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Tasting the flavour of solitude and the nectar of peace,
those who drink the joy that is the essence of reality
abide free from fear of evil.
Dhammapada verse 205
Question: Can you explain the relative merits of practising as a
monastic and practising as a householder? Could you also describe any
general patterns of personality change that you have noticed in people
as a result of Buddhist practice?
Ajahn Munindo: Whether one lives the life of a celibate renunciate, as a
monk or nun, or whether one lives as a layperson, a householder, is a
question of one’s choice of lifestyle. That choice is not just about
personal preferences but has to do with all sorts of conditions – our
accumulations, our kamma. It is a basic premise of the Buddhist outlook
that we did not come into the world as a blank sheet but with a history
and a set of tendencies. What we came into this life with, forms the
context and the background against which our life’s unfolding takes
place, the details of which most of us can’t see.
For all of us, however – monks, nuns or lay people – the practice is
essentially the same. We all encounter frustration, limited existence
and suffering. What matters is whether we are willing to receive our
suffering consciously and look into the actuality of it, or whether we
are committed – knowingly or unknowingly – to distraction and avoidance
in order to delay looking at what is truly taking place. In both the
householders’ life and the monastic life there is the full spectrum of
commitment, from those who are enthusiastically committed to seeing what
the reality of each moment is, to those occupied in distraction. What
matters is whether our lifestyle is true for us and whether it helps us
develop increased willingness. Willingness is what matters.
The reality, whatever our choice of lifestyle, is that throughout our
life we have to face the evidence of our limitations. Whether we like it
or not, we all experience not getting our own way and becoming lost in
habitual reactivity. When we come right up against those experiences,
how do we respond? Do we resist, saying, ‘I shouldn’t be this way, I
should be more clear about where I’m going in my life;’ or is there the
heart-capacity to meet this person – me – in this experience of
limitation in an unobstructed way?
Encountering Loneliness
To speak personally, I can say that living as a monk, has been a
difficult choice but that I don’t have any regrets. I do regret some of
the ways I have handled certain situations in the past but I don’t
regret having chosen to live the life of a monk. I feel very privileged
and fortunate to live this life, and the longer I live it the more that
feeling grows. It’s fundamentally about living in solitude and getting
to know your aloneness. Yes, monks live together in community but in our
togetherness we are alone. The structures of the life bring us to an
intense recognition of our aloneness and the agony of loneliness.
For someone who lives the monastic life of a celibate renunciate,
loneliness is not considered as a symptom of failure. It is looked upon
as an indicator – a sign. When you feel the pain of loneliness as
horrible – just as it is – it does not mean failure. This feeling tells
you where your resources are, where you need to go to get your gold; so
it’s something that we train ourselves to welcome and look into. We are
supposed to feel lonely – at least until we realize contentment in our
aloneness. From this perspective, compulsive socialising or any heedless
activity that distracts us from an accurate, personal, receptivity to
the experience of loneliness is seen as a hindrance.
There are monastic communities in both Buddhist and non-Buddhist
traditions in which there are movements towards socialising and group
activity, but according to my understanding and observation of these
things, invariably either those activities die out or the communities
themselves die. The reason is that the monastic life is essentially
solitary – it’s all about being alone. The decision to live such a life
is made for all sorts of reasons, but ultimately it needs to be made
because we find it in our nature to make that choice. It’s not right or
wrong to live the monastic life or to live a householder’s life. We
choose whatever is appropriate for our condition – whatever supports us
in our commitment to the path of practice.
Anybody who has lived the life of a monk, a nun or a postulant for any
length of time knows the pain of loneliness, but hopefully has also
tasted the benefit of being supported by the spiritual community in
their encounter with it. The spiritual community is a very important
support in encouraging us to go deeper into all aspects of our
experience – perhaps into loneliness even more than other aspects. To
try and live monastically without any support would be very difficult.
Because of this, the Buddha encouraged the spiritual community, the
Sangha, to make a shared commitment to a celibate renunciate lifestyle,
and to support each other in their efforts.
If we have adequately prepared ourselves with strength of mindfulness
and steadiness of samadhi, along with the self-respect that comes with
sense-restraint and moral conduct, then we can embrace the energetic
reality of loneliness. Instead of thinking, ‘I feel lonely, what can I
do to get rid of this feeling of loneliness? I’ll write an e-mail, read
a book, or ring somebody up,’ we open up to receive – without any
judgment or analysis – the feeling of loneliness. To be encouraged to do
that is a wonderful thing and is very much a part of what the spiritual
community is about.
