The Four Great Elements and Self

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

Insight meditation (mindful.org)

"What was the Buddha’s advice on how to practice? He taught meditators to practice like the earth; practice like water; practice like fire; practice like wind.

 

"Practice like ‘old things,’ things we are already made of: the solid element of earth, the liquid element of water, the warming element of fire, the moving element of wind.

 

"If someone digs the earth, the earth is not bothered. It can be watered, shoveled, or tilled. Rotten things can be buried in it. But the earth will remain indifferent.

 

"Water can be boiled or frozen or used to wash anything dirty; it is not affected.

 

"Fire can burn beautiful and fragrant things or ugly and foul things; it doesn’t matter to fire.

 

"When wind blows, it blows on all sorts of things, fresh and rotten or beautiful and ugly, without concern.

 

"The Buddha used this analogy. The aggregation [material heap] that is us is merely the coming together of the elements of earth, water, fire, and wind. If we try to find an actual person in there, we can’t. There are only these collections of elements.

 

"But for all our lives, we never thought to separate them like this [analyze them as elements] to see what is really there. We have only thought, ‘This is me, that is mine.’ We have always seen everything in terms of a self, never seeing that there is merely [impersonal] earth, water, fire, and wind.

 

"But the Buddha teaches in this way. He talks [in ultimate terms expressed in the Abhidhamma] about the Four Elements and urges us to see [with penetrating insight] that this is what we are.

 

"There are earth, water, fire, and wind; there is no person here. Contemplate these Four Elements [or qualities of materiality, corporeality] to see that there is no being or individual, but only earth, water, fire, and wind."