Posted by: Upāsaka Subhavi | 12/15/2019

Letting Go – Ajahn Jayasaro

Why do you consider certain people’s behavior to be so offensive? Usually it’s because you have an idea that they shouldn’t be like that. So when the mind dwells on “should” or “shouldn’t”, you’re setting yourself up for suffering. Why shouldn’t people be selfish? Why shouldn’t they be aggressive? Why shouldn’t they do all the terrible things they do? Why not? If their minds are like that, if they look at things like that, have that kind of view, those kinds of values, why not? Such behavior is then perfectly natural. When the causes and conditions are like that, the conduct will be like that.

The more you can see things in terms of causes and conditions, the more you can let go. If somebody speaks very harshly, you see it stems from their way of looking at things. Perhaps they’ve developed that kind of habit; perhaps they’ve always spoken like that. The more you can see the conditions underlying the behavior, the more you can let go.

-Ajahn Jayasaro

Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s



Shillelagh Studies


Daily Dhamma Study Group

Teachings of Lord Buddha in the Pali Canon