Top 30 Ajahn Brahm Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Why seek revenge? Karma is going to get the bastards anyway.”

— Ajahn Brahm

Featured in: Karma Quotes

2. “Complaining is finding faults, wisdom is finding solutions.”

— Ajahn Brahm

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

— Ajahn Brahm

4. “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

5. “Everyone makes mistakes. The wise are not people who never make mistakes, but those who forgive themselves and learn from their mistakes.”

— Ajahn Brahm

Featured in: Forgiving Quotes

6. “Fear is finding fault with the future.”

— Ajahn Brahm

7. “Life is what’s happening while you’re worrying.”

— Ajahn Brahm

8. “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.”

— Ajahn Brahm

9. “Silence is so much more productive of wisdom and clarity in thinking.”

— Ajahn Brahm

10. “Love is not liking somebody. Anyone can do that. Love is loving things that sometimes you don’t like.”

— Ajahn Brahm

11. “Peace is the most valuable commodity. And it’s free!”

— Ajahn Brahm

12. “Meditation is like a gym in which you develop the powerful mental muscles of calm and insight.”

— Ajahn Brahm

13. “Understand the place of love in a spiritual life. A powerful and blissful type of love has no conditions, no ownership and no people involved. Be free from fear. Be who you are. That is love.”

— Ajahn Brahm

14. “Love, oneness, is no separation between you and life. It is a progressive letting go, a progressive not fault finding. Just do nothing and love this moment. Its very beautiful and very deep.”

— Ajahn Brahm

15. “The quieter you become the more happiness you have.”

— Ajahn Brahm

16. “Why allow other people to control your inner happiness?”

— Ajahn Brahm

17. “My first meditation teacher told me that there is no such thing as a bad meditation. He was right. During the difficult meditations you build up your strength, which creates meditation for peace.”

— Ajahn Brahm

18. “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.”

— Ajahn Brahm

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

— Ajahn Brahm

20. “Careful patience is the fastest way!”

— Ajahn Brahm

21. “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.”

— Ajahn Brahm

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

— Ajahn Brahm

23. “Disengaging means you leave these things alone and you’re not concerned or worried about them.”

— Ajahn Brahm

24. “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.”

— Ajahn Brahm

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

— Ajahn Brahm

26. “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.”

— Ajahn Brahm

27. “Your job is to be free, not to carry around the so-called attainments or failures of the past.”

— Ajahn Brahm

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

— Ajahn Brahm

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

— Ajahn Brahm

30. “You understand that the defilements promise you so much but that they never actually deliver.”

— Ajahn Brahm

31. “Better lite a candle than complain about the darkness.”

— Ajahn Brahm

32. “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.”

— Ajahn Brahm

33. “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.”

— Ajahn Brahm

34. “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.”

— Ajahn Brahm