Monkchat

It had been a while since I'd had a decent conversation about Buddhism so I decided to attend "monkchat" at Wat Chedi Luang, a stunning temple in the centre of the Old City in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand.

The monkchat set-up is a collection of tables and chairs shaded by trees in the temple grounds where young monks and novices (monks not yet qualified), take it in turns to attend for a few hours each day to talk with visitors, one on one or in groups. These conversations allow visitors to ask questions about Buddhism and the life of monks, and encourage the young monks to improve their language skills and learn about the lives of foreigners. Great idea; everyone's a winner!

As well as myself, my monk chat group consisted of a small collection of visitors from the US and France and our monk was Tung, a friendly 20 year old newly qualified monk with good English skills, from Wat Suan Dok, a nearby Buddhist monk university. As I didn't have a voice recorder it would be unfair to quote everything Tung told us as I'm only going from memory and a few scribbled notes which are, of course, open to interpretation but, here's what I got out of it:

If you were to give a Westerner just one piece of tangible advice to take away, what would it be?

"Practise meditation," Tung replied with a laugh. He went on to explain that monks in Thailand generally learn two types: 'insight meditation' and 'tranquility meditation' but that in Theravada Buddhism (the type of Buddhism they practise in Thailand) they only practise insight as it makes them more knowledgeable.

Insight mediation or "Vipassana", also known as "mindfulness" meditation, is the meditation of nirvana - the end of suffering. This type of meditation is about observing physical feelings in the body, and observing one's emotions, but without focusing on them and without attachment; just noticing them.

Tranquility meditation or "Samatha" is the meditation of enlightenment - the wisdom of emptiness. There are several types of tranquility meditation but one often used is a focus on the breath in order to calm the mind.

The Buddha practised both types but Tung stipulated that it's very important to have a meditation teacher and that you study it before you practise otherwise if you practise before you study you are likely to go the "wrong way". (I'm not sure what happens if you go the "wrong way", we didn't ask.)
  
Why do Theravada Buddhist monks not practise Samatha?
Because it doesn't give knowledge but Samatha meditation is like magic - "monks can fly!" (I couldn't get a solid explanation for this but, believe me, I'm looking for one!)

What happens to a Buddhist's soul when he dies?

Tung explained that we never see the soul, we can just feel a love. We go to one of four places when we die, depending on our lifestyle / state of mind:

1) If we are an angry person, we will go to an evil place
2) If we are a desirous person, we will become a "hungry ghost"
3) If we keep the five precepts, we will be reborn into the human world
4) If we have high merits we will go to heaven. 

What are the five precepts?

No killing
No stealing
No sexual misconduct*
No lies
No alcohol.**

*I've looked into this and as long as nobody gets hurt it's fine. Phew!
**Yeah, it is what it says; bad luck.

How do you know if a Buddhist is enlightened?

Apparently you don't. You continue to go to your Buddhist meetings and they will go to their enlightened meetings to talk about things but you will never get to find out.

Do monks pray?

"We don't pray, we chant and meditate."

Fascinated, and eager to learn more, I returned a week later and, this time, spoke alone with a monk named Supot, aged 23.

Supot, who travels to attend monk chat almost every day from a monastery outside of the city in the countryside, explained how difficult it can be to speak to visitors who have strong religious beliefs. "They're not open to new ideas," he told me. Because they're so focused on a "God" figure, he went on to clarify, they can't get their heads around a religion without one, and constantly try to push Buddha into that role which, of course, won't fit because Buddha was a regular guy (albeit a prince - but he was still human like the rest of us, and that's the point).

Supot quoted a Buddha proverb, "Everything is dependent on your actions."

His point is that Buddhism is all about taking responsibility for yourself, rather than relying on being judged, rewarded or punished by an external God. "When I put something on my Facebook," Supot told me, "not everything is about Buddhism. You must not only pray for things, but you must also take action. Things happen, not because of their wishing or praying but because of their action."

I told him I'm still amused to find that monks use Facebook but he didn't respond directly, although he did express disappointment that the world seems to be reducing face to face communication, which he deems important for happiness, in favour of spending more time making and maintaining relationships online. He advised me to live in reality because virtual friendships are not real. And oddly that echoes exactly what my good friend Karen told me the day previous. (I guess I need to listen!)

There's a fair bit of information here and everyone will make their own interpretations but, for me, there's a big question jumping right out that cannot be answered by a Theravada Buddhist monk:

What'll happen if we practise tranquility/Samatha meditation, the meditation of enlightenment? Will we find that "prayer" (or a form of prayer) can manifest our wishes without action?

