Ain’t That Enough

Of the many reliable guides for living a mindful life, Ajahn Chah is hard to beat. He was a Thai Forest monk who was famous not only for his simple and direct approach but his training of several senior western meditation teachers. His tuition, alongside that of Thich Nhat Hanh’s, quietly exerts a grandfatherly influence on some of the more dynamic expressions of today’s secular mindfulness movement. A particular emphasis of Ajahn Chah’s teaching was how to be on more realistic and, therefore, better terms with life. 

​Regarding the central human concern of how to live wisely, he used an analogy of doing good mathematics – subtracting when you need to subtract, adding when you need to add, and so on. Knowing what is appropriate, and when, is what gives you the right answer, suggested Ajahn Chah. The problem, as he saw it, was that humans are prone to forgetting how best to operate in given circumstances due to our tendency for always wanting to multiply, that is, to have more, more, more. 

Time, money, power, status, fun, freedom, friends… the list goes on. How easy it is to always want more. But when there is no sense of enough, there is no lasting contentment to be found. And so we suffer. Conversely, when we have the thought “okay, this is plenty”, when we value the measure of “enough”, then we are no longer on-the-take with life and more able to live with ease.

What is the pay-off, according to Ajahn Chah, for developing such a humble and non-acquisitional attitude to life? He put it like this: “Your mind will become still in any surroundings, like a clear forest pool. All kinds of wonderful and rare animals will come to drink at the pool, and you will clearly see the nature of all things. You will see many marvellous and strange things come and go, but you will be still. This is the happiness of the Buddha.”

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