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Introduction |
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So often we are trying to follow the Buddha’s teaching with the idea of
becoming free from something – free from our desires, our personality,
our anger, our suffering. It might then come as quite a surprise, when
suddenly, in the middle of our striving to attain or get rid of
something, we find our heart opening like a window, revealing to us the
spacious vista of an unexpected kind of freedom: the freedom to fully
meet ourselves as we are right now; the freedom to fully experience all
the situations and emotions that seem to be obstacles to our happiness,
without having to believe in or follow their apparent messages. What
allows us to abide in that unexpected freedom, finding stillness and
clarity in the eye of the storm, is a spacious, embracing awareness of
the present moment, which for its liberating qualities lies at the heart
of the Buddha’s teaching. This collection of talks is formed around the
theme of this potentially limitless awareness.
The inspiration to put this book together originated with a series of
talks given by Ajahn Munindo at the beginning of the millennium in New
Zealand. In those talks he characterised a practice centered on trust in
a non-judgmental awareness of the present moment as ‘source-oriented’
practice, contrasting it to ‘goal-oriented’ striving. I was living at
the monastery in Wellington where the talks were given and it was a
great relief for me to hear his eloquent exposition of a theme I was
struggling with myself, feeling intuitively drawn to a source-oriented
approach but at the same time keeping a half-hearted commitment to
goal-striving. A predicament which led me into years of confusion in
which I vainly tried to synthesize and reconcile the two approaches in
my own practice. Finding myself encouraged by one of our senior monks to
follow my own intuition was quite a relief, freeing up a lot of energy.
Part of the newly kindled enthusiasm went straight into the effort to
get the talks edited. With the help of a few good friends we merged them
into one text called ‘We are all Translators’, the second of this
collection. There was a particularly strong incentive for me to do this,
having seen how many other people, particularly Westerners, shared the
same response to the talks or the theme developed in them. And the
reception of the talk seems to have proved its relevance, as it has now
been reprinted in several languages.
Soon after coming to Aruna Ratanagiri, the monastery at Harnham, in the
north of England, where Ajahn Munindo is the senior incumbent, a number
of other talks sprang to my attention that seemed similarly significant,
adding perspectives and themes that felt like cornerstones of Ajahn
Munindo’s way of living and presenting the Dhamma: ‘When we fall in
Love’ with its appreciation of how to harness all of our enthusiasm for
life into our practice; ‘What is Renunciation?’ explaining the need for
a proper container in which our passions can be transformed; and ‘Prayer
and Devotion’, concerning the engagement of our heart’s longings and
aspirations in a way that usually gets little attention in Western
presentations of the Theravada teachings. Then, over a period of a few
months I heard Ajahn Munindo give a whole series of talks illustrating
the application of present-moment awareness to various difficult
situations and emotions, culminating in the ‘The Power of Paradox’. In
this talk he succinctly formulates the essence of a source-oriented
approach to practice: “Patiently allowing utterly frustrating dilemmas
to be present in our here-and-now, judgment-free awareness - this is the
path of purification.” With those talks fleshing out the theme opened up
by ‘We are all Translators’, the idea of a book took on more definite
shape, and after some initial hesitation (“Do you really think these
things are worth printing?”) Ajahn Munindo warmed up to the idea.
Finally, through the bequest of his good friend Sue Warren, who passed
away in 2003, there arose the opportunity to print this book and
dedicate it to her dear memory.
In the first talk of the collection Ajahn Munindo shares his experience
of his early years as a monk in Thailand and his relationship to and the
teachings received from his first teacher, the late Ajahn Tate. The book
then moves on to the theme of respectfully translating the teachings and
the form of the inherited tradition into what is meaningful and workable
for us. This is a task that, as is explained in ‘We are all
Translators’, we have to face individually if we want to receive genuine
benefits from our practice. In his own efforts to meet this challenge,
Ajahn Munindo remains faithful to the instructions on awareness he
received from his first teacher: to “realise the difference between the
contents of the heart and the heart itself.”
The main body of the book develops the theme of this awareness, the
heart itself, its inherent freedom and its relevance for receiving and
transforming the various passions and problems arising in our life. The
aim is to show how it is that in this cauldron of awareness, if our
connection to it is strong, stable and clear enough, all obstructions
can be melted down into their raw energies which then become available
again to manifest in ways that are wholesome and beautiful. As the Ajahn
points out in ‘Getting to Know our Emotional Household’, this is
essential, as “we need all our energy for the work of purification”, and
whatever part of it we try to deny or repress for too long will go
underground and eventually turn against us.
The talks towards the end of the book offer reflections and practices
that try to provide a supportive framework to hold awareness in its
place, investing it with the strength needed to undertake its
transformative work. This arrangement of the talks, then, follows a
certain logic; however, it should be possible to open the book at any
page and find some relevant reminder or a fresh perspective on the
challenges we face in our practice.
The talks were given at a variety of venues – at Aruna Ratanagiri
monastery, during either the regular Sunday evening meetings or lay
meditation retreats, during travels to meditation groups in Britain as
well as in other countries – always to a lay audience, mostly with
monastic Sangha presence, often addressing specific questions, and so in
general trying to address topics of concern for both monastic and lay
practitioners. They have, at least in part, been edited extensively to
adapt them to the written format, to avoid repetitions or to clarify the
argument where it seemed helpful.
The quotations at the beginning of each talk are taken from Ajahn
Munindo’s own rendering of the Dhammapada, published by River
Publications. They introduce the theme of the talk and pay homage to the
Buddha by offering a reference to the Pali scriptures, the most ancient
record of his teachings. Thai and Pali words (apart from Buddha, Dhamma,
Sangha and some proper names) have been italicised where they appear in
the first instance in each talk. Their meaning can be looked up in the
glossary.
It was a great pleasure to work on this book with the dedicated help of
so many friends. We would particularly like to thank Thomas Jones and
Glenn Langdell for their very competent editing of the talks, the
various proof-readers, especially Ajahn Candasiri, and Soph Moeng for
offering his type-setting skills.
At times we felt that our enthusiasm for trying to include as much
material as possible, trying to cover all the points we found
particularly relevant to the overall theme, would result in a rather
longish volume. Which reminds me of a story about the Spanish artist
Pablo Picasso. Once Picasso was visiting the Louvre in Paris with an art
critic friend. As they were standing in front of one of Rafael’s
masterpieces, expressing their admiration, the art critic pointed to one
of Rafael’s ethereal renderings of a Greek goddess, and ventured to say,
“But Pablo, don’t you think he painted this arm much too long?” which,
technically, was true. However, Picasso immediately retorted straight
from the heart: “Ah, no – such a beautiful arm can’t be long enough!”
I hope you will enjoy reading this book as much as we enjoyed producing
it.
Abhinando Bhikkhu
Aruna Ratanagiri, February 2004© 2005 Aruna Publications |
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