Archive | Reflections on Practice

In the late 1980s, the Thai monk Ajahn Suwat was teaching a ten-day retreat at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) with Ajahn Geoff (Thanissaro) as his translator. Ajahn Suwat had been in America for some time but he hadn’t taught a retreat to Westerners before. After several days, Ajahn Suwat asked Ajahn Geoff, “Why do the students seem so unhappy? They’re meditating. They’re here. But they seem so grim & not at all like they’re enjoying themselves.” After thinking about it, Ajahn Geoff said, “They know how to meditate, but not how to practice dana.” He saw a direct relationship between the lack of happiness & the lack of a foundation in dana.

In Thailand, where I lived for many years, generosity & giving are a child’s first teachings in Buddhism. Pregnant women go to the temple, offer food & dedicate merit: “May my child be healthy & happy.” When children are little, they get up early with their families to make offerings to the monastics walking by on almsround. Someone helps each child put a spoonful of rice in the alms bowl, and everyone claps & says, “Great!” Children get the idea: Wow, giving is good. They grow up associating generosity with pleasant feelings because it is a cultural value.

There are many different translations of the word dana. Basically, it is the quality of generosity in which we give physically and from the heart. Hearts with dana are generous, open-palmed & liberal in terms of willingness to give, share, be present & help others. All of those qualities lead us away from me & my needs, me & my preferences, me & my demands, me & my expectations, me & my desires, me & my firm place in the center of the universe.

At the root of generosity is the perception that there is always something to share. In fact, you don’t need a lot in order to give…. Sometimes we have a lot, but we feel it’s not enough & that we have to protect what’s there. We don’t even think about sharing what we have. That’s a state of lack & of being truly poor. On the other hand, giving & sharing come from a place of wealth.

There’s an old story about the difference between heaven & hell. The hell realms are filled with people who sit at long banquet tables piled high with all sorts of delicious foods & drinks. But everyone is completely miserable & hungry because the utensils are too long to maneuver. No matter how hard they try, they can’t put the food into their mouths. The heavenly realm is the same: the tables are laden with the same delicious foods & drinks & with the identical long utensils. But the people are happy & bright because they use the utensils to feed one another. There is no hunger or frustration, only fullness & well-being within the identical conditions. Giving & sharing is what turns a hell realm into a heavenly one.

One of the doorways out of suffering is generosity. It’s important to realize that dana is not just about material giving. It also involves service & keeping one’s eyes open for what needs to be done. How can I help? Who is in need of assistance? In order to feel comfortable helping others, we have to leap over the hurdle of self, of me & mine. Acts of service invite us to step out of the conditioned boundaries that we set up for our imaginary selves.

Excerpted from article in Inquiring Mind Fall 2007 Vol.24 #1

Ajahn Pasanno is a senior disciple of Ajahn Chah who for many years was the abbot of Wat Pah Nanachat International Forest Monastery in Thailand. In the late 1990s, he moved to California to head the new Abhayagiri Monastery. Ajahn Pasanno stepped back from the role of abbot in Spring 2018 but continues as an anchor of wisdom & guidance for the community.

The Ten Paramis are the ten perfections of the heart to cultivate in one’s practice of the Dhamma.  Ajahn Sucitto tells us, “These parami form a set of themes that are used in the Theravada tradition to this day. They provide a template for the mind’s energies & activities that isn’t an extra to all the other things we might have to do, but encompasses our talking & working, our relationships & interactions with others, our times of private introspection, our decision-making & the forming of our life directions. We practise morality, patience & all or any of the rest while we are engaged at work, or minding the children, or stuck in a traffic jam… The parami take spiritual practice into areas of our lives where we get confused, are subject to social pressure & are often strongly influenced by stress or stress- forming assumptions. Providing alternative ways to orient the mind in the stream of daily events, the ‘perfections’ can derail obstructive inner activities, & leave the mind clear for meditation. Cultivating parami means you get to steer your life out of the floods.”

The Ten Perfections (Parami)

Generosity/Sharing (dana) Recognizing the joy of sharing, & acknowledging that we all come into this world subject to pain, sorrow, sickness & death, I aspire to offer what I can in terms of resources, hospitality, healing & wise advice.

Morality/Integrity (sila) Recognizing the trust that develops from conscientiousness & fellow-feeling, I aspire to cultivate actions of body, speech & mind that turn away from hostility & harshness, & that cut off greed & manipulative behaviour.

