Ringkasan dibuat dengan bantuan AI • Belum diverifikasi
Ceramah ini membahas tentang pencarian kedamaian sejati dan bagaimana praktik Dhamma dapat membawa kebahagiaan dalam kehidupan sehari-hari. Ajahn Acala memulai dengan menceritakan kisah penahbisannya, dari kehidupan duniawi yang penuh pencarian kebahagiaan hingga menemukan kedamaian melalui meditasi dan memilih menjadi bhikkhuni. Ia kemudian menjelaskan peran pikiran dalam membentuk kualitas batin seperti inspirasi, mudita, dan kepuasan, serta menekankan pentingnya niat benar dalam Jalan Mulia Berunsur Delapan, yaitu niat melepas, niat tanpa niat buruk, dan niat tanpa mencelakai. Ia mengutip nasihat Ajahn Brahm, 'make peace, be kind, be gentle', sebagai alat praktis untuk menerima situasi dan mengurangi penderitaan. Dalam sesi meditasi, ia memandu peserta untuk menjadi pengamat pasif dan menunggu kedamaian muncul tanpa memaksa, dengan sikap santai seperti duduk di beranda sambil minum teh. Sesi tanya jawab mencakup berbagai topik, termasuk praktik dalam kehidupan sehari-hari, perbedaan antara niat tanpa niat buruk dan tanpa mencelakai, kenyamanan fisik dalam meditasi, kehidupan bhikkhuni, dan pentingnya kesabaran dalam menunggu munculnya lebih banyak guru bhikkhuni. Pesan utama ceramah ini adalah bahwa kedamaian tidak perlu ditunggu secara pasif, melainkan dapat dihadirkan melalui penerimaan, niat benar, dan praktik yang konsisten dalam segala situasi.
This is what should be done by one who is skilled in goodness and who knows the path of peace.
Let them be able and upright, straightforward and gentle in speech,
humble and not conceited, contented and easily satisfied,
unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways,
peaceful and calm and wise and skilful, not proud and demanding in nature.
.
Do the slightest things which they would later reprove.
Wishing in gladness and in safety, may all beings be happy,
whatever living beings there may be, whether they are weak or strong,
omitting none, the great or the mighty.
.
Medium, short or small, the seen and the unseen,
those living near and those born and to be born,
may all beings be happy.
.
Do not deceive another or despise any being in any state,
let none through anguish harm another.
.
Even as a mother protects with her life her child, her only child,
so with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings,
radiating kindness over the entire world.
.
Spreading upwards to the skies and downwards to the depths,
outwards and unbounded, freed from hatred and ill-will,
whether standing or walking, seated or lying down,
free from drowsiness, one should sustain this recollection,
this is said to be the sublime abiding, by not holding to fixed views,
the pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,
being freed from all sense desires, is not born again into this world.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
so I think I've only done this once before quite a long time ago so I was just wondering
uh most of you like you've everyone's been here before or is this the first time for anybody
maybe you could just put up your hand if it's the first time I can kind of see
people see most of you seem like regulars so I guess you've all meditated before as well then
about the recording so I am recording it on a camera here since it was quite a long time ago
that I did this and I don't know most of you I know maybe there's one or two familiar faces I
just thought I'd start with the number one question that monastics get asked which is
why did you ordain also that's a kind of a familiar and safe topic for me so I'll start
with that and then see where it goes so when people ask that question what often comes up
for me is that I ordained because of happiness yeah
I was just following what made me happy basically so I grew up and I was obviously I was not born a
nun I was a layperson I grew up in Melbourne and I went to school and university and got a job I
followed the general advice that my parents and the world at large tells you which is you know
to study hard and then you can go to university and get a good job and earn money and then you
will be happy basically
so I did all of those things I went to university I got a job that I it kind of ticked all the boxes
that I would want in a job it was not a job where I stuck at a desk all day I got to travel and be
outside and I worked with nice people but it was at this this point as began becoming a bit
suspicious because I was like wait I'm I've done all everything that everybody has told me and I
do not I am definitely not happy I'm quite stressed out I was quite stressed out and
I guess it became very apparent that the material wealth and the friends and the enjoyment that I
was having that's not it just wasn't giving me a sense of fulfillment like I thought it would I had
already sort of started doing meditation retreats when I was at university so my my parents are
Buddhist so they're from Sri Lanka
originally and that's where I was born but I grew up in Australia and so Buddhism was kind of happened
I like to say it happened in the background of my life for most of my life I grew up with it in the
