Aj Sumedho Interview

[sabaijai]

The current issue of Tricycle: Buddhist Review, contains a long interview with Ajahn Sumedho, Here is an excerpt.

Everyday Path Moments

An Interview With Ajahn Sumedho

July 12, 2006

Ajahn Sumedho is abbot of the Amaravati Buddhist Centre in Hertfordshire and a former disciple of the late Thai meditation master Ajahn Chah, under whom he studied for ten years at the Wat Pah Pong monastery. Born in Seattle, Washington in 1934 and fully ordained in 1967, Ajahn Sumedho has worked closely with several lay organizations, including The English Sangha Trust. In 1975, he established Wat Pah Nanachat, international forest monastery, in Ubon Province, Thailand, and is considered a founding figure of the Thai Forest monastic tradition in the West. He is the author of Now is the Knowing, and his teachings are widely recognized for being practical and direct. Ajahn Sumedho was interviewed by Philip Moffitt, vipassana teacher and founder of the Life Balance Institute, for a feature in the Spirit Rock News, Volume 19, Number 1 (February 2006-August 2006)

The Third Noble Truth, the truth of cessation, is the one that’s most confusing for most students. It’s also taught less than the first two, for various reasons. Would you explain what cessation is?

It’s the end of suffering, really. This you have to recognize. You can’t describe it. Cessation does sound a bit annihilationist in a way to the thinking mind. You think everything is going to cease, a kind of void of nothingness. It’s really the end of suffering. That’s why the First Noble Truth is suffering, the Second is the causes, and the Third is the end of suffering. It’s not like cessation is a kind of extinction of everything, but cessation is suffering. Then when suffering ceases, the awareness is still operating. To realize the cessation of suffering, you are no longer attached to the causes. This is recognized or realized. Cessation is peace, is liberation, is enlightenment, Buddha—all the things we might long for as ideals. These are realized through letting go and the cessation of suffering. But if we are trying to get rid of suffering because we don’t like it, we never let it really cease. We’re just suppressing it or running away from it. It’s through this receiving, recognizing, using suffering that we can actually let suffering go and realize the cessation of it.

What is meant by the phrase, “a path moment?”

To me that means to have an insight into the path, which is a realization of cessation. That’s a profound insight. That first moment is usually very brief and then the thinking mind returns saying, “What was that?” or “That was a path moment.” When you remember it, it creates a desire to have it again. But after that moment this is where the sense of letting go of the memory [is important and one should focus on] cultivating awareness in a kind of ordinary way, not looking for another path moment as such, but developing awareness in daily life, ordinary routine daily life.

Integrating insight into daily life is perplexing for many students. They have what feels like a deep insight, and then they expect everything to change. They may have this insight for just a few moments, or they may be in an altered state of some kind for a period of time, hours or even days. But there’s always a point when that too ceases. They express such disappointment and seem so uncertain about how to continue. How would you explain to the students that this is okay, that there’s not supposed to be something big happening?

Oftentimes, students have such insights on silent retreats or when they’re alone where everything is very controlled and their environment is very quiet, very still. Through the practice, the sense of the self falls away and one has insight. But it’s easy to connect mentally to the memory of the insight with a situation. You get this sense of always wanting to have that experience again through having a similar situation.

Students often fail to recognize the possibility that the reality of awareness is always there, no matter where they are or what they are doing. They mistakenly think they have to control the environment, go on a meditation retreat, or go off to some special place to have awareness. Such thinking can be another type of defilement; it is “clinging” to memory. The practice is always to just see the suffering and the cause of suffering, in all situations. Keep working with the awareness of suffering and with letting go of the causes. In this instance suffering is the desire to have another quiet retreat or the desire to have something that you remember, but you don’t have right now. If you keep working with suffering, then you begin to recognize even attachment to views of vipassana or views of meditation techniques or to your own particular views and opinions about practice is suffering.