About this book

This review is of the book Food For The Heart written by Ajahn Chah. I bought the paperback version probably six months ago, where I paid less than $22.00 for the book (new). My introduction to this book actually was through an audio version on Audible, where I listened to the book maybe a dozen times. The Audible version is incredible, narrated by Graeme Malcolm who gives an incredible performance making the book so enjoyable to listen to. The audio book is about 15.5 hours long. The paperback is 396 pages long. The book has a nice binding and has a medium sized font making it easy to read. The quality of the pages are good and the book is 9″ high x 6″ wide, making it a fairly large book, but still one that you can hold comfortably. In addition to the chapters in the book there is an Introduction, Glossary, Notes, Sources for Text, and an Index.

Summary

Much like the Buddha the venerable Ajahn Chah was a master at adapting his teaching to his audience. Food For The Heart is a collection of his teachings “dhamma talks”. In this book Ajahn Chah one of the greatest teachers from Thailand covers conduct, meditation, the keys to liberation, and the various aspects of wisdom. Most of the content of this book are the teachings of Ajahn Chah and there is a conversational quality to the reading as if the master himself was talking to you or a small group. This conversational quality was of course one of the aspects that make this such a great audio book.

For those new to Buddhism or those just needing a refresher, the Introduction provides a basis for the rest of the book by covering the 4 Noble Truths, the Law of Kamma, Uncertainty, and the characteristics of Theravada teaching, which Ajahn Chah’s Thai Forest teachings are modeled after. The Introduction also covers Ajahn Chah’s life and teaching methods providing some context about the man for the rest of the book.

As you read Food For The Heart the resounding theme is the dharma is not found in books, but learned by experience. Much like Zen philosophy, Ajahn Chah emphasizes meditation as the key to practice. It is not that he feels books or dharma talks are useless, but they only facilitate or provide a conceptual framework. The true practice must be experienced with sitting and walking meditation. One of my favorite quotes from Ajahn Chah from this book is as follows:

The value of the Dhamma isn’t to be found in books. Those are just the external appearances of Dhamma; they’re not the realization of Dhamma as a personal experience. If you realize the Dhamma you realize your mind. You see the truth there. When the truth becomes apparent it cuts off the stream of delusion.

One of the other keys that Ajahn Chah repeatedly proclaims is the need to be diligent with your practice and this may include accepting some suffering to get through say a meditation session. He continuously urges you to devote yourself to your practice; to be disciplined and not give up when it becomes difficult. Of course he is correct, there is no point in reading or listening to the dharma without implementing these concepts in your life. Buddhism is not a spectators sport. Ajahn may be the coach, but to be on the team you need to play in the game and exert effort. Buddhism without effort is merely philosophy and while there is nothing wrong with a little philosophy it will not lead to the end of suffering and nibbana.

Recommendation

I won’t go into some long diatribe regarding why I love this book and strongly recommend it. One of the things I enjoyed was listening to or reading about a chapter everyday. This allowed me to think about the lesson / chapter and absorb what was being taught. Reading or listening to the book is very easy and enjoyable because of the straight forward English used; mostly due to the conversational style of the text.

I have read dozens of books on Buddhism over 20+ years, and I would rank Food For The Heart in my top 3 favorite books on Buddhism. The author Ajahn Chah was a brilliant teacher and gave his life to teaching the dhamma. One final thing regarding the format of the book. I love real paper based books, but in this case I just loved the audio version of this book. The narration was nothing short of excellent, but because the chapters are dharma talks and self contained you don’t need to consume it as if it was a story. This makes it nice to listen to and read when you have time.

About the Author

Normally I would provide you the Wikipedia link to information about an author, but I was able to find some nice sources on an Ajahn Chah website dedicated to the master.

I would recommend reading this short biography of Ajahn Chah located below as it comes from his website: https://www.ajahnchah.org/book/About_Ajahn_Chah.php

If you would like to know even more Ajahn Jayasaro speaks about the life of Ajahn Chah. Ajahn Jayasaro is an English disciple of Ajahn Chah, and the writer of Ajahn Chah’s biography in Thai language. https://www.ajahnchah.org/videos.htm

Additional Information

Notes: dharma and dhamma are the same thing “dhamma” is just the Pali spelling of dharma.

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