Thai forest tradition. He's an American who went to Thailand in his college years, discovered the Thai forest tradition, ordained, spent many years in Thailand, and then came back to the States to found the Mehta Forest Monastery in the northern San Diego County mountains, where he is now the abbot. He is a prolific writer and translator, a translator of the as well as the teachings of the Thai forest tradition. Those translations are available on the web via the website called Access to Insight. And he's here now to talk with us today. I don't know what image is a call to mind when you hear the word Theravada Buddhism. Some of you may have read some very dry scholarly works.

[01:02]

I find it very dry. Some of you may have seen Thai temples down the street and have the impression that it's the San Diego State of the Buddhist world. Parties one after another. But there is another side to Thai Buddhism, and that's what I found when I went to Thailand in 1972, and then I returned to ordain in 1976. And that was the Thai forest tradition. It's a tradition of monks and some nuns who go out into the forest and train there. It was started back in the late 1900s, early 1800s, early 1900s, by a man named Ajahn Mun, who benefited from some monastic reforms in Bangkok when more texts were available. Up to that point, Pali texts would not have been translated into Thai. They were translated into Thai and they began to discover that there were teachings that advised people to go out into the forest in order to practice rather than staying around home.

[02:07]

So he and a group of others went into the forest and started practicing. One of the things I find inspiring about his story was that unlike the Zen tradition, with which the forest tradition does have many similarities, there is no long-standing lineage. That goes back centuries. There have been forest traditions in Thailand since at least the 13th century. But there's a tendency for each of them to die out after a couple of generations. Once practiced for a couple of generations, you may find one or two who become outstanding meditators. And then they attract the support of kings, royalty, aristocrats, who invite the monks into the city. They come into the city, the practice begins to degenerate. People are upset with the low level of the practice, they go looking for another forest tradition, which keep kind of bubbling up in the course of time. But there's been very little continuity from one forest tradition to the next. In fact, it's kind of a habitat issue. I was just talking to Alan recently that the problem in Thailand now is there's very little forest left.

[03:10]

And so as the current tradition begins to go into decline, no one knows where the next forest tradition is coming from. Although my teacher's teacher forecasts that it would come from America. So we hope that there's some hope here. But in John Bun's case, there was very little for him to go on. He did have a few texts, but he had no real experienced meditation teachers to give him guidance. And so he pretty much had to go out and rediscover the path on his own. And the way he did it is very much in line with a particular Buddhist text, which you may have heard of. It's called the Kalama Sutta. It's one in which the Buddha gives advice to people who have complained that they have heard many different teachings from many different teachers, and they don't know who to listen to, who to believe. And the Buddha says, well, it's obvious that when you hear many different truths, you're going to be confused. And he says, don't go by tradition, don't go by lineage, don't go by texts that you have received. And for most people who've heard this particular sutta, that's the part where they stop. And they say, well, that allows us to go on whatever we like. The Buddha then goes on to say, don't go by your personal preference.

[04:13]

Don't go by what seems reasonable to you. Doesn't leave you much. But it does leave you something very important in the fact that we do have a tendency to look for authority either within ourselves or from outside. And the Buddha is saying, just because an outside authority tells you something, it's not necessarily true. Just because your inner voice tells you something, it's not necessarily true. The issue is how you put it to the test. In which case, he said, if you see that by putting a particular teaching into the test of your actual practice, see the results that come out. If you find that it gives rise to greed, anger and delusion, then no matter what the authority was, the type of teaching is wrong, or your understanding of it is wrong. If you find that greed, anger and delusion lessen in your practice, then it is a sign that the teaching is right. And so the question is not the outside of authority or the inside force, but it's the actual process of cause and effect which you learn to master as you get more and more familiar with it. And there's another discourse, the Buddha's instructions to his son, Rahula, in which he gives specific advice on how to test the process of cause and effect in your practice.

[05:21]

And it's an interesting discourse because his son, Rahula, was only seven years old at the time, and so the Buddha was forced to put the practice in really simple terms. I had a friend one time who was an interviewer, and she said the best way to get the truth out of someone is either to attack them and see what they say, but then they get very defensive. But she says even better is to ask questions that seem a little stupid. in which case the person has to explain him or herself very thoroughly, in which case things will come out that ordinarily might not come out at the times. And so when the Buddha's having to discuss things with his son Rahula, he has to be very explicit, and it's one of the most explicit Buddhist texts there is. He says that before you do something, excuse me, let me back up, first he goes to visit Rahula, and you have the feeling that Rahula in that day had said a lie to somebody. And so the first thing the Buddha does as he arrives, in those days they had a ritual that was Didn't take second place to Zen ritual. It was quite ritualistic. A teacher comes and you wash his feet.