Chinese whispers

This scorching hot Thailand afternoon I was sitting on a plastic chair in the shade, just inside the doorway of a Chinese Buddhist temple, examining the faces of rows of giant golden statues staring down at me. Elaborate Chinese dragons wrapped themselves tightly around pillars and enormous, brightly coloured decorations hung down from the ceiling, dancing lightly in the occasional breeze. The whole ensemble was so extravagant that I felt they were portraying a message so obvious I was missing it, like when you're playing charades and your friend is frantically jumping up and down and waving their arms around, demonstrating a concept that is juuust out of your reach, but then when you're told the answer you kick yourself - how the hell did I miss it?!

It was like that; the expressions on the statues' faces were almost straining with the answer. The luminous gold, the colourful dragons and the fancy embellishments were akin to a charades buddy's manic gesticulations. "Come on, you know this," they were insisting, "just look!" A few days earlier I had visited this temple and whispered to a golden Buddha, "Show me the way." This time I couldn't leave until I got the answer.

So, I sat a while longer, half meditating, half desperately trying to figure out what these statues were silently bellowing at me. And eventually it came:

"You see us as Gods but you're the same, you just don't realise it. Everything is perfect; open your eyes to the perfection."

"That's easy for you to say!" I thought to the all-seeing, all-knowing statues. "How do we open our eyes?" I begged, out loud into the echoey chamber. After a few short seconds the simple reply radiated from their golden faces.

"Accept."

Of course. OF COURSE! I closed my eyes as they filled with water that spilled onto my cheeks, the mild anxiety in my heart and head draining into peace, and the half-smile on the statues' faces reflecting onto my own.

Like I've suspected and experienced many times, this time the answer was crystal clear:

The inner peace we seek is found in surrender; accepting what is.

As I exited the shady temple into the bright sunshine I laughed a little at myself - how the hell did I miss it?!

Amazing grace!

Something really remarkable happened this morning...

It must've been around 5am. I'd not been asleep too long with having had a late night and the blistering heat and complicated night-time decisions about open/closed windows, the air-con, the fan and the duvet... I woke up, as I often do here, to find myself scratching a mosquito bite - oh God! If you've ever had mosquito bites you'll know what I'm talking about; no amount of scratching relieves it - you stop scratching, the itch returns with a vengeance and this can carry on for hours. My usual plan of action is to scratch and scratch until I'm exhausted, or get out of bed and run the bite under the cold tap, or apply some tiger balm to soothe it but, this time, I decided to try something new... 

As you well know, there are many things in life - mosquito bites being one of them! - that go against our ideas of what's "right" or "good" or "perfect" and when one of these things comes along it can really upset the apple cart. What I've been learning are various adaptations of a basic technique that allows us to handle these apparently negative life events in a way that prevents us from suffering. Thing is, as life has been going pretty well for me lately, I've not really had an opportunity to try it out. But the itching mozzie bite provided me with just that...

Here's what I did: I relaxed and allowed myself to feeeel the itching without resisting it. Without dialog, without giving it a label, or a history, without analysing or blaming - I just surrendered to the itching; felt it fully. In my head I sat right in the middle of the itching. And the incredible thing is, the more I did this, the less the itching bothered me.

Then, after about 30 seconds of this, in my imagination, I "peeled back" the itching to see if there was an emotion underneath - I found anger! Again, I didn't think about the anger, try to reason, justify or explain it, I just allowed myself to feel it fully; to sit in the middle of it.

And you know what? The itching stopped and I fell asleep - the whole process took less than a minute! A bit later, I woke again to find myself scratching a bite and so I did the process again and again it worked like a dream.

This probably sounds like nonsense to you - who cares that I did some sort of "mind over matter" thing to stop some itching, what's the biggie? But, it IS a biggie, my dear friend! Because this technique can be applied to anything and everything that upsets us, irritates us, angers us, makes us feel terrified or desperate or isolated..! If, instead of trying to numb, ignore, "treat" or push away the "negative" feeling, we allow ourselves to feel it fully but without attaching a story to it, no reasons, explanations or blame, just embracing the fear/sadness/anger/whatever and then let any other feelings come to the fore, again without a story, eventually the pain subsides and we come to our source; grace; peace - ultimate freedom!

This cessation of suffering through surrender is explained in The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and, I'm told, there is a similar technique used in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP).

I learned a fully comprehensive process based around this technique, called The Journey by Brandon Bays. The Journey utilises this concept of feeling (and therefore releasing) trapped emotions that cause misery and sickness, in order to become happy and healthy and move forward with our lives. A practitioner did a full Journey process with me and, in 45 minutes, I got over a huge issue that had been shadowing my life since I was a child.