As a householder or a layperson it is not necessarily the case that you
will be forced to confront loneliness in the same manner as a monk or
nun will be. Living with a partner in a committed relationship, for
example – in many cases with children as well – brings a very different
experience altogether. Assuming that such a relationship is not
destructive or dysfunctional, there will be a sense of companionship –
close, intimate companionship. Since the last close intimate
companionship I had was about thirty years ago, there is little I can
say about that. But from what people tell me, committing to a close
relationship doesn’t protect anyone from the pain of loneliness. So
whatever our lifestyle choice, all of us who are committed to practice
are called to go deeply into this experience and find our own way to a
resolution.
Personality Shifts
With regards to changes in personality through practice, nowadays what I
see in everybody who is training, whether monastic or lay person, is a
shift in heart towards an increased willingness to receive the present
moment in its fullness – without interpretation, indulgence or
avoidance.
In any experience our mind can imagine all sorts of possible outcomes,
some agreeable and some disagreeable. We can become very anxious because
of these imagined possibilities. However, if we practise rightly and
truly, we find ourselves increasingly capable of accommodating all sorts
of eventualities – both the frightening and the wonderful. I have found
this to be true throughout my years of training and have observed it
growing in many with whom I have lived. Witnessing such increase of
capacity is always a joy.
I received a letter today from someone who lives in Eastern Europe and
has been practising for a few years. He’s young and very enthusiastic in
his practice and has just recognised that he’s been attached to the
conceited view that he is in the best religion. There is nobody in his
family and hardly anyone else in his immediate environment who is a
Buddhist, so he’s very much a solitary Buddhist. He’s been holding onto
an idea of himself as a Buddhist in a very tight way, which is quite
understandable – that’s generally how we all begin. But because of his
right practice he has reached the point where he’s started to loosen the
way he holds the perception of himself as a Buddhist, and has come to
realise how conceited his view was that ‘I am a Buddhist and Buddhism is
the best religion there is.’
In his letter he discribed how, having seen his conceit, he became
caught in terrible doubt. He thought, ‘I’ve been brain-washed. Buddhism
is just another system of brainwashing.’ He wrote that he’d been
watching a video of Nazis in Germany in the 1930’s, in which the Nazi
youth were going round teaching the young people to sing nationalistic
songs praising Hitler and so on. The Nazis were skilled at programming
large numbers of people to hold specific views and beliefs, to conform
to a fixed idea.
Seeing this video coincided with him recognising how rigid his grasp of
Buddhism was. He fell into this hellish doubt in which he decided that
he had been thoroughly mistaken and that Buddhism was, in fact, just a
load of codswallop! ‘This is just another form of programming for
imbeciles!’ he thought to himself, believing that he’d made a terrible
and humiliating mistake.
Fortunately, his practice was adequately balanced so that he was soon
able to reflect on the shift in his experience and on the doubt he was
caught up in. The reality of his experience was that he was having
doubts, that’s all. He didn’t know that Buddhism was a load of
codswallop; he didn’t know that he’d been programmed into believing some
cultic nonsense. His practice was sufficiently broad, non-judgmental and
here-and-now that he was able to accommodate his doubt without grasping
it, without becoming it. If in that moment when the thought arose –
‘I’ve been programmed by a cult of fanatic monks and Ajahn Munindo is
another sort of a Nazi’ – he hadn’t been properly prepared, then he
could have thrown the whole thing out of the window, gone out drinking
with his mates and created a whole lot of unskilful kamma. I am
impressed with the way this young man went through this period – on his
own – allowing the doubt to be there. He allowed the real possibility
that he’d got it all wrong to remain in his consciousness, without
losing the balance of his mind. His willingness to experience the doubt
took him through to some insight into the nature of doubting.
As we continue in the practice of the Buddha-Dhamma we find an increased
willingness to accommodate all sorts of possibilities that come to us.
We don’t jump to conclusions so readily, and because of this, the heart
and mind begins to expand in a more open and easeful way. By our
practice of restraint we find that there are more, not fewer,
possibilities. Practitioners become more relaxed, they become more
trusting. This is the sort of personality change your might expect from
practice.
