Ajahn Chah

Ajahn Chah 

The Buddha taught that the only way to truly end doubt is through contemplation of your own body and mind – ‘just that much.’ Abandon the past; abandon the future – practise knowing, and letting go. Sustain the knowing. Once you have established the knowing, let go – but don’t try to let go without the knowing. It is the presence of this knowing that allows you to let go. Let go of everything you did in the past: both the good and the bad. Whatever you did before, let go of it, because there is no benefit in clinging to the past. The good you did was good at that time, the bad
you did was bad at that time. What was right was right. So now you can cast it all aside, let go of it. Events in the future are still waiting to happen. All the arising and cessation that will occur in the future hasn’t actually taken place yet, so don’t attach too firmly to ideas about what may or may not happen in the future. Be aware of yourself and let go. Let go of the past. Whatever took place in the past has ceased. Why spend a lot of time proliferating about it? If you think about something that happened in the past let that thought go. It was a dhamma (phenomenon) that arose in the past. Having arisen, it then ceased in the past. There’s no reason to mentally proliferate about the present either. Once you have established awareness of what you are thinking, let it go. Practise knowing and letting go.