Ajahn Brahm Quotes

When the weather is hot, keep a cool mind. When the weather is cold, keep a warm heart.

Love is not liking somebody. Anyone can do that. Love is loving things that sometimes you don't like.

We should always be grateful for the faults in our partner because if they didn't have those faults from the start, they would have been able to marry someone much better than us

Berapa banyak waktu dalam hidup yang kita sia-siakan karena mengkhawatirkan sesuatu yang, pada saat itu, tak memiliki solusi, dan karena itu, bukanlah sebuah masalah?

Better lite a candle than complain about the darkness

When life is good do not take it for granted as it will pass. Be mindful, be compassionate and nurture the circumstances that find you in this good time so it will last longer. When life falls apart always remember that this too will pass. Life will have its unexpected turns.

Whatever you do in your life, Son, the door of my heart will always be open to you.

Any place you don´t want to be, no matter how comfortable, is a prison for you.

To think that you will be happy by becoming something else is delusion. Becoming something else just exchanges one form of suffering for another form of suffering. But when you are content with who you are now, junior or senior, married or single, rich or poor, then you are free of suffering.

Silence is so much more productive of wisdom and clarity than thinking.

Why allow other people to control your inner happiness?

any place you don’t want to be is a prison.

How many times have you tried to solve “the problem”? you’ll be trying to solve it not just until you die but for many more lifetimes. 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.

We all deserve to get away and have some peace; and others deserve the peace of us getting out of their way!

Grief is what we add on to loss. It is a learned response, specific to some cultures only. It is not universal and it is not unavoidable. ... Grief is seeing only what has been taken away from you. The celebration of a life is recognizing all that we were blessed with, and feeling so very grateful.

Careful patience is the fastest way!

Sir, if someone took a Buddhist holy book and flushed it down my toilet, the first thing I would do is call a plumber!

If you know how to let go and be at peace, you know everything you need to know about living in the world.” – Ajahn Brahm

The goal of this meditation is beautiful silence, stillness, and clarity of mind.

Tugovati znači vidjeti samo ono što vam je oduzeto. Slavljenje života znači prepoznati sve čime smo blagoslovljeni i osjećati zahvalnost.

All you need to do is follow the instructions: Sit down, shut up, watch, and don’t get involved. Gradually, the meditation experience will open up all by itself.

The secret of life is ... everything is out of control.

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.

Delusion is so incredibly powerful, much more pervasive than most people know. As Voltaire quipped, “The only way to comprehend the mathematical concept of infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity.

I figured out once that if you decide to have fun when you give a public talk, then you relax. It is psychologically impossible to have fear and fun at the same time. When I am relaxed, ideas flow freely into my mind during my talk, then leave through my mouth with the smoothness of eloquence. Moreover, the audience doesn’t get bored when it is fun.

It is the high value that one gives to one’s own thoughts that is the main obstacle to silent awareness. Wisely removing the importance that one gives to thinking, and realizing the greater accuracy of silent awareness, opens the door to inner silence.

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

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

The quieter you become the more happiness you have.

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

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.

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

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

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

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!

9. Your Photo Album Many people have a photo album. In it they keep memories of the happiest of times. There may be a photo of them playing by the beach when they were very young. There may be the picture with their proud parents at their graduation ceremony. There will be many shots of their wedding that captures their love at one of its highest points. And there will be holiday snapshots too. But you will never find in your album any photographs of miserable moments of your life. Absent is the photo of you outside the principal’s office at school. Missing is any photo of you studying hard late into the night for your exams. No one that I know has a picture of their divorce in their album, nor one of them in a hospital bed terribly sick, nor stuck in busy traffic on the way to work on a Monday morning! Such depressing shots never find their way into anyone’s photo album. Yet there is another photo album that we keep in our heads called our memory. In that album, we include so many negative photographs. There you find so many snapshots of insulting arguments, many pictures of the times when you were so badly let down, and several montages of the occasions where you were treated cruelly. There are surprisingly few photos in that album of happy moments. This is crazy! So let’s do a purge of the photo album in our head. Delete the uninspiring memories. Trash them. They do not belong in this album. In their place, put the same sort of memories that you have in a real photo album. Paste in the happiness of when you made up with your partner, when there was that unexpected moment of real kindness, or whenever the clouds parted and the sun shone with extraordinary beauty. Keep those photos in your memory. Then when you have a few spare moments, you will find yourself turning its pages with a smile, or even with laughter.