So, when I say something remarkable happened this morning, it was the realisation that I can do this myself, at any time, with any issue. I'm not saying it'll always be easy but at least I know it's possible and therefore something to aim for - how amazing!

It's a bug's life

Last week when I moved into my rented bungalow in Thailand I noticed a few tiny ants about the place. Not many - maybe two or three in the kitchen, the occasional one walking across the bed, one or two in the bathroom. They were no bother, I figured they were looking for food and so was careful not to leave any crumbs or spills about as one ant can turn into hundreds at the mere sniff of a splash of orange juice.

I put my rubbish meticulously into a plastic bag in the bathroom bin and there was nothing more than a few pistachio shells and an empty cornflakes packet. Nonetheless the next time I looked there was a dual carriageway of ants marching purposefully between a small crack in the skirting and the bin. They carefully navigated the rim of the bin and some stood by while others made the death-defying, slippery descent into the plastic bag to retrieve cornflake crumbs and bits of pistachio nut.

I was amused and impressed by this display of organisation and co-operation but didn't really think it was ideal to have all these ants in the house so I took the bin bag outside to the main bins. A few hours later a group of about 50 ants was standing near the bin as though having a meeting about what to do next and then shortly after, they'd all gone. I decided to put a new bin bag somewhere they couldn't reach so I hung it from a sticking-out screw in the bathroom wall and went to make a cuppa.

While making the cuppa I spilled a penny-sized drop of soya milk on the worktop and quickly wiped it up before taking my drink to the bedroom. When I took my empty cup back to the kitchen I noticed a penny-sized group of ants on the worktop where I thought I'd wiped up the milk. This group was being joined by a long line of ants stretching across the kitchen worktop, round the corner, into the bedroom, past the skirting board, down the step into the bathroom, along the floor (always sticking to the edges) and into the small crack in the bathroom wall at floor level.

I gently shooed them off the worktop with the yellow sponge and gave the area a good clean and, within minutes, all the ants had disappeared.

I had a nice packet of cashew nuts with my drink and put the empty wrapper in the cunningly-placed carrier bag in the bathroom - I was proud of my strategy - there's NO WAY they'd find it there!

But, I kid you not, when I went back in the bathroom an hour later for my shower, there was an organised army of ants marching between the hole in the corner and the carrier bag dangling from a screw about 5ft up the opposite wall. They came at it from above as well; they shimmied across the dado rail and slowly, being careful not to slip, climbed down the shiny, vertical, tiled wall, across the sticking-out screw and the bag handle and into the bag. But what really blew me away was, the ones coming back were carrying tiny pieces of cashew nut several times the size of their own little bodies! Out of a cashew bag, out of a plastic carrier bag, up a slippery tiled wall and across a distance the equivalent of a few miles to us. And they could make it back in less than three minutes! After a while the activity started to die down. As I watched them I noticed that every ant, as they passed each other on the way to/from the bin bag, would stop and interact with each other. This interaction was only for a second and consisted of them facing head on, waggling their antennae before carrying on their way although, sometimes the interaction would be followed by the ant who had been heading toward the bin bag now changing direction to go back to the hole in the wall... It was all rather fascinating and did make me wonder what they were "saying".

These ants, measuring no more than 4mm in length, displayed spectacular intelligence, adapting quickly to a new environment and reacting immediately to new stimulus, communicating efficiently to their group, yet I can bet most of us have never really considered them to be anything more than a bit of a nuisance.

The majority of us likely has at least a vague awareness of the intelligence of some household pets - cats, dogs, birds, etc. - but, what about the creatures we don't regularly interact with? Is it fair or accurate to consider them lesser beings simply because they're not human? I wonder, if you had the choice of hiring an employee with the agility, brain, brawn, commitment, communication skills, teamwork and tenacity of an average ant, or that of an average human, which would you go for?  

Pune intended

It's hard to explain how I ended up in this busy, polluted city for two whole months but something told me a visit to Pune was absolutely the right thing to do. 

It's hardly "typical India"; there's not a great deal to see, there are too many strange people (foreigners more so than the locals) and, for much of it, I felt I was wasting my time by apparently not doing much toward my goal of understanding happiness. Regardless, I trusted my inner voice and rented a flat and it turned out to be a great learning experience!

See, as well having met a truly wonderful man, taking a life-changing course (more another time), and writing and recording a song (I'll make you hear it soon!) because there wasn't much to do and nobody I wanted to make friends with, I spent a good portion of my time on my own. This made me realise some things about myself which has led to a more solid understanding of the basic requirements of different levels of consciousness.

