June 14, 2026

If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you will have complete peace." — Ajahn Chah, *A Still Forest Pool*

Ajahn Chah said this to Western students at Wat Nong Pah Pong in Thailand during the 1970s, a period when young Americans and Europeans were arriving at his monastery looking for something they could not name. He had spent years as a wandering forest monk, sitting in cemeteries and sleeping under trees, watching his own mind the way a scientist watches an experiment. The quote invites wonder because it treats peace not as a distant reward but as something you can test right now, in small doses, with ordinary things you are already gripping.