The Training Of The Heart
Today, I woke up and read a passage from my copy of Bodhinyana, a collection of dhamma talks by the Venerable Ajahn Chah, whose ascetic forest monastery I visited when I stayed at Wat Pah Nanachat.
The book is tattered, its cover torn, its pages separated as the binder’s glue long ago had come undone. Perhaps it’s worn from being carried on my travels through many seasons and countries. Before it came into my possession, it had belonged to the monastery at Wat Suan Mohk, in Surat Thani, so its pages have been turned by other hands. It was gifted to me, by one of the monks on the day of my departure. We were all waiting in the main sala, where we took our meals, our silence, at last, broken. When I mentioned how much I loved that book, the monk, limping from the pain of meditation, brought me his copy. The taxi had arrived by now. In moments I would be leaving the lush coconut grove, its wild and common creatures, the sear, burning light, the river, the salas, the sound of bells, the shock of hibiscus.
Not that it was easy to stay there. I have tried and failed, I think, at writing these things as poems. One cannot write or read the dhamma; one has to experience, suffer, and abandon. That is all. Poems, too, are such phenomena. Poems make a space for thoughts and feelings, for images, which are, in their essence, the heart’s nature, and for which language might otherwise fail. Perhaps, among other purposes, they are a mirror for the heart’s cage. This might be knowledge, or it might be ignorance.
The practise of meditation is the training of the heart, and the emphasis of the Buddha’s teaching. Ajahn Chah writes about this in Bodhinyana:
“All conditions that are born in our heart, all conditions of our mind, all conditions of our body, are always in a state of change. The Buddha taught us not to cling to any of them. He taught his disciples to practise in order to detach from all conditions and not to practise in order to attain to any more.” (66)
