Buddhist monk on Gender Equality (video)

Claralynn N.(United Kingdom); Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Seth Auberon, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; Abbot Ajahn Brahmavamso (BuddhistSocietyWA, June 27, 2014)

PERTH, Western Australia - Ajahn Brahm -- an enlightened Western Buddhist monk from England living in Australia after a decade in Northeast Thailand (Isan) at Wat Pah Nanachat, the International Forest Monastery -- talks about the banning of his United Nations' speech on gender equity, equality of the sexes.

Viewers who support Wisdom Quarterly and women's right to full ordination in Theravada Buddhism as well as supporting Ajahn Brahm's work striving for the equality of females within all Buddhist schools, particularly his more traditional and monastic tradition, are encouraged to consider signing the online petition here.

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  Sangha: nuns, monks, female, male supporters.

  Traditionally, it was thought that women could no longer secured full ordination due to a rule the Buddha laid down when his foster mother ordained. However, evidence found in the background stories (Vibhanga) of the Nuns' Disciplinary Code (Bhikkhuni Vinaya), research by the Theravada nun Ayya Tathaloka, shows that those rules or garudhammas are a historical impossibility. Had the Buddha laid them down with all the fanfare in front of the Shakyan women as is claimed, questions would not have arisen regarding etiquette between male and female monastics and ordination, as those would have been settled issues. But that questions did arise, as recorded in the stories accompanying the formation of each rule, those sexist and patriarchal garudhammas could not have been preexisted. The function of these additional rules seems to be little more than to subordinate female Sangha members to males and was clearly in the interest of monks to have hastily inserted at some point in time.

Let's invite Ajahn Brahm to present his gender equality paper at the 2015 UNDV conference

3,242 signers so far. Let's reach 10,000 United Nations' Day of Vesak (UNDV)
 
Supporting Buddhist women at the U.N.

Nuns are necessary for a complete Sangha

We, the undersigned, are astounded and deeply disappointed by the banning of Ajahn Brahm's paper on gender equality at the 2014 United Nations' Day of Vesak (UNDV) conference in Vietnam.

 

The paper was clearly aligned with the UN’s Millennium Development Goal 3 (Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women), which the UNDV is committed to uphold through its connection with the UN. Moreover, Ajahn Brahm's paper had already been approved for presentation when it was suddenly banned 36 hours before its scheduled presentation.

 

We value free and open dialogue. We therefore ask that the UNDV, in accordance with Millennium Development Goal 3, promotes dialogue about the participation of women in contemporary Theravada Buddhism by inviting Ajahn Brahm to publicly present his gender equality paper at the next UNDV conference in 2015.

• READ: Ajahn Brahm's paper
• Remembering Asherah, the Western God's wife
• NUNS: Alliance for Bhikkhunis (bhikkhuni.net)
• Ongoing: Israel's Gaza offensive – Ebola outbreak – Ukrainian unrest 

(To view signers, go to petition2014.org. This petition will remain open until October 1st, 2014. The petition can be read in Chinese (petition2014.org/2001325991.html), Thai and Vietnamese (petition2014.org/3616363436253634365236073618-vi7879t.html), and Sinhalese (petition2014.org/35233538345835243517.html).

Ajahn Brahm: Letting Go vs. Clinging (video)

Seth Auberon, Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Ajahn Brahm (BuddhistSocietyWA); Ven. Nyanatiloka, Buddhist Dictionary: Manual of Doctrines and Terms

(Poh Ming Tse Temple, 2014) Ajahn Brahm: Freeing Our Minds from Our Mental Prisons

Ven. Ajahn Brahm, an ennobled and very humorous Western monk who emerged from the Thai Forest Tradition in Isan under Ajahn Chah, now lives and teaches in Australia. He had just come from teaching at a retreat when he chose to explore ways of letting go in the Buddha's teaching. Indeed, there is danger in clinging (upadana) and liberation in letting go, internally renouncing, and freeing ourselves from suffering.

Orange is the new black, but for free robes not bound jumpsuits (dreamstime.com).

