Practice Like Still Flowing Water: Peace Beyond Solitude

On the new-moon Uposatha day, the monastic community at Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery had recited their precepts that afternoon, and the rains retreat was turning over. A few monks were coming out of solitude, a few more were going into it, and the last group of the season was heading up into the forest for the extended stretch of formal practice that the Vassa period traditionally makes room for. It is into that quiet, slightly in-between air that Ajahn Pasanno spoke in a Dhamma talk offered on October 11, 2026. His theme, carried in the title Practice Like Still Flowing Water, is a question most practitioners eventually run into: if peace depends on the conditions around us, what happens when the conditions never cooperate? His answer is that the work is less about escaping the world than about how we hold it, what we invest in, and whether the heart can stay clear while things keep arising and passing away.

What does the Buddha mean by "the world," and why does solitude not solve it?

Ajahn Pasanno opened by describing what a retreat is for. Monastics step back from ordinary life to focus on the formal aspects of practice and to ask, in his words, "where is the practice? What are we doing?" He was quick to note that the retreat is not a sealed-off reward. He recalled the Buddha being asked what "the world" is, and the answer as he gave it: the eye, the ear, the nose, the tongue, the body, the mind. The world, in this teaching, is not a place out there. It is how we receive experience, connect with it, and relate to it through the senses and through this body and this mind.

That reframing is the hinge of the whole talk. If the world is the way we receive it, then physical isolation does not automatically produce peace. Ajahn Pasanno put it plainly: a person can be in complete solitude and still carry around "a pretty big world," a complicated one. Another person can live fully engaged in the middle of obligations and the world can be "very simple and clear." The difference is not the geography. It is "how we carry it, how we hold it."

How can a heart stay pristine in the middle of the mud?

To make the point concrete, Ajahn Pasanno pointed to two teachers from his own lineage. He spoke of his old teacher, Luang Por Chah (Ajahn Chah), and of Luang Por Chah's successor, Luang Por Liem. Both, he said, took on a huge amount of responsibility, in contact and connection with the monastic communities and with the lay world around them, and remained "completely unshaken by the world." Their example is what he wanted listeners to take from the retreat period: the ability to stay with the Dhamma, with what he called "this pristine truth of the Buddhist teachings," which is there all the time.

Then he gave the image he attributes to Ajahn Chah. Imagine a diamond that has fallen into a mud puddle. The diamond does not become mud. It is still a diamond, and the mud does not change what it is. Ajahn Pasanno's point was that a heart well established in the Dhamma works the same way. The teaching itself is pristine, and the heart can be pristine too, even when life around it is muddy. The image is worth sitting with because it refuses the easy assumption that purity requires a clean environment. The diamond's nature is not a property of its surroundings. The practice is to know that nature and stay in contact with it.

"What do we invest in and what do we give importance to? Because we can get, you know, obsessed with all sorts of things. And is it really very useful or beneficial or at all peaceful?" (Ajahn Pasanno, Dhamma talk, Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery, October 11, 2026)

That question is where the talk turns practical. Investigating what we are investing in, and what we are caught up in, is part of the work of mindfulness and reflection. It is not a call to indifference. Ajahn Pasanno was careful about this. The lesson he drew is not "absolute passivity and non-involvement." It is a sharper question about proportion: how much does the world really need me to provide its commentary all the time? How much does the heart need the proliferation, the worries, the likes and dislikes, the opinions about how things should and should not be?

What does accepting the weather have to do with inner peace?

Ajahn Pasanno's most vivid illustration came from ordinary weather, and it is the part of the talk that made the room laugh. A few days earlier, he said, it had been blistering hot, and then the weather turned and it was suddenly cold. Does it make a difference whether you like one and dislike the other? Does the fact that it is hot change if you pretend it is not? Obviously not. You do not wander out at midday without covering yourself. You find shade, shelter, a quiet place to wait it out. Cold is no different. "That's the way things are."

He admitted, with some humor, that as he gets older his "Canadian genes are long gone" and he is "freezing," and that he used to love the cold. Acceptance, he said, does not mean pretending. Fortunately, he has a good down vest and down jacket. That, he said, is part of the peace: "accepting the way things are and then adjusting accordingly." The acceptance is the place of peace. The adjustment is wisdom in action. Most of us collapse those two steps, either fighting reality or resigning to it. Ajahn Pasanno keeps them separate, and that separation is what makes the teaching usable on an ordinary November morning.

He tied this to the deeper truth that all things arise and all things pass away, that everything comes into being through conditions and dissipates. We are born and we die. He called these "fundamental truths" that allow us to be at peace with the way things are. The habit of wanting this and not wanting that, of believing things should be one way and not another, is what keeps the mind out of balance. It agitates the mind and costs it clarity.

What is the quality of knowing, and do you need special insight to find it?

The antidote Ajahn Pasanno named is a cultivation he described as simple, and he is clear that its simplicity is the point. It is mindfulness: being aware, being present, being steady within oneself and very alert and watchful. The heart goes back to "the quality of knowing," and abides there. He was emphatic that you do not need some special knowledge or a particular degree of attainment to begin. "It's just this quality of awareness and presence." From there, you can rely on that knowing to stay at peace with whatever arises.

The practical shift is that you do not have to make things the way you want them, and you do not have to run from what you do not want. You can simply recognize: this can be known. This is how it comes to be, how it is established, how it starts to shift, and how it falls apart. There is, he said, "a simplicity in that, but there's a real beauty that is delightful."

Can everyday life become a cause for awakening?

The last major thread of the talk concerns intention. Ajahn Pasanno described a Thai cultural tradition: during certain ceremonies, offerings, or designated periods of meditation, people make a dedication. The phrase he cited is nibbana paccayo hotu, "may this be the cause and condition for my realization of nibbana." What he wanted listeners to notice is that this need not be reserved for a special occasion, once a year or once in a while. The real skill is learning to take everything one is doing and orient it, to turn everything to one's advantage. The practice is not "I have to get conditions exactly right before I can be peaceful." It is taking the conditions as they come and making them the path.

He asked a question that stays with the reader: are we using what is happening in our lives as a cause and condition for awakening, or as fuel for more proliferation and suffering? His own answer leaned toward the first. Practice, in this frame, is not a separate room you enter when the weather is right. It is the still water that keeps flowing through the rest of the day.

Where to go from here

Ajahn Pasanno's talk is a short, unhurried guide to a practice that does not depend on a perfect setting. If you want to try it in your own life, a few questions from the talk can serve as a starting point:

• When the world feels complicated, what am I carrying with me, and is it necessary?
• What am I investing my attention in, and does it actually bring benefit or peace?
• When conditions change, can I accept what is so and then adjust, like reaching for the down vest?
• Can I rest in the quality of knowing, without demanding special insight?
• Can I offer my ordinary activities as a cause and condition for awakening?

The talk itself is worth listening to in full, especially for its pacing and its long pauses, which mirror the teaching. The diamond in the mud puddle is a good image to return to whenever the water gets murky.