Fearless Mountain Newsletter
Spring 2008 Articles
Anagārika Life Journey to the Source An Offering of Gratitude Newsletter Editor Stepping Down Absolute Sincerety Letting Go In India Inspiration, Gratitude, and Joy in India From the Monastery Calendar View Archive
Ajahn Ānandabodhi and Ajahn Santacitta
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I was last here almost ten years ago, and it’s been very nice to look around and see the changes that have happened. From England we hear about the hard work at Abhayagiri so it’s nice to see the fruits of that hard work. Ajahn Santacitta was here just the year before me so this is our second visit after a very long gap. It’s quite heartening to see what the community has done with the place and the property. Many people who have come through here and people connected to Abhayagiri have benefited from it. When we were coming today, we felt it was auspicious that it was both the late-night sit (the lunar observance day), and Ajahn Chah’s memorial day.
I was just remembering the day Ajahn Chah died in 1992. I was living as a lay woman near Harnham Monastery (Ratanagiri) in the north of England with my partner. I remember a friend coming to the door and asking if we had heard that Ajahn Chah died. We hadn’t, so we went off to buy some flowers, white lilies, and went up to the monastery to pay our respects. I remember that as we were there, as I was in the shrine room—there had been a large shrine made to Ajahn Chah—we were chanting the funeral chant and just sitting quietly taking in the fact that he had died. I first came across the Thai forest tradition in 1990. I haven’t ever been to Thailand so I didn’t meet Ajahn Chah, but I did feel incredible gratitude to him for the teaching that he passed on, both what was written and also what was living in the Sangha that I was visiting in Amaravati and Harnham. So I felt this very deep gratitude to him. I had been wavering for some years already about whether I should ordain or not ordain; wondering if it was the right thing to do. That evening, I decided I would offer one year of my life to the Sangha, to Ajahn Chah, as a gift or offering of gratitude to him. Page 2 of 9
I didn’t really know when that would happen but it was quite clear that was what I wanted to do.
It must have been about a half a year later, I felt that it was time. In those days it was very easy to stay at Amaravati and there wasn’t a long waiting list (for anagārikā training) like there is now. It was easy to just book for three months with the hope of staying longer, so that’s what I did. Now fifteen years later I’m still in the monastery with a real sense of gratitude for the opportunity. Through the whole process there was a sense of confidence, faith that this was the right direction.
I first came across the Four Noble Truths when I was a teenager, with a very strong sense of, “Oh, this is it. The Buddha knows the way out of suffering.” I had a very strong confidence in that. Although I didn’t really understand the teaching very well, I did understand, “there is suffering” and I also understood that, although I didn’t know how to do it, “there is a way out of suffering here and now.” And it’s not something that I have to wait until I die to see whether I’ve been good enough, or not, to go to heaven. I knew there is a way out of suffering in this very life and I felt a very deep confidence in that when I heard the teaching. I just trusted that, “Okay, even though I don’t really understand how to do it or how to meditate, if I just keep taking a step at a time, then it will come.”
In my first year as an anagārikā, I went through enormous doubt and struggles because I am someone who stumbled across the Buddha’s teaching, and stumbled across the Thai forest tradition as well. I remember that a few of the other sisters were very excited about some of the Suttas and they would show me this or that Sutta, and I would just get really depressed because I thought, “I Page 3 of 9
just can’t understand it. I can’t understand the language of it, what it’s pointing to, maybe I can’t do this at all.” I remember once being in tears in my room. “Oh, I just have to leave. I just can’t understand these complex teachings.” Fortunately, a nun knocked on my door by chance and asked what was happening. She said, “Rubbish. You understand the teaching fine. You just understand it in a different way.” That was helpful. Ajahn Chah’s way of teaching is so simple and immediate. He’s pointing to learning from nature and learning from the body, learning from the breath, learning from observing the mind. So I found I can do all of that; I can manage. I can be with the mind and whatever is going on. I can stay present with various different mind states. I can be with the breath and learn to be with the body.
