Book Review

Food for the Heart: The Collected Teachings of Ajahn Chah
  By Ajahn Chah
  Publisher: Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2002
  ISBN: 978-08617-13233

Food for the Heart is a collection of talks by the Venerable Ajahn Chah (1918-1992), a well-known teacher of the Thai Forest Tradition of Buddhism. Spiritual seekers came to his monastery from all parts of Thailand, and later from all around the world, to hear his talks and to practise under his guidance. Occasionally, someone had a tape recorder on hand, and some of the talks taped in this way became the source of this book.

In an introduction, Ajahn Amaro, a disciple of Ajahn Chah, explains certain aspects of Buddhism and the Thai Forest Tradition important for understanding the talks. He also provides background on Ajahn Chah’s manner of teaching. His teaching was always done “in the reality of the moment,” with spontaneity, humour, and “heart-breaking compassion.” The more sustained of his talks were termed “Dharma-talks” (or “Dhamma-talks,” using the Pali term). Yet even these were quite unprepared:

Not one syllable of the Dhamma teachings printed here was plotted out before he started speaking. This was an extremely important principle, he felt, as the job of the teacher is to get out of the way and to let the Dhamma arise according to the needs of the moment – “If it’s not alive to the present, it’s not Dhamma,” he would say.

The people who gathered to listen to Ajahn Chah came from all walks of life. Monks and novices following the strict discipline of the monastery were often joined by peasants from nearby villages, nuns from Buddhist convents, and an array of visitors, some highly educated, some unlettered. Reading these talks, it is helpful to note the audience to which a particular talk was given. For example, the talk titled “Dhamma Fighting,” which deals with sensual temptations, was addressed to monks between the ages of 25 and 30 struggling with the discipline of celibacy. The talk titled “Making the Heart Good,” about overcoming superstitious beliefs, was given to a group of peasants who believed that they collected spiritual merit by travelling to the monastery.

When speaking to simple local people, Ajahn Chah would use vivid, down-to-earth images from their daily life. “If we were to dye a piece of cloth,” he said, “we’d have to wash it first … If the cloth is dirty, dying it makes it come out even worse than before. Think about it. Dying a dirty old rag, would that look good?” He said that running around the countryside trying to collect spiritual merit was “like the housewife washing the dishes with a scowl on her face. She’s so intent on cleaning the dishes, she doesn’t realize her own mind’s unclean!” To make the point that spiritual realization depends on developing one’s inner capacity, he said:

Suppose there was a hole, and there was something at the bottom of it. Now anyone who reached into the hole and couldn’t touch the bottom would say the hole was too deep. A hundred or a thousand people might put their hands down that hole, and they’d all say the hole was too deep. Not one would say their arm was too short!

Although Ajahn Chah taught within a monastic tradition, where practitioners withdrew from society to live and practise in a remote forest, he said that laypersons with families and worldly responsibilities could also develop spiritually. “If you really understand the practice of Dhamma, then no matter what position or profession you hold in life, be it a teacher, doctor, civil servant, or whatever, you can practice the Dhamma every minute of the day.”

Ajahn Chah insisted that spiritual practice is not confined to “meditation and listening to Dhamma-talks.” People think that these “are ‘the practice.’”

That’s true too, but these are only the outer forms of practice. The real practise takes place when the mind encounters a sense object. That’s the place to practice, where sense contact occurs. When people say things we don’t like, there is resentment; if they say things we like, we experience pleasure … If we just run around chasing after happiness and running away from suffering, we can practise until the day we die and never see the Dhamma.

Ajahn Chah described “sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touch and mind objects” as potential traps that “catch us and bind us fast. If you attach to the senses, you’re the same as a fish caught on a hook. When the fisherman comes, struggle all you want, you can’t get loose.”

Ajahn Chah taught that through disciplined practice and careful observation we can come to know the impermanence and unreality of all sense impressions:

If we understand according to this reality, then the senses cease to be substantial. They are just sensations that come and go. In truth there isn’t any “thing.” If there isn’t any “thing,” then there is no “we” and no “they.” If there is no “we,” then there is nothing belonging to “us.”

This realization is the beginning of the escape from suffering:

It’s in this way the suffering is extinguished. There isn’t anybody to acquire suffering, so who is it that suffers?… Attachment to these feelings gives rise to the concept of self or ego, and thoughts of “we” and “they” continually manifest. Here is where it all begins, and then it carries us around in its never-ending cycle.

But we cannot defeat attachment simply by avoiding sense impressions that disturb us:

Escaping from suffering … doesn’t mean running away from whatever suffering arises. By doing that you just carry your suffering with you … The teachings say that wherever a problem arises, it must be settled right there. Where suffering lies is right where non-suffering will arise; [suffering] ceases at the place where it arises.

Everyone must do this spiritual practice himself, for himself. In fact, Ajahn Chah goes so far as to say that “we are our own teachers: if we are wise, every personal problem, event, and aspect of nature will instruct us; if we are foolish, not even having the Buddha before us explaining everything would make any real impression.” Then how do we develop wisdom? “The Buddha can show you the way to develop wisdom, but how much of it you develop depends on the individual.”

Walking the path to reach Buddhadhamma is something each one of us must do individually, for no one can do it for us … Teachers can only point out the direction of the Path. Whether or not we ourselves walk the Path by practising, and thereby reap the fruits of practice, is strictly up to each one of us.

In another talk he points out the difference between merely believing the teachings and actually practising them:

The Dhamma is paccattam – you know it for yourself. To know for yourself means to practise for yourself … Even the teaching I have given you today is completely useless in itself. It is worth hearing, but if you were to believe it just because I said so, you wouldn’t be using it properly. If you believed me completely, you’d be foolish. Put the teachings into practise for yourself, see it within yourself, do it yourself – this is much more useful. You will then know the taste of Dhamma.

_{Book reviews express the opinions of the reviewers and not of the publisher.}