Stories about letting go
51 Buddhist wisdom stories about letting go from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- A dustbin with a hole in the bottomAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Ajahn Chah's simile: when people dump on you, think of yourself as a dustbin and let them put their rubbish in — but be a dustbin with a hole in the bottom. Accept it all, keep…
- An hour to killStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: On a retreat in Thailand, a Kuala Lumpur woman — later a star meditator — gets nowhere for eight or nine days and is frustrated. After the closing blessings, everyone else packs…
- Between Cambridge exams he meditated instead of revisingStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: During six-day Cambridge natural-sciences finals (3 hours morning and afternoon), after astrophysics of the galaxy he skipped lunch, meditated, let go of worrying about the past…
- Carrying coffins of dead momentsAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: He compares obsessing over the past to carrying coffins of dead moments: cultures bury or cremate the dead and walk on — do the same with past memories, good or bad, so the…
- Celebrate the ending of the stuck songStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: After years without music in a NE Thai forest, a Bangkok visa trip lets a pop song stick in his head for days. Fighting it made it worse; emphasising the finale until the…
- Death us do part — see you in heavenJoke · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Devoted couple reunite in heaven; he refuses her — the ceremony said death us do part, and they are dead now.
- Don't hold back a spooked buffaloAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: In 1970s Thai villages the water buffalo were docile family members — until spooked: head up, snorting, then running in any direction. One day a farmer passing the monastery…
- “Don't you ever take away my suffering”Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At a grief and loss seminar at Observation City, Ajahn Brahm teaches his 'concert' way of letting go of grief: his father's 16 years with him were like a beautiful concert — be…
- How big is my hand?Analogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Simile (shown with his hand): held in front of his face, his hand is so big he can see nothing else. Is it the hand's fault? No — it's just too close. Put it back where it…
- How heavy is the glass?Analogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Brahm's own analogy (he laughs hearing someone else quote it): how heavy is the glass? The longer you hold it the heavier it feels — minutes to pain, agony, hospital. When it…
- How many times should you forgive?Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At a Singapore concert based on his book, asked how many times in Buddhism you should forgive someone who hurts you again and again, he answers: 'One more time.'
- How to hold a glass of water stillAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Demonstration simile: however hard you try to hold a glass of water still, it trembles, and more willpower makes it shake more. The easy way is to put it down. At first the water…
- “Is this heavy?” — Ajahn Chah and the stickStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Walking back from alms round, Ajahn Chah picks up a stick and asks the young Ajahn Brahm whether it is heavy, then throws it away: it is only heavy while you hold it.
- Joke: round the meditation menuJoke · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A beginner on retreat can't do breath meditation, so he teaches them anapanasati; that's too hard, so metta; then loving kindness; then insight; then vipassana; then letting go;…
- 'Joy at last to know there's no happiness in the world'Analogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A favourite image of Ajahn Chah's, which he used when visiting England about 25 years earlier: a statue in a monastery in southern Thailand of a fully enlightened monk throwing…
- Letting the rip carry him outStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A New Zealand monk, tramping with a friend on a hot day, reaches a secluded, pristine beach in (he thinks) the South Island; they strip off and swim — and he is caught in a…
- 'Look out, behind you!'Analogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Simile from his pre-monk cinema days: in a horror film someone in the audience always shouts 'Look out, behind you!' at a monster on the screen — or a husband shouts 'Kick the…
- Mum's blessing at seventeenStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At seventeen, with a sleeping bag and his guitar, he hitchhiked from London to North Africa to explore the world. It must have driven his mother crazy, but she gave him her…
- Old monks don't lieStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A wandering old monk spends the rains retreat in a hut a poor farmer builds for him. Leaving, he says a great treasure lies close by: at sunrise stand at your threshold facing…
- She called me a pig — three more timesAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: If someone calls you a pig and you keep replaying it — she's got no right, why did she — a wise person sees you've just let her call you a pig three more times. Every memory is…
- Sit still under the mango treeAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Ajahn Chah's simile, taught in a monastery that was a mango orchard: the only way to get the mangoes is to sit perfectly still under the tree and hold out your hand, and a mango…
- “Steve, you can die”Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Visiting a dying man, Steve, Ajahn Brahm senses something is holding him back and asks his partner Jenny (present in the audience) whether she has given him permission to die.…
- Still in the POW campStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Two Australian veterans who were captured at the fall of Singapore and held in prisoner-of-war camps meet at a reunion. One asks the other whether he has forgiven the Japanese…
- The Ananda method of enlightenmentStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: After the Buddha's death, Ananda — his attendant for 25 years — is still not enlightened, while 499 of the 500 monks gathering for the great council are arahants with psychic…
- The Australian anjaliStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At an international bhikkhuni conference, fed up with endless photos with palms joined, Ajahn Brahm suggests the senior nuns — Tenzin Palmo among them — do 'the Australian form',…
- The Biggest LoserStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Challenging the slur 'loser', Ajahn Brahm lists what he lost becoming a monk — money, girlfriends, possessions, a nice motorbike — sleeps on the floor with no phone or…
