Four Ways of Letting Go:Buddhist Practice for Peace

The inability to let go of past hurts, present difficulties, and future fears creates profound suffering not only for ourselves but for everyone around us. By learning to release what we carry—emotionally, mentally, and psychologically—we cultivate peace and happiness that extends to our families, colleagues, and communities. This teaching directly addresses why we struggle to let go despite knowing intellectually that holding onto grievances, worries, and regrets causes unnecessary pain. Rather than simply advising "let go," the Buddha offers four concrete methods for training the mind to release what burdens us.

Why We Hold On When Letting Go Makes Sense

The paradox of human suffering is that we cling to things that hurt us repeatedly. When someone wrongs us, they may harm us once in the moment of the transgression. Yet by replaying that injury in our minds, becoming angry, and refusing to release it, we allow that person to hurt us again and again every time we recall the event. This is, as Ajahn Brahm points out, "totally unreasonable, illogical, one of the most foolish things you could ever do." Similarly, when we worry about a future illness, financial loss, or relationship problem, we suffer twice: once from the imagined event and again from the anxiety itself. We neglect the only moment where we can actually take meaningful action—the present—and instead exhaust ourselves mentally in an imagined future.

The same applies to our fears. Whether we face a serious diagnosis or uncertainty about tomorrow, worry makes the existing burden heavier. As Ajahn Brahm explains, if you receive news of an illness, "you're already sick enough and now you worry yourself sick even further." The worry does not change the medical reality; it only depletes our energy and mental clarity. Understanding this logic intellectually is not enough, however. Knowing that we should let go and actually being able to let go are two different capacities. This is where the four ways of letting go become practical tools.

The First Way: Simply Throwing Things Away

The first method emerges from a teaching moment with Ajahn Brahm's own teacher, Ajahn Chah. While walking back from an alms round in the forest, Ajahn Chah picked up a stick and asked, "Brahmavamso, is this heavy?" He then immediately threw it away and said, "Not now. It's only heavy when you hold it." This simple demonstration carries profound significance. Anything we carry—a job we hate, relationship problems, family obligations, health concerns, financial stress—feels heavy only because we hold it. The moment we let it go, it has no weight.

This first way teaches us that we can literally and figuratively discard what burdens us. At a meditation retreat, Ajahn Brahm had practitioners carve words like "my family," "my job," "my husband," "my wife," "my kids," or "my life" onto sticks, then throw them into the forest. The purpose is not to actually abandon these responsibilities but to experience, even briefly, the freedom that comes from release. For nine days during a retreat, practitioners could be free from worry about these things. This practice demonstrates that letting go is a capacity we possess—we are not permanently bound to our worries.

The modern parallel is the overstuffed backpack. We live such complicated lives, accumulating not just memories and emotions but also possessions, commitments, and anxieties. Like a backpacker carrying an enormous pack filled not just with clothes but with heavy granite rocks, we walk through life exhausted. The weight comes not from any single burden but from the accumulated mass of everything we refuse to set down. By learning to discard, to simplify, and to travel lightly through existence, we free ourselves from chronic exhaustion.

The Second Way: Leaving Things Alone

The second way of letting go involves a different stance: not throwing things away, but choosing not to engage with them at all. This applies particularly to the past. "The past is a prison," Ajahn Brahm teaches. Once something has happened, it cannot be changed. We cannot alter what someone said to us, what we did, or what was done to us. Yet we imprison ourselves by repeatedly returning to those moments, re-examining them, feeling anger or shame about them.

If we look honestly at our past—the times people hurt us, let us down, said terrible things—there is nothing we can do about it now. The intelligent response is to look at it, acknowledge it happened, and then leave it alone. This is different from repression or denial. We are not pretending the harm did not occur; we are simply refusing to continue the punishment by replaying it mentally. As Ajahn Brahm notes, "You don't have to do anything, kamma will sort it out, leave it alone, you let it go."

Similarly, the future contains infinite possibilities for what might happen. We might face illness, loss, disappointment—or we might not. We cannot control what will occur, and worry does not prepare us for genuine challenges. It only depletes the one resource we do have: this moment. By leaving the future alone, by refusing to mentally rehearse catastrophes, we redirect our energy to the present, which is "the place where your future, peace, health and happiness is being constructed." If we act with kindness, integrity, and peace in this moment, we are genuinely building a better future. Worry is not construction; it is sabotage.

