The Riddle Tree
October 12, 2006
There’s a story of a young American monk ordained in Thailand who went to study with one of the famous forest ajaans. He asked the ajaan, “What meditation object is going to bring calm and peace to my mind?” And the ajaan said, “I don’t know. You have to find out.” The young monk hearing, “I don’t know,” thought it meant that “I don’t know anything about meditation.” He ended up disrobing and going someplace else. But that’s not what the ajaan meant. What he meant was that each of us has to find out what’s going to work for us as we meditate. You have to find the object that’s most suitable for you, and the best way to relate to it. The whole purpose of developing concentration is to get the mind to settle down, and the way to get it to settle down is to give it a place where it likes to stay settled. What’s going to work for you is going to depend on your preferences, on your background, on all kinds of factors that are purely personal.