The Right Amount

One of the most important skills monks at Wat Pah Pong were expected to develop in the first years of their training was the ability to judge ‘the right amount’ – not too much and not too little, the optimum amount – when consuming the requisites.

Reflections on wise use of the requisites were included in the morning and evening chanting sessions to provide regular reminders. Too much of anything meant sensual indulgence and the accumulation of defilement; too little was a fruitless asceticism. The task was to find the golden mean. It wasn’t easy, and every now and again, junior monks could feel a sudden surge of resistance. If anything was likely to lead to a fierce Dhamma talk from Luang Por, it was heedless use of the requisites.

If the food left over in your bowl is enough to provide at least three or four laypeople with a meal, then things have gone too far. How is someone who has no sense of moderation going to understand how to train his mind? When you’re practising sitting meditation and your mind’s in a turmoil, where are you going to find the wisdom to pacify it? If you don’t even know basic things like how much food you need, what it means to take little, that’s really dire.

Without knowing your limitations, you’ll be like the greedy fellow in the old story who tried to carry such a big log of wood out of the forest that he fell down dead from its weight.

How much is enough? Is this too much? Is this too little? These were questions that monks were to ask themselves constantly with regard to their use of the requisites. The ability to recognize the optimum amount in any situation and to keep to it, together with sense-restraint and wakefulness, were declared by the Buddha to be the three ‘apaṇṇaka’ or ‘always relevant’ virtues; and they were a favourite basis for Luang Por’s Dhamma talks to the Sangha.

This reflection by Ajahn Jayasaro is from the book, Stillness Flowing, (pdf) p. 295.