- The cremation pyre exploded — and Ajahn Liem went to bedStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Ajahn Liem, long Ajahn Chah's acting abbot, builds the crematorium for his teacher's royal funeral — a structure that still stands as a stupa. With the King of Thailand present…
- The executive who slept for three daysStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: On a retreat in Sydney many years ago, an executive arrived at 11:30 at night after tying up loose ends at work. Told in her first interview that most people are tired and that…
- The ghost at the end of the caveStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: On Vesak day at a cave monastery in the north of Thailand, Ajahn Brahm slips away from the abbot's dull talk and is asked by villager after villager the same questions: how many…
- The man in the latex mask whose psoriasis clearedStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At a North Perth / Redemptorist retreat centre near Northbridge a man arrived in a latex face mask — severe whole-body psoriasis; the mask stopped him scratching his face.…
- The matchbox on the headStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A malnourished young monk in steamy north-east Thailand — sticky rice with a boiled frog, under four and a half hours' sleep, up at 3 a.m. — is always sleepy in meditation.…
- The meditator twisted into a knotStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: On a retreat someone interrupts his meditation: a woman is twisted into an extreme, contorted posture. Afterwards he asks if she's all right; she had no idea and felt great. Then…
- The monkey who wouldn't let go of the bananaStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Hunters hollow out a coconut, cut a hole just big enough for a monkey's hand, tie it to a tree and put a banana inside. The monkey grabs the banana but can't pull out its fist;…
- The mother who never drops her babyAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Simile from the Mirrabooka shopping centre: mothers carry their babies through jostling crowds with a trolley in the other hand and never drop them, and the baby sleeps in total…
- The novice who stoppedStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A novice of 12 or 13 at Ajahn Chah's monastery, tired during a very long sermon, kept thinking: 'When is Ajahn Chah going to stop?' Then he turned it around: 'When am I going to…
- The perfect Zen gardenStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A young Japanese gardening monk makes the most admired garden in Japan. An old meditation monk climbs in early one morning and hides to learn his secret. The gardener meditates,…
- The Rhodes scholar given permission to dieStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A fit Tennessee wrestler and Rhodes scholar, a fellow monk in Thailand, fell desperately ill and was sent to a monastery in England, where he stayed in his room for two or three…
- The social worker's solutions that popped upStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A senior social worker with heavy responsibilities arrives at a nine-day retreat in North Perth at 8:30 p.m., straight from the office with big unsolved problems. She has…
- The stolen Harley on the wrong levelStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: An early member owns almost nothing except his prized Harley-Davidson. In a Sydney shopping centre car park he returns to find it gone, contemplates the teachings — “I don't own…
- The talk he couldn't rememberStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Years after Ajahn Chah's stroke left him unable to speak, Ajahn Brahm dreams — lucidly — that Ajahn Chah gives him a brilliant Dhamma talk. Knowing how rare and precious it is,…
- The torn-up degrees his mother taped back togetherStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: On his first visit home as a monk, Ajahn Brahm finds his BA and MA certificates at his mother's and, needing them no longer, tears them up and throws them in the bin, feeling…
- The twin who forgave at AuschwitzStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Ajahn Brahm recalls an article about a woman who, as an identical twin at Auschwitz, was subjected to the experiments of Dr Mengele's team; as he tells it, her twin sister was…
- The two chicken farmers: eggs or dung?Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: One chicken farmer fills his basket with chicken dung, leaves the eggs to rot and stinks out his house; the other brings home the eggs for an omelette and the market and leaves…
- The whole household had the same dreamStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: The daughter of the monastery treasurer, in her twenties, dies of cancer. Some time later he arrives at dawn: at breakfast one daughter mentioned dreaming that her dead sister…
- Too comfortable to waste on sleepStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Once Ajahn Brahm lay in bed unable to sleep — probably too much tea — worrying he wouldn't get to sleep in time. Then he thought: I spend so much time cross-legged talking to…
- Toothache in the nightStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: In his first year at a Thai monastery, with an empty medicine cabinet and no telephone, Ajahn Brahm has a terrible toothache. He can't watch his breath; walking meditation turns…
- Wait at the crossroads for the busAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Simile from Opening the Door of Your Heart: a decision is like arriving at a crossroads. You don't have to go north, south, east or west — sit down and wait for the bus. Buses…
- Walking off with everything he owned on his backStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: After five years as a monk in Thailand (around 1979) Ajahn Brahm leaves his monastery to wander on foot. Nothing can be stored, so he must carry everything; in the tropical heat…
- “What's done is finished”Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A Thai abbot sends the builders home for the three-month rains retreat, leaving his new hall without a roof or windows and with timber and cement bags strewn about. A visitor…
- “When did you have your accident?”Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A retreatant reports that as she grew still her back became very hot, not painfully. Ajahn Brahm asks when she had her accident; astonished, she confirms a car accident injuring…
- Wrap yourself a gift of peaceAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: For a birthday or anniversary, wrap an empty box carefully, put inside a paper that says 'peace — to me, with love from me', hide it, 'find' it next morning and play along until…