The Third Way: Accepting What Must Happen

Not everything can be thrown away, and not everything can be left alone. Some things must be accepted. The third way of letting go involves surrender to what is inevitable or unchangeable. This may include aging, eventual death, the impermanence of all people and circumstances, or current conditions we cannot immediately alter.

A striking story illustrates this principle: Ajahn Brahm had a mother who kept a shelf filled with old items—ornaments, decorations, objects from the past. Every time he visited her, he saw the same cluttered shelf. Finally, he told her, "Mum, when you pass away, someone's going to come and they're going to chuck all this away." She replied, "That's awful! That's terrible!" So he suggested, "Why don't you chuck it away now and then you get the joy of seeing the clear shelf for yourself?" Yet she could not. Some people must hold on until loss is forced upon them by death.

This teaches that there is a season for release. Some people can only accept and let go when circumstances compel them to. That acceptance, however, comes with great freedom. Whether we release things voluntarily or are stripped of them by circumstance, the end point is the same: at some point, we must let go. Recognizing this universal truth means we can begin practicing acceptance voluntarily rather than waiting for crisis or death to force our hand.

The Fourth Way: Developing the Mind That Doesn't Complain

The fourth way addresses not external circumstances but our internal relationship to them. Even when we cannot change a situation, we can change our mind's response to it. This is the development of a mind that does not complain, does not resist, does not struggle against reality.

Ajahn Brahm introduces a meditation analogy: an old story in which a monk is meditating and mosquitoes come and bite him repeatedly. Rather than swatting them away or moving, he simply sits. The mosquitoes bite him one hundred times, one thousand times. But he has developed a mind that is unmoved, unresisting. He is not suppressing anger or suffering; he has cultivated a mind that simply does not react with complaint or struggle.

This fourth way is perhaps the most subtle and requires the most training. It means accepting present conditions—traffic jams, boring conversations, uncomfortable situations, difficult people—without adding the secondary suffering of resistance and complaint. As Ajahn Brahm observes, "It's not what I'm getting out of this." This shift from constantly evaluating whether our experience satisfies us to simply allowing experience to be as it is represents a fundamental liberation from the habit of complaining.

A practical application appears in the prison ministry context that Ajahn Brahm mentions. When people ask inmates what they do in prison, the response is "We meditate." Even in confined spaces, with minimal possessions, prisoners can develop minds that do not complain. This does not mean accepting injustice or poor conditions—it means not compounding physical confinement with mental anguish. The freedom that matters most cannot be imprisoned.

The Integration: Moving Through Life Without Burden

These four ways are not separate techniques to be used in isolation. They work together. We throw away what we can discard, leave alone what cannot be changed, accept what must be accepted, and train the mind not to complain about any of it. The result is a capacity that "most of the other people can't do": the ability to let things go and let things be in any situation.

This capacity does not mean abandoning responsibility. Even monks and nuns, who have committed to simplicity and letting go, "still have to work hard, you have to keep your responsibilities." Rather, it means engaging with life's demands without the exhaustion that comes from resistance, resentment, and worry. We can perform our duties—caring for family, managing work, maintaining relationships—while simultaneously releasing the heavy emotional and mental burdens we attach to these roles.

The deeper understanding is that our peace, health, and happiness are constructed in this moment, through this moment, by how we hold ourselves in relation to what arises. Every time we replay a hurt, we injure ourselves again. Every time we worry about the future, we abandon the present moment where we could actually do something beneficial. Every time we complain about unchangeable conditions, we add suffering to suffering. And every time we let something go—truly let it go—we recover energy, clarity, and peace.

Where to go from here

Begin with the first way: identify one thing you are carrying that could be discarded. It might be a grudge, a possession you no longer need, or a commitment that no longer serves you. Practice the stick exercise if it resonates—write the burden on paper or carve it on an object, then physically throw it away. Notice what that release feels like, even if the burden returns in your mind. That momentary freedom is real and accessible.

Next, observe your relationship to the past. Where are you held prisoner by something that cannot be changed? Can you look at it, acknowledge it, and then consciously leave it alone? This is not forgetting; it is wise non-engagement. Similarly, notice how much energy you spend worrying about futures that may never arrive. Each time you catch yourself rehearsing a catastrophe, ask: "Is there something I can actually do about this right now?" If yes, do it. If no, let it go.

Finally, practice the fourth way in small moments. In traffic, instead of complaining, observe your mind's habit of resistance. In a boring meeting, practice not struggling against the situation. These are laboratories where you develop the mind that does not need to complain. Over time, this capacity becomes not a forced suppression but a natural way of being—and it is in this natural release that lasting peace emerges.