background and then at some point I think in my late teens I just became more interested in
meditation so at University through friends I heard about these Goenka retreats and I was
doing them quite regularly and when I started working I was realizing that that's the thing that
was giving me a sense of peace and happiness much more than anything else
in my life and so I knew about the Dhammasara monastery from a nun I had
met in Melbourne and I visited for the first time in 2010 and it was just like
wow you can do this thing I can live like this full-time basically and I
don't have to go and retreat and then feel sad and then go back to work I can
I thought being a nun was like being on retreat full-time it's not just in
case anybody thinks that but the first time I visited it was just a very I guess it was
life-changing basically it became very clear to me that this is really what I
wanted to do I had to leave obviously I went back to Melbourne and I continued
working and then I visited once more and then in 2012 I sort of packed up my life
and moved to Perth for good and so I've been here in Dhammasara basically since
2012 I have left but you know
visit my parents or traveled a little bit but mostly I've been here another
reflection I think when I was working I would look at the senior people you know
in the company I worked for people who had made it or had been successful in I
was a hydrogeologist so there was like they were successful in that field you
know there was a principal hydrogeologist I'm pretty sure they're not gonna watch
this so it's okay for me to say this but there was the guy who was like the
principal hydrogeologist
in our company and he had definitely made it in terms of his career he was
one of the leading people in Australia and in the world he pretty much picked
whatever projects he wanted to he did a lot of development aid projects which
would you know seem like very meaningful things to do but when I looked at these
people and I was like I do not want to end up like you basically there was just
this very sense strong sense of this is not for me
they just didn't seem happy I guess not happy in the same way that the
monastics who I knew were happy so that was definitely a strong reflection for
me to at least try out monastic life and I tried it out and obviously it took
since I'm still here I thought it'd also be nice for me to just share some I
guess reflections or just some tools that I
use that have kept me going I've been here I've been a bit Cooney for 10 years
and I've been here since 2012 so I must have learned something along the way so
I thought I'd share just a few I guess tricks of the trade so one of them
probably one of the most important things I've learnt in the time that I've
been here there's a question maybe I'll answer it at the end is
what how important it is how I use my mind you know how I use my mind how I
choose to apply my mind makes a big difference in my life and at the end of
the day in the quality of my meditation when I do sit down and close my eyes so
what I mean by that is I can attend to things in a way that either leads to an
increase in my defilements or a decrease in my defilements yeah and you
definitely see that when you
you've lived in one place with roughly the same people for a long time you know
some days you're like really inspired and you know Dhammasara is the best
place in the world and how wonderful it is that I get to be a bit Cooney and
then there's other days where you kind of walk around stomping and sort of
scowling at everybody I guess as a practical example of that like every day
so I live in a hut in the forest and I walk down to the main monastery for
breakfast and we do a little bit of work and I just catch myself some days
I'm just stomping down the hill not looking at the trees you know I've got
like a list of things that I need to do that day but then I can catch myself and
go wait you know you have to just stop and look at the trees
it's usually dawn or just before dawn and the sun is just coming up and it's
very beautiful I just go back to my body and focus on the the the sound of the
crunching gravel underneath my feet or I come down and I see lots of nuns lots of
bhikkhunis and even just in some places in the world it's rare to see a
monastic right let alone bhikkhunis which are even more rare and I live with
twelve with twelve of them but obviously when you see people every day they they
can also just seem like people so you need to remind yourself of the fact that
they're they're actually very rare rare creatures and so when you look at them
in that way it leads to a sense of inspiration and gratitude and maybe
you're thinking oh well it's it's easy to find inspiration and gratitude if you
live in a monastery but actually all of us here you know you're all healthy
enough you know maybe not perfect health but we all have health we're all healthy
enough to be healthy enough to be healthy enough to be healthy enough to be
healthy enough that we can be here and our life is free of duties enough that
we can spare an hour or an hour and a half and we can devote that time to
