"Letting go" from The Venerable Ajahn Chah

A Collection of Dhamma Talks

For the ultimate in the practise of Buddhist
Meditation, the Buddha taught the practise of
"letting go". Don't carry anything around!
Detach! If you see goodness, let it go. If you
see rightness, let it go. These words' "let go",
do not mean that we don't have to practise. It
means that we have to practise following the
method of "letting go" itself. The Buddha taught
us to contemplate all dhammas, to develop the Path
through contemplating our own body and heart. The
Dhamma isn't anywhere else. It's right here! Not
someplace far away. It's right here in this very
body and heart of ours.

Therefore a meditator must practise with energy.
Make the heart grander and brighter. Make it free
and independent. Having done a good deed, don't
carry it around in your heart, let it go. Having
refrained from doing an evil deed, let it go.

The Buddha taught us to live in the immediacy of
the present, in the here and now. Don't lose yourself
in the past or the future.

The Teaching that people least understand and which
conflicts most with their own opinions, is this
Teaching of "letting go" or "working with an empty
mind". This way of talking is called "Dhamma language".
When we conceive this in worldly terms, we become
confused and think that we can do anything we want.
It can be interpreted this way, but its real meaning
is closer to this: It's as if we are carrying a heavy
rock. After a while we begin to feel its weight but
we don't know how to let it go. So we endure this heavy
burden all the time. If someone tells us to throw it
away, we say, "If I throw it away, I won't have anything
left!" If told of all the benefits to be gained from
throwing it away, we wouldn't believe them but would
keep thinking, "If I throw it away, I will have nothing!"
So we keep on carrying this heavy rock until we become
so weak and exhausted that we can no longer endure, then
we drop it.

Having dropped it, we suddenly experience the benefits
of letting go. We immediately feel better and lighter
and we know for ourselves how much of a burden carrying
a rock can be. Before we let go of the rock, we couldn't
possibly know the benefits of letting go. So if someone
tells us to let go, an unenlightened man wouldn't see
the purpose of it. He would just blindly clutch at the
rock and refuse to let go until it became so unbearably
heavy that he just has to let go. Then he can feel for
himself the lightness and relief and thus know for
himself the benefits of letting go. Later on we may
start carrying burdens again, but now we know what the
results will be, so we can now let go more easily.
This understanding that it's useless to carry burdens
around and that letting go brings ease and lightness
is an example of knowing ourselves.

Our pride, our sense of self that we depend on, is the
same as that heavy rock. Like that rock, if we think
about letting go of self-conceit, we are afraid that
without it, there would be nothing left. But when we
can finally let it go, we realize for ourselves the
ease and comfort of not clinging.

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