In the beginning I had a very strong resistance and aversion to being present with the experience of being human. This evening, as I was sitting in the meditation, I was thinking, “It took a long time to arouse a sense of gratitude for this human birth.” In the beginning there was a very strong sense of, “I just want to get out. I want to find the way out of suffering and I don’t want to be born again.” This was a very strong motivation and then gradually I realized I was trying to get away from the situation I was in. It took a long time to acknowledge that, “there is this body and as long as I am alive, I had better get to know it and make friends with it because we’re going to be together for a lifetime.” It was much more attractive to go into blissful meditation—to concentrate the mind and enjoy a very pleasant meditation—but I would find that once I came out of the meditation I would be very irritable, sensitive, judgmental and reactive to people. So I recognized, “This is not really working. Even though the meditation might be Page 4 of 9
nice, it’s making the rest of my life more miserable so I must be doing something wrong.” Then I started to practice more consciously with body awareness, being with the feeling of the body, which I actually found a very unpleasant practice. I didn’t like it but it did bring a sense of grounding and integration of the practice.
For a while I doubted that perhaps I shouldn’t have started doing this because my meditation seemed to be worse than before. “I no longer get blissful meditations and I’m with the rather unpleasant experience of being embodied and perhaps I’ve made a mistake here.” But I just kept going. Intuitively, it felt like this was the right way to go, gradually, with this practice of being with the way things are. The sense of acceptance grew and with that, much more interest and wanting to learn from this body rather than wanting to get away from it or get out, get away from being born. Really taking interest in the limitations of it, the wonders of it and the feelings that arise and cease in the body. Also with the mind and mind states, rather than trying to get away, feeling depressed or fearful or whatever it might be that was in the mind, I decided to just take an interest in it, in what’s it like, looking; “what are the qualities of depression, what does depression feel like? How does it feel when it’s beginning and how does it feel right in the middle of it? How does it feel when it’s lifting at the end? What’s the feeling afterwards, when it’s gone?” Just to really make friends with this mind state of depression.
In my teens and early twenties I experienced a lot of depression and through making friends with it and getting to know it, being with the movement of it, it became a much less frequent visitor. It was like there were two doors; the depression would could come in but it could go out again. Just by being present with it, investigating it and Page 5 of 9
befriending this rather unpleasant mind state, it started to lift and move away. Similarly with fear, of course I still experience fear, I feel a little bit anxious sitting here (in the Dhamma Hall) talking. It’s not something I often do but it’s just an experience; there’s this feeling in the legs, a little tingling feeling, the chest is a little tighter than usual. Just getting to know it and be with it and accept it as it is.
The motivation of the practice over the years has moved away from, “I desperately want to get out of samsāra, I don’t want to be reborn, I want to get out.” Somehow it doesn’t have the same meaning to me now. This isn’t to say I’m no longer interested in enlightenment—I’m very interested, but the sense of being somebody stuck in saµsæra is different and I see how my mind very much creates that samsāra and that “me” that is stuck in it. So the motivation in practice has changed to one of gratitude—gratitude for this opportunity and an interest in how to share what I’ve received with others, how to be part of opening up to the Path.
Earlier last summer I was fortunate enough to spend seven days listening to His Holiness the Dalai Lama teaching on dependent origination. At the end of that teaching I sent a card to my mother and father saying to them, “Thank you for this precious human birth.” From the bottom of my heart I was really thanking them for this precious human birth. Somehow it was amazing to get to that point from having been really quite depressed and desperately wanting to get out, to a place of, “Wow, thank you for this great opportunity. What an amazing opportunity this is!” Also from having had quite a difficult relationship with my father, and at times with my mother, as many people do, coming to a point of genuinely feeling grateful to them for this opportunity. It seems that so long as we expect life to be other than how it is, Page 6 of 9
then we experience suffering. That simple turning around, embracing, investigating and receiving life as it is, however it is, is the key to freedom. Really, it’s a very immediate practice.
The thing I was struggling with in the beginning of my monastic life was the idea that I should be something other than how I am, or I should be able to understand some concept before I can practice the Dhamma. What the Buddha was pointing to, what Ajahn Chah was pointing to, what Ajahn Sumedho frequently points to, what nature points to, is to come back to this, be with this, learn from this and accept this, however ‘this’ is. And the magic is that embracing things as they are allows for the unimaginable to happen and it allows for transformation because we’re no longer operating according to a set pattern. We’re opening up, allowing life to guide us and even though sometimes it might seem it’s taking us through quite dark places, if we stay with it, it can lead us out again into the light of understanding.
