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Don’t Tarry Picking Berries.

#WednesdayWisdom

Photocredit: Author’s own image

Ajahn Chah was and is a great teacher. He can convey a Dhamma teaching succinctly through beautiful stories and his own style of humour, always providing you with plenty for reflection. I always enjoy this one and hope you do too with nothing added or taken away…

“Therefore, you should all take a look at yourselves. Why were we born? Do we ever really attain anything in this life? In the countryside here people start planting rice right from childhood. When they reach seventeen or eighteen they rush off and get married, afraid they won’t have enough time to make their fortunes. They start working from an early age thinking they’ll get rich that way. They plant rice until they’re seventy or eighty or even ninety years old. I ask them, ‘From the day you were born you’ve been working. Now it’s almost time to go, what are you going to take with you?’ They don’t know what to say. All they can say is, ‘beats me!’ We have a saying in these parts, ‘Don’t tarry picking berries along the way, before you know it, night falls.’ Just because of this ‘beats me!’ They’re neither here nor there, content with just a ‘beats me’ sitting among the branches of the berry tree, gorging themselves with berries. ‘Beats me, beats me.’

Why do they leave it till they get old? Just like they’re never going to die. When they get to fifty or sixty years old or more, ‘Hey, Grandma! Let’s go to the monastery!’ ‘You go ahead, my ears aren’t so good anymore.’ You see what I mean? When her ears were good what was she listening to? ‘Beats me!’ she was just dallying with the berries. Finally when her ears are gone she goes to the temple. It’s hopeless. She listens to the sermon but she hasn’t got a clue what they’re saying. People wait till they’re all used up before they’ll think of practising the Dhamma.”

— Ajahn Chah

[excerpts taken from ‘The Collected Teachings of Ajahn Chah’, 2011, p138 and 140]

May this teaching lead you to realisation; may it help you know the truth. May we all be freed from the suffering of birth and death.

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