[06:22]

And then, so Rahula sets out a bowl of water with a dipper in it and the Buddha takes the dipper of water, washes his feet. And then he shows, he leaves a little bit of water remaining in the dipper and he shows it to Rahula. And he says, Rahula, do you see this little bit of water remaining in here? Well, yes. He says, that's how much goodness there is left in a person who tells a lie without feeling ashamed about it. You can imagine Rahula wincing. Then he takes the water and throws it away. Do you see how that water is thrown away? Rahula winces again, yes. That's what happens to the goodness of a person who tells a lie and feels no shame. He takes a dipper and turns it upside down. See how that dipper is turned upside down? Rahula gets the message, pulls it up, now it's empty. You're empty of goodness if you tell a lie without feeling any shame. So he starts with a point that the practice depends on honesty. You have to be honest not only with other people, but also with yourself. Secondly, he goes on to say, what is a mirror for? And Rubble says a mirror is for reflection. He says, in the same way that your actions should be used as a mirror, before you say or do or think something, ask yourself, this thing that I intend to do, what are the results that I expect?

[07:32]

Is it going to be for my own harm, for the harm of others? If so, you don't do it. If you foresee no harm, go ahead and do it, but then you don't stop right there. While you're doing the action, you reflect on what results are coming up immediately in the present moment. If you see any harmful results, either for yourself or for others, you stop. If not, you can continue with the action to the end. After it's over, you're still not done. You have to reflect on the long-term consequences of your action. In which case, if you found that there was harm, then you go and talk to another person who's practicing who's also on the path and get their advice. And then you resolve that you'll never make that mistake again. If you see that there has been no harm in what you've done, then you can take joy in the fact that you're on the path. You kind of pat yourself on the back, which is allowed in Buddhism. We tend to forget that. That you're doing well. And so it's a process of looking at your intentions and One of the teachings that I found that was most stressed in the forest tradition was that the area of our minds where we're least aware of ourselves is in the area of intention.

[08:36]

We do something, we don't really examine that carefully, why we're doing it. And as a result, we don't really learn that much in the process of cause and effect, where these things are coming from, because it is through our intentions that we shape not only the present moment, but also the future. So the emphasis here is on developing qualities of mind, being honest, being observant. And it was this combination of being observant and honest that led Ajahn Mun through a lot of trials and travails in the forest. And as members who began to study with him, they began to realize that he had attained a very high level of realization as a result of his practice. It was on the basis of this that the Thai forest tradition got its foundation. It's not known for a particular doctrine or particular doctrinal stance, but it is known for a particular mode of practice and a mode of training. And a lot of that training has to do with developing these precise qualities of honesty and observance within the students. When I first went to stay with my teacher, John Fuhr, who had studied both with a student of Ajahn Mun and with Ajahn Mun directly, there wasn't much to read.

[09:43]

He must have known that I had something of an academic background because he forbade me to read anything but one tiny meditation guide. As he said, there are two types of people in the world, people who think too much and people who don't think enough. And if you're the type who thinks too much, you should just forget about reading, forget about analysis, work on concentration. If you're the type who doesn't think enough, then once you're cars of concentration have developed, you would work very hard on getting that person to start thinking about what they were doing. But a lot of the training came in the form not so much of just meditation instructions, but also daily instructions on how to live. In other words, a lack of explicit instructions, but a lot was expected. I was his attendant for many years, and the things had to be put in a certain place, his room had to be arranged in a certain way, his bath water had to be boiled in a certain way, there was a system to everything. He never told me what it was. When I first went to stay with him, he said, if you want to learn from me, you have to learn how to think like a thief. Now how does a thief think?

