself, it’s already peaceful.” That is, the mind is intrinsically in an enlightened state, which Chah calls “Original Mind.” This seems equivalent to Suzuki Roshi’s “Big Mind.”
With most of us, the peace of this mind is beyond our awareness. However, there is a solution for this. Chah says, “If we know fully the true nature of sense impressions, we will be unmoved.”
“The true nature of sense impressions” might be said to be the theme of the rest of Ajahn Chah’s book. By sense impressions, he means the Buddhist skandhas, which comprise the entire activity of body and mind that we assume to be ourselves.
When I began to work with Chah’s teaching, I put into practice especially one part of it. This was the advice to observe the activity of the skandhas and to ask myself whether I had any control over it. For example, if I felt pressure on the soles of my feet as I walked on floor or pavement, did I ask to feel that. Or if I felt sad, I was to ask whether I had invited that feeling to come into my mind. Or if I found this or that thought in my mind, I was to ask whether I invited that thought to come to me before it did. Or if I liked or disliked something or someone, did I ask for that emotion before it came. And so on through the welter of thoughts, feelings, and emotions that I experienced during the day. The answer to such questions, as I put them to myself, was always “no.”
The purpose of this practice is for the observer eventually to realize that he or she has no instrumentality in the workings of his own mind and emotions. In other words, he sees that his “I” or personal self has no relevance at all respective to the course of his life. In time, he simply drops his belief in his “I,” self, or ego, and from then on he rests in Original Mind.
To end with Ajahn Chah’s words, “Our practice is simply to see the ‘Original Mind.’” “Just this is the aim of all this difficult practice we put ourselves through.”