Being with Ajahn, for me, it's... so many things he said.
One thing he said, I think I've recorded it, and I've got a quote on that and put it in my book.
It's going to be a quote in my book.
He said to me, so it wasn't to any of you, and some of the things, sometimes he would talk to me for a little bit, because he said, oh, I can talk to you in Thai.
Because he knows it's hard to talk to you, he can't give you too much.
But at one point, he said to me, he said,
Noah.
Think of the Buddha.
All the perfections for four uncountable eons and 100,000 great eons that he developed.
He could have had anything he wanted.
And he didn't want anything.
And it just hit me.
This was Nibbita, I think.
Where there arises the dispassion.
He said,
Think of the Buddha.
Whatever he had wanted, if he had wanted to be the ruler of the universe, he could have been.
Whatever he wanted.
He didn't want anything.
Not one thing.
And then he used this quote, Nothing is worth claiming.
No dhamma is worth claiming.
And that really hit me.
It was like,
I mean, it's an obvious thing to say, but it really, you go back to your opinion and think, really, you know, what is, how could I cling to something?
Look at the Buddha.
He could have had anything and yet he didn't cling.
The things that I wish for, that I want for, nothing compared to the wonder, the power, the pleasure that he could have had.
And he threw it all away.
He gave it all up.
So that was something that was really quite a wonderful way of putting it.
Because, you know, the feeling you get from Ajahn when he says that is that, you know, he's actually, this is something he understands and experiences himself.
We don't know, we can't say what someone else's attainment is, but this is a guy who, he really means what he says.
It's like, when you hear it said from someone who is
who's there and who really experiences these things for himself.
Because the teaching he gives is quite simple to me.
It's the same thing again and again, and yet it's exactly what people need to know and need to hear.
And you hear it from him, someone who actually means it and actually knows it.
It's quite different from someone just repeating it.
So I was really happy, and another really great happiness was the fact that all of you got a chance.
I was able to bring people to Ajahn Chah again and to have them do a course.
It's part of passing this legacy on, because he's not going to be around forever.
When he's gone, all we're going to have is stories like, oh, you never had a chance to practice with Ajahn Chah.
I'm so happy that I kind of pushed that you go and then in the end I had to come.
Oh yeah, you pushed me to go.
Yeah, yeah.
It worked out really well.
Everything worked out really well for this trip.
Everything has worked out so incredibly well.
I mean, you guys may not realize it, Verizon, if you haven't followed me around, but you probably realize it if you haven't.
How horrible do things go most of the time?
And so how wonderful it's been.
We got to Jomtong and it was like, oh, not this again.
No rooms, even though they promised us rooms.
No reporting with that Jan, even though we said we wanted to come to do a meditation.
And I just sat in the office and I started joking about it.
I said, yeah, this is a great birthday present.
Thanks.
Happy birthday.
let's just sit and complain gee thanks happy birthday to me and so we sat around for a while and then we finally got to talk to it and just everything fell into place and except for the temperature the forecast was it was supposed to rain the whole time we were there and it kept supposing to rain and pretending to rain and there was lots of thunder that was the funny part jomtong's great for
Lots of thunder and no rain.
The Buddha talked about this.
There are people who thunder and don't rain.
This is people who talk and don't practice.
There are people who rain and don't thunder.
This is people who practice but don't teach.
There are people who neither rain nor thunder.
People who neither practice nor teach.
And then there are people who rain and thunder.
People who practice and teach.
So the weather in Jomtonga is like that.
It actually does thunder a lot in Jomtonga.
And everything has worked well.
And we got to Chiang Mai, or we were going to Chiang Mai, and everything fell into place to meet up with my supporters in Chiang Mai, and we had lunch with them.
And they offered to bring me to Wat Thamboa Thang, and I was kind of concerned, is it going to be okay going there?
What's the monk going to be like, the new monk that's there?
And he was like, oh, I don't even want, you know, I didn't even want to be here.
Please come and help, you know.
He wants to go back to his own town, so he wants me to come help.
And he was so happy that we came and that maybe I'll be able to help him to build a place.
He said, because I know if Pranola comes, he's got lots of students, and he can help me to build this.
He'll be able to take care of it, to help to build this place up.
When you're there, you could use the opportunity to spend time in this village.
That's just funny.
The idea is that we could do a switch, right?
For a month or something.
Anyway, that's a lot.
There are a couple of insights that I wanted to share and I don't know how much to get into.
But two things that really hit me during the course.
One is this idea of happiness.
And I don't know if I can put it cogently.
We're a little bit tired because we've been really
worn out this past, moving around and traveling and so on.
First of all, that happiness, when we talk about happiness, because this is, happiness is really the key and it's what brings you to the meditation practice.
Happiness is what we expect to get out of the practice, right?
But the curious thing, when you talk about happiness as being a thing, then suddenly you're talking about
an experience.
We're talking about ultimate reality.
When we say this is happiness, like this water is happiness, or a place is happiness, or a person makes us happy, or food makes us happy, or our addictions make us happy, what we're actually talking about is ultimate reality.
We think that
there is an experience and that is happiness.
We have this view and this idea of an entity or a situation that makes us happy.
But the truth is, we're talking about individual experiences that have to do with some happiness and some desire and some experiences and so on.
And when you actually look at those things, none of those ultimate realities are truly happiness.
So the curious thing is, in the end,
you don't find happiness.
And happiness is not what you get in practice.
What you get is the realization that this thing that we call happiness is not actually real.
It's made up of things that are not happiness, that are just experiences.
They're not good, they're not bad.
Whatever little pleasure you get out of what you call happiness is just a moment.
It's a brief moment in that experience, in that situation.
And in the end you see that it's quite worthless.
It's something that once you cling to, it causes you suffering.
If you're looking for it, once you start to create these desires and addictions, it causes you suffering.
And this is why the Buddha said, There is no happiness besides peace.
Parang means, some people translate it as there's no happiness without peace, but that's not the meaning.
Parang means, besides peace, nothing can be called happiness.
Because there is nothing that could be called happiness.
You look at this, could this be happiness?
No, it's there and it's gone.
What does that mean to you, to call it happiness?
What you think of as happiness is not that moment, because that's meaningless.
When you think of happiness as, oh, watermelon or steak or sex or family or friends or something, you think of these as happiness.
And the reason why it's not satisfying and why it leads us to addiction and dissatisfaction is because it's not real.
The things that we're talking about are momentary experiences.
It was something that was very visceral in that regard that I wanted to share.
And there was one other thing.
And certainly the Buddha thing was something I wanted to share.
Now you've all had a teaching from Ajahn Thaw.
And a pair of braids there.
Okay, so that's a lot of talking from us on our practice the past ten days.
So thank you all for sharing with us.
Let's continue on with questions maybe.