[10:45]

Suppose someone were trying to break into the office over there. Would they come up to you and ask you what times you're going to be away? Which window do you leave unlocked? They have to notice on their own. They have to case the joint. And many times. It was like casing my teacher. For two years he wouldn't even let me into his bedroom. The room where he had his mat and everything. So I would have to peek inside to see how he arranged things. When he arranged it on his own because I knew the day would come when I had to arrange that. And if something was in the wrong place, I would know. One time I put this, he had a tea set. It was a porcelain tea set. I had placed it in the wrong place. He picked it up and threw it on the ground. Fortunately, it didn't break. But I remembered that you never put it there again. But again, he didn't tell me where it was supposed to go. I would have to look. And his own teacher had told the story that John Lee had lived with a John Munn for a while. And it was a joint... a little hut they had that was made out of banana leaves in the forest. And again, John Lee's duty was to place John Munn's things in proper order in his room.

[11:49]

And every day, John Munn complained that things were not in the right place. But again, he wouldn't tell him when the right place was. Well, John Lee had the good fortune that this hut was made out of banana leaves. So he poked a hole in the wall between their rooms. and watched what a Jon Mun would do when he put the room in order. And so the next day he was able to go in and put the room pretty much in order as a Jon Mun had done it. And he took a lot of satisfaction the next day as a Jon Mun went into the room, looked left, looked right, saw nothing out of place, sat down and meditated. When I was living with a Jon Fur, the walls were made out of wood. I couldn't poke a hole in an unnoticed way. But I had to find that, one, a willingness to make mistakes was a very important part of the practice. and then to a willingness to, as I said, be very observant, as observant as possible, not expect things to be handed to you. The whole purpose in this is that when you're meditating, you can't have your teacher sitting right next to you giving you advice. You have to use your own powers of observation, use your own ingenuity. Use what you might also call your own imagination in the process, because there are many times you run up against a problem for which you have not been prepared.

[12:57]

And yet if you have some basic principles in which to work, and have a way of working through them, or working variations on them, you can find that you can discover a lot of the Dharma, even though it hasn't been given to you in texts or in the form of a particular verbal teaching. And this, I would say, is the style of the forest tradition. It's something that's characterized more by its style than by a particular set of doctrines or particular doctrinal stance. In the ancient world, they made a distinction between what they called scribe knowledge and warrior knowledge. And by warrior knowledge, they meant skills that you needed in the battlefield. Scribe knowledge was the kind of knowledge that you could pick up in words. And the difference between the two, of course, is that one is that warrior knowledge, it's a knowledge of skill. And you have to reflect on how do you learn a skill. This is one thing I think that all schools of Buddhism have in common. Mahayana's talk about skillful means. In Thailand, they talk about being a skillful meditator. And skill, it depends on one, as the Buddha taught Rahula, one, knowing what you're planning to do, what your intentions are, two, knowing the situation, knowing what you do in relation to that situation and then seeing the results that came.

[14:11]

And then being able to come back the next time and make adjustments as you see the results have come out well or haven't come out well. Lost my train of thought. Or the warrior knowledge versus the scribe knowledge. Of course, in scribe knowledge you can get in battles over things, but the most that gets spilled is ink. Whereas with the warrior knowledge, if you get into battles or get into controversies that are unnecessary, a lot of damage can be done. And so we tend to think of a warrior as a very macho person. But think back in the 1950s, and especially if you've read any of the revisionist material on Eisenhower. Eisenhower had a reputation for being kind of dumb. And it turns out that they discovered that it was part of his plan to make people think he didn't know what he was doing so he could get away with whatever he wanted to do. But one of the really fortunate things he did for us in the 1950s was he kept us out of war many times. The hawks in Congress were pushing for war and Eisenhower would say, no, this is not an appropriate place to stop.

[15:14]

And I can't imagine anyone else who would have his reputation and his ability to say no and not be accused of being soft or accused of being soft on communism. But because he had already made his reputation as a warrior, it was possible for him to say no when a particular battle came up. So I think this is one of the reasons why the forest tradition doesn't get involved in doctrinal disputes, except where it's absolutely necessary. In other words, they say, OK, you do things your way, we'll do things our way, and we'll just live peacefully together. And I think that's a very positive attitude, the sort of live-and-let-live attitude that a true warrior would have, knowing that it's not necessary to get into disputes when the real issue is your own defilements. The other person's defilements are that person's issue. Your issue is sort of cleaning up your own house, and if you have time and energy after that, then you can help people clean up theirs. which I think is a very healthy attitude, especially as many different schools of Buddhism now are coming together, and the states have a proper live and let live attitude towards each other.

