Quotes from Ajahn Brahm

Disengaging means you leave these things alone and you're not concerned or worried about them.

Your job is to be free, not to carry around the so-called attainments or failures of the past.

I often say that if you see a ghost, face the ghost nose to nose and say "boo." The ghost will run a mile; it's more scared of you than you are of it. When

Instead, understand that this world is just the play of the senses. It's the five khandhas doing their thing; it has nothing to do with you. It's just people being people, the world being the world. Sometimes

it's not the sound that disturbs you; it's you who disturbs the sound.

Sometimes in life, even saints have to "hiss" to be kind. But no one needs to bite.

The quieter you become the more happiness you have.

FORGIVENESS MIGHT WORK in a monastery, I hear you say, but if we give that sort of forgiveness in real life, we'll be taken advantage of. People will walk all over us — they'll just think we're weak. I agree. Such forgiveness rarely works on its own. As the saying goes, "He who turns the other cheek, must visit the dentist twice, rather than once!

What is the essential difference between banknotes, coins, and chicken shit? None.

You understand that the defilements promise you so much but that they never actually deliver.

it's the nature of the mind to be restless.

when life shovels shit on you, shrug it off, tread it in, and you will always stand higher in life.

It's like a person who on Monday works all day but gets no money at the end of the day."What am I doing this for?" he thinks. He works all day Tuesday and still gets nothing. Another bad day. All day Wednesday and Thursday he works, and still nothing to show for it. Four bad days in a row. Then along comes Friday. He does exactly the same work as before, and at the end of the day the boss gives him his wages. Wow! Why can't every day be a payday?

If we want to go further, then instead of being silently aware of whatever comes into the mind, we choose silent present-moment awareness of just one thing.

That is all we want to see, so that is all we do see.

Fear is finding fault with the future.

Whenever the current is stronger than you are, that is the time to go with the flow. When you are able to be effective, that is the time to put forth effort.

Wisdom is not learning but seeing clearly what can never be taught.

Each of us can know only a part of the whole that constitutes truth.

Contentment is the only time you have enough.

Freedom is being content to be where you are.

Any place you don't want to be, no matter how comfortable, is a prison for you.

The hardest part of anything in life is thinking about it.

To think that you will be happy by becoming something else is a delusion. Becoming something else just exchanges one form of suffering for another form of suffering.