Sowing Rice

Sit watching your in-and-out breath. Stay relaxed and comfortable, but don’t let yourself get distracted. If you’re distracted, stop. Look to see where the mind went and why it isn’t following the breath. Go looking for it and bring it back. Get it to keep running along with the breath, and one of these days you’ll come across something good.

But keep on doing what you’re doing. Do it as if you’re not expecting to get anything from it, nothing will happen, you don’t know who’s doing it—but you keep on doing it. It’s like taking rice from the granary and sowing it on the ground. It looks like you’re throwing it away. You scatter it all over the ground as if you’re not interested in it. But it’ll turn into sprouts and plants. You put the plants in the paddies, and in return you get to eat rice treats.

That’s just how it goes.

This reflection by Ajahn Chah Subhaddo is from the book, In Simple Terms: 108 Dhamma Similes, (pdf) pp. 39-40, translated into English by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu.