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Awareness Itself
Ajahn Fuang Jotiko (1915-1986) was a devoted student of Ajaan Lee‘s. After Ajaan Lee’s death, Ajaan Fuang continued on at Wat Asokaram, Ajaan Lee’s bustling monastery near Bangkok. A true forest monk at heart, Ajaan Fuang left Wat Asokaram in 1965 in search of greater solitude more conducive to meditation, and ultimately ended up at Wat Dhammasathit in Rayong province, where he lived as abbot until his death in 1986.
This book is a compilation of Ajahn Fuang Jotiko teachings collected and translated by his student Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Ajaan Fuang was a man of few words who spoke in response to circumstances: If the circumstances warranted it, he could give long, detailed explanations.
This book is a compilation of Ajahn Fuang Jotiko teachings collected and translated by his student Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Ajaan Fuang was a man of few words who spoke in response to circumstances: If the circumstances warranted it, he could give long, detailed explanations.
- GenresBuddhismMeditation
59 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 15, 2023
It was very interesting to read Ajaan Fuang's teachings. We get a glimpse of how he taught his students, as many of his teachings are in response to students' questions. Although I don't believe everything he said, his wisdom and advice is definitely impactful.
Here are some quotes that I liked:
“When they flew over a village, though, some children playing below saw them, and started shouting, “Look! Swans carrying a turtle! Swans carrying a turtle!” This spoiled everything for the turtle, until he thought of a smart retort: “No. The turtle’s carrying the swans!” But as soon as he opened his mouth to say it, he fell straight to his death below.
The moral of the story: “Watch out for your mouth when you enter high places.”
“When people advertise how good they are, they’re really advertising how stupid they are. If something’s really good, you don’t have to advertise.”
“If he didn’t want to give his life story, they said, could he please at least teach them some Dhamma. This is a request no monk can refuse, so Ajaan Fuang told them to close their eyes and meditate on the word buddho — awake. They turned on their tape recorders and then sat in meditation, waiting for a Dhamma talk, and this was what they heard:
“That’s today’s Dhamma: two words — bud- and dho. Now if you can’t keep these two words in mind, it would be a waste of time to teach you anything else.”
“Before you say anything, ask yourself whether it’s necessary or not. If it’s not, don’t say it. This is the first step in training the mind — for if you can’t have any control over your mouth, how can you expect to have any control over your mind?”
“Litter” is Thai slang for idle chatter, and once Ajaan Fuang used the term to dramatic effect. It happened one evening when he was teaching in Bangkok. Three young women who were long-time friends happened to show up together at the building where he was teaching, but instead of joining the group that was already meditating, they found themselves an out-of-the-way corner to catch up on the latest gossip. As they were busy talking, they didn’t notice that Ajaan Fuang had gotten up to stretch his legs and was walking right past them, with an unlit cigarette in his mouth and a box of matches in his hand. He stopped for a second, lit a match, and instead of lighting his cigarette, tossed the lit match into the middle of their group. Immediately they jumped up, and one of them said, “Than Phaw! Why did you do that? You just barely missed me!” “I saw a pile of litter there,” he answered, “and felt I should set fire to it.”
“One day Ajaan Fuang overheard two students talking, one of them asking a question and the other starting his answer with, “Well, it seems to me...” Immediately Ajaan Fuang cut him off: “If you don’t really know, say you don’t know, and leave it at that. Why go spreading your ignorance around?”
“We each have two ears and one mouth — which shows that we should give more time to listening, and less to speaking.”
“When you eat, keep your mind on your breath, and contemplate why you’re eating. If you’re eating simply for the taste of the food, then what you eat can harm you.”
“If you try to straighten out the world without really straightening yourself out first, your own inner goodness will eventually break down, and then where will you be? You won’t be able to do anybody — yourself or anyone else — any good at all.”
“We all want happiness, but for the most part we aren’t interested in building the causes for happiness. All we want are the results. But if we don’t take an interest in the causes, how are the results going to come our way?”
“You charge a high price for your blood, don’t you? The mosquito asks for a drop, and you take its life in exchange.”
“The Buddha forbade alcohol because most people lose their mindfulness when they drink it, right? But if you drink mindfully it’s okay, isn’t it, Than Phaw?” “If you were really mindful,” he answered, “you wouldn’t drink it in the first place.”
