itslikethis-ajahn-chah

The Tree in the SeedSamadhi is firm concentration. If you’re firm in your practice, it’s a kind ofconcentration, but it doesn’t yet give you the fruit. It’s still just the flower—butout of the flower comes the fruit, big or small. The potentials of people are notthe same. Things that are buried inside, we don’t yet see. Like the seed of ajackfruit: Suppose that you eat some jackfruit and lift out a seed. When you dothat, you’re lifting a whole jackfruit tree, but at the moment, you don’t see it.You don’t yet know it. Even if you were to split open the seed, you stillwouldn’t see the tree because it’s subtle. When you don’t see it, you feel thatthere’s no tree in there. Why? Because it hasn’t been mixed with the rightthings. If you plant a jackfruit seed in the dirt, then it will start growing. Leaveswill appear. Branches will appear. They’ll get bigger and bigger. Flowerswill appear. Small fruits will appear. Big fruits will appear. Ripe fruits willappear. But as long as the seed is still just a seed, you can’t point to thesethings in there. This is why people don’t take any interest.When you’re meditating, you’re picking up a mango—and you’re pickingup the whole mango tree. It’s the same as picking up a jackfruit seed butwithout seeing the tree in the seed. What gets in the way? The sweet flavor ofthe flesh gets in the way. The sour flavor gets in the way. We haven’t yet madeour way into the jackfruit tree inside the jackfruit seed. All we can see is thatthe flesh is sweet; it’s delicious. All these things get in the way of our seeingthe jackfruit tree inside the jackfruit seed.It’s the same with us as we practice. We sit on top of the Dhamma. We liedown on top of the Dhamma. We plant our foot on the Dhamma with every step—but we don’t know that we’re stepping on Dhamma.