Everything Is ‘Correct’

~ By Ajahn Jayasāro ~

On a bitterly cold night in December 1980, seated on the wicker seat under his kuti, Ajahn Chah gave a Dhamma talk to his Western disciples. As I sat amongst his audience on the frigid floor that night in my thin cotton robe, struggling not to shiver, I was in heaven. It was exactly two years since I had arrived at Wat Pa Pong. All my hard work in learning the Thai language had borne fruit. Now I could understand every word of my teacher’s discourse, and I felt filled with Dhamma joy.

The theme of the talk that night was that everything is correct; it is only our cravings that makes it seem otherwise. By saying this, Ajahn Chah was not denying the reality of good and bad, right and wrong. He was saying that everything that occurs does so as the expression of a web of causes and conditions. As such, all experiences are the inevitable consequences of all that has gone before – to use Ajahn Chah’s idiom, everything is ‘correct’. The wise person becomes free of suffering, not by fighting against it, but by dealing with the causes and conditions that underlie it.

Late that night a few of us accompanied Ajahn Chah upstairs. As he sat on his bed I put socks on his feet, unintentionally putting on one inside-out. Noticing, he said ‘You’ve put the one on wrong’. I replied, ‘Luang Por, it’s correct.’ He smiled, ‘You listened well’. I took the sock off, inverted it, put it back on his foot again. Then, after bowing three times, I took my leave.

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"Food for the Heart", a series of Dhamma teachings handwritten weekly is posted on the Buddhadāsa Indapañño Archives page with Ajahn's kind permission.

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For other teachings by Ven. Ajahn Jayasāro, please visit the Panyaprateep Foundation website.