“Ajaan Fuang pointed to the people sitting around them and asked, “This group isn’t asking you to drink. Why don’t you give in to their group pressure instead?”
“A student asked permission to keep a notebook of Ajaan Fuang’s teachings, but he refused, saying, “Is that the sort of person you are? — always carrying food around in your pocket for fear there’ll be nothing to eat?” Then he explained: “If you jot everything down, you’ll feel it’s okay to forget what you’ve written, because it’s all there in your notebook. The end result is that all the Dhamma will be in your notebook, and none in your heart.”
“If you don’t put it into practice, what you’ve heard will never become real inside you.”
“If you want results from your practice, you have to make up your mind that the Buddha is your one and only refuge. Don’t go taking refuge in anything else.”
“The truth lies within you. If you’re true in what you do, you’ll meet with the truth. If you’re not, you’ll meet only with things that are fake and imitation.”
“one of the group complained, “How could anyone be so disrespectful as to do something like this?” But Ajaan Fuang told her, “Don’t criticize whoever did it. If they hadn’t thrown the trash here, we wouldn’t have the opportunity to earn the merit that comes from cleaning it up.”
“Another woman once telephoned the main office at Wat Makut, saying that she was going to provide a meal for monks at her house and wanted to invite Ajaan Fuang to the meal because she had heard that he was a Noble Disciple. When the invitation was conveyed to him, he refused it, saying, “Is her rice so special that only Noble Disciples can get to eat it?”
“Whatever you do, always think of your teacher. If you forget your teacher, you’re cutting yourself off at the root.”
“People are all alike, but not at all alike, but in the final analysis, all alike.”
“If you want to judge other people, judge them by their intentions.”
“Nothing comes from focusing on the faults of others. You can get more done by looking at your own faults instead.”
“When you meet with obstacles, you have to put up a fight. If you give up easily, you’ll end up giving up all your life long.”
“Other people criticize us and then forget all about it, but we take it and keep thinking about it. It’s as if they spit out some food and we pick it up and eat it. When that’s the case, who’s being stupid?”
“It was up to the student to figure things out for himself. As Ajaan Fuang said, “If it gets to the point where I have to tell you, it shows that we’re still strangers.”
“If you want to learn, you have to think like a thief and figure out how to steal your knowledge. What this means is that you can’t just wait for the teacher to explain everything. You have to notice for yourself what he does, and why — for everything he does has its reason.”
“Don’t think that the small disciplinary rules aren’t important. As Ajaan Mun once said, logs have never gotten into people’s eyes, but fine sawdust can — and it can blind you.”
“On fasting as an aid to meditation: “For some people it works well, for others it works just the opposite — the more they fast, the stronger their defilements get. It’s not the case that when you starve the body you starve the defilements, because defilements don’t come from the body. They come from the mind.”
“All you have to study is the meditation-word, buddho. As for any other fields you might study, they never come to an end, and can’t take you beyond suffering. But once you’re come to the end of buddho, that’s when you’ll come to true happiness.”
“You can’t plan the way your practice is going to go. The mind has its own steps and stages, and you have to let the practice follow in line with them. That’s the only way you’ll get genuine results.”
“Don’t make a journal of your meditation experiences. If you do, you’ll start meditating in order to have this or that thing happen, so that you can write it down in your journal. And as a result, you’ll end up with nothing but the things you’ve fabricated.”
“Persistence comes from conviction, discernment from being mindful.”
“When you start out sitting in meditation, it takes a long time for the mind to settle down, but as soon as the session is over you get right up and throw it away. It’s like climbing a ladder slowly, step by step, to the second floor, and then jumping out the window.”
“Meditating isn’t a matter of making the mind empty, you know. The mind has to have work to do. If you make it empty, then anything — good or bad — can pop into it. It’s like leaving the front door to your home open. Anything at all can come strolling right in.”
“When the meditation goes well, don’t get excited. When it doesn’t go well, don’t get depressed. Simply be observant to see why it’s good, why it’s bad. If you can be observant like this, it won’t be long before your meditation becomes a skill.”
“You don’t meditate to ‘get’ anything. You meditate to let go.”
“It’s the same with the mind. You have to find something it likes, so make the breath as comfortable as you can, to the point where it feels good throughout the whole body. The mind likes comfort, so it’ll come of its own free will, and then it’s easy to catch hold of it.”