[16:15]

I think we have learned a lot from each other. Those are just a very brief introduction to the forest tradition. Since I don't know you, I thought it would be best to hear your questions, and then I would be able to deal with whatever issues these issues have raised in your mind. You know, in the Zen tradition, I think the lineage serves the purpose of kind of verifying the teaching or verifying the enlightenment of the teacher. And then the teacher verifies the enlightenment of the student who might take his place. So I'm wondering how that works in the forest tradition. How do you know that a teacher is enlightened or somebody is enlightened? The best you know is when they're more enlightened than you are. There's a reputation of the teacher, some of which may be based on what his students or her students have experienced directly in their ability to explain the Dharma, to embody the Dharma. And this is a lot of it.

[17:17]

It's the embodiment that you... People watch their teachers over there very closely. And the lineage is only as good as the last person in the lineage, the most recent person in the lineage. And so you look at your teacher directly, and my time with Ajahn Phuong, he was not a well-known teacher within the tradition or within Thailand at all. I used to get a lot of criticism from other people saying, there are many more famous teachers than he is. Why don't you go visit the more famous teachers? And I said, well, I haven't come to the end of him yet. Maybe when I come to the end of him, maybe I want to move on. And I also notice that the monks who are going around and visiting all the famous teachers tend to just roll pretty quickly, because they're more focused on the teacher than they were on their own practice. Yes? It's a tradition.

[18:22]

I didn't have that in my case because as I was getting to leave after my fifth year with my teacher, he got sick. And there was no one else to care for him. There were other monks around, but he had a tendency to have a very sharp tongue when he was sick. Because he was saying this was an excellent idea, excellent opportunity to be near the teacher and to learn a lot about mindfulness. And one of his ways of doing that was to criticize you in front of other people. In Thailand, they call that ripping the other person's face. And the other monks were very sensitive to that. And so they would find excuses for other projects that have to be done in the monastery. And I was the slowest in the group. So I ended up being the monk to take care of him. So for the last, my last six years with him, I was looking after him. I didn't have a chance to get away. I've actually done more in my time alone out in the forest since coming to America than I had in time. It's really up to the talents of the individual monk and his abilities.

[19:32]

As a young monk, you're expected to keep very quiet. In fact, you're not expected to teach. You're not allowed to teach until you've had your 10th year as a monk. It gives you a chance to sort of work through your own understanding of things. After that, there is more of an expectation that because people are providing for you as a monk, they want to begin to see some of the results of what you've been doing. It's not an individual activity that you're involved in. It's a communal activity. The lay people who don't have time to devote themselves full-time to meditation are hoping that those who do have full-time will be able to share some of the results with them. And so they're willing to give support, they're willing to look after you in many ways, which is very touching. I mean, here I was, a total stranger, just suddenly plopping myself down in another community, and they were perfectly happy to feed me, look after me. When I was sick, they would take me to see a doctor. But there was the expectation that after a certain amount of time, at least 10 years, perhaps more in some cases, that you would have something to give in return. It's kind of a specialization. Yes?

[20:33]

I was interested in what you said about not listening to your inner self. And yet, I guess I don't understand because isn't that inner self what tells you, makes you feel guilty? Or does, you know, when you go and try something, then is it, what is the, how do you kind of talk about the experience that you have when you learn to get a teaching and go out and try it and it doesn't work, isn't that inner voice what's helping you out? Okay, it's partly an inner voice, but notice the Buddha also said, listen to your good friends. So bounce things off other people as well. Find people that you can rely on. And again, you have to test them in the same way that you test yourself. And so if you want to call that your inner voice, the more reflective inner voice that tests things and then monitors results, that's the voice you want to listen to. The inner voice I was talking about that you can't particularly trust is one just, you know, a thought comes into your mind and it feels right and it feels good, but you haven't tested it yet.

[21:36]

Because Ajahn Man in his own meditation, he was the type of meditator who had a lot of visions. And some of them seemed worthwhile and some of them were more questionable. So it's more this kind of inner idea that springs up rather than a reaction to your experience. Right. It's learning to monitor your experience. That's the kind of inner quality you're trying to develop. That's what I meant. And secondly, you raised the issue of guilt. I was always amazed in Thailand that they do not have a word for guilt in the whole language. You may have read Ruth Benedict, the sword in the Chrysanthemum. She made a distinction between guilt cultures and shame cultures. And basically the distinction comes down to how your parents raise you when you're a child. And if you do something wrong in a shame culture, they would say, don't do that. It embarrasses us in front of the neighbors. In a guilt culture, they say, don't do that. It hurts me when you do that. And in Thailand, the emphasis on shame is not so much feeling ashamed in the sense that you're a bad person, but the idea that you have enough regard for yourself as a person that you would feel ashamed to do such and such a thing.

