Suffering on the Road¹

Another example I could mention is that young novice I once encountered who wanted to practise living in a cemetery completely alone. As he was still more or less a child, hardly into his teens, I was quite concerned for his well-being, and kept an eye on him to see how he was doing. In the morning he would go on alms round in the village, and afterwards bring his food back to the cremation ground where he would eat his meal alone, surrounded by the pits where the corpses of those who hadn't been burned were buried. Every night he would sleep quite alone next to the remains of the dead. After I had been staying nearby for about a week I went along to check and see how he was. On the outside he seemed at ease with himself, so I asked him:

''So you're not afraid staying here then?''

''No I'm not afraid,'' he replied.

''How come you're not frightened?''

''It seems to me unlikely that there's anything much to be afraid of.'' All it needed was this one simple reflection for the mind to stop proliferating. That novice didn't need to think about all sorts of different things that would merely complicate the matter. He was ''cured''straight away. His fear vanished. You should try meditating in this way.

I say that whatever you are doing - whether standing, walking, coming or going - if you sustain mindfulness without giving up, your samādhi won't deteriorate. It won't decline. If there's too much food you say that it's suffering and just trouble. What's all the fuss about? If there is a lot, just take a small amount and leave the rest for everybody else. Why make so much trouble for yourself over this? It's not peaceful? What's not peaceful? Just take a small portion and give the rest away. But if you are attached to the food and feel bad about giving it up to others, then of course you will find things difficult. If you are fussy and want to have a taste of this and a taste of that, but not so much of something else, you'll find that in the end you've chosen so much food that you've filled the bowl to the point where none of it tastes very delicious anyway. So you end up attaching to the view that being offered lots of food is just distracting and a load of trouble. Why get so distracted and upset? It's you who are letting yourself get stirred up by the food. Does the food itself ever get distracted and upset? It's ridiculous. You are getting all worked up over nothing.

When there are a lot of people coming to the monastery, you say it's disturbing. Where's the disturbance? Actually, following the daily routine and the ways of training is fairly straightforward. You don't have to make a big deal out of this: you go on alms round, come back and eat the meal, you do any necessary business and chores training yourself with mindfulness, and just get on with things. You make sure you don't miss out on the various parts of the monastic routine. When you do the evening chanting does your cultivation of mindfulness really collapse? If simply doing the morning and evening chanting causes your meditation to fall apart, it surely shows that you havent really learnt to meditate anyway. In the daily meetings, the bowing, chanting praise to the Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha and everything else you do are extremely wholesome activities, so can they really be the cause for your samādhi to degenerate? If you think that it's distracting going to meetings, look again. It's not the meetings that are distracting and unpleasant, it's you. If you let unskilful thinking stir you up, then everything becomes distracting and unpleasant - even if you don't go out to the meetings, you end up just as distracted and stirred up.

You have to learn how to reflect wisely and keep your mind in a wholesome state. Everybody gets caught into such states of confusion and agitation, particularly those who are new to the training. What actually happens is that you allow your mind to go out and interfere with all these things and stir itself up. When you come to train with a monastic community determine for yourself to just stay there and just keep practising. Whether other people are training in the correct way or wrong way is their business. Keep putting effort into the training, following the monastic guidelines and helping each other with any useful advice you can offer. Anyone who isn't happy training here is free to go elsewhere. If you want to stay then go ahead and get on with the practice.

It has an extremely beneficial effect on the community if there is one of the group who is self-contained and solidly training himself. The other monks around will start to notice and take example from the good aspects of that monks behaviour. They will observe him and ask themselves how it is he manages to maintain a sense of ease and calm while training himself in mindfulness. The good example provided by that monk is one of the most beneficial things he can do for his fellow beings. If you are a junior member of a monastic community, training with a daily routine and keeping to rules about the way things are done, you have to follow the lead of the senior monks and keep putting effort into the routine. Whatever the activity is you do it, and when it's time to finish you stop. You say those things that are appropriate and useful, and train yourself to refrain from speech that is inappropriate and harmful. Don't allow that kind of speech to slip out. There's no need to take lots of food at the mealtime - just take a few things and leave the rest. When you see that there's a lot of food, the tendency is to indulge and start picking a little of this and trying a little of that and that way you end up eating everything that's been offered. When you hear the invitation, ''Please take some of this, Ajahn'', ''Please take some of that, Venerable'', if you're not careful it will just stir up the mind. The thing to do is let go. Why get involved with it? You think that it's the food stirring you up, but the real root of the problem is that you let the mind go out and meddle with the food. If you can reflect and see this, it should make life a lot easier. The problem is you don't have enough wisdom. You don't have enough insight to see how the process of cause and effect works.

Footnotes

...¹

A talk given to a group of monks preparing to leave the monastery and go off wandering after their fifth year under the guidance of Ajahn Chah

... consciousness²

The five khandhas: the five groups or aggregates in which the Buddha has summed up all physical and mental phenomena of existence, and which appear to the deluded person as a self or personality. They are physical form (rūpa), feeling (vedanā), memory and perception (saññā), mental formations (sankhārā) and sense consciousness (viññāna).

...thudong³

Thudong (Thai Language) generally refers to the practice of wandering. It is derived from the Pāli word dhutanga, which refers to the thirteen austere practices. These are strict observances recommended by the Buddha to monks, as a help to cultivate contentedness, renunciation, energy and other wholesome qualities. One or more of them may be observed for a shorter or longer period of time. They include the vows of: wearing patched-up robes, wearing only three robes, going for alms, not omitting any house while going for alms, eating at one sitting, eating only from the almsbowl, refusing all further food, living in the forest, living under a tree, living in the open air, living in a cemetery, being satisfied with whatever dwelling and sleeping in sitting position.

... monasteries⁴

Generally the monks living in the village and city monasteries in Thailand will spend more time studying the Pāli language and the Buddhist scriptures than training in the rules of discipline or meditation, which is more emphasized in the forest tradition.

...āsava)⁵

The four āsava or taints include: the taint of sense-desire (kāmāsava), of desiring eternal existence (bhavāsava), of wrong views (ditthāsava), and of ignorance (avijjāsava).