A Still Forest Pool

A guide to transforming your relationship with the world around you—turning every walk in the woods into a profound spiritual practice.

The wisdom of Ajahn Chah helped ignite interest in meditation in the West, where many of his students became contemporary spiritual leaders. Spending many years walking and meditating in a forest monastery in Thailand, Ajahn Chah engaged in the uncomplicated and disciplined Buddhist practice called dhudanga, a quiet, intensive, and joyous practice of the forest monks.

In A Still Forest Pool, Ajahn Chah’s humble yet powerful words awaken the spirit of inquiry, wonderment, understanding, and deep inner peace. His teachings contain what has been called “the heart of Buddhist meditation,” the direct and simple practices of calming the heart and opening the mind to true insight. This way of mindfulness, or insight meditation, has become a rapidly growing form of Buddhist practice in the West.

Attachment, according to Ajahn Chah, causes all suffering. Understanding the impermanent, insecure, and selfless nature of life is the message he offers for human happiness and realization. To vividly grasp the meaning of attachment leads us to a new place of practice—the path of balance, the Middle Path.

With A Still Forest Pool, you will learn to take the steps on the meditative path that will change and fulfill your life.

This title was previously published in 1985; this new edition includes new material by Jack Kornfield.