Shedding Tears in Amazement with Dhamma
Ajahn Mahā Boowa
Recorded at Wat Pa Baan Taad in June 2002, late in his life, Ajahn Mahā Boowa describes — in the most direct first-person language any senior Forest master has ever used on the topic — the citta's response at the moment of liberation. He weeps as he tells it. The talk is iconic in the Thai Forest tradition not for any new doctrine but for the quality of testimony: a senior arahant describing, plainly, what awakening felt like to the heart that experienced it.
Iconic late-life testimony from one of the great Thai Forest masters on the citta's response to liberation. There is no comparable document.
The sangha responds.
More foundational talks from Theravada.
The Mindful Way
BBC archive footage of Ajahn Chah at Wat Pah Pong
The only widely-circulated film footage of Ajahn Chah, captured by the BBC in 1979 at Wat Pah Pong as part of a documentary on Theravada renunciate life. He is filmed in conversation with Western disciples, walking the forest, instructing monks, and teaching with the wry, exacting plainness that became the signature of the Thai Forest tradition. For an entire lineage that grew explosively after his death — Ajahn Sumedho, Ajahn Brahm, Ajahn Pasanno, Ajahn Amaro, the entire Amaravati and Abhayagiri sanghas — this footage is the one moving image of the source.
Four Ways of Letting Go
Recorded at Bodhinyana Monastery in Western Australia, Ajahn Brahm's 'Four Ways of Letting Go' has crossed 2.5 million views and become — by any measure — the most-viewed English-language dhamma talk ever uploaded. Brahm walks through four progressively deeper releases: the body, the senses, thought, and finally the knower itself. He does it the way only he can — with the disarming jokes, the British timing, the absolute precision underneath. It is the talk that has converted more people to sitting meditation in the streaming era than any other.
The Sound of Silence
Ajahn Sumedho — the senior Western disciple of Ajahn Chah and the founding abbot of Amaravati — opens up his signature method. The 'sound of silence' or 'nada' is not a sound the meditator makes but one the meditator notices: a continuous high-frequency inner hum that the mind, when quiet enough, can rest in. Sumedho turns it into a complete awareness practice, one that is portable, durable, and remarkably accessible. For three decades it has been the practice that holds the Forest sangha's English-speaking lay community.