OK, I'll put my plain English head on...

Consciousness is NOT about how intelligent we are, how good we were at school or how well we do our job. Consciousness is our awareness; it's the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. The most conscious people are called "enlightened" and they include people you might have heard of like Jesus, Buddha, a spiritual leader called Osho and a writer called Eckhart Tolle. There are probably LOADS more of them but enlightened people don't usually like to mention it... 

So, yeah, what I figured out is that people at different levels of consciousness have different basic needs:

The lower levels need constant stimulation in the form of gossip, shopping, smoking/drugs/alcohol, TV, and other similar types of entertainment and addiction. They often aren't aware of the benefits of good nutrition and exercise; either that or their diet and exercise become an addiction. They don't know the extent of their ability to change their own lives and believe they have to "follow the herd". They usually live in the past or the future (in their head) and are rarely "present", making them dissatisfied, bored, depressed or anxious. When things "go to plan" they experience extreme pleasure and conversely when things don't go to plan they suffer enormously.

The mid-levels, although often give in to one or two addictions, can usually manage without constant stimulation but still need five basics otherwise their well being suffers: enough sleep, exercise, nutrition, the company of friends/family, and a purpose. They're aware of the benefits of meditation, often know that they have the power to change their lives and have a thirst for knowledge about the mind and the universe because, once they start learning there's more to life than what's on the surface, they need to know more. Although occasionally they get excited about the "good" stuff and struggle with the "bad" stuff they're conscious enough to realise it's all in the mind and can usually get by without too much drama. 

The highest levels need none of the addictions and stimulants required by the lower and mid-levels. They live in a state of meditation - that's not to say they're always sitting in the lotus position but that they are present in all they do making them content. Their focus is clear and, although they feel and express happiness and sadness, they don't get overly-excited or upset. They have their minds and behaviours under control: when things don't "go to plan" they're able to accept it because they know that everything is perfect whatever happens. They deal with life without getting shaken up because they can see the bigger picture. 

So, the higher our level of consciousness the more content we are and the great news is that it's entirely possible to move upwards..!

Want to know more? Maybe start by putting "consciousness" into Wikipedia and see what occurs...

Soon-a come-a day, gonna be-a big-a star...

Can you remember that song Shaddap You Face? A fine example of musical creativity, yes? No! But nonetheless this dubious song made it to number one in the UK singles chart, didn't it, keeping at number two a beautiful piece of musical genius highly deserved of the top spot, namely Vienna by Ultravox. It's an absolute travesty but, bitterness aside, my reason for bringing this up is to illustrate the point that, contrary to what we're led to believe, we do NOT have to be exceptional at what we do to achieve our goals. And it's not about who we know either - it's about deciding what we want, believing in it and taking opportunities, and that's all.

If you want to achieve something, here's what you need to do:

Step 1) Decide.
The hardest part of getting what you want is deciding what you want. Don't limit yourself to what you think you can easily achieve - if your heart's in it you'll find the way. Then say it out loud, "I will move to Austria and join the opera!" Say it often and write it down. Tell people you plan to move to Austria and join the opera. As well as opening doors this will ensure that when the relevant opportunities present themselves you'll recognise them.

Step 2) Believe.
The second hardest part of getting what you want is believing you can have it. We all equally deserve to realise our dreams - keep reminding yourself of this. "I can and I will move to Austria and join the opera - heck, I deserve it!" Don't worry about how you'll achieve it, that will never be a problem, just believe in it. This will ensure that, when you recognise the aforementioned opportunities you don't just ignore them.

Step 3) Take.
The most straightforward step is simply to seize the opportunities. You don't need to be good at or have experience of your goal (do you think Joe Dolce was especially talented?!) because what you need will appear when you need it. People who've moved to Austria and joined the opera will fall out of the woodwork keen to offer advice. Well-wishers will help you. You'll be bombarded with useful articles, classes, videos, magazines... Take hold of every opportunity toward your goal that, in your heart, feels right.

There's no step 4 - that's all, folks! Follow the three steps above and you WILL manifest your goal - Ohhh, Viennaaa..!!

One love

Hate, war and competition can never lead the world toward love, peace and togetherness. Love, peace and togetherness consist of acceptance, collaboration, compassion, trust and truth.

If WE can...

- Accept others exactly as they are, whether they are like us or not
- Collaborate with others instead of competing against them
- Show compassion; remembering everyone has their own issues they're battling with
- Trust and be trustworthy
- Be honest and truthful

...in all our daily activities, then WE are the world leaders for love, peace and togetherness; one global community: one family: one love.