[22:46]

And so it doesn't come from a low self-opinion, it actually comes from fairly high self-esteem. And that's why if you lie, then you're feeling like you've failed your own self. You've lowered yourself. I know that in Northern California now, there are a few women living there now, and there will be more. But how does that impact, do women have this opportunity? Do they have? There are centers like that. It's interesting that both in Thailand and Burma, the women's centers tend to be located in the lawn area.

[23:50]

It's a cultural group that's sort of halfway between the Thais and the Burmese. And in those areas, there are a lot of women's centers. Women teachers' centers specifically. They live out in the forest, some of them do. The forest tradition I was in, there tend to be more centers where the women are connected with monasteries, like the situation up in Abhayagiri. So, there are opportunities. Yes? You were saying that Ajahn Moon, in his meditation, or in his experience, had visions. time is the extent to which visions are of particular Like that?

[25:24]

Well, your most important question is the last one. When you have a vision. Again, you put it to the test. If it seems reasonable to begin with, you might test it and see if the information... First, try to see what kind of substantial information is in there. If it's a vision about previous lives, you say, well, I don't necessarily need to know the details about that. But maybe there's a general principle in here about, you know, the nature of life and death that you might want to get into. see first if there's a Dharma lesson that can be extracted out of the image, let the rest of it go. The simile that my teacher gave us is when you... when you get a coconut, you don't eat the whole coconut, at least they don't in Thailand. You get the coconut milk out of the coconut and you throw the rest of the coconut away. You just take the coconut milk. So by trying to find the coconut milk out of the vision and then put it to the test in the same way that you would put any other teaching to the test. Just because... That means knowing something And as for the cultural conditioning, I was listening at one time when one of my teacher's students, who was Chinese, was having a vision.

[26:43]

Actually, it was a vision of my mother, who had passed away many years back. And she said she saw her, and she said she'd never seen anything like this. She was wearing white, and she had a bright light behind her head. And my teacher said, oh, that's a Western Deva. That's what they look like. So I'll just toss that out for you to consider. Sometimes he would tell me things.

[27:51]

I remember one time, though, he saw me washing robes. This is when I was first there. You know, I grew up with a washing machine. You throw the clothes in the machine, and they come out washed. And I'd looked to see what the agitator did, and it just seemed to sort of move around a little bit. So I was washing clothes in my pail one day. And he came over and looked at me. He says, that's the way you wash clothes? Yeah. And I said, well, yeah. And he says, my hands and feet just go weak looking at you doing this. But probably the most involved story about this was that the robes we wear are dyed from jackfruit, the wood of the jackfruit tree. And in more recent years, chemical dyes have come into Thailand, so it's more common for you to actually use a chemical dye and throw a little jackfruit in for the scent. It's a very good kind of deodorant for the cloth. Well, one time he was given a set of robes, a beautiful set of undyed robes, and he said, this is the time for you to learn the traditional way of doing this, with just using the jackfruit without the chemical dye. And then he went into his robe.

[28:56]

So I went out and I boiled the jackfruit root down in the water and I took the robe into it and I dipped it and it came out a very pale, pale yellow. I said, this is not going to work. So I started asking around other monks who might know something about this. And they explain the process that you just had to boil it down until you got this really concentrated essence many, many, many times. And then you would tie the rope in that. And similar things like that. He would give me a project and then just kind of go into it in the same room and let me decide how to do it. I think this is the living Koan tradition. It's not limited to Zen or Rinzai or whatever. It's a living tradition of Koan, which is your everyday activity and interaction with your teacher and with your students is on every moment. Yes? Well, it must have been very difficult for you, especially in the beginning years, you know, learning the language and the customs and maybe being the only Westerner there.

[30:09]

It must have been very challenging. So I'm wondering why you stuck with it. One, I was very impressed with my teacher. And two, it wasn't that he was this horrible ogre all the time. I mean, he could be very avuncular, very kind. And it was a combination of seeing that he had really benefited very much himself from the practice. He seemed to be extremely wise, a very happy person. And he kept saying it wasn't that he'd started out that way, it was because of the training he had received. I said, I want that training. And so I stuck with it. And you never had time to think about how hard it was. It was just what you were doing. Of course, he had made me take a vow before I started with him that I'd be willing to die entirely if I didn't succeed. Otherwise, he wouldn't take me on as a student. So every time I thought of leaving, I said, no, I'm going to die. OK, I'll stay. Yes? What is the wall that the forest or nature places in your teachings?

