It was a fine autumn morning in September when, arising a little stiffly, I realised I needed to take my body for a walk. I calmly set off, rubbing the sleep from my eyes with a little gentle happiness, nothing special. Yet setting off through the forest with a mellow heart I found myself wishing a good morning to all the trees and other inhabitants. To my surprise that morning to calmly and sincerely say ‘hello’ to nature brought the experience alive in a brand new way - I did not just see a lot of pretty shapes and colours, acknowledging all the living beings out there in this simple way I naturally felt full of love and respect. I congratulated the trees for growing well this year and the ants for building their hill even higher. Likewise my concern for nature felt more personal, more human, coming from an immediate and realistic perspective. My love felt safe beginning at the heart and not going straight to my head. My love was constructive and open, active not passive, not full of opinions and expectations. I was not thinking that things should be this way or that and starting to worry. I was not wanting anything. I was simply ready to help. I helped a beetle across the road. I ended up taking a long walk all the way to the ocean. Paddling in the gentle breakers the water was cool. The sand moulded to my feet and I was gradually invited by the body back to the cool ground of the heart for a well-deserved rest. It had been a memorable day. And today, going about my business, I still find that I do not forget my friends in the forest and act irresponsibly. I speak up for my friends when the opportunity arises. I feel good inside where it really matters. And all this comes so naturally and simply just from remembering to say ‘hello’ to nature, straight from the heart. Video versionThis is part 3 of the "Nature Series". 1. A walk in nature 2. Finding our place in nature 3. Hello nature 4. Our goodbye nature 5. It's never too late to love the world 6. True love for the world Meditation is the purpose of Buddhist monasteries and monastic life. All the rules are there to help the meditator to focus and protect their minds. The rules are not statements of right or wrong but of that which is not conducive to higher meditation. For example, sex is not considered wrong or sinful in any way. It also becomes obvious when a meditator is ready to give up sex for their meditation – they simply enjoy their meditation more. Sex thus becomes a distraction from something that is more pleasurable and more worthwhile. So a good meditator can choose the monastic life or to spend time in monasteries depending on how their practise is going in a quite simple, straightforward manner. Also, in terms of learning meditation, it is important to be able to get advice when you need it and actually equally important to avoid advice when you are doing well. This is the reason why a good monastery is more of a spiritual drop-in centre rather than somewhere that provides courses. The Buddha taught people mostly in an individual way rather than in groups for the same reason. It seems that in terms of beginners the Buddha taught almost exclusively in an individual way in order to get someone started. From then on the more a teaching is tailored to an individual the better. We all have our different abilities or obstacles in meditation and there are very many different techniques or approaches to choose from. Some approaches will work for us, others may even be harmful. Also our needs will change as time goes on, we will need to do different techniques in order to balance our minds.
All this means that a relationship with an experienced teacher can be very valuable. Unfortunately, in contrast to this, so many teachers just give out simple, universal instruction these days and will try to convince people that theirs is the only way. This is what makes you a popular teacher and suits the propagation of the teaching by computer. It creates mass movements behind teachers that only lead to division and difference of opinion in the religion as a whole. This mass approach is also, I believe, an obstacle to spiritual community life. People hide in the group and do not really get to know each other or develop their independence as spiritual practitioners. Neither do people develop the broad approach to meditation that bears greatest fruit in the long-term. I find this all rather immature but forgivable in the relatively new tradition of Buddhism in the West. These then are all the reasons I believe in traditional monasteries as the best place to learn meditation and the reasons I have chosen to live in one. I offer this for your reflection Ajahn Kalyāno http://www.openthesky.co.uk The Buddha tells us, quite plainly, that it is suffering to be separated from those we love. Indeed.
The Buddha also tells us that friendship with what is wholesome is the whole of the Holy Life. Hmmm... If we put these two statements together then we see that the spiritual solution to our loneliness is to abide with that part of ourselves which is wholesome and to remember and to recollect the part of our loved ones that is the same. Looking deeper we can also realise how stable the wholesome aspects of our mind can be. When we meet a good friend after very many years we can still connect with their good side as though we have never been apart. So this solution is not as difficult as it might look. Just as with boredom it is a matter of giving something to our loneliness rather than falling prey to the craving that is its unwholesome side. Such love, a giving love and a love of giving, is the solution to our loneliness. Practising like this I have spent months alone and silent and never felt lonely. Only the craving feels lonely. I live in the monastery almost all the time. We have no TV and our access to internet is very limited. There are almost no other forms of entertainment in the monastery. I am very rarely bored, only by the administration work sometimes.
