All things are just as they are. They don’t cause suffering to anybody. It’s just like a thorn, a really sharp thorn. Does it make you suffer? No, it’s just a thorn. It doesn’t bother anybody. But if you go and stand on it, you’ll suffer. Why is there suffering? Because you stepped on the thorn. The thorn is just minding its own business. It doesn’t harm anybody. It’s because of we ourselves that there is pain. Form, feeling, perception, volition, consciousness…. all things in this world are simply as they are. It’s we who pick fights with them. And if we hit them, they hit us back. If they’re left alone they won’t bother anybody. Only the drunkard gives them trouble.

- A Tree in a Forest
A collection of Ajahn Chah’s Similes

"If you’ve never really contemplated the world, never taken the time to understand and know it, then it becomes a frightening place for you. It becomes like a jungle: you don’t know what’s around the next tree, bush or cliff - a wild animal, a ferocious man-eating tiger, a terrible dragon or a poisonous snake."

"In meditation we’re nothing, just observing what sorrow really is. We’re not saying that we shouldn’t feel sorrow when we separate from someone we love; it’s natural to feel that way, isn’t it? But now, as meditators, we’re beginning to witness sorrow so that we understand it, rather than trying to suppress it, pretend it’s something more than it is, or just neglect it."

[excerpts from Now is the Knowing - Venerable Ajahn Sumedho]

"Where does rain come from? It comes from all the dirty water that evaporates from the earth, like urine and the water you throw out after washing your feet. Isn’t it wonderful how the sky can take that dirty water and change it into pure clean water? Your mind can do the same with your defilements if you let it."

"Our birth and death are just one thing. You can’t have one without the other. It’s a little funny to see how at a death people are so tearful and sad, and at a birth how happy and delighted. It’s delusion. I think if you really want to cry, then it would be better to do so when someone’s born. Cry at the root, for if there were no birth, there would be no death. Can you understand this?."

[Quotations from "NO AJAN CHAH" compiled and edited by Dhamma Garden]