Mindfulness, Precepts and Crashing in the Same Car

by Ajahn Jayasaro

Unknown Binding

About the author

After joining Ajahn Sumedho's community as an anagārika in 1978 he travelled to Thailand to ordain at Wat Nong Pah Pong in 1979.He received full ordination by Ajahn Chah in 1980 and was abbot of Wat Pah Nanachat from 1997 to 2002.

Jayasāro has been involved in educating Thai people about the ivory trade. In 2018, Jayasāro authored a biography of Ajahn Chah entitled Stillness Flowing.

In 2019, Jayasāro was honoured with a royal title from Thailand's King Vajiralongkorn (Rama X).

On 9 March 2020, Jayasāro was granted Thai citizenship by royal decree.

He currently lives alone in a one monk monastery in Thailand.

Reviews

[Emkoshka · Rating 3 out of 5]

A brief transcription of a speech on achieving mindfulness through practising the moral precepts of Buddhism, which was a good reminder to me that being good and doing good are steps on the path to enlightenment. The closing anecdote about a woman who kills the evil in her son's killer with loving kindness was moving and powerful.

[Yuhan · Rating 3 out of 5]

p3
The profound teaching is whatever you can't do yet. It's not something that's always intellectually difficult, but it's profound if you haven't yet penetrated it, you haven't reached it. Indeed, it's often the simplest and most straightforward teachings which are the most effective and produce the most change in our lives. This is a point to observe about the Dhamma--that the study and the practice of Dhamma change you. It leads somewhere. In Pali, it is called 'opanayiko' that is, it leads 'onwards'--or it leads 'inwards'--depending on how you translate the term.

p8
It's quite natural for most of us to consider the world divided into two things; the things we like, and the things we don't like. Although we may not like to consider it so bluntly, a great deal of our lives even as adults is taken up with trying to maximize the experience of things we like, and trying to minimize contact with things or people that we don't like. Our sense of ease in life is often measured by our success in that endeavour.
...But in the end it's a frustrating way to live our lives, because even if we are experiencing a lot of things that we like, the intensity of pleasure that we receive from them is not stable. Anything that is pleasant is subject to the law of diminishing returns. You get a certain amount of pleasure out of it the first time, and then after a few times you don't get so much pleasure, so you have to increase the stimulus to get the same amount of pleasure.

p11
Of course, when separation does take place, often it's a shock. People say, I just never thought that would happen.' Why not? Why is it so impossible to imagine? Every kind of separation takes place all the time, all around us.
...The idea in Buddhism is opening up to the truth of things, both the side we find pleasant and the side that we find unpleasant. The moment we start to censor our experience, when we say, 'I only want to think about this,' or, 'that just makes me anxious, that just makes me fearful', you are creating paper tigers in your mind and you give energy to those negative qualities.

p13
And this is the weird thing--intention, thought, and feeling arise first, and the one who is thinking and feeling arises subsequent to the thought.