Ajahn Amaro on “Renunciation and Joy”

A reflection on practice by Other Teachers & Folks We Value

I used to be a big music fan & listened to it all the time. Now that I don’t deliberately listen to it, I find that when I do happen to hear music, it’s as if I’m hearing it for the first time. Music used to be such a constant presence in my life that it had lost its power. If I hear it now, it has an astonishing quality of freshness. I am with every note, every phrase.

When we adopt the renunciate life we aren’t condemning the world of the senses, per se, because that leads to aversion & negativity. Instead we are learning to accept whatever is offered to us with full appreciation. Whatever arrives is received & cherished, but we don’t try to add anything. I think many people listen to music because they love the place that the music takes them to, which is the present moment. You are not thinking about anything else; you are experiencing the harmony, balance, and rhythm that the music suggests. But all of those qualities are present in a meditative mind. If we need music in order to get us there, then when there isn’t music (or delicious food or beautiful surroundings or whatever it might be), we are likely to feel bereft. We immediately start to look for another experience that will take us to that place of beauty.

What the precepts do is to shut the door on all our habitual sources of satisfaction so that our entire attention is directed inward. That is where we discover a beauty & clarity, and a vastness of being which is unshakable, independent of circumstances and conditions. Then when we hear a piece of music, or see a beautiful blue sky or the fine shape of a tree, that’s an extra.

 But remember that the joy only comes after the self-surrender & sacrifice. I think as a culture, we are afraid of sacrifice. We feel that we must own & accumulate things in order to be complete, and not just material objects but people & relationships as well. It is hard for us to understand that letting go is not a loss, not a bereavement. Of course, when we lose something that is beautiful or dear to us, there is a shadow that crosses the heart. But we enlighten that shadow with the understanding that the feeling of loss is just the karmic result of assuming that we owned anything in the first place. The renunciate life is based on the realization that we can never really possess anything.

Read full Interview with Ajahn Amaro: The Happy Monk
by Terry Vandiver & Wes Nisker in Inquiring Mind Fall 1995