The Riding Mower      

Let’s suppose you live in a house that sits on two acres of grass.  You have a very advanced riding mower that is self-propelled and has a laser feature that measures the height of the grass.  Being self-propelled, the mower goes where it goes no matter whether you have other preferences.  When mowing your vast lawn, you can just sit on the mower and think your thoughts or read a book, and the mower does the job all by itself.  

According to Buddhism, if I am correct, this is a passable image of a person’s life.  Usually a person’s life is governed by his or her thoughts, likes and dislikes, and bodily sensations, all of which are included in the term “skandhas.”  Ajahn Chah’s Food for the Heart (2002) offers an extremely clear explanation of the workings of the skandhas, saying that “they come and go of their own: there is no ‘self’ that is running things”(48).   

In life, we are forever on that riding mower that is self-propelled.  We may think that we run our lives, but we don’t.  In any event, that is my understanding of Buddhism.