Dhamma Talk With Ajahn Jayasaro

[sabaijai]

Dhamma Talk with Ajahn Jayasaro

in English, at Baan Aree Library

Monday 9th November

Ajahn Jayasaro was formerly the co-abbot and then sole abbot of Wat Pah Nanachat International Forest monastery in the North-East of Thailand for many years. Wat Pah Nanachat is in the lineage of Luang Phor Chah – a huge name in Thai Buddhism. Ajahn Jayasaro now resides alone in Kao Yai, and rarely makes public appearances in English outside of Kao Yai. In fact we are planning to arrange some regular trips to his hermitage where he gives a public talk every week in Thai – if there are enough of us to go along he will gladly speak in English there.

Ajahn Jayasaro is well known for his interesting and moving Dhamma Talks, in both his native English and also in Thai. For many years he led the International monastery and gained a fine reputation for accessibility and sharp dhamma. Hugely popular with the Thai community we are very glad he will talk this time in English only in support of the international community here in Bangkok.

We are holding the event at Baan Aree Library – the place where ‘Littlebang’ started 3 years ago! Be sure to come early to ensure a seat inside the air-con hall, as there will likely be a lot of people.

Map:

http://littlebang.wordpress.com/2009/10/11...ajahn-jayasaro/

Baan Aree

Baan Aree Library is a thriving dhamma site with library, meeting hall, and lots of events organised in Thai. The Library itself is open daily from 9 am – 7 pm and has a few books in English. The new Dhamma Hall is airconditioned and set in the attractive grounds, with many very reasonably priced vegetarian food stalls open in the daytime.

Baan Aree has regular Dhamma meetings in Thai which are listed at their Thai website: http://baanaree.net/ .

The Library is right on the Skytrain line. Go to Ari BTS station and walk back towards the victory monument about 20 meters and you should see the passage way to Baan Aree Library on the right hand side – click on the maps below. Do arrive early and meet with some of the regulars in the coffee shop in the compound. Baan Aree car park is accessible from the rear (Soi Ari 1) where you see the sign for ‘ BANANA FAMILY PARK ‘. Bus routes 8, 28, 29, 38, 54, 63, 74, 77, 108, 157, 177, 502, 503, 509, and 510 all pass by. Get out at Ari BTS Station.

[camerata]

This was an excellent dhamma talk. Did anyone else go?

This a good article about Aj Jayasaro's popularity with the Thai urban middle class on The Buddhist Channel.

These days Phra Jayasaro lives alone in a hermitage at the foot of Khao Yai mountains. Two Sundays a month he receives visitors in Phak Chong. They are mostly upper-middle class Thais from Bangkok, and they often number a hundred people, driving up from the city to attend one of his morning sessions of meditation, chanting and dhamma talk.

Phra Jayasaro sees a trend of educated, urban Thais returning to Buddhism. "It has become legitimate again. When I was here in the late '70s, it wasn't."

Others talk of a slightly different trend: The ever-stronger connections between western-born monks and lay western-educated Buddhists in eastern countries such as Thailand. Acharn Jayasaro was a disciple of the late Luang Por (Venerable Father) Chah, a well-known Thai monk who was able to foster a particularly vibrant community of western monks that has spread throughout the world.

[sabaijai]

I had to miss the lecture as I was in Sri Lanka last week. Coincidentally one of my travelling companions was a Thai woman who is a perfect example of the 'trend of educated, urban Thais returning to Buddhism.' She works as a scriptwriter in Bangkok but spends much of her down time visiting forest temples in Isan.

[camerata]

A summary of the talk:

Ajahn Jayasaro started his talk last night, to over 200 people in the Baan Aree Library, with the story of a scholar willing to go through any hardship to find the perfect teaching. Eventually he's directed to a great Master and he bows before him. "Tell me" he asks, "the highest, the most profound Dharma, the one single verse that encapsulates all that we ever need to know".

The Master looks at the scholar and says, in the Pali with which they were most familiar, "Sabbapapassa akaranam. Kusalassa upasampada. Sacitta pariyodapanam. Etam Buddhana sananam. Avoid evil. Do Good. Purify the mind. This is the teachings of all Buddhas". "That's it?" the man complains. "That's it? What kind of answer is that? Even a child of five can recite that verse."

"Yes" replies the Master. "But even a man of fifty finds it hard to practice", and the rest of Ajahn Jayasaro's talk focused on that practice. He started with the part about training the mind, saying it is best done in what he called the 'classroom' of the present moment, but also said that it is inseperable from the earlier part about avoiding evil and doing good.

In fact, he suggested, sila is itself a perfect practice. Mindfulness needs to be mindful of something and what, in daily life, could be better than the precepts? "Keeping the precepts" he taught "is not just the foundation of practice, keeping precepts is itself the practice of liberation", and he went on to give an example.

