A random quote from Ajahn Chah’s A Still Forest Pool, available in print or online. This book is so full of compact and poetic genius, I could quote the whole thing on this blog. I literally opened it and pointed my finger…
If someone curses us and we have no feelings of self, the incident ends with the spoken words, and we do not suffer. If unpleasant feelings arise, we should let them stop there, realizing that the feelings are not us. “He hates me, he troubles me, he is my enemy.” A bhikkhu does not think like this, nor does he hold views of pride or comparison. If we do not stand up in the line of fire, we do not get shot; if there is no one to receive it, the letter is sent back. Moving gracefully through the world not caught in evaluating each event, a bikkhu becomes serene. This is the way of Nirvana, empty and free.
Investigate the five aggregates, then; make a clean forest. You will be a different person. Those who understand emptiness and practice accordingly are few, but they come to know the greatest joy. Why not try it? You can abolish the thieves in your heart and set everything right.
“not caught in evaluating each event”. I like that.
Your comments are on the mark. What is a good’ talk?Generally pleope mistake good’ with enjoyable’ or interesting’, which is a natural enough outlook for the general public. Skillful’ is a better word than good’ in many ways, and is a concept Buddhists are generally aware of (it is a translation of kusala’) but it might seem slightly odd if one is not conversant with the terminology.The idea behind writing this post is that pleope have different expectations of Dhamma Teaching. For example, you can’t really expect concise information and content from a Forest Dhamma Talk, nor a focus on practise from an academic lecture. One thing when I was a new monk we were all made to go and attend the talks of the Abbot. I could not understand a word of it, but was still expected to go. Somehow, I got just as much benefit from those talks as I did later when I could follow some of the Thai.