Buddhist monasticism has always been a profound stepping out of the mainstream of society. Even in the time of the Buddha, these communities were considered to be a challenge to materialism, deity worship, social class hierarchy and institutionalized discrimination. For 2,600 years Buddhist monks and nuns have been living examples of an alternative way of life based on virtuous living and sustaina…

Living together we rely on each other. This can be compared to the “social life” of a forest. In the “society of trees” it is not the case that all trees are the same. There are big ones and small ones. In fact, the big trees also have to rely on the small ones and the small ones on the big ones for the situation to be safe. It isn’t true that a tree isn’t threatened by dangers only because it is…

Ajahn Chah had four basic levels of teaching, and each one, although at times very difficult for the students, was taught with a lot of humour and a lot of love. Ajahn Chah taught that until we can begin to respect ourselves and our environment, practice doesn’t really develop. And that dignity, the ground of practice, comes through surrender, through impeccable discipline. A lot of us in the West…

…If our attention and energies are directed only outwards towards our spiritual companions or towards society, it becomes clear sooner or later that even if we expend every ounce of energy right up until the last breath, there will still be more to do — the needs, the suffering of the world ‘out there’ is endless. We can never make it all all right. If we try, as many of us have to do before the p…

…having a living teacher like Ajahn Chah was not like worshipping a prophet who lived 2500 years ago, but actually inheriting the lineage of the Lord Buddha himself. Perhaps because of visiting the Buddhist holy places, kataññu-katavedi began to become very strong in me in India. Seeing this, and then thinking of Luang Por Chah in Thailand, I remembered how I had thought: “I’ve done my five year…

There are periods when we face problems and unwholesome states of mind in our practice, caused by how we relate to the sensual realm, where the three daughters of Māra, “Miss Rāga”, “Miss Arati” and “Miss Taṇhā” come to challenge us. In these periods, try to hold on and ask yourself: Where do these challenges come from? In what kind of form do they arise? They all come by way of perceptions in…

Question: “I understand that you maintain only one rule instead of the full 227 monastic rules that all other monks keep. Is that true?” Ãcariya Mun: “Yes, I maintain only the one rule.” Question: “Which one do you maintain?” Ãcariya Mun: “My mind.” Question: “So, you don’t maintain all 227 rules?” Ãcariya Mun: “I maintain my mind by not allowing any wrong thoughts, speech, or actions that woul…

When we adopt the renunciate life we aren’t condemning the world of the senses per se, because that leads to aversion and negativity. Instead we are learning to accept whatever is offered to us with full appreciation. Whatever arrives is received and cherished, but we don’t try to add anything. I think many people listen to music because they love the place to which the music takes them, which is…

Becoming is a sense of identity in a particular world of experience. Becomings of this sort can last for whole lifetimes or, within the mind, for fleeting moments of time. In every case of becoming, both the identity and the sense of the world coalesce around a particular desire. The identity relates to the desire in two ways: both as the self that wants to experience the object of the desire, and…

It is particularly fruitful to explore the relationship between the sense of being a separate self, someone or something separate from the surroundings, and the energies of attraction and aversion—how they depend on each other. By identifying ourselves as something—anything—we are trapped into this sense of being someone or something having experiences from which we are separate. Then our relation…