File: still flowing water ajahn chah.png (2.62 MB, 900x1387)

2.62 MB PNG

>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.

https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/StillFlowingWater/