Ajahn Chah
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
You can't prevent it.
Just think, could you exhale without inhaling?
Would it feel good?
Or could you just inhale?
We want things to be permanent, but they can't be.
It's impossible.
Once the breath has come in, it must go out.
When it's gone out, it comes back in again and that's natural, isn't it?
Having been born, we get old and then die and that's totally natural and normal.
It's because conditions have done their job because the in-breaths and out-breaths have alternated in this way
that the human race is still here today.
As soon as we are born we are dead,
Our birth and our death are just one thing.
It's like a tree.
When there's a root, there must be branches.
When there are branches, there must be a root.
You can't have one without the other.
It's a little funny to see how at death people are so grief-stricken and distracted.
And at birth, how happy and delighted.
It's delusion.