[31:11]

It's a place where you go and you confront whatever greed, anger, and delusion there is in your mind that you wouldn't see if you're surrounded by people. That's the role. Secondly, the forest is a place where you have to be very alert. We had cobras in the monastery where I was. It was, even though it wasn't out, you know, totally, total jungle wilderness, but there was a lot of jungle in the monastery itself. And so you have to be ready to encounter a cobra, and what do you do when you meet up with a cobra? You have to learn these things. And it could happen at any time. I mean, human beings tend to be kind. Teachers, when they give you your living koans, tend to be kind, but snakes don't particularly take that into consideration. And so it's the combination of just sort of the dangers of being there and learning how to overcome your fears. And then secondly, the fact that when you're alone, things come up that you ordinarily wouldn't see. So if you met a cobra, what would you do? Pray. No, no, walk around it.

[32:14]

And after a while, one, you've spent a lot of goodwill to the cobra. You begin to realize, well, this is another being just like you are. It has its hopes and its desires, and it doesn't want to be stepped on. It's probably more afraid of you than you are of it. And it teaches you a whole new perspective on the animal realm. So we're all in this together. I had a friend who was not afraid of cobras at all because he swore up and down he'd be given a tattoo on his leg when he was young that protected him from animal bites. And so he caught cobras in ways that I would never dare. There was a cobra who came into the kitchen of the monastery one time. It was coming after a cat and its kittens. And the cat was in this cardboard box. It was going to scare the cobra away. And the cobra was coming in, watching the cat. And so my friend snuck up behind the cobra, pulled it by the tail, jerked it and spun it around like this. And when he was done, he had a very limp cobra. And so he took it outside and put it in the grass and eventually, I'm sure it must have dislocated a vertebra or something because it finally kind of got itself back into shape and went off.

[33:23]

But many were the times when I, well I did step on a cobra one time and lived to tell. How do I get into these stories all the time? I was going into the bathroom, and the bathrooms in Thailand had these little drain holes on the side, and I knew there was a danger someday a snake would come in. So I'd always turn on the light and check the bathroom first before I went in. And that particular day, I was in a hurry, and so I stepped in as I was turning on the light, and I felt something soft under my foot, so I jumped in. Fortunately, the cobra had a toad in its mouth. And so it coughed out the toad. By the time it turned around to get me, I was gone. But you do have times when you're sitting under the tree and a cobra comes right within you, two or three inches out of you, and you just learn to realize that, one, the cobra, if you sit very still, the cobra will not know you're there. And so you just learn to sit very still. Yes? You mentioned the importance of observing one's intentions. I wonder how one observes the results of one's actions without becoming greedy for particular results, particular achievements, both in meditation practice and in daily life.

[34:48]

Well, it's the same as approaching any skill. You have to learn the balance between the desire for the results and your willingness to focus on how you're going to get there. If the desire gets too strong so that you're not paying attention to what you're doing, the desire is overcoming. If you have no desire for results, you're not going to develop the skill. So think back on whatever skill you've mastered in the past and have that attitude towards looking at your intentions in general. Yes? Did you say something about your life before you became a monk? I went to college, graduated, went to Thailand. pretty uneventful life. I thought I wanted to learn meditation and come back and have a normal life like everybody else. And then I got over there and realized that if I was going to do this well I had to give my life to it totally.

[35:48]

Yes? How does your community, your monks community, interact with the lay community? If you're a hermit type of monastery, how do you, I mean do you have some Well, we have a hill where we're located. Half the hill is for the monks to live, half the hill is for lay visitors to stay. It's an avocado orchard. We have little places for people to sit, pitch tents and have walking meditation paths under the trees. And so visitors are welcome. And there's a fairly constant stream of people who are coming. And it's my duty as the abbot to deal with the visitors, the other monks are in training. And then as time passes, they tend to take on some more of these responsibilities. But even in Thailand, where you have the forest tradition, you have to remember the monks have to depend on lay people every day for their food. So it's not a total hermit existence. There's a symbiosis that develops there. Because people are providing your food when they need help, you can't not give them help.