Renunciation/Values-based Simplicity (nekkhamma) Recognizing the ease that arises with modesty & contentment, I aspire to relinquish needless acquisition & an imbalanced use of material resources.

Clarity/Wisdom (pañña) Recognizing the skill of clarity, I aspire to handle my perspectives with awareness & careful reflection, & thereby arrive at an unbiased understanding.

Energy (viriya) Recognizing my capacity for vigour, or for distraction & laziness, I aspire to use my energy for my long-term benefit & for the welfare of others.

Patience/Tolerance (khanti) Recognizing the value of tolerance & perseverance, I aspire to let go of getting my own way, cutting corners & being narrow-minded.

Truthfulness (sacca) Recognizing the wise relationships that can be established through my own veracity & through the honesty of others, I aspire to free my mind from biased perspectives & devious behaviour.

Resolution (adhitthana) Recognizing the potency of a firm heart, I aspire to hold intentions that are enriching, & to ward off vacillation on one hand & forceful goalseeking on the other.

Goodwill (metta) Recognizing the happiness of a warm heart, I aspire to cultivate empathy & compassion. Resisting mind-states based on fault-finding of myself or others, I will encourage goodwill rather than foster ideals of perfection.

Equanimity/Stability of Heart (upekkha) Recognizing the peace of even-minded acceptance, I aspire to let sickness & health, blame & praise, failure & accomplishment flow through my awareness without getting distracted by them.

Buddhist monk Ajahn Sucitto, currently based at Cittaviveka Monastery in Chithurst, West Sussex, has been part of a number of Theravada monasteries in Britain. The passages above on the Paramis are excerpted from his books “Parami, Ways to Cross Life’s Floods” and “Buddha-Nature, Human Nature.” Both are available on-line in PDF form at no charge.

After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.
Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,
Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her
Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she
Did this.

I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.
Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick,
Sho bit se-wee?

The minute she heard any words she knew—however poorly used—
She stopped crying.

She thought our flight had been canceled entirely.
She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the
Following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late,

Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and
Would ride next to her—Southwest.

She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.

Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and
Found out of course they had ten shared friends.

Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian
Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering
Questions.

She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered
Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag—
And was offering them to all the women at the gate.

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California,
The lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same
Powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies.

And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers—
Non-alcoholic—and the two little girls for our flight, one African
American, one Mexican American—ran around serving us all apple juice
And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too.

And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands—
Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing,

With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always
Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought,
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.

Not a single person in this gate—once the crying of confusion stopped
—has seemed apprehensive about any other person.

They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.

Not everything is lost.

Photo at top of Naomi’s 95 yr old Palestinian grandmother by Michael Nye.

Naomi Shihab Nye describes herself as a “wandering poet.” Born to a Palestinian father & an American mother, she grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem & San Antonio. Drawing on her Palestinian-American heritage, the cultural diversity of her home in Texas & experiences traveling the world, Nye uses her writing to attest to our shared humanity. The recipient of many literary awards, she currently serves as Young People’s Poet Laureate in the U.S.

“The fool who knows he is a fool
Is that much wiser.
The fool who thinks he is wise
Is a fool indeed.”
The Buddha from the Dhammapada

There was a mighty elephant with a strong trunk and long tusks, trained by a good master, and willing and serviceable. This elephant, led by his trainer, came to the land of the blind. Very soon the rumors went in the land of the blind that an elephant had come to their country. So the wise men and teachers of the blind came up to the elephant and began to investigate him. And when the elephant was gone, they met and discussed the animal among themselves.

There were some who said he was like a great thick snake; others said he was like a snake of medium size. The former had felt the trunk, the latter the tail.

Further, there were some who claimed that his figure was like a high column, others declared he was large and bulky like a big barrel, still others maintained he was smooth and hard but tapering. Some of the blind had taken hold of one of the legs, others had reached the main body, and still others had touched the tusks.

In the end they abused and scolded one another over their disagreements, and finally every one of them swore that everyone else was a liar and was cursed on account of his heresies.

Everyone of these blind men was honest in his contentions, sure of having the truth and relying on his own experience. But the elephant trainer knows that every one of them has a parcel of the truth, that every one is right in his way, but wrong in believing his outlook to be the whole truth.

The master of the elephant was an Enlightened One. He brought the elephant of truth into the land of the blind, and those who listen to him well will understand that all the claimants have parcels of the truth. Those who takes refuge in his doctrine will cease to bicker and quarrel.

Sutta Pitaka – Khuddaka Nikaya