STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART

Thirteen Talks on the

Practice of Meditation

Venerable Ācariya

Mahā Boowa Ñāṇasampanno

Translated from the Thai

by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu

Copyright

Copyright © Venerable Ācariya Mahā Boowa Ñāṇasampanno 1987

This book is a free gift of Dhamma, and may not be offered for sale, for as the Venerable Ācariya Mahā Boowa has said, ‘Dhamma has a value beyond all wealth and should not be sold like goods in a market place.’

For free distribution

Reproduction of this book, in whole or in part, by any means, for sale or material gain is prohibited. Permission to reprint in whole or in part for free distribution as a gift of Dhamma, however, is hereby granted, and no further permission need be obtained.

Questions about this book may be addressed to

Wat Pa Baan Taad

c/o Songserm Service

89 Posri Road

Udorn Thani 41000 Thailand.

Contents

• Copyright
• Introduction
• The Language of the Heart
• The Marvel of the Dhamma
• The Prison World vs. the World Outside
• Birth & Death
• A Taste for the Dhamma
• Feelings of Pain
• Investigating Pain
• The Principle of the Present
• At the End of One’s Rope
• The Radiant Mind Is Unawareness
• An Heir to the Dhamma
• Unawareness Converges, Concealing the True Dhamma, the True Mind
• The Conventional Mind, the Mind Released
• Postscript
• Glossary

Introduction

These talks—except for the two marked otherwise—were originally given for the benefit of Mrs. Pow Panga Vathanakul, a follower of Venerable Ācariya Mahā Boowa who had contracted cancer of the bone marrow and had come to practice meditation at Wat Pa Baan Taad in order to contend with the pain of the disease and the fact of her approaching death. All in all, she stayed at Wat Pa Baan Taad for 102 days, from November 9, 1975 to February 19, 1976; during that period Venerable Ācariya Mahā Boowa gave 84 impromptu talks for her benefit, all of which were tape-recorded.

After her death in September, 1976, one of her friends, M.R. Sermsri Kasemsri, asked permission of the Venerable Ācariya to transcribe the talks and print them in book form. Seventy-seven of the talks, plus an additional eight talks given on other occasions, were thus printed in two massive volumes together totaling more than 1,000 pages. Six talks from these two volumes have already been translated into English and published in a book entitled Amata Dhamma.

The talks in the present collection all deal with the practice of meditation, and particularly with the development of discernment. Because their style of presentation is personal and impromptu, they will probably be best understood if read in conjunction with a more systematic introduction to the techniques of meditation, such as the Venerable Ācariya’s own book, Wisdom Develops Samādhi, which is available separately or as part of the volume, Forest Dhamma.

The title of the present book is taken from a request, frequently made by the Venerable Ācariya to his listeners, that his teachings be taken to heart, because they come straight from the heart.

Note