“I sat in concentration and found that if I let the breath follow its natural course, it felt a lot more comfortable, and the mind wouldn’t run away from it.”
“Why do you teach people to look at the breath? What is there to look at? There’s just in and out. How are they going to gain discernment from looking at just that?’ He answered, ‘If that’s all they see, that’s all they’ll get.”
“Goodwill isn’t a thing, like money, that the more you give, the less you have. It’s more like having a lit candle in your hand. This person asks to light his candle from yours, that person asks to light hers. The more candles you light, the brighter it is for everyone -- including you.”
“People for the most part don’t like the truth. They prefer make-believe instead.”
“What’s there to feel mistreated about? You’re the one that’s swayed under the events that have hit you, that’s all. Contemplate what’s happening and you’ll see that the mind is something separate. Events come passing in and then go passing by. So why be influenced by them? Keep your mind right at the simple awareness that these things come and soon they’ll be gone, so why follow them?”
“To be aware means to be aware as soon as defilement arises, to see defilement and not act under its power.”
“For insight to arise, you have to use your own strategies. You can’t use other people’s strategies and expect to get the same results they did.”
“The mind can think good thoughts, so why can’t it think bad thoughts? Whatever it’s thinking, just watch it — but if the thoughts are bad, make sure you don’t act in line with them.”
“The Buddha’s own search was for this refuge. He taught all of his disciples to take refuge in themselves, for we can depend on others only for a little while. Other people merely show us the way. But if you want what’s really true and good in life, you have to depend on yourself — teach yourself, train yourself, depend on yourself in every way. Your sufferings come eventually from you. Your happiness, eventually from you.”
“The heart when it’s released is like the fire element in the air. When fire goes out, it isn’t annihilated anywhere. It still permeates space, simply that it doesn’t latch onto any kindling, so it doesn’t appear. When the mind ‘goes out’ from defilement, it’s still there, but when new kindling comes, it doesn’t catch fire, doesn’t latch on — not even to itself. That’s what’s called release.”
“There are seven basic steps:
1. Start out with three or seven long in-and-out breaths, thinking bud- with the in-breath, and dho with the out. Keep the meditation syllable as long as the breath.
2. Be clearly aware of each in-and-out breath.
3. Observe the breath as it goes in and out, noticing “whether it’s comfortable or uncomfortable, broad or narrow, obstructed or free-flowing, fast or slow, short or long, warm or cool. If the breath doesn’t feel comfortable, change it until it does. For instance, if breathing in long and out long is uncomfortable, try breathing in short and out short. As soon as you find that your breathing feels comfortable, let this comfortable breath sensation spread to the different parts of the body.
To begin with, inhale the breath sensation at the base of the skull and let it flow all the way down the spine. Then, if you are male, let it spread down your right leg to the sole of your foot, to the ends of your toes, and out into the air. Inhale the breath sensation at the base of the skull again and let it spread down your spine, down your left leg to the ends of your toes, and out into the air. (If you are female, begin with the left side first, because the male and female nervous systems are different.)
Then let the breath from the base of the skull spread down over both shoulders, past your elbows and wrists, to the tips of your fingers, and out into the air.
Let the breath at the base of the throat spread down the central nerve at the front of the body, past the lungs and liver, all the way down to the bladder and colon.
Inhale the breath right at the middle of the chest and let it go all the way down to your intestines.
Let all these breath sensations spread so that they connect and flow together, and you’ll feel a greatly improved sense of well-being.
4. Learn four ways of adjusting the breath:
a. in long and out long,
b. in long and out short,
c. in short and out long,
d. in short and out short.
Breathe whichever way is most comfortable for you. Or, better yet, learn to breathe comfortably all four ways, because your physical condition and your breath are always changing.
5. Become acquainted with the bases or focal points for the mind — the resting spots of the breath — and center your awareness on whichever one seems most comfortable. A few of these bases are:
a. the tip of the nose,
b. the middle of the head,
c. the palate,
d. the base of the throat,
e. the breastbone (the tip of the sternum),
f. the navel (or a point just above it).
If you suffer from frequent headaches or nervous problems, don’t focus on any spot above the base of the throat. And don’t try to force the breath or put yourself into a trance. Breathe freely and naturally. Let the mind be at ease with the breath — but not to the point where it slips away.
