Ajahn Chah on letting go

Ajahn Chah (ajahnchah.org) via Ven. Sujato; Ellie Askew, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

Rural Thai rice farmer works his crops (Sasin Tipchai as Bugphai/flickr.com).

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The Buddha did not teach about the mind and its psychological factors so that we’d get attached to concepts. His sole intention was that we would recognize such phenomena as impermanent, unsatisfactory, and impersonal.

Then we can let go, lay them aside, be acutely aware and thus know them as they arise.

This mind/heart has already been conditioned: It’s been trained to turn away and spin out from a state of pure awareness. As it spins it creates conditioned-phenomena, which further influence the mind, And the proliferation (papanca) carries on.

The process gives birth to the good, the harmful, and everything else under the sun. The Buddha taught, Abandon it all.

Initially, however, we have to familiarize ourselves with the theory in order that we’ll be able to abandon it all at the subsequent stage. This is a natural process. The mind is just this way. Psychological factors are just this way.