listening to the Dhamma and to meditating into developing wholesome
states of mind and more than that we have the opportunity to hear the
Buddha's teachings yeah we were born at a time where the Buddha's teachings are
still available
and we also have we have enough wisdom like we have a sense of whether you
think you're Buddhist or not we have a sense of intuition that this is
something good this is something worth listening to so we yeah we can
inspiration and gratitude together I guess if we really value the
opportunities that we do have to sit or the opportunities that we do have to
go and retreat and it can just bring up a lot of energy in the mind I find as
opposed to if you just don't think about things in that don't attend to things in
that way another quality is mudita so I don't know if you know what mudita is
it's sympathetic joy or altruistic joy so it's happiness that you get from
rejoicing in the goodness of other people or rejoicing in their good fortune
I heard a monk say once it's like a lazy person's practice so you don't
actually have to do anything good yourself you just rejoice in other
people's goodness yeah so you're like oh look that person is so generous how
wonderful oh that person's so kind how wonderful because it's not always the
case right when you see something good happen to somebody else or you see that
somebody else is good at something it's not always the case that
joy will spring up yeah sometimes you might be like oh why didn't that good
thing happen to me or why am I not good at whatever XYZ but we can just change
it change how we're perceiving that in a little way and instead go how wonderful
you know it's inspiring that I this person at work is doing so well it's
wonderful that these other nuns I live with are so kind contentment so that's
another it's
it can be like a perception it's it's that we can bring up so as monastics to
some degree contentment is kind of forced upon us in some ways by the fact
that the choice is taken out of a lot of things yeah we I don't I don't have a
lot of options in terms of wardrobe it's all brown basically so in the money I
have a choice of like brown or brown to wear in the morning you know whereas
before as a layperson I remember I had a very large cupboard full of clothes and
I would often look in there and feel like I have nothing to wear I'm not sure
if people are familiar with that feeling um whereas now I don't have that problem
yeah same with food we we actually get quite nice food here at Dhammasara but
there's still the the choice is it's what's put out yeah there might be like
40 different things but it's still it's less than if when I was a layperson and
I could go shopping or I could order things online and I can cook myself
whatever we want I'm not sure if people are familiar you're probably all
familiar that fully ordained monks and nuns we don't store food and we don't
cook for ourselves and so everyday people bring food to the monastery and
we also have like lay people and trainees who help with breakfast and
things like that and it's interesting how when
the choice is not there you just you become content right you you become
happy with the choices with whatever is available um I used to be a very fussy
eater there's a long list of things I wouldn't eat like pickles and mushrooms
and all sorts of things and I eat them all now so I guess in the context of
being a lay person we can also kind of impose that on ourselves we can just
have certain maybe like you know one day a week or whatever
you don't go out and you just have whatever's in the fridge or whatever I
don't know there's many creative ways I'm sure that you could come up with ways
to limit your choices I think I think from a worldly perspective we think more
choice is always a better thing but I think it causes us a lot of anxiety
actually too much choice I see someone nodding in agreement that's nice I guess
it's a little phrase that Ajahn Brahm often uses but I use a lot and I have
found very few of them but I think it's a little phrase that Ajahn Brahm often uses but I use a lot and I have found very
useful which is make peace be kind be gentle yeah so I'm not sure if people
know where where that comes from so he's actually it's comes from the second
factor of the Eightfold Path which is sama sankapa or right intention or I
think Ajahn Brahm prefers motivation but I prefer intention so I'm going to go with intention
right intention and there's three right intentions so there's nekama sankapa avyapada sankapa and avyapada sankapa
vihingska sa redesigned by avyapada which are intentions of renunciation
intentions of non-ill will and intentions of non harming so you can
kind of see where be kind and be gentle the last two come from
and make peace is his slightly creative translation of my kind of renunciation
yeah so when we make peace we kind of accept a situation
very kindly renunci passionate so when we make peace we kind of accept true surrender herão一起 tipo Vergleich numbers of renunciation to make peace the other �bone金戒 transmission ofedo consequence of renouncing to have peace like this so when we met peace we kind of accept a situation