6. Spread your awareness — your sense of conscious feeling — throughout the entire body.
7. Unite the breath sensations throughout the body, letting them flow together comfortably, keeping your awareness as broad as possible. Once you are fully aware of the aspects of the breath you already know in your body, you’ll come to know all sorts of other aspects as well. The breath, by its nature, has many facets: breath sensations flowing in the nerves, those flowing around and about the nerves, those spreading from the nerves to every pore. Beneficial breath sensations and harmful ones are mixed together by their very nature.”
Here are some quotes that I liked:
“When they flew over a village, though, some children playing below saw them, and started shouting, “Look! Swans carrying a turtle! Swans carrying a turtle!” This spoiled everything for the turtle, until he thought of a smart retort: “No. The turtle’s carrying the swans!” But as soon as he opened his mouth to say it, he fell straight to his death below.
The moral of the story: “Watch out for your mouth when you enter high places.”
“When people advertise how good they are, they’re really advertising how stupid they are. If something’s really good, you don’t have to advertise.”
“If he didn’t want to give his life story, they said, could he please at least teach them some Dhamma. This is a request no monk can refuse, so Ajaan Fuang told them to close their eyes and meditate on the word buddho — awake. They turned on their tape recorders and then sat in meditation, waiting for a Dhamma talk, and this was what they heard:
“That’s today’s Dhamma: two words — bud- and dho. Now if you can’t keep these two words in mind, it would be a waste of time to teach you anything else.”
“Before you say anything, ask yourself whether it’s necessary or not. If it’s not, don’t say it. This is the first step in training the mind — for if you can’t have any control over your mouth, how can you expect to have any control over your mind?”
“Litter” is Thai slang for idle chatter, and once Ajaan Fuang used the term to dramatic effect. It happened one evening when he was teaching in Bangkok. Three young women who were long-time friends happened to show up together at the building where he was teaching, but instead of joining the group that was already meditating, they found themselves an out-of-the-way corner to catch up on the latest gossip. As they were busy talking, they didn’t notice that Ajaan Fuang had gotten up to stretch his legs and was walking right past them, with an unlit cigarette in his mouth and a box of matches in his hand. He stopped for a second, lit a match, and instead of lighting his cigarette, tossed the lit match into the middle of their group. Immediately they jumped up, and one of them said, “Than Phaw! Why did you do that? You just barely missed me!” “I saw a pile of litter there,” he answered, “and felt I should set fire to it.”
“One day Ajaan Fuang overheard two students talking, one of them asking a question and the other starting his answer with, “Well, it seems to me...” Immediately Ajaan Fuang cut him off: “If you don’t really know, say you don’t know, and leave it at that. Why go spreading your ignorance around?”
“We each have two ears and one mouth — which shows that we should give more time to listening, and less to speaking.”
“When you eat, keep your mind on your breath, and contemplate why you’re eating. If you’re eating simply for the taste of the food, then what you eat can harm you.”
“If you try to straighten out the world without really straightening yourself out first, your own inner goodness will eventually break down, and then where will you be? You won’t be able to do anybody — yourself or anyone else — any good at all.”
“We all want happiness, but for the most part we aren’t interested in building the causes for happiness. All we want are the results. But if we don’t take an interest in the causes, how are the results going to come our way?”
“You charge a high price for your blood, don’t you? The mosquito asks for a drop, and you take its life in exchange.”
“The Buddha forbade alcohol because most people lose their mindfulness when they drink it, right? But if you drink mindfully it’s okay, isn’t it, Than Phaw?” “If you were really mindful,” he answered, “you wouldn’t drink it in the first place.”
“Ajaan Fuang pointed to the people sitting around them and asked, “This group isn’t asking you to drink. Why don’t you give in to their group pressure instead?”
“A student asked permission to keep a notebook of Ajaan Fuang’s teachings, but he refused, saying, “Is that the sort of person you are? — always carrying food around in your pocket for fear there’ll be nothing to eat?” Then he explained: “If you jot everything down, you’ll feel it’s okay to forget what you’ve written, because it’s all there in your notebook. The end result is that all the Dhamma will be in your notebook, and none in your heart.”
“If you don’t put it into practice, what you’ve heard will never become real inside you.”
“If you want results from your practice, you have to make up your mind that the Buddha is your one and only refuge. Don’t go taking refuge in anything else.”
“The truth lies within you. If you’re true in what you do, you’ll meet with the truth. If you’re not, you’ll meet only with things that are fake and imitation.”
