The heart is just the heart; thoughts and feelings are just thoughts and feelings. Let things be just as they are.
Interpretation
Acceptance of emotions and thoughts without judgment leads to inner peace.
This quote by Ajahn Chah emphasizes the importance of accepting our feelings and thoughts as they are, without labeling them as good or bad. It conveys a profound sense of peace that comes from allowing ourselves to experience emotions fully, while recognizing that they are just aspects of our human experience, not definitive truths about our identity.
In practice
In a meditation workshop, to encourage participants to accept their thoughts.
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.
Happiness and suffering do not depend on being poor or rich, they depend on having the right or wrong understanding in our mind.
Quickness is the essence of the war.
The art of life, of a poet's life, is, not having anything to do, to do something.
There's a schizoid quality to our relationship with animals, in which sentiment and brutality exist side by side. Half the dogs in America will receive Christmas presents this year, yet few of us pause to consider the miserable life of the pig - an animal easily as intelligent as a dog - that becomes the Christmas ham.
You say 'I' and you are proud of this word. But greater than this- although you will not believe in it - is your body and its great intelligence, which does not say 'I' but performs 'I'.
The early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the Church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles o popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.
By Jove the stranger and the poor are sent, and what to those we give, to Jove is lent.
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