To give up doing evil is more important than making merit.
Interpretation
Choosing to stop doing bad deeds is more valuable than performing good deeds.
This quote by Ajahn Chah emphasizes the importance of ceasing harmful actions rather than simply focusing on accumulating positive contributions. It suggests that the moral and ethical responsibility to refrain from causing harm is fundamental to spiritual and personal growth, and that positive actions will follow when one prioritizes the intention to do no harm.
In practice
In a discussion on personal growth, one might quote this to highlight the importance of ethical behavior over just performing good acts.
Once you understand non-self, then the burden of life is gone. You'll be at peace with the world. When we see beyond self, we no longer cling to happiness and we can truly be happy. Learn to let go without struggle, simply let go, to be just as you are - no holding on, no attachment, free.
When sitting in meditation, say, "That's not my business!" with every thought that comes by.
If you haven't wept deeply, you haven't begun to meditate.
To observe and watch one's own mind is something really interesting. The untrained mind will run and follow its old habit patterns. Because it has not been trained and taught, it will get lost in all kinds of stories and issues. Therefore we have to train our mind. The meditation practice in Buddhism is all about training one's own mind.
Meditation is like a single log of wood. Insight and investigation are one end of the log; calm and concentration are the other end. If you lift up the whole log, both sides come up at once. Which is concentration and which is insight? Just this mind.
The heart is just the heart; thoughts and feelings are just thoughts and feelings. Let things be just as they are.
One of the pervasive risks that we face in the information age, as I wrote in the introduction, is that even if the amount of knowledge in the world is increasing, the gap between what we know and what we think we know may be widening.
Learn from the negative as well as the positive, from the failures as well as the successes.
We live in a world which respects power above all things. Power, intelligently directed, can lead to more freedom. Unwisely directed, it can be a dreadful, destructive force.
I prayed like a man walking in a forest at night, feeling his way with his hands, at each step fearing to fall into pure bottomlessness forever. Prayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart.
Pray to God that your attachment to such transitory things as wealth, name, and creature comforts may become less and less every day.
Let every man be master of his time.
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