“one of the group complained, “How could anyone be so disrespectful as to do something like this?” But Ajaan Fuang told her, “Don’t criticize whoever did it. If they hadn’t thrown the trash here, we wouldn’t have the opportunity to earn the merit that comes from cleaning it up.”
“Another woman once telephoned the main office at Wat Makut, saying that she was going to provide a meal for monks at her house and wanted to invite Ajaan Fuang to the meal because she had heard that he was a Noble Disciple. When the invitation was conveyed to him, he refused it, saying, “Is her rice so special that only Noble Disciples can get to eat it?”
“Whatever you do, always think of your teacher. If you forget your teacher, you’re cutting yourself off at the root.”
“People are all alike, but not at all alike, but in the final analysis, all alike.”
“If you want to judge other people, judge them by their intentions.”
“Nothing comes from focusing on the faults of others. You can get more done by looking at your own faults instead.”
“When you meet with obstacles, you have to put up a fight. If you give up easily, you’ll end up giving up all your life long.”
“Other people criticize us and then forget all about it, but we take it and keep thinking about it. It’s as if they spit out some food and we pick it up and eat it. When that’s the case, who’s being stupid?”
“It was up to the student to figure things out for himself. As Ajaan Fuang said, “If it gets to the point where I have to tell you, it shows that we’re still strangers.”
“If you want to learn, you have to think like a thief and figure out how to steal your knowledge. What this means is that you can’t just wait for the teacher to explain everything. You have to notice for yourself what he does, and why — for everything he does has its reason.”
“Don’t think that the small disciplinary rules aren’t important. As Ajaan Mun once said, logs have never gotten into people’s eyes, but fine sawdust can — and it can blind you.”
“On fasting as an aid to meditation: “For some people it works well, for others it works just the opposite — the more they fast, the stronger their defilements get. It’s not the case that when you starve the body you starve the defilements, because defilements don’t come from the body. They come from the mind.”
“All you have to study is the meditation-word, buddho. As for any other fields you might study, they never come to an end, and can’t take you beyond suffering. But once you’re come to the end of buddho, that’s when you’ll come to true happiness.”
“You can’t plan the way your practice is going to go. The mind has its own steps and stages, and you have to let the practice follow in line with them. That’s the only way you’ll get genuine results.”
“Don’t make a journal of your meditation experiences. If you do, you’ll start meditating in order to have this or that thing happen, so that you can write it down in your journal. And as a result, you’ll end up with nothing but the things you’ve fabricated.”
“Persistence comes from conviction, discernment from being mindful.”
“When you start out sitting in meditation, it takes a long time for the mind to settle down, but as soon as the session is over you get right up and throw it away. It’s like climbing a ladder slowly, step by step, to the second floor, and then jumping out the window.”
“Meditating isn’t a matter of making the mind empty, you know. The mind has to have work to do. If you make it empty, then anything — good or bad — can pop into it. It’s like leaving the front door to your home open. Anything at all can come strolling right in.”
“When the meditation goes well, don’t get excited. When it doesn’t go well, don’t get depressed. Simply be observant to see why it’s good, why it’s bad. If you can be observant like this, it won’t be long before your meditation becomes a skill.”
“You don’t meditate to ‘get’ anything. You meditate to let go.”
“It’s the same with the mind. You have to find something it likes, so make the breath as comfortable as you can, to the point where it feels good throughout the whole body. The mind likes comfort, so it’ll come of its own free will, and then it’s easy to catch hold of it.”
“I sat in concentration and found that if I let the breath follow its natural course, it felt a lot more comfortable, and the mind wouldn’t run away from it.”
“Why do you teach people to look at the breath? What is there to look at? There’s just in and out. How are they going to gain discernment from looking at just that?’ He answered, ‘If that’s all they see, that’s all they’ll get.”
“Goodwill isn’t a thing, like money, that the more you give, the less you have. It’s more like having a lit candle in your hand. This person asks to light his candle from yours, that person asks to light hers. The more candles you light, the brighter it is for everyone -- including you.”
“People for the most part don’t like the truth. They prefer make-believe instead.”
“What’s there to feel mistreated about? You’re the one that’s swayed under the events that have hit you, that’s all. Contemplate what’s happening and you’ll see that the mind is something separate. Events come passing in and then go passing by. So why be influenced by them? Keep your mind right at the simple awareness that these things come and soon they’ll be gone, so why follow them?”