What I have learned from this life is that to look for stimulation is not a solution to boredom. The boredom will merely return as soon as the stimulation ceases. In fact stimulating the bored mind is like putting a dead fish in a washing machine – it only looks alive. The solution to boredom is to make an effort and pay attention to something. We can need some simple things to give our attention to so that this is not too much effort to sustain. This is bringing the fish back to life. Just the same as with loneliness it is a matter of giving something to our boredom rather than falling prey to the wanting or craving that is its unwholesome side. Looking deeper, a mind that is aware of itself is never a bored mind. This is like a fish, that becoming aware of the water that it is swimming in, is never a bored fish. It was approaching dusk on a cold winters day at the monastery. The sky was pale grey and there was a stillness to the air. We were on a meditation retreat and the community were gathering for the four o’clock meditation sitting. I was just approaching the house when I spotted a very large bird sitting on a branch just at the edge of the lawn. I approached. Much to my amazement the bird was a very large owl, by far the biggest I had ever seen and as grey as the sky. It was looking towards me with a piercing yet open gaze. It blinked and I froze on the spot. Owls had always been special to me ever since my father had read Winnie the Pooh to me as a very young boy. To me they had become a symbol of wisdom. The atmosphere on this winter’s afternoon was such that this great bird seemed to embody this quality like never before – my mind brightened and fell completely silent. I felt somehow at one with nature and with this place. In the moment the scene appeared to me as though it were a lucid dream, luminous and still yet lacking none of its sense of reality, my hands were cold. Anagārika Mischa was approaching along the path towards me, I beckoned to him to slow down, pointing as the owl retreated to a tree a little further back. I gasped at its size and at its slow, silent flight. As I spread mettā to the great bird, it turned its head towards me and flew a little closer. By this time I was completely enchanted. I felt as though I was immersed in a fairy tale. I would not have been surprised if the bird had spoken. I turned to Mischa, “I think something special must have happened,” I said, much to my own surprise. The words just seeming to tumble out of my mouth on their own. The owl took flight, passing behind the house and into the forest, out of sight. I repeated to Mischa, “I think something special must have happened. I never say such things but there is something auspicious about this.” I returned to my hut and did not join the meditation. I stared through the window at the glorious, crimson sunset. I couldn’t stop wondering what might have happened. Later that evening I received a mail from a very generous supporter. He had decided to sponsor a sala to be built on the hill behind the house. I was stunned, all I could think of was the owl. I realised it had flown right in the direction of our proposed sala site. I felt a little overwhelmed. I could not resist writing back immediately, “Did anything happen at your end around 4 p.m.?” “That’s about when I made the decision,” he replied. So it seems as though that winter day something special had happened. I hope one day someone will give a very wise Dhamma talk in the new sala, worthy of such a message and such a messenger if that is what it was. Then it will seem as though the Dhamma had arrived in Norway in a very special way, in a way perhaps acknowledged somehow by nature itself and perhaps we will carve an image of the owl to adorn the new sala in the new style of ‘Norse Theravada’. Or perhaps we will do that anyway. Video versionBefore the corona crisis really got warmed up I was already thinking we had a bit of a crisis in the world – I was beginning to think that the smartphones were taking over our lives. I saw this as inducing a bit of a crisis of communication, paradoxically enough – so much virtual communication and nothing real, nobody seemed to me to be listening any more. My first solution was to keep writing calm and gentle, thoughtful things as best I could and uploading them. I was trying to catch the helpless browsers and get them to sit down and reflect. From the feedback I have had, so far so good. Now I hope you too are sitting down. The next idea is perhaps a little shocking, more radical, aimed at the heart rather than the head. For I propose, if possible, the breeding of billions of hamsters. I hope and claim that people will like stroking hamsters better than running their fingers up and down their phones. I dream of a world where hamsters thus bring us back to the real world through love and to a new loving world. As long as hamsters cannot carry the dreaded virus I would still like to humbly put this forward as a direction for mankind. I am sure the hamsters will like it too. And reality, even at times of crisis, in fact especially at such times, is where we will find our refuge from the storm if we can make a gentle landing from our flights of fancy.
I offer this for your reflection Ajahn Kalyāno http://www.openthesky.co.uk Then, of course, there are times during any good crisis when we will need to fight back. But how do we do this without hatred or ill-will? My answer is with a little snort. I will explain. I grew up in the days of Henry Cooper, who fought for the world heavyweight boxing title against the great Muhammed Ali. Although he lost he was a bit of a national hero, he was such a courageous, nice guy. I remember watching the fight, along with everybody else, when I was about five years old. Whenever the boxers landed a punch the gloves make a puffing sound as the air was expelled from the glove’s padding. Aged five I thought that the boxers were making these sounds as they punched. After the fight I danced around the room, shadow-boxing, trying to imitate Muhammed Ali, snorting through my nose as I landed every punch. Of course later, when I found out my mistake, I began to find it funny to repeat my imitation and shadow-boxing became a good laugh. As I grew up I sensibly forgot about all this until I was living in South London. One day I was walking feeling rather irritated, trying to meditate on the breath to calm down as I went. There is a pub on the Old Kent Road called ‘The Henry Cooper’. Walking past the pub my mind went back to the fight and to my shadow-boxing. I snorted a little in remembrance and to my amazement my unruly mind-state was dispelled. It was a breakthrough. I had been taking my meditation too seriously, I realised. After so many years of meditation on the breath now the inner demons, when they come, can be clearly seen trying to fight their way into my attention, my concentration, at the end of my nose. This playful little snort with its fighting spirit can so often be enough to fight back. When I find myself in a corner I only need to snort a little to bring up a fighting spirit and keep it light and fluffy. There is something so delicious too about a such universal response to the battles of life, inner or outer. It keeps the inner demons where they rightly belong, out there.
I offer this for your reflection Ajahn Kalyāno http://www.openthesky.co.uk Sometimes, with a light heart, we can unexpectedly find something precious in something very ordinary. The other day I was playing with a small stick in my hand as though it were a cigarette. Something inside let go. In my youth there had always been something rather liberating about smoking – the act of rebellion spiced up with the nicotine rush. Then, of course, I discovered along with the rest of my generation how damaging smoking really was for the health and I quit. With a small stick, however, there was the chance to relive the liberating feeling without harm. Just feeling the familiar sensation of something between the correct two fingers, I could already feel a little lift, a sense of freedom. This was playing a little with the thrill of renunciation, harmlessly getting beyond caring. Such it was that I came to find comfort in a small stick, called Harold. Such it was that I invented the ‘patent corona comforter’ available to be forever found for free, in any forest or garden, by any cool contemplative.
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