"By taking on as a life principle the intention not to harm" he said, "we immediately illuminate the intention to harm", and he explained that by observing the precepts we can more easily see when our intentions run contrary to them. This, in itself, he said, is mindfulness meditation. It is not a preliminary to practicing the Dharma, but is the actual practice of the Dharma.

Talking about his own efforts over the past thirty years following rigorous monastic precepts, precepts that include, he said, rules over even such things as how to place your bag when sitting down, Ajahn Jayasaro compared keeping precepts to playing music. Watching a violinist in concert, we don't think "you poor musician, every note was decided for you hundreds of years ago".

Rather, we see how the notes, far from restricting him, are the means to his creativity, and Ajahn Jayasaro emphasised again that the practice of sila is liberating, not least in the way it eliminates remorse and builds confidence and self-respect. Only then did he turn to look specifically at the practice of samadhi.

Through meditation, he said, we can find inner refuge, stability, and integrity. Not, he said, by looking for blissed-out states, but by seeing things as they actually are. And not, he said, through studying theories, but through stepping into the classroom of the present moment. You can even do this, he said in response to the first question, for just a single minute, any time you like.

Source.

[honu]

I caught it; awesome teaching, very clear and useful. A few other highlights (comments or corrections welcomed):

Ajahn Jayasaro described how to deal with strong emotions like anger or anxiety (in response to a question). He mentioned that it would be easier to intentionally diffuse the emotional response early in the process by utilizing the relation between mental and physical states. If someone could learn to notice correlated physical responses to impending anger or anxiety (changes in breathing, tightness in the chest, whatever response the person typically felt) then they could intentionally calm themselves before losing control. He mentioned that this would itself take mindfullness that could be developed in part through other regular Buddhist practices (meditation and the like). He also mentioned that it only seems like one experiences self-awareness of anger or anxiety but in fact that the experience that really occurs is one of momentary awareness of mental state and then return to the strong emotional response, because the two would not occur simultaneously. Ajahn Jayasaro related that on one level we are likely to enjoy a negative experience like anger (for example, because it gives us a feeling of power when we might otherwise feel powerless) so that a higher level of self-understanding could better define the experience.

Ajahn Jayasaro made a second point about how it is possible to use short periods of concentration throughout the day to offset stress or just to re-establish mindfullness (the conventional expression of this would be self-awareness, which of course by implication contradicts some core Buddhist teaching). He explained that even sixty seconds sitting at a keyboard or time spent in a lift (elevator) could be used for this, in combination with watching the breath or whatever other technique is a part of regular practice (which would typically involve sitting meditation, or perhaps other additonal mindfulness techniques). The theme that wove through the different points was that mindfulness could be reinforced by a number of different ongoing practices, but that the base of these was the understanding and application of Buddhist teachings and the regular meditative practices related to these. The point Camerata referred to about morality related to this as well: it was not described as a restrictive guide that would bring future benefits but as a helpful tool to promote regular momentary awareness and to avoid harmful perspectives.

His response to another question was less clear. Someone asked how Buddhism could attribute negative circumstances or tendencies to act to the fruits of past negative choices but at the same time would not attribute positive choices or personal developments to the results of past actions. The question is one of free will. It corresponds to the Christian dilema of how God can plan everything but at the same time we can also have free will (but in a very different form). My impression of his answer was that a complete response would rely on more background discussion than a short answer phrased in general terms could provide, but I did not follow his response well enough to describe it in more detail.

My understanding of this problem (to be clear: not what Ajahn Jayasaro related) is that Buddhism and free will can correlate because although we are not independent of other events and causitive factors we still play a role as a causitive agent, just not as an independent one, which is the form we seem to take. So independent free will really is a contradiction, but the ability to make choices is not. As I understand it Buddhism is not designed to function as a model for personal or external reality (although in a limited sense it can and does). A more conventional interpretation makes it's role descriptive, when in fact it is more prescriptive, a tool for changing a more conventional perception of self to a more useful and ultimately positive one.

[sabaijai]

Interesting take, honu, thanks for the additional details.

The discussion of ‘free will,’ with respect to Buddhism, is fraught with difficulty, IMO, beginning with the fact that it’s mainly a Western concept and is not treated separately in most Indianised philosophy. Even within the Western tradition, defining free will is problematic to say the least.

Buddhism doesn’t address free will directly but instead focuses on the laws of kamma. Since intention is scrupulously described one can assume that ‘free will’ does exist, but I’m not sure that knowing or believing that really applies to anything within the Buddhist system.

The ways in which kamma-vipaka play out are described in shelves of books on Buddhism which address the problem posed at the Aj Jayasaro session. My favourite because it’s concise and clear is Karma for Today's Traveler.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Karma-Today-...ler-t84704.html

[Sarathi]

The video of the talk is posted up on www.littlebang.wordpress.com , in case you missed it.