Prison is a scary place yet not nearly as fearful as our mental prisons, ones we've created as terrifying places we are imprisoned even as we walk around free to do as we like. In this video teaching by the ennobled and humorous Western Theravada monk, brought to us by the Buddhist Congress and Angulimala Fellowship, Ajahn Brahm shares his insights and wisdom on the most important prison break we can attempt. It is peppered throughout with the distinctive flavor of Ajahn Brahmavamso's trademark humor. See video below from 2010 when he began this thread.

MENTAL PRISON: Some of us are as tortured and trapped as prisoners in prison cells.

 

Non-clinging (nekkhamma) is a Buddhist Pali term translated as "the pleasure of letting go" or "renunciation." It conveys, more specifically, "giving up worldliness and leading a higher life" or "freedom from crippling lust, craving, and addictions." In the Noble Eightfold Path, it is the first practice associated with "Right Intention."

In the Theravada list, it is the third of the Ten Perfections, involving non-attachment and non-clinging to suffering. How do we cling to suffering? The root of our self-injury is clinging to the Five Aggregates, to wrong views of self.

Milarepa's Tibetan Vajrayana writings are canonical Mahayana Buddhist texts that emphasize the temporary nature of the physical body and the need for non-attachment.

 

Non-clinging is also a central concept in Zen Buddhist philosophy. One of the most important technical Chinese terms for "non clinging" is wú niàn (無念), which literally means "no thought." This does not signify the literal absence of thought, but rather not clinging to or identifying with thought, the state of being "unstained" (bù rán 不染) by thought -- like a lotus flower born in water and grown up in water rising above water and remaining unstained by water.

Therefore, non-clinging is being detached from one's thoughts. That is, it is to separate oneself from one's thoughts and opinions [of course, they are not actually one's own] in detail as to not be harmed mentally and emotionally by them (see The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch translated by Philip B. Yampolsky).

I can do this monastic stint standing on my head...because I'm free (annenbergproject.org)

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"Freedom from sensual lust"

Ven. Nyanatiloka, Buddhist Dictionary: Manual of Doctrines and Terms

Gokyo Ri peak (Hendrik Terbeck/flickr)

The real meaning of "renunciation" (nekkhamma) is an internal act not an external one.

It is not by shaving one's head and face and donning saffron robes that one moves toward enlightenment (bodhi, awakening) and nirvana (moksha, liberation from all suffering). There are many monastics who yet cling and are therefore no closer to freedom than householders).

The word is apparently derived from nir + Ö kram, "to go forth (into the wandering, left-home-life of an ascetic)." But in Pali language texts, this term is nevertheless used as if it were derived from lust (kāma as in Kama Sutra) and always as an antonym to kāma (craving for sensuality). 

It is one of the Ten Perfections (pāramīs or pāramitās as in the Prajna Paramita, the famous "Perfection of Wisdom" literature).

  

Nekkhama-sankappa, the "intention of renunciation" -- thoughts free of lust, thoughts of renunciation, is one of the three kinds of right intention or right thought (sammā-sankappa), the second factor in the Noble Eightfold Path (see Magga, 2), its antonym being kāma-sankappa, lustful thoughts and intentions.

Four Ways to Let Go and Get Free

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What is clinging?

Maitreya Buddha, Gandhara (wiki)

"Clinging," according to the Path of Purification (Vis.M. XVII), is an intensified degree of craving. The four kinds of clinging are:

1. sensual clinging,
2. clinging to views,
3. clinging to mere rules and rituals [as if they could ever in and of themselves lead to or result in enlightenment],
4. clinging to personality-belief.

(1) "What now is sensual clinging? Whatever with regard to sensuous objects there exists of sensuous lust, sensuous desire, sensuous attachment, sensuous passion, sensuous delusion, sensuous fetters, this is called sensual clinging.

 

(2) ''What is clinging to views? 'Alms and offerings are useless [without karmic benefit to the giver]; there is no fruit and result for skillful and unskillful deeds: all such views and misconceptions are called clinging to [wrong] views.

(3) "What is clinging to mere rules and rituals? Holding firmly to the view that through [the observance of] mere rules and rituals one may reach purification [enlightenment and liberation, bodhi and nirvana), this is called clinging to mere rules and rituals.