“To be aware means to be aware as soon as defilement arises, to see defilement and not act under its power.”
“For insight to arise, you have to use your own strategies. You can’t use other people’s strategies and expect to get the same results they did.”
“The mind can think good thoughts, so why can’t it think bad thoughts? Whatever it’s thinking, just watch it — but if the thoughts are bad, make sure you don’t act in line with them.”
“The Buddha’s own search was for this refuge. He taught all of his disciples to take refuge in themselves, for we can depend on others only for a little while. Other people merely show us the way. But if you want what’s really true and good in life, you have to depend on yourself — teach yourself, train yourself, depend on yourself in every way. Your sufferings come eventually from you. Your happiness, eventually from you.”
“The heart when it’s released is like the fire element in the air. When fire goes out, it isn’t annihilated anywhere. It still permeates space, simply that it doesn’t latch onto any kindling, so it doesn’t appear. When the mind ‘goes out’ from defilement, it’s still there, but when new kindling comes, it doesn’t catch fire, doesn’t latch on — not even to itself. That’s what’s called release.”
“There are seven basic steps:
1. Start out with three or seven long in-and-out breaths, thinking bud- with the in-breath, and dho with the out. Keep the meditation syllable as long as the breath.
2. Be clearly aware of each in-and-out breath.
3. Observe the breath as it goes in and out, noticing “whether it’s comfortable or uncomfortable, broad or narrow, obstructed or free-flowing, fast or slow, short or long, warm or cool. If the breath doesn’t feel comfortable, change it until it does. For instance, if breathing in long and out long is uncomfortable, try breathing in short and out short. As soon as you find that your breathing feels comfortable, let this comfortable breath sensation spread to the different parts of the body.
To begin with, inhale the breath sensation at the base of the skull and let it flow all the way down the spine. Then, if you are male, let it spread down your right leg to the sole of your foot, to the ends of your toes, and out into the air. Inhale the breath sensation at the base of the skull again and let it spread down your spine, down your left leg to the ends of your toes, and out into the air. (If you are female, begin with the left side first, because the male and female nervous systems are different.)
Then let the breath from the base of the skull spread down over both shoulders, past your elbows and wrists, to the tips of your fingers, and out into the air.
Let the breath at the base of the throat spread down the central nerve at the front of the body, past the lungs and liver, all the way down to the bladder and colon.
Inhale the breath right at the middle of the chest and let it go all the way down to your intestines.
Let all these breath sensations spread so that they connect and flow together, and you’ll feel a greatly improved sense of well-being.
4. Learn four ways of adjusting the breath:
a. in long and out long,
b. in long and out short,
c. in short and out long,
d. in short and out short.
Breathe whichever way is most comfortable for you. Or, better yet, learn to breathe comfortably all four ways, because your physical condition and your breath are always changing.
5. Become acquainted with the bases or focal points for the mind — the resting spots of the breath — and center your awareness on whichever one seems most comfortable. A few of these bases are:
a. the tip of the nose,
b. the middle of the head,
c. the palate,
d. the base of the throat,
e. the breastbone (the tip of the sternum),
f. the navel (or a point just above it).
If you suffer from frequent headaches or nervous problems, don’t focus on any spot above the base of the throat. And don’t try to force the breath or put yourself into a trance. Breathe freely and naturally. Let the mind be at ease with the breath — but not to the point where it slips away.
6. Spread your awareness — your sense of conscious feeling — throughout the entire body.
7. Unite the breath sensations throughout the body, letting them flow together comfortably, keeping your awareness as broad as possible. Once you are fully aware of the aspects of the breath you already know in your body, you’ll come to know all sorts of other aspects as well. The breath, by its nature, has many facets: breath sensations flowing in the nerves, those flowing around and about the nerves, those spreading from the nerves to every pore. Beneficial breath sensations and harmful ones are mixed together by their very nature.”
January 4, 2015
We all want happiness but for the most part we are not interested in building the CAUSES for happiness. All we want are the RESULTS. But if we don't take interest in the causes, how are the results going to come our way?
You don't meditate to get anything, you meditate to let go.
The truth lies within YOU. If you're true in what you do, you'll meet with the truth. If you are not, you will meet only with things that are fake and imitation.
