“Virtue is a strength. Concentration is a strength. Discernment is a strength. When they pool their strengths and work together so that they’re one and the same, that’s called magga-samangi: the path in harmony. As soon as this harmony arises,…
“If you have mindfulness and alertness at all times, you’ll come to your senses. If you waste your time playing with other things, suffering will arise and you’ll suffer—because you don’t have any mindfulness. Your alertness isn’t here. It’s like…
“Make the mind mindful and keep it aware all the time. The problem is how to keep it aware. Suppose you have an area about three meters wide and you’re sitting inside it. And there’s a big cobra staying in…
“When you make merit, what is merit? It’s correctness. In other words, it’s bringing the mind to peace, away from all kinds of evil. All of you lay people have gathered to make merit, but when you look for the…
“Now that you’ve come here to the monastery, you no longer have any questions about what Paa Pong Monastery is like or where it is. That’s because you’ve already seen for yourself. As long as you haven’t seen for yourself,…
“When you live alone, you can still be stupid. You can still suffer. When you live with a lot of people, you can be stupid and suffer. It’s like chicken shit. If you hold it by yourself, it stinks. If…
“We’re walking along a road that goes straight ahead. It doesn’t matter how many kilometers it goes, we just keep walking straight ahead. When we find a log or a rock obstructing our way, we pick it up and throw…
“When you come here to Nong Paa Pong Monastery, there are roads crossing your way. But they don’t matter. You simply go past them, because you don’t want them. The same with all the preoccupations in the world: We want…
“For your vegetable to grow big and beautiful, you have to remove the weeds. That’s when your vegetables will have a chance to grow large and beautiful—because you’ve removed the weeds. You’ve removed the bad things around the vegetables, so…
“When we see the truth, we’ll admit the truth. When we see the cause that gives rise to stress, then wherever stress would arise, we don’t do that. We don’t say that. We practice so that our practice becomes correct,…