Certainly, my experience has been that, instead of having to feel sure
about things, I am able to let myself be not so sure. Sometimes people
tell me that when I talk I sound very sure and confident, but that is
not necessarily my subjective experience. When I talk about Dhamma, what
I am concerned with is encouraging investigation. At the end of a Dhamma
talk I hope the listeners have more and deeper questions than at the
start. However, when I meet my brothers and sisters and their partners,
who are all evangelical Christians, then I know that I am meeting people
who are really sure. If they are not travelling the world as
missionaries in Africa, Turkey, India, or the United States, they are
preaching and running churches near home. They don’t have any doubts at
all – certainly not conscious ones. They are very much convinced that
they have the answers. In that respect we are worlds apart because I
can’t say that I have the answers. I feel connected to a reality which
is much bigger than me – something beyond delineations of inner and
outer – a reality that I care about tremendously. And this is something
that I wholeheartedly commit my life in service to; but I can’t say that
I know or that I’m sure. I welcome this state of uncertainty – I think
it’s a healthy condition.
Not Sure
As far as making right effort in daily life – accommodating family
situations, community situations and other people – I think this
particular point is very relevant. Recognising that, in reality, we are
not sure most of the time makes us much nicer people to be with. If, out
of fear of being unsure, we hold on to ideas and take fixed positions,
we can become very rigid. If I feel sufficiently threatened in certain
situations, a fear comes up and there’s an experience of contraction – a
rigidity kicks in, and when that kicks in, possibilities become limited.
My mind doesn’t want to look at the myriads of possibilities, doesn’t
want to float around and feel what’s actually going to fit. In that
state of contraction and limitation it wants to get something and feel
sure. But this doesn’t benefit me and it doesn’t benefit other people.
On the other hand, when we are able to remember that we don’t know what
is going to happen – that we don’t know for certain – then there is a
relaxation, a releasing; an opening up and a trusting, a reconnecting
with a trusting relationship to life. Life is uncertain but that is just
the truth. We don’t have to be in a perpetual state of fear because of
it.
There are many contemplations that aim at leading us into a trusting
relationship to life, but I think this reflection on the fact that most
of the time we don’t know what is going to happen is especially useful.
When the tendency to grasp out of fear or insecurity arises, if we have
prepared ourselves, we hold back and just wait, remaining open and at
the same time in touch with the sense of ‘not sure’. This was one of
Ajahn Chah’s most regular teachings, perhaps his most regular teaching.
Whatever you said to him, after he responded he would often add, ‘but…mai
neh, mai neh,’ not sure. Neh – which comes from the Pali word nicca,
meaning ‘permanent’ – in Thai means ‘sure’ or ‘certain’. Mai is
negative. That was really the bottom line in all of his teaching.
Whatever arrangements were being made, ‘We’re going to do this’ or ‘Next
week I’m going to Bangkok,’ he would regularly say ‘mai neh’, ‘but not
sure.’ Not because he lacked commitment – he was anything but
wishy-washy; but because he wanted us to see the Dhamma in all of our
activity.
On the day that Ajahn Chah died in 1992 a friend of the monastery
offered a lamp as a gift to mark the occasion. We switched this lamp on
for the next ten days and nights as a gesture of our respect. After this
period we held a Memorial Service in the Dhamma Hall here. A large
gathering of people from Newcastle and the surrounding area came
together for chanting and meditation, to reflect with gratitude on our
teacher who had just passed away. At the Memorial Service I read a talk
from a collection of Ajahn Chah’s teachings called Food For The Heart.
It was on Ajahn Chah’s favourite theme – impermanence. The words in this
talk gained a new significance as I read them. When I came to this
important passage, the key sentence of the whole talk, which says, ‘…and
any teaching from any teacher that does not include the words
impermanence…’ the light bulb blew ‘...is not the teaching of the
Buddha….’ I had to stop for a few moments. I suppose these things
happen, don’t they? What causes them, what is actually going on – who
knows? But it certainly etched that particular aspect of Ajahn Chah’s
teaching even more deeply in my mind:
‘Any teaching that does not contain the words not sure or impermanent is
not the teaching of the Buddha.’
Thank you very much for your attention this evening.
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