we are renouncing i guess what how we would like things to be our preferred version of
existence which you know we're never going to get anyway and i remember being i was on a retreat at
jana grove and i went to talk to ajahn brahm and i i didn't have any questions i just said do you
have any advice and he said oh just make peace be kind be gentle and in my head i was like is that
all you've got there's so many times but i went away and it's like it just stuck in my head that
that particular instance of him saying that to me and it's come back up in so many situations when
uh because we sometimes we can't change our external situation right we have work to do
or
or a family member gets sick or we're in pain and sometimes there is nothing else that we can do
except to make peace be kind and be gentle and so when we again we just have this we bring up
bring it up in our mind and we just accept whatever situation we're in that cuts through
a lot of the suffering actually because a large a lot the the larger portion of the suffering is
what we add to any situation you know how we relate to it so we did we had we had bringing
up inspiration and then mudita contentment and I jump roms phrase of make peace be kind be gentle
I think like if I just look back over the course of my monastic life those are kind of I'm not sure
exactly perceptions or tools that I've just used over and over again
and like with anything the more we do it like the more we practice mudita the more we practice how
can I look at this situation to bring up inspiration how can I learn to be content
with this situation that I'm not particularly pleased with the more we do it it becomes easier
yeah so you you see you see that smallness of heart coming and then you're just like no I'm
just gonna bring up some of the deter and try and reframe this situation if we do this I guess
throughout our lives when we do sit when we do meditate when we do sit down and
close our eyes it just becomes much easier yeah because we've we've already
been cultivating wholesome states of mind because otherwise what happens is
if I'm sure we've all had the experience where we've just been very grumpy and
negative and then when you sit down to meditate all that happens is you fall
asleep because the mind is dull yeah when the mind has energy it's it's bright
and then it's naturally going to be able to meditate better you will do some
meditation now is that okay Gloria okay okay since you're all seasoned
meditators I'll keep the beginning instructions short why is Gloria laughing I don't know
I just really like I really like to just like sit and meditate it sounds very good
okay
So the most important thing is that you have to be physically comfortable yeah
so if you want to lie down that's fine just just make yourself physically
comfortable but you can close your eyes if you wish and maybe just to start the
meditation we can take three deep breaths together so just check in with
the body and just see how it's going is it comfortable do you need to adjust
anything take a bit of time and just become aware of your body what can you
feel is there any tension there can you feel the pressure of the seat beneath
your bottom is the temperature in the room okay pay attention to whatever
sensations come up from your immediate physical surroundings what can you feel
is there any wind on your face any sounds that you can hear it's nice to
start a group meditation by bringing up some gladness we can all feel glad that
we're all wise enough and unburdened with duties enough that we can be here
together there are probably many other things that you could have done they go
to the movies
or have dinner with a friend, but you chose to come and listen to the Dhamma and to do
some meditation, so we can feel glad that we've chosen to spend our time well together.
When we meditate, it's nice to think of ourselves as a passive observer, rather than an active
agent.
So we just wait patiently and see what happens, allow the meditation to unfold.
It's the same attitude you would have if you made yourself a cup of tea, and you go and
sit on the veranda and watch the world go by.
You put aside all your duties, your emails, all your thoughts, all your thoughts, and
your emails, your family, your friends, you're just waiting, waiting for peace to show up.
So if we're just sitting on the veranda having a cup of tea, we're not trying to focus on
our breath, we're not trying to count breaths, we're just kicking back and relaxing and waiting.
There's nothing to do.
There's nowhere to go.
No phone calls need to be answered.
As we wait still and patiently, as energy in the mind grows, we'll start to notice more.
Our present surroundings will become brighter.
Whatever we did earlier in the day, and whatever we have to do later on, that will all fade
away.
And the present moment expands.
It becomes more spacious.
If our mind has wandered off, that's okay.
Just come back to our cup of tea on the veranda.
Come back to our body and start again.
With most things in life, peace turns up when we don't go looking for it.
So if we just wait and enjoy ourselves, it's okay.
If we just wait patiently, then peace will come.
