The Broken Glass You may say, "Don't break my glass!" But you can't prevent something breakable from breaking. If it doesn't break now, it'll break later on. If you don't break it, someone else will. If someone else doesn't break it, one of the chickens will! The Buddha says to accept th
Doing the Math The Dhamma is like doing math. There's multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction. If we can think in this way, we'll be intelligent. We know the right time and place for things. We subtract when we should subtract, multiply when we should multiply, divide when we should di
Peels & Husks I'll give you a simple comparison. Suppose you've bought a banana or a coconut in the market and you walk along carrying it. Someone asks you, "Why did you buy the banana?" "I bought it to eat it." "But do you have to eat the peel, too?" "No.
A Spittoon About anatta: In simple terms this means "not-self." But it depends on there being a sense of self; it depends on there being a sense of atta. That's why there's anatta. And it's a correct anatta, too. When there's no atta, anatta doesn't appear. For example: You don't have th
Groping for Fish ...As long as you don't see the dangers of these things enough to let them go, don't see the rewards that will come when you do, your work won't achieve any purpose. It's as if you're just playing around with these things, scratching at them with your fingernails. If we see their
A Splinter The Buddha teaches us to escape through discernment. It's like having a tiny splinter or thorn in our foot. As we walk along, there are times when it hurts and times when it doesn't. If we ram it into a stump, it hurts. So we feel around on our foot but don't feel the splinter, so we le
Carrying a Rock "Letting go" actually means this: It's as if we're carrying a heavy rock. As we carry it, we feel weighed down but we don't know what to do with it, so we keep on carrying it. As soon as someone tells us to throw it away, we think, "Eh? If I throw it away, I won't ha
A Thorn Things are simply the way they are. They don't give us suffering. Like a thorn: Does a sharp thorn give us suffering? No. It's simply a thorn. It doesn't give suffering to anybody. If we step on it, we suffer immediately. Why do we suffer? Because we stepped on it. So the suffering comes
The Lonely Path Whatever there is in the mind: If our reasons aren't yet good enough, we can't let it go. In other words, there are two sides: this side here and that side there. People tend to walk along this side or along that side. There's hardly anybody who walks along the middle. It's a lonel
Salt That's Not Salty A monk who claimed to be a meditator once came and asked to live here with me. He asked about the way we practice, and I told him, "If you live with me, you can't keep money or stored up things. I follow the Vinaya." He said that he practiced non-attachment. I sai
The Chicken & the Duck Two people see a chicken and a duck. The first person wants the chicken to be a duck, and the duck to be a chicken, but it simply can't be. Throughout their life, it can't happen. If the first person doesn't stop thinking in this way, he'll have to suffer. The second per
Rivers It's like rivers that flow down to the lowlands. They flow down in line with their nature. The Ayutthaya River, the Muun River — whatever the river: They all flow downhill. None of them flow uphill. That's the way they ordinarily are. Suppose there were a man standing on the bank of a rive
Maggots When we give rise to right view in our hearts, we can be at ease wherever we are. It's because we still have wrong views, still hold onto ideas that are poisonous, that we're not at ease. Holding on in this way is like being a maggot. Where it lives is filthy; its food is filthy. Its food
Mange The Buddha said, "Monks, did you see the jackal running around here in the evening? Did you see him? Standing still it suffered. Running around it suffered. Sitting down it suffered. Lying down it suffered. Going into the hollow of a tree, it suffered. Going into a cave, it felt ill at
The Dog on a Pile of Unhusked Rice ...This is like a dog lying on a pile of unhusked rice. Its stomach is gurgling — jawk, jawk — and it lies there thinking, "Where can I get something to eat?" Its stomach is hungry, so it jumps off the pile of unhusked rice and goes looking for som...
Rowf! Rowf! Rowf! I once saw a dog who couldn't eat all the rice I had given it, so he lay down and kept watch over the rice right there. He was so full he couldn't eat any more, but he still lay keeping watch right there. He would drift off and get drowsy, and then suddenly glance over at the foo
A Sense That Your Arm is Short The Buddha's teachings are direct, straightforward, and simple, but hard for someone who's starting to practice them because his knowledge can't reach them. It's like a hole: People by the hundreds and thousands complain that the hole is deep because they can't reach
A Frog on the Hook Animals caught in traps and snares suffer. They're tied down, strapped down tight. All they can do is wait for the hunter to come and get them. Like a bird caught in a snare: The snare pulls at its neck, and no matter how much it struggles it can't get free. It keeps struggling,
Poking a Red Ants' Nest Sensuality is like taking a stick and using it to poke a big red ants' nest. The more we poke it, the more the red ants come falling on us, onto our face, into our eyes, stinging our ears and eyes. But we don't see the drawbacks of what we're doing. It's all good as far as
A Thirst unto Death It's like a man with a strong thirst from having traveled a long way. He asks for water, but the person with the water tells him, "You can drink this water if you want. Its color is good, its smell is good, its flavor is good, but it's poisonous, I want you to know. It can