16/01/2026
https://www.facebook.com/100081776657646/posts/867236146012266/
In Memory of Luang Pu Chah Subhaddo
17 June 1918 ~ 16 January 1992
34th Death Anniversary
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"𝙄𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙙 𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙫𝙚𝙨 𝙞𝙩𝙨 𝙥𝙧𝙞𝙢𝙖𝙡 𝙣𝙖𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚, 𝙣𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜'𝙨 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙨𝙪𝙧𝙚. 𝙏𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚'𝙨 𝙣𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙗𝙪𝙩 𝙩𝙖𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙗𝙞𝙧𝙩𝙝 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙙𝙮𝙞𝙣𝙜, 𝙦𝙪𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙬𝙖𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜, 𝙨𝙪𝙛𝙛𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙡𝙖𝙘𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜-- 𝙣𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙗𝙪𝙩 𝙙𝙞𝙛𝙛𝙞𝙘𝙪𝙡𝙩𝙞𝙚𝙨 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙖 𝙡𝙤𝙣𝙜, 𝙡𝙤𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙚."
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Our mind. This is where we begin to fathom the nature of our mind. Our mind has no issues. It’s like a scrap of cloth or a flag that’s fastened to the end of a pole and just stays there: Nothing happens. Or like a leaf left to its own nature: It stays still; nothing happens. The fact that the leaf flutters is because of something else: the wind. The nature of the leaf itself is that it stays still and doesn’t do anything to anybody. The fact that it moves is because something else comes and makes contact. When the wind makes contact, the leaf flutters back and forth.
It’s the same with the nature of our mind. There’s no love, no hatred, no blaming of anyone. It stays as it is in that way—a condition that’s really pure, clear, and clean. It stays in peace, with no pleasure, no pain, no feelings at all. That’s the genuine condition of the mind.
The reason we practice is to explore inwardly, explore inwardly, explore inwardly, to contemplate inwardly until we reach the primal mind: the primal mind that’s called the pure mind. The pure mind is the mind without any issues. No preoccupations are passing by.
In other words, it doesn’t go running after preoccupations. It doesn’t criticize this or that, doesn’t get pleasure in this way or that. It’s not happy about this thing or sad about that. And yet the mind is always aware. It knows what’s going on.
When the mind is in this state, then when preoccupations come blowing through—good, bad, whatever the preoccupations: When they come blowing or cogitating in, the mind is aware of them but stays as it is. It doesn’t have any issues. It doesn’t waver.
Why? Because it’s aware of itself. It’s aware of itself. It’s constructed freedom within itself. It’s reached its own condition. How has it been able to reconstruct its primal condition? Because the knower has contemplated in a subtle way to see that all things are simply manifestations of properties and elements. There’s nobody doing anything to anybody.
As when pleasure or pain arises: When pleasure arises, it’s just pleasure, that’s all. When pain arises, it’s just pain, that’s all. It doesn’t have any owner. The mind doesn’t make itself the owner of pleasure, doesn’t make itself the owner of pain. It watches these things and sees that there’s nothing for it to take. They’re separate kinds of things, separate kinds of affairs. Pleasure is just pleasure, that’s all. Pain is just pain, that’s all. The mind is simply what knows these things.
Before, when there was a basis for greed, aversion, or delusion, the mind would take these things on as soon as it saw them. It would take on pleasure; it would take on pain. It went right into them to feed on them. “We” took pleasure and pain without stop. That’s a sign that the mind wasn’t aware of what it was doing. It wasn’t bright. It didn’t have any freedom. It went running after its preoccupations. A mind that runs after its preoccupations is a destitute mind.
When it gets a good preoccupation, it’s good along with it. When it gets a bad preoccupation, it’s bad along with it. It forgets itself, that its primal nature is something neither good nor bad. If the mind is good along with its preoccupations, that’s a deluded mind. When bad comes and it’s bad, too; when pain comes and it’s pained, too; when pleasure comes and it’s pleased, too, the mind turns into a world. Its preoccupations are a world. They’re stuck with the world. They give rise to pleasure, pain, good, bad—all kinds of things. And they’re all not for sure.
If the mind leaves its primal nature, nothing’s for sure. There’s nothing but taking birth and dying, quivering and wavering, suffering and lacking—nothing but difficulties for a long, long time. These things have no way of coming to closure. They’re all just part of the cycle. When we contemplate them with subtlety, we see that they have to keep on being the way they’ve been in the past.
As for the mind, it doesn’t have any issues. When it does have issues, it’s because we grasp onto things. Like the praise and blame of human beings: If someone says, “You’re evil,” why do you suffer? You suffer because you understand that they’re criticizing you. So you pick that up and put it in your heart.
The act of picking it up—knowing it and taking it on that way—is because you’re not wise to what it is, and so you catch hold of it. When you do that, it’s called stabbing yourself with clinging. When you’ve stabbed yourself, there’s becoming that gives rise to birth.
With some people’s words, if we don’t pay them any attention or take them on—when we leave them simply as sounds, that’s all—then there are no issues.
Say a Khmer person curses you: You hear it, but it’s just sounds—Khmer sounds, that’s all. They’re just sounds. When you don’t know their meaning, that they’re cursing you, the mind doesn’t take them on. In this way, you can be at your ease.
Or if Vietnamese or any other people of different languages curse you, all you hear are sounds. You’re at your ease because you don’t bring them in to stab the mind.
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From Still Flowing Water: Eight Dhamma Talks, by Venerable Ajahn Chah, and translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu.
https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/StillFlowingWater/
