Ajahn Chah

Training this Mind

a field of purple flowers with trees in the background

A Dhammatalk by Ajahn Chah. This talk was previously printed as a different translation under the title ‘About this Mind’.

Training this mind… actually there’s nothing much to this mind. It’s simply radiant in and of itself. It’s naturally peaceful. Why the mind doesn’t feel peaceful right now is because it gets lost in its own moods. There’s nothing to mind itself. It simply abides in its natural state, that’s all. That sometimes the mind feels peaceful and other times not peaceful is because it has been tricked by these moods. The untrained mind lacks wisdom. It’s foolish. Moods come and trick it into feeling pleasure one minute and suffering the next. Happiness then sadness. But the natural state of a person’s mind isn’t one of happiness or sadness. This experience of happiness and sadness is not the actual mind itself, but just these moods which have tricked it. The mind gets lost, carried away by these moods with no idea what’s happening. And as a result, we experience pleasure and pain accordingly, because the mind has not been trained yet. It still isn’t very clever. And we go on thinking that it’s our mind which is suffering or our mind which is happy, when actually it’s just lost in its various moods.

The point is that really this mind of ours is naturally peaceful. It’s still and calm like a leaf that is not being blown about by the wind. But if the wind blows then it flutters. It does that because of the wind. And so with the mind it’s because of these moods – getting caught up with thoughts. If the mind didn’t get lost in these moods it wouldn’t flutter about. If it understood the nature of thoughts it would just stay still. This is called the natural state of the mind. And why we have come to practice now is to see the mind in this original state. We think that the mind itself is actually pleasurable or peaceful. But really the mind has not created any real pleasure or pain. These thoughts have come and tricked it and it has got caught up in them. So we really have to come and train our minds in order to grow in wisdom. So that we understand the true nature of thoughts rather than just following them blindly.

The mind is naturally peaceful. It’s in order to understand just this much that we have come together to do this difficult practice of meditation.

The original text Training this Mind can be found at ajahnchah.org

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About Ajahn Chah

The Venerable Ajahn Chah Subhaddo (June 17, 1918 - January 16, 1992) was an influential meditation teacher within Buddhism and the founder of two great monasteries in the Thai Buddhist forest tradition.

He was respected and loved in his own country as a man of great wisdom, and was instrumental in establishing Theravāda Buddhism in the West. Starting in 1979 with the founding of Cittaviveka (better known as Chithurst Buddhist Monastery) in Great Britain, the Thai Buddhist foresttradition of Ajahn Chah has spread throughout Europe, the U.S. and the British Community.

Ajahn Chah's Dhamma talks have been recorded and translated into several languages. He was known for his simple and clear presentation of the Dhamma, which inspired both the local villagers and the highest social class in Bangkok.

He was also known as the master with the most Western monk-disciples, for which he opened a separate monastery (Wat Pah Nanachat) near his own monastery Wat Nong Pah Pong. More than a million people, including the Thai royal family, attended the funeral of Ajahn Chah in 1992. He left a legacy of Dhamma talks, pupils and monasteries behind him.

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