Karen Blochlinger has narrated 2 audiobooks on Listento.it by 2 authors. The most-rated is Two Buddhist Essays.
The Training of the Heart
Summary
Excerpt from The Training of the Heart by Ajahn Chah The nature of our heart is such that whenever it clings and grasps there is agitation and confusion. First it might wander over there, then it might wander over here. When we come to observe this agitation, we might think that it’s impossible to train the heart and so we suffer accordingly. We don’t understand that this is the way the heart is. There will be thought and feelings moving about like this even though we are practicing, trying to attain peace. That’s the way it is. When we have contemplated many times the nature of the heart, then we will come to understand that this heart is just as it is and can’t be otherwise. We will know that the heart’s ways are just as they are. That’s its nature. If we see this clearly, then we can detach from thoughts and feelings. And we don’t have to add on anything more by constantly having to tell ourselves that ”that’s just the way it is”. When the heart truly understands, it lets go of everything. Thinking and feeling will still be there, but that very thinking and feeling will be deprived of power.
©1986 Buddhist Publication Society (P)2020 Pariyatti
Two Buddhist Essays
Summary
As a profound thinker, as the most profound thinker the world has ever known, the Buddha had two ways of speaking to people. At one time he would address them in words that expressed the utmost depth of his knowledge. At other times, he would tell them simple things within the compass of their ready understanding, in words that were taken from the ordinary speech used among themselves. In both modes of speech, he spoke what was true. But in the former mode he spoke what was final, ultimate truth and fact; in the latter mode, what was true for the people and the time to and in which he spoke. We use these words “universe” and “things” because they are terms of current speech, and there are no others available to express more nearly what we mean; but in the Buddhist way of envisaging life there is no “universe” and no “things” in the sense in which these words are ordinarily used. For the Buddhist way of envisaging what is here is one that is not satisfied to skim surfaces, but goes into things, penetrates them, and seeks to find out what they are at the bottom.
©1978 Buddhist Publication Society (P)2020 Pariyatti