Tan Ajarn's Notebooks
Tan Ajarn was a prolific thinker and writer until the last day of his life. He also encouraged others to write down any useful ideas they might have. On alms round he jotted Dhamma insights on his hand. He tried out the phrasing for various Dhamma sayings that later became famous on any scrap of paper that might be at hand. And he filled hundreds of notebooks with Pali references, questions for further study, poems, ideas, and more. They are slowly being published in Thai.
Here we are making available some of them that grabbed our attention, both from those published and as yet unpublished in Thai. The collection will be rather eclectic. Hope you enjoy them.
On Nibbana
On Sati (Mindfulness)
On Sex & Gender
On Emptiness
I Am A Merchant
From "Last Three Months Illness"
We don't deny the Tipitaka but will not let it dominate us either. We will squeeze the essence from the Tipitaka just as people squeeze oils from various kinds of seeds.
Dhamma outside the Tipitaka is put into the Tipitaka. The truth of nature is discovered, then taught, then recorded, so that the Dhamma in the Tipitaka consequently appears. Thus, it is possible to teach Dhamma without getting caught up in the Tipitaka, especially through meditation.
The Truth of the Dhamma of Nature has become the Truth of the Tipitaka. Then it is hard to pull it out again as the Dhamma outside the Tipitaka. The Zen folks like to speak in a challenging way that Zen is the Dhamma outside the Tipitaka. Listen carefully, and don't be confused.
Note Cards from 1937 - 38
Since Tan Ajarn's passing in 1993, we have been slowly cataloguing the many notebooks, photos, and other records he left behind. Among them are note cards from the early days of Suan Mokkh. One sample is below. For more, please click here.
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There is always a certain thing that
we need without ourselves knowing what it is, for as long as we have not yet
realized Arahantship (awakened perfection). The Great Being went out in
search of dukkha's quenching even though he didn’t know what it is! We
ourselves can observe exactly here that all the things we have received are
incapable of making our hearts stop & rest in peace. All the kinds of
mental concerns still dominate our hearts all the time. The most difficult
problem that we face is that we always need something most specially but we
do not know and cannot answer ourselves what it is. But this most difficult
problem will disappear immediately when we discover Buddha-Dhamma, which
reveals to us that we have continually fallen into spinning around (in
concocting of ego-birth and ego-death). |