If you want to judge people, judge them by their intentions.
When people say something is good, it's THEIR IDEA OF GOOD. But is it always what's really good FOR YOU?
You don't meditate to get anything, you meditate to let go.
The truth lies within YOU. If you're true in what you do, you'll meet with the truth. If you are not, you will meet only with things that are fake and imitation.
If you want to judge people, judge them by their intentions.
When people say something is good, it's THEIR IDEA OF GOOD. But is it always what's really good FOR YOU?
August 10, 2025
a collection of sayings by Thai forest monk Ajaan Fuang Jotiko.
it's probably good for beginners. it's not that bad, had some funny stories and funny quotables.
it's also short, which is nice.
i think maybe the title should be changed to "sayings.." because "awareness" is only the main topic of like 2 chapters, while the rest of the chapters usually don't mention it.
it's probably good for beginners. it's not that bad, had some funny stories and funny quotables.
it's also short, which is nice.
i think maybe the title should be changed to "sayings.." because "awareness" is only the main topic of like 2 chapters, while the rest of the chapters usually don't mention it.
April 17, 2019
There's some wise instruction in here, but overall I'm glad Ajaan Fuang isn't my teacher, because he comes off as stern, judgmental, and manipulative. I've had enough of that from being close to narcissists and narcissistic sociopaths.
September 23, 2019
Il libro stesso mi ha portato a chiedermi quanto sia fondamentalmente utile questa pratica. Mi riferisco al leggere "raccolte di pensieri", citazioni e simili.
Se non sbaglio (e il fatto che possa sbagliare dopo aver finito il libro da una settimana dice già molto di suo, anche se forse dice più di me che del libro) uno dei tanti pensieri di Ajaan era proprio che è inutile dare ad uno studente tutti i consigli che gli serviranno in tutta la vita in un colpo solo perché senza contesto, in una situazione sbagliata, potrebbero fare più male che bene.
Ho sottolineato 3/4 di libro, ho riflettuto su molti pensieri, mi son trovato in disaccordo con altri (la parte della pizza mi tocca sul vivo e mi fa ancora dire "seh vabé"), ma mi chiederò quanto mi resterà "dentro" tutto questo bellissimo bagaglio.
Felicissimo di sentire altri pareri :)
Se non sbaglio (e il fatto che possa sbagliare dopo aver finito il libro da una settimana dice già molto di suo, anche se forse dice più di me che del libro) uno dei tanti pensieri di Ajaan era proprio che è inutile dare ad uno studente tutti i consigli che gli serviranno in tutta la vita in un colpo solo perché senza contesto, in una situazione sbagliata, potrebbero fare più male che bene.
Ho sottolineato 3/4 di libro, ho riflettuto su molti pensieri, mi son trovato in disaccordo con altri (la parte della pizza mi tocca sul vivo e mi fa ancora dire "seh vabé"), ma mi chiederò quanto mi resterà "dentro" tutto questo bellissimo bagaglio.
Felicissimo di sentire altri pareri :)
January 7, 2025
A sharp dose of hard-core dhamma. Collection of pithy sayings from Thanissaro Bhikku's teacher. Strong emphasis on right view, breath meditation, and ethical conduct.
I think the book could have been better with a commentary and/or summary of the teachings within each chapter. I also thought the disparaging comments on marriage were generalisations and unfair on how beneficial partnerships can be spiritually and practically.
I think the book could have been better with a commentary and/or summary of the teachings within each chapter. I also thought the disparaging comments on marriage were generalisations and unfair on how beneficial partnerships can be spiritually and practically.
July 16, 2017
A series of teachings on meditation, with some very good and relatable examples from a teacher I hadn't heard of before, of Ajahn Lee's lineage. I'll try to find more of Fuang's wisdom if I can because he is very direct, full of citta, clear, compassionate, measured.
July 21, 2018
Composed mostly of brief and deeply insightful quotes and stories, this reads almost like a book of Theravada koans (although differing from koans in the merciful lack of obscurity).
June 26, 2014
Essenzialmente è una raccolta di citazioni tratte dagli insegnamenti di un saggio monaco buddista. Una buona lettura se siete interessati all'argomento ed una lettura molto utile se state affrontando seriamente una pratica meditativa, a patto di soprassedere su alcuni elementi folcloristici (visioni, karma, vite passate, fantasmi, ecc).
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