Ajahn Jayasaro was born on the Isle of Wight, England in 1958. He joined Ajahn Sumedho’s community for the Rains Retreat as an anagarika in 1978 and in November of that year he left for Wat Pa Pong in Northeast Thailand where he ordained as a novice and then as a Bhikkhu in 1980 with the Venerable Ajahn Chah as his preceptor. From 1997 to 2002 Ajahn Jayasaro was the Abbot of Wat Pah Nanachat. He is now living alone in a hermitage at the foot of the Khao Yai mountains.

He is the author of several books in English and Thai, including the authorized biography of Ajahn Chah, and is considered an expert in Buddhist Pedagogy in Thailand, receiving an honorary PhD from Mahachulalongkorn University in 2011 and a “Chao Khun” title from the King of Thailand in 2015.

~For more, see panyaprateep.org.

Selected Works (in chronological order)

Don’t try to be someone else

What lies behind this insistence on love is a worry: without a deep-seated fear that one day love would no longer exist (or exist in the same way) why would anyone feel that they have to insist upon it so much?

This book is intended to provide an introduction to the teachings of the Buddha which will shed some light on a subject that, to non-Buddhists, can appear both unexpectedly rational and exotically strange.

The Buddha spoke of two kinds of desire: desire that arises from ignorance and delusion which is called taṇhā—craving—and desire that arises from wisdom and intelligence, which is called kusala-chanda

It is as if an arrow has been pulled out of your heart.

We manifest our humanity, we are most fully human, in learning.