If I think back to 1992, the year Ajahn Chah died, I couldn’t have imagined that my life would evolve in the way that it has or that I would have the sense of gratitude for life in the way that I have now. Even just in the last few days the reminder has come from various different places, because we do need reminding; it’s easy to forget. Just to keep open and keep listening and not to try to plan or shape or form the future, to be open in the present and to take care of the present and allow the future to take care of itself. It’s an interesting act of faith, really.
I’d like to talk about some of my experiences on tudong, just walking on faith with an almsbowl, robes, and another sister. I notice that when you’re walking in that way, where you don’t know whether you’re going to eat that day, where you’re going to sleep or even where you’re going Page 7 of 9
to end up, it brings up real joy to the heart and brightness to the mind, because the only thing you can do is be completely present. There is no alternative. You can plan, but you know your plans aren’t going to go anywhere. They’re not going to work. You’re not going to be where you thought you would be. You’re not going to eat what you hoped you would eat or thought you might eat. You won’t end up sleeping in the situation you imagined. It will be different to whatever you planned. So even though the compulsive habit is to plan, after a while you just drop it. You might be able to plan half a day where you’re going to be but you can’t even plan where you’re going to be that night. I find this brings a real aliveness and joy, because it’s actually how it is all the time, but we forget and we try to control life.
Two years ago, I went on a long tudong in Wales for two months with Sister Tithamedha. When I came back to the monastery, it was so difficult to adjust to having to plan things, have meetings, decide when things were going to happen and look frequently at my clock. What was particularly difficult was to keep that sense of openness and unknowing in a context that’s so formed. But it is possible, it just takes more effort and awareness to keep that openness of mind in an environment where, like here during the Winter Retreat, the daily schedule is set out and is printed on the door, everybody knows what it is. Okay, today we’re doing this, tomorrow it’s going to be the same and then probably the breakfast will be the same tomorrow . . . We can lose the openness to life if we take these things for granted. But actually, we don’t know what’s going to happen next. I didn’t know I was going to be sitting here giving a talk tonight. We don’t know what will happen or what kind of shifts Page 8 of 9
the mind will make. We can only see from the place that we are looking from now but there’s much more.
This is also normally our Winter Retreat time but Ajahn Santacitta and I decided to come and see what the possibilities are of starting a nuns’ community on the West Coast of America. This is also an act of faith that arose for us unexpectedly last summer. There’s certainly a need for our nuns’ community to have another option of a place to live, to have more space because the nuns’ community in England is very full. There’s been an interest for a long time to find somewhere to start a place. Rather to our surprise, the energy and momentum seem to be quite strong, alive and connected in terms of coming here to the West Coast. We don’t know what’s going to happen, whom we’ll meet, where we’ll eventually end up or whether it will work or not work. I can see that already, even though we’ve only been here a few days, my mind starts to say, “We have to have a plan and we need more facts.” But actually what I have to do is open the mind, let go and be open to receive whatever happens. It feels like a very interesting space to be in.
Also I’m very fortunate to have found myself in a lineage that so clearly points to the four requisites as a means of support. Tonight there is this shelter and today there is this meal. If needed, there can be basic medicine and these robes. How wonderful to have that kind of support which is so simple and so practical. It’s very easy when reflecting on this to bring up a sense of gratitude and abundance. Just today we were staying in the new nuns’ day room. It’s quite a little room and there were three of us in there and yet I thought, “Oh, this is such a great space.” Everything was there that we needed for this day, for a day. This is just perfect. Everything Page 9 of 9
we need is here. It’s important to reflect on what we have and to arouse a sense of gratitude for what we have. It’s so easy to take things for granted and to expect more, or want something different. It seems if one is really present with what is, with a sense of gratitude, then there is this feeling of abundance. William Blake said “Gratitude is heaven itself.” So, no longer having to always look for the perfect conditions but realizing the conditions of this moment are perfect, and there are great possibilities.
So I do feel very much gratitude and respect to Ajahn Chah for what he shared with so many people and even long after his death, continues to share, it seems, with more and more people. I feel very fortunate to have stumbled across this Path. I really wish that each person here takes in the teaching and the practice and makes full use of it and that each of us are able to dwell in a state of happiness and well-being in our hearts, whatever our circumstances may be.
