The Tree in the Seed

Samadhi is firm concentration. If you’re firm in your practice, it’s a kind of concentration, but it doesn’t yet give you the fruit. It’s still just the flower—but out of the flower comes the fruit, big or small. The potentials of people are not the same. Things that are buried inside, we don’t yet see. Like the seed of a jackfruit: Suppose that you eat some jackfruit and lift out a seed. When you do that, 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 still wouldn’t see the tree because it’s subtle.

When you don’t see it, you feel that there’s no tree in there. Why? Because it hasn’t been mixed with the right things. If you plant a jackfruit seed in the dirt, then it will start growing. Leaves will appear. Branches will appear. They’ll get bigger and bigger. Flowers will appear. Small fruits will appear. Big fruits will appear. Ripe fruits will appear. But as long as the seed is still just a seed, you can’t point to these things in there. This is why people don’t take any interest.

When you’re meditating, you’re picking up a mango—and you’re picking up the whole mango tree. It’s the same as picking up a jackfruit seed but without seeing the tree in the seed. What gets in the way? The sweet flavor of the flesh gets in the way. The sour flavor gets in the way. We haven’t yet made our way into the jackfruit tree inside the jackfruit seed. All we can see is that the flesh is sweet; it’s delicious. All these things get in the way of our seeing the jackfruit tree inside the jackfruit seed. It’s the same with us as we practice. We sit on top of the Dhamma. We lie down 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.

Source:
It’s Like This
Venerable Ajahn Chah
Translated from the Thai by Thanissaro Bhikkhu