Where Is My Real Home?

Like household utensils that you've had for a long time -- cups, saucers, plates and so on -- when you first had them they were clean and shining, but now after using them for so long, they're starting to wear out.

Some are already broken, some have disappeared, and those that are left are wearing out, they have no stable form. And it's their nature to be that way.

Your body is the same...it's been continually changing from the day you were born, through childhood and youth, until now it's reached old age. You must accept this.

The Buddha said that conditions, whether internal, bodily conditions or external conditions, are not self, their nature is to change. Contemplate this truth clearly.


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Anyone can build a house of wood and bricks, but the Buddha taught that that sort of home is not our real home, it's only nominally ours.

Our real home is inner peace.

An external, material home may well be pretty but it is not very peaceful. There's this worry and then that, this anxiety and then that. So we say it's not our real home, it's external to us.

Sooner or later we'll have to give it up. it's not a place we can live in permanently because it doesn't truly belong to us, it belongs to the world.

That's the way it is. Wanting it to be any different would be as foolish as wanting a duck to be like a chicken.

Don't worry about things too much, just think "this is the way things are."

So don't waver. Let go. Throw it all away.

Even if you don't let go, everything is starting to leave you anyway.

Can you see that, how all the different parts of your body are trying to slip away? Take your hair; when you were young it was thick and black. Now it's falling out. It's leaving. Your eyes used to be good and strong but now they're weak, your sight is unclear. When your organs have had enough they leave, this isn't their home.


Extract from: Our Real Home, by Venerable Ajahn Chah