 

(4) "What is clinging to personality-belief? The 20 kinds of ego-views [beliefs about self, identity, ego] with regard to the groups of existence, these are called clinging to personality-belief" (Dhs.1214-17).

 

This traditional fourfold division of clinging is unsatisfactory. Besides clinging to lustful objects of the sense, we would expect either clinging to fine material spheres and immaterial spheres of existence or simply clinging to continued existence (bhava-upādāna, continued being, which can never be static, and is therefore translated as becoming).

Although a non-returner, a person who has gained the third stage of enlightenment, is entirely free of the traditional four kinds of clinging, that person is not yet freed from rebirth, as one still possesses clinging to continued-becoming. The Commentary to the Path of Purification (Vis.M. XVII), trying to get out of this dilemma, explains sensual clinging as including here all the remaining kinds of clinging.

 

"Clinging" is the common rendering for upādāna, but "grasping" would come closer to the literal meaning of it, which is "uptake" or the habit of repetitive craving; see Three Cardinal Discourses (Wheel 17), p.19.

"What the Buddha Never Taught" (book)

Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; Tim Ward; TheSecularBuddhist.com

Golden Buddha in characteristic Thai or Siamese style (Anekoho/flickr.com)

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20th Anniversary Edition (Goodreads.com)

To understand what the Buddha taught in theory, it is good to discuss practices he did did not teach. What did he teach?

So let's have a behind the scenes look at life in a Thai forest monastery. Tim Ward wrote a classic and humorous "behind-the-robes" account of his journey to Northeast Thailand to live in a Buddhist forest monastery for Westerners as a temporary monastic.

 

"There is still a place in the jungles of Thailand, where you can leave it all behind..."

This book became a classic and a bestseller in the 1990s. It is funny and clear, a true-life “behind the robes” account of life inside one of the strictest jungle monasteries in Southeast Asia. 

In Wat Pah Nanachat, the monastics keep the 227 rules laid down by the Buddha, including refraining from all killing. But how does a foreign novice cope with a cobra in the outhouse or the temptation of a Mars Bar in his alms bowl? Find out in this newly reincarnated 20th anniversary edition, with a new introduction by the author Tim Ward and a new foreword by Wade Davis.
 

The Buddha reclining into final nirvana (kwanyinbuddha/flickr.com)

Episode 49: author Tim Ward

Thesecularbuddhist.com

Ward, author of What The Buddha Never Taught, talks about his experiences as a Theravadan monk (novice) in Thailand. 

This podcast has featured two former Western monastics who have written books about their experiences -- original "Buddhist Atheist" Stephen Batchelor and Stephen Schettini. Today a third guest exposes an underlying thread in their experiences -- a personal resonance with the particular form of practice was lacking. That's not to say that it's not there for many, if not most, Westerners who take robes (ordain temporarily or permanently).

But the reasons why some have left the alms bowl behind seem very similar if not identical. Many of the recent discussions on the Facebook Fan Page for "The Secular Buddhist" have centered on this topic: What's right for one individual, culturally, may not be right for another. And that's okay, of course. Secular Buddhism is about creating an opportunity for spiritual practice, self-cultivation (meditation), and fostering communities of support for those more comfortable with a secular (non-religious) worldview. Many of us are less comfortable with the trappings of organized religion and supernatural explanations. We find more resonance with practicing in our own, non-traditional way.

And as Buddhism expands in the West, it is inevitable that it find its own forms, which reflect the culture it finds itself in. Some of us deal quite well with faith approaches to meditative practice, while others take a more skeptical view. But a PRACTICE of reducing suffering, of self and others, remains. We share this vision, and however we get there, however winding the path, the core practice of that path is the same. LISTEN TO THE EPISODE

Why would anyone become a hermit?

Publisher's Weekly (review edited by Wisdom Quarterly)

Ward's funny title is based on famed book

According to Ward's delightful account of his stay in a Thai Buddhist monastery, there are many things that the Buddha never taught [but they are practiced anyway].

 

One is the extreme rigor of the Pah Nanachat monastery, involving rising at 3:00 am for [paritta] chanting, walking on gravel roads in bare feet, and eating only one big meal a day.

