June 2024

Greetings from Wat Buddha Dhamma, 10 Mile Hollow, Wisemans Ferry, NSW 2775, Australia; www.wbd.org.au

Autumn has settled upon Australia with cool temperatures and some exceptional rain showers. Fortunately, Summer was not as extreme as was originally forecast. We had only a few 40C days and an unusual amount of rainfall on the east coast. The monastery water tanks were quite low at one point, but then the rain started and just kept coming. Now they are over-flowing!

I have not up-dated this Blog for some time as I was only 'rambling' around the monastery for some seven months. Then, in the third week of April I was invited by my long-term friend and former monk, John Barter, to visit him at his newly-renovated home in the Tweed Valley, northern NSW. With the Covid lock-downs and the long-drawn out renovations, I had not visited there for many years.

It was great to meet up once again and catch up after so long. I also gave a talk at the Thursday night meditation group and a day-long workshop in his newly-refurbished meditation hall looking out over the Tasman Sea to the east and Mount Warning to the west. A keen group of meditators investigated the theme of I-making, and were grateful to receive a copy of the book to follow up.

Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5oJQ4awhME 

After so many years of travel, both as a lay person and as a monk, I now find myself being very reluctant to journey beyond the monastery and adjacent National Park (about a 15 km radius). However, following some thoughtful reflection, I agreed to a trip to Indonesia for the Vesak celebration in Jakarta and a visit to Borobudur. On my last major trip as a lay-person I had planned to visit Indonesia. However, as most people know by now, I ended up staying in Thailand for nine years. As a monk I was invited some year ago to visit the Buddhist community in Bali and spent ten days there giving talks, meeting the Buddhist community, and visiting Buddhist temples in Denpasar and Singaraja. Presently the Buddhist presence in Bali has increased with the establishment of a Forest Monastery and several young Balinese men training at Wat Pah Nanachat.

My visit to Dharma Sukha Buddhist Centre in Jakarta was quite eventful. I was met at the airport by Sister Ajita (who spent a month at WBD last year), her father and a delegation from the association. On my first day a group of us visited the impressive Tzu Chi Foundation, probably the biggest Buddhist organization providing medical and educational relief worldwide, particularly disaster relief. Founded in 1966 by a Taiwanese Buddhist nun it is now active in over 100 countries around the world, with the largest centre in Jakarta due to the generosity of an Indonesian benefactor. We were met by the president and a delegation (including a film crew from their TV station), shown their presentation hall explaining their history and the wide range of relief work, and passed through the upper lecture halls to the large 1,000 person capacity shrine room on the top floor. We were then offered lunch in their expansive cafeteria (together with 300 school students!) and concluded with a pot of tea in the book shop/cafeteria where I gave a short interview for their TV station. It was indeed very inspiring to see such devoted generosity provided by so many good-hearted volunteers.

Back at Dharma Sukha I began a series of teachings with a Saturday Meditation Day, a talk to 80 children at the Sunday school class, a three-night, 2-hour Sutta Class and the Vesak celebration with an estimated 2,700 people attending the four-hour event. 

My trip to Indonesia finished with a weekend visiting Borobudur, the largest Buddhist structure in the world. The massive stone stupa is a teaching monument to Mahayana Buddhism with intricate carvings guiding people through the three realms of Sensuality (the temptations and suffering of worldly existence), 'Form' (the previous and present life of the Buddha) to 'Formless' (no carvings, only Buddha images inside stupas), and topped off with the pinnacle of Nirvana. Unfortunately, due to the large numbers of visitors, people are only allowed one hour to visit the upper levels – a very short time to investigate all the numerous carvings. However, it was a very powerful experience to witness the tremendous faith and devotion which the building of this edifice exemplifies. It is also a lesson in impermanence as the structure was abandoned for many centuries when the ruling powers in the area declined in influence.

Not far from Borobudur are a number of volcanoes, the most well-known being Mount Merapi, which is presently erupting on the north side. Unfortunately, the weather was cloudy and rainy so we were unable to view Mt. Merapi. However, we had some time on the last day before returning to Jakarta, so a (safe) visit was arranged. We arrived at the largest village at its base and transferred to an open Jeep for the journey over rocky roads closer to the summit. The road ended at a lava field which had over-whelmed one of the bunkers set up for rapid evacuations in 2010. On the way down we stopped at the museum documenting the devastating eruption in 2010 which killed over 300 people, most of them asleep in their beds. It is one of the ironies of nature that while volcanoes are dangerous neighbours, the volcanic soil around them is so extremely fertile that it tempts farmers to encroach on their slopes, sometimes with tragic results.

Vesakha Puja, the Full Moon of May, commemorates the Birth, Awakening and Passing of the Buddha. It is celebrated in many ways by Buddhists throughout the world. However, I see it as a special occasion to reflect upon the life of the Buddha, particularly his Awakening which transformed young Siddharta Gotama into the Awakened Buddha. The account of this event in the Pali Canon mentions that following his Awakening he was reluctant to teach as he realized that this profound insight goes completely against the way most people understand reality. Very simply this is that while unawakened people seek well-being through and for themselves, the Buddha realized that ultimate well-being is the experience of selflessness. The dilemma, of course, is how do people totally enamoured of self-see beyond self? Thus, we have all the various spiritual exercises to help us see beyond the limitations of self.

I think that it is very important to always keep in mind the ultimate purpose of the Buddha's teaching in order to handle the religious teachings and spiritual exercises in the right way. Otherwise, there is the danger of what the Buddha called 'attachment to rules and conventions' – we mistake the religious conventions for the goal. Or we get so attached to the conventions we forget that they are only a means to an end, and perhaps just end up creating a refined spiritual self!

Thus, the practise of generosity is not for gaining a place in heaven for our self but, for letting go of supports for self so that it rises to a heaven-like experience. Similarly with maintaining precepts. Through living a noble and high-minded life the self dwells in a higher level of existence much more free of the self-burdening emotions of greed and aversion. And, of course, the Buddhist meditation of Calm trains the mind to be calmed of self-referencing thoughts, worries and fears to experience levels of consciousness beyond self. While through Insight meditation we investigate the very sources of believing and grasping self to see through the illusion. Basically, the purpose of the spiritual exercises and virtues is to lighten and attenuate the attachment to self in order to pave the way for the experience of selflessness or Nibbana, which is also the ultimate well-being for a human being. What else is there to strive for?

May you continue your journey towards the reducing of self-attachment and possibly realize the ultimate well-being of selflessness.

 

With Metta,

Ajahn Tiradhammo

 

P.S. Copies of 'Beyond I-making' can be obtained at the monastery or the eBook version downloaded from the monastery website: Click here:  Beyond I-Making