Being Dharma: The Essence of the Buddha's Teachings

Deep in a Thai forest lived "a pot-bellied monk who looked more like a bullfrog than a saint" and yet whose no-nonsense brand of Buddhist meditation has profoundly influenced many of the West's most popular teachers. He was called Ajahn Chah. In Being Dharma Paul Breiter, Ajahn Chah's longtime interpreter, brings us his collection of Ajahn Chah's dharma talks. Here we find a teacher who prefers the concrete to the abstract and practice to theory. The practice is training the mind, and the goal is achieving a constant mindfulness that will end suffering and yield peace and compassion at every moment. Achievements, he says, come gradually with relentless training in meditation and practicing the moral precepts. Ajahn Chah's plain teachings and simple, straightforward examples cross language barriers easily as he instructs us on the fundamentals of impermanence and nonattachment. In Being Dharma Paul Breiter allows us to soak up the simple but profound wisdom of this master to the masters. --Brian Bruya