[36:51]

It's a very direct kind of relationship. Keeps it very basic. The Buddha said the one thing that unites us is that we're all dependent on food. And so, keep the relationship as basic as possible, and it's as clean as possible. Yes? The Kalama Sutta, yes. A couple of years back I received a postcard in which someone had stamped, do not believe anything except your own sense of the truth, the Buddha. And apparently that's supposed to be a quote from the Galama Sutta, but it's much more complex, that you have to take not only what other people say and your own, sort of your internal inspirations, but then you have to put them to the test first before you can say, okay, this must be true, because you've seen it in practice. Yes? You've talked a lot about practice in daily living.

[37:55]

The Thai forest tradition is particularly known as a practice that emphasizes meditation. So could you talk some about particularly how this tradition teaches meditation? Okay, it varies from the sort of many lineages that have already developed in the forest tradition. The one I belong to has probably the most systematic meditation teaching, which is on dealing with the breath. strong emphasis on concentration. You focus on the breath, but then you don't just sit with the breath as it is, you begin to experiment with the breath. This is where we're talking about the aspect of developing a skill. Try long breathing, try short breathing, whole body breathing. What kind of breathing feels really good right in the present moment and try to maintain that as a basis for developing stronger and stronger levels of concentration. And so you're actually Well, it's always good to know other tools.

[38:58]

And again, in manipulation you find if you manipulate it with too heavy a hand, you get no results. So you have to learn how to be very subtle. And in the course of that you begin to see ways that you've been manipulating the breath subconsciously that you didn't realize before. Yes. Is feeling good really a good guide for how to actually manipulate your breath? Because I think that I can give myself very pleasant, very physical sensations with certain breathing, but I'm not sure that's leading to clarity or anything that's really in the long term. something that would have more than just the immediate physical pleasure? It's the ability to maintain the clarity in spite of the pleasure that's going to get you to a deeper level of concentration. So clarity is a more important guide? It's the combination of the two. Is there anything else that you want to look for? Let's get a little technical here.

[39:58]

There are three levels of concentration, basically. The first one is your ordinary, everyday level of concentration that can't stand pain or boredom. It runs into anything unpleasant, it goes. And as you work with the breath, you begin to work through whatever unpleasant sensations there are in the body, and you feel you can have a handle on them, you're not afraid of them. So you can stay with them. And work through them. You get to the point where things are pleasant. Now you hit the second level of concentration, and its problem is that it can't withstand pleasure. It tends to blur. Pleasure destroys the second level. Yeah. It destroys the clarity. You get dull. You get dull. This is where people tend to have visions when they come in, that they're not all that clear. And at that point, you have to give the mind conscious work to do, keeping it within the body in the present moment to maintain that clarity, that mindfulness and alertness. You said, give them unconscious work to do? Give the mind conscious work to do. Oh, sorry. In which case, like, you might go surveying the body, how does the breath energy feel, say, and just go down the different parts of the body, the legs, the ankles, the feet, the toes, the energy around the body.

[41:03]

In other words, another way is to visualize the bones in the fingers. And start up your hand. Start with this joint, then the next joint, and sort of visualize the bone. Okay, sense the breath around the bone. Does it feel, is there any tension there? If there is, relax it. Keep the mind busy, but keep it within the bounds of the body. And you find you can get past that tendency to kind of blur out with the pleasure. And the mind goes to a deeper level where it's just totally still and equanimous. And you can get it to the point where the body, you're not breathing, you're just very still, but very alert and very awake. And by having worked through the unpleasant breath sensation, the unskillful breathing in the beginning, you've got yourself with a good foundation for concentration. Well, as I said earlier, my teacher said there are two types of people, and assuming that we're in Berkeley, people who think too much need to work on their concentration very steadily.

[42:45]

Once the mind gets very still, if you're the type of person who's already analyzing things, and has a tendency to want to look at what's going on in your mind, insight starts to arise. You begin to ask the question, okay, once the mind gets very still, is there still something in here? Is there still some sort of subtle stress, some sort of, something that's not quite right yet? And you work through that, and you begin to see, what am I doing to cause that stress? And so you're keeping the mind in the concentration, but you're also beginning to analyze it a little bit. And it's finding the right balance of the two, so there's not so much analysis that it destroys the concentration. And there's not too much stillness, it just kind of blots out thought. But that forms the center of the various other qualities that you want to develop around it. Alertness, mindfulness, discernment. But it's kind of a tailor-made thing.

[43:35]

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