165. We must learn to let go of conditions and not try to oppose or resist them. And yet we plead with them to comply with our wishes. We look for all sorts of means to organize them or make a deal with them. If the body gets sick and is in pain, we don’t want it to be so, so we look for various sutras to chant. We don’t want the body to be in pain. We want to control it. These sutras become some form of mystical ceremony, getting us even more entangled in clinging. This is because we chant them in order toward off illness, to prolong life and so on. Actually the Buddha gave us these teachings in order to help us know the truth of the body, so that we can let go and give up our longings. but we end up chanting them to increase our delusion.

166. Know your own body, heart, and mind. Be content with little. Don’t be attached to the teachings, Don’t go and hold onto emotions.

167. Some people are afraid of generously. They feel that they will be exploited or oppressed. In cultivating generously, we are only oppressing our true nature to express itself and become lighter and freer.

168. If you reach out and grab a fire in your neighbor's house, the fire will be hot. If you grab a fire in your own house, that, too will be hot. So don’t grab at anything that can burn you, no matter what or where it is.

169. People outside may call us mad to live in the forest like this, sitting like statuses. But how do they live? They laugh, they cry, they are so caught up that at times they kill themselves or one another out of greed and hatred. Who are the mad ones?

170. More than merely teaching people, Ajahn Chah trained them by creating a general environment and specific situation where they could learn about themselves, HE would say things like, "Of what I teach you, you understand maybe 15 %," or "He's been a monk for live years, so he understands 5 %." A junior mink said in response to the latter, "So I must have 1% since I've been here one year." "No" was Ajahn Chah's reply. "The first four years you have no percent, then the fifth year, you have 5%."

171. One of Ajahn Chah's disciple was once asked if he was ever going to disrobe, if he was going to die in the yellow robes. The disciple said that it was hard to think about, and that although he had no plans to disrobe, he couldn't really decide that he never would.  When he looked into it. He said, his thoughts seemed meaningless. Ajahn Chah then replied by saying. "That they are meaningless is the real Dhamma." 

172. When someone asked Ajahn Chah why there was so much crime in Thailand. A Buddhist country. Or why Indochina was such a mess, he said. "Those aren't Buddhists who are doing those unwholesome things. That isn't Buddhism doing those things. Those are people doing those things. Buddha never taught anything like that."

173. Once a visitor asked Ajahn Chah if he was an arahant. HE said, "I am like a tee in a forest. Birds come to the tree, hey sit on it's branched and eat its fruit. To the birds the fruit may be sweet or sour or whatever. But the tree doesn't know anything about it. The birds say sweet or they say sour, but from the tree's point of view, this is just the chattering of birds."

174. Someone commented, "I can observe desire and aversion I my mind, but it's hard to observe delusion." " You're riding on a horse and asking where the horse is?"  was Ajahn Chah 's reply.

175. Some people become monks out of faith but then trample on the teaching s of the Buddha. They don’t now themselves better. Those who really practice are few these days, for there are too many obstacles to overcome. But it doesn't die, then make it good.