So as the mind gains some energy, it might feel brighter and more spacious.
Maybe the breath becomes more prominent, but don't go to the breath.
Just remember we're sitting back and relaxing, and then the breath will come to us.
So as we approach the end of the meditation, just really continue to enjoy.
Just keep going.
Just sitting and waiting, and seeing what happens.
Enjoy that feeling of being unburdened from your usual duties and responsibilities.
Unburdened, or respond to other people around us.
So as we approach the end of the meditation, we can check in again with our bodies.
Do we feel more relaxed?
Does the mind feel brighter?
Yes.
See what worked well.
And if it feels like nothing worked well, if all we did was chase after our thoughts,
that's okay too.
It's still time well spent cultivating wholesome intentions.
Also, at the end of a period of formal meditation, it's nice to share the merits.
so the merit is basically just the happiness that's in our heart whatever joy whatever peace
whatever stillness that we experienced we can share that with beings who are in need
maybe they're living in a difficult situation in a war maybe they're experiencing a lot of fear
in their lives a lot of instability so we can share the happiness and joy in our heart with
them or if there's someone in particular that you know who's unwell or in need you can think
of them only to end the meditation we can take three deep breaths together and then open our
eyes so I guess now is the time you can ask questions or questions or questions or questions
or if you have any comments or complaints are also welcome so there was one question in the
chat which is you did not choose Santi forest you didn't know I think I did know about Santi
Forest Monastery at that time like the very first time I came to Perth was 2010 so at that time
Santi was still had monks and nuns basically so I Santi and Dhama Sarawatha
only two places that I knew where I could stay that had nuns and where I could stay as a female
practitioner. There wasn't anywhere actually at the time in Melbourne that I knew of anyway,
a forest monastery where I could go as a woman. And I didn't know any of the monastics at Santi
or Dhammasara. I just looked at the website and Dhammasara kind of was like, it was just nuns,
whereas Santi was like, well, there's a picture of a monk on the website. And it wasn't very clear
who was there exactly. I didn't know who Bhante Sujata was at the time. I had also heard that
Santi was very cold. So Dhammasara was in Perth, which I knew was a bit warmer. So that was
basically why I came to Perth to start with. I want to share a bit on my practice recently.
It's not, it's not really a question, but like,
I think
I think one of them for me recently is that I think Buddhism, like teach me how to care
about people. I think it's like really care about myself as well. Emotional pain constantly,
I still have it. But I think I need to push them away. And I think the thing that
the thing that I tried to push that hostility inside of me, and made me
painful on a day to day basis. And, and I have difficulty like connecting with other people
because of that as well. But I think it's like, I think recently is that I really, really start to
like, learn to like feel like learn to know how care feel like during the meditation. And I think
it's like,
because I've,
I've never until like, until I think it was like the meditation I was doing another day. And then I really like
bring, bring the pain in, instead of like, instead of like trying to like get rid of them and stuff. And I think it
makes them more painful. It was so bad. But at the same time, I took to myself in a way, like, because during the retreat, I also asked him, it's
like, a lot of things like it happened, maybe during when I was a child, but sometimes it's like, I still feel like
they they're kind of like, very close to me, like there were days ago, maybe, like, like, just happened
recently. And then he he's told, he told me, like, like, if you have pain, like you care about your, like, something
like you care about your pain, and you don't, like, push, push it away. And you don't try to get rid of it. And then I try and they say,
hard to push yourself away as well and i felt really grateful about that yeah and i think
sometimes it's like really hard things are things can be really hard but learn to i learned to be
more caring i think people around me also feel that feel this as well as well because i can feel
like they're they used to be like much more like grumpier and stuff and they soften they all soften
over time yeah i i can really feel that like they're when they talk to me i'm reflecting that
because i can sense that when they talk to me they're different when they're taught when they
talk to me they're like much of course it's not really a good thing like you it's it's better that
you can be kind to everyone but sometimes i can really feel like i can really feel feel that they
soften around me and they kind of made me feel really happy because i felt like it better for
me as well
yeah that's all i want to share
no thank you so we can all have mudita for the fact that you you know the dhamma has helped you
yeah um so it's it's wonderful when the dhamma can help like it it can change our lives right