Another simile is that of the man who was born and raised in a prison and who has never set foot outside. All he knows is prison life. He would have no conception of the freedom that is beyond his world. And he would not understand that prison is suffering. If anybody suggested that his world was dukkha, he would disagree, for prison is the limit of his experience. But one day he might find the escape tunnel dug long ago that leads beyond the prison walls to the unimaginable and expansive world of real freedom. Only when he has entered that tunnel and escaped from his prison does he realize how much suffering prison actually was, and the end of that suffering, escaping from jail is happiness. In this simile the prison is the body, the high prison walls are the five senses, and the relentless demanding prison guard is one's own will, the doer. The tunnel dug long ago, through which one escapes, is called jhana [meditation] (as at AN IX, 42). Only when one has experienced jhana does one realize that the five-sense world, even at its best, is really a five-walled prison, some parts of it is a little more comfortable but still a jail with everyone on death row! Only after deep jhana does one realize that "will" was the torturer, masquerading as freedom, but preventing one ever resting happily at peace. Only outside of prison can one gain the data that produces the deep insight that discovers the truth about dukkha. In summary, without experience of jhana, one's knowledge of the world is too limited to fully understand dukkha, as required by the first noble truth, and proceed to enlightenmen.

YOUR REAL HOME Home is a place where you can just be yourself, be at peace, be at ease, be nothing, just empty and free. The purpose of meditation is to get you in touch with your real home, the place of stillness inside of you. You realize that your true home is carried around with you all the time. But how do we get in there? The door of your heart is open to you no matter what you do. Freedom, love, compassion, just being still, not controlling, letting go, is the door into that home inside of you. You don’t go there by measuring and by judging. You go there by quietness and not thinking. So you come through the door of your inner home where you can reside at will, at any time.

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.

gripping.You can attain this degree of stillness only by letting go of everything in the entire universe except for this momentary experience of the breath happening silently.

SILENT AWARENESS Recognize the space between thoughts. When one thought ends and before another thought begins — There! That is silent awareness. It may be only momentary at first, but as you recognize that fleeting silence and you become accustomed to it, the silence lasts longer. You begin to enjoy the silence. Silence is so much more productive of wisdom and clarity than thinking. When one realizes that, silence becomes more attractive and important. The mind inclines toward it, seeks it out constantly. Once we realize that most of our thinking is really pointless, we gladly and easily spend much time in inner quiet. You are much closer to truth when you observe without commentary, when you experience just the silent awareness of the present moment. Inner speech does not know the world at all. It is the inner speech that spins the delusions that cause suffering In that silent awareness of “just now”, we experience much peace, joy, and consequent wisdom.

Better to light a candle than complain about the darkness.

The pure heart is a happy heart.

Do not fear delight in meditation. Happiness in meditation is important! Moreover, you deserve to bliss out. Blissing out on the breath is an essential part of the path. So when delight does arise alongside the breath, cherish and guard it like a valuable treasure.

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.

Grief is seeing only what has been taken away from you. The celebration of a life is recognizing all that we were blessed with and feeling so very grateful.

People say never stand in the shadows of great men. Stand on their shoulders. I say, no: stand in their shadow, kick their ass, and tell them to get out of the way.

The secret of life is… everything is out of control.” – Ajahn Brahm

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?

That cobra-patting Thai monk once stayed several months at our monastery in Australia. We were building our main hall and had several other building projects waiting for approval at our local council’s offices. The mayor of the local council came for a visit to see what we were doing. The mayor was certainly the most influential man in the district. He had grown up in the area and was a successful farmer. He was also a neighbor. He came in a nice suit, befitting his position as mayor. The jacket was unbuttoned, revealing a very large, Australian-size stomach, which strained at the shirt buttons and bulged over the top of his best trousers. The Thai monk, who could speak no English, saw the mayor’s stomach. Before I could stop him, he went over to the mayor and started patting it. “Oh no!” I thought. “You can’t go patting a Lord Mayor on the stomach like that. Our building plans will never be approved now. We’re done! Our monastery is finished.” The more that Thai monk, with a gentle grin, patted and rubbed the mayor’s big stomach, the more the mayor began to smile and giggle. In a few seconds, the dignified mayor was gurgling like a baby. He obviously loved every minute of having his stomach rubbed and patted by this extraordinary Thai monk. All our building plans were approved. And the mayor became one of our best friends and helpers. The most essential part of caring is where we’re coming from.

But Buddha commanded Patacara to recover her presence of mind. Her madness left her, and she worshipped at Buddha’s feet. “Death of people we love is inevitable,” said the Buddha. “It is a waste of life to brood or become bitter. No one can shelter us from the fate that awaits us. It is therefore incumbent that we set off on the path to nibbana.