• The same thing is every day practiced in California near San Diego at Metta Forest Monastery. It is a branch of the same strict revivalist Dhammayut school Ajahn Thanissaro (Geoffrey DeGraff) was relegated to after being expelled from Thailand -- for almost becoming an abbot there, an act that would have given functional Thai land ownership to a foreigner (farang), which the Thai Sangha and government were not willing to tolerate -- when his Thai teacher passed away.

Ward concludes that the final lesson is about the redemptive power of laughter.

A Canadian journalist, he traveled around Asia for six years, eventually winding up at Wat Pah Nanachat, which was built to spread Theravada Buddhism to farangs ("foreigners," non-Thais). 

 

Among the motley crew the author finds at the jungle monastery are an ex-gospel singer from England, a former accountant from China, and a former real estate millionaire from Chicago, USA.

The head monk is an Australian who used to play jazz guitar in his last life. The book is Ward's affectionate, and often very funny, account of his sojourn in this place of meditation and renunciation.

The volume could have been improved by some sharp editing, but its little redundancies and repetitions help capture the often monotonous life of the monk.

Encouraging journeys of self-discovery

Tracy Sherlock (Vancouver Sun)

Siddhartha's search for life's meaning

"If you're looking for the meaning of life, you'll benefit from seeking it out yourself," says author Tim Ward, who spent time in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand in the 1980s.

 

"I think it's really valuable for everybody, preferably in their 20s, to really come up against the question, 'Where does meaning reside?'"

"I think that there is an answer," Ward continues, "and that is that part of what it is to be human is to generate meaning." 

 

Ward wrote about his experiences in What the Buddha Never Taught, which has been released in a special 20th anniversary edition with a foreword by Canadian anthropologist and author Wade Davis. 

Young I left the household to wander

"One of the things I look at with regret in our current society is that so many of those meanings are given to kids, they sort of just jump onto meanings without having to feel what meaninglessness is like," Ward said.

 

"They want a career where they will make a lot of money, so they can live in a nice house and drive a big car because that's what successful people do. That makes me cry and tear out what last bit of hair I've got. Where's your struggle to find the meaning that's in your bones?"

"If anything, that's my hope for this book on its 20th anniversary that it will encourage younger readers to do that fighting for the meaning in their life, and not accept the values that are given to them." More

British monk to visit U West from Thailand

Angela Lee (UWest), CC Liu, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly (9-24-13)

Ajahn Jayasaro with children at assembly, May 2013 (panyaden.ac.th)

 

British monk Ajahn Jayasaro to visit U West

Ajahn ("teacher") Jayasaro (my.groupt.be)

Ajahn Jayasaro (born 1958) from the Isle of Wight, England, began his monastic training in Thailand in 1978. He was among an early set of adopters who sought out the Teaching and Training (Dhamma-Vinaya) as students of legendary Theravada forest meditation teacher Ajahn Chah. Ajahn Jayasaro received full ordination as a monk in 1980 and has lived in Thailand ever since.

 

West goes East then returns to teach

In 2002, after a five-year period as abbot of the Westerner's forest-paradise known as Wat Pah Nanachat ("International Forest Monastery") made famous by the Canadian journalist Bill Ward in his comical travel diary What the Buddha Never Taught, Ven. Jayasaro took up residence in a hermitage at the foot of the Kow Yai mountains in the province of Nakorn Rachasima, Northeast Thailand (Isan). This visit is supported by UWSG, Religious Program, Chaplaincy Program, and the BudaWest Club at UWest.

 

The first Buddhist university in Los Angeles

SCHEDULE

• Dharma Talk/Meditation (English) Fri., Oct 25, 2013, 6:00-8:00 pm
• Day Retreat (Thai/English) veg. lunch Sat., Oct. 26, 9:00 am-4:00 pm
• Dharma Talk/Meditation (English) Sun., Oct. 27, 9:30 am-12:00 pm
• Location: University of the West, Locke Hall (ED 213)
• Contacts: Peggy (818) 568-6011 or Aroon.seeda@gmail.com