basically and that's why i think uh Ajahn Brahm's make peace be kind be gentle is so powerful even
though it's it's it sounds deceptively simple but it's actually difficult to do like when you have
a lot of pain it's really difficult and painful it's you it's natural that you want to push it away
um but and it's it's it's hard to like do what you did which is to bring the pain into the meditation
because then you have to you really fully experience it right which is why it became more
more painful is that how i understood it yeah yeah um but like you said a lot of the suffering
a large portion of the suffering is just is us fighting against
our experience of how life is right yeah so thank you for sharing i also want to add on to like
the reference i heard that reference like mudita is the practice is the hidden gem for lazy people
i heard Ajahn Jayasarov talk and he said that mudita is like the internet like when you take
onto it it has infinite resources like how many happiness you can generate by yourself yeah but
when you observe like other people like it's just like nonsensical it's like the possessor of other people's happiness
like you're tapping into the internet and infinite resources is at your fingertips yeah yeah yeah i
think i i hadn't heard agents say the bit about the internet but i think the bit about it being
a lazy practice is from a talk of his yeah sorry is it chris christelle you had a question yes
thank you atcha i've got a question um about uh right intention because um i was listening to
another drama talk maybe i remember wrongly okay but from what i remembered it was like
right intention was intention was like no no greed no ill will and no delusion because greed
ill will and delusion are the problem so right intention was the intention of having no greed
no ill will and no delusion but it seems from what you said that there's no
no delusion the no delusion is replaced by no harming
can be contentment renunciation that's it like it fits well and no it will is no it will
harming is like uh because for me no harming was the same as no ill will but it seems that yeah i
was wrong so yeah i'd be happy if it's a bit clearer for me yeah thank you so um from my
point of view i think the suttas the three right intentions are um intentions of renunciation
intentions of non-ill will and of non-harming uh non-greed non-hatred and non-delusion so they're
the um three root causes of all our problems right so um those are certainly good intentions to have
um intentions of non-delusion
and then those are the three that i think would be hard we all aspire to be non-deluded but that's
a it's a hard one to have perspective on but uh as far as i know the three right intentions are
the ones that i said thank you what i can understand the difference between no it will and
no harming because it seems that harming is worse than just ill will that's right is that is that
okay okay thank you so i heard sometimes
i think it's true that we do sometimes emotions come up to the surface because they need to be
released from the body to the universe then you are free suppressing or pushing them away will
make them stuck with us rather than releasing i think may peace be with you all yeah i think um
just from like a basic psychology point of view i think it's true that we do
hold a lot of things in our body that's why sometimes we have tension right when you get
stressed you maybe your neck will feel tense or if you get really nervous like i do you you can feel
it in your stomach maybe sometimes so i think that's very true our mind obviously has a very
big impact on our body um and yeah it makes sense that suppressing them or pushing them away
i don't know if they're released to the universe but i think just helping just when we're able to
reflect and see how our body and mind are connected in meditation when we find these
these areas of tension we can just care for them or send method to them and that can also help
soften them. It has a comment, non-delusion is covered by right view in the Eightfold Path.
I saw questions. There's a lot of people now. Oh, sorry, so Harry, is it? I can't, Harry and Ninja.
Yeah, um, I have, um, a bit of a practical question on the, on how to deal with physical
discomfort, especially in the beginning of meditation. Like, I often hear guided meditations
beginning with make yourself feel as comfortable as possible, and sometimes I feel a sense of
the idea of contentment. The more comfortable, the more I try to make myself feel right,
the worse it gets. So I would just like to hear your thoughts on, like, how to find this balance
between making yourself comfortable and not feeling comfortable.
Comfortable enough, but maybe also at some point accepting that this is just how it feels now,
and this is what I'm working with today. Yeah. Yeah, I think, I think you said it beautifully.
That's why they, they say as comfortable as you can, right? The body is inherently uncomfortable,
especially the older we get, we will have aches and pains. And even if you're like
lying on the softest mattress in the world, flat out, you'll still feel some pain.
Um,
so,
you do what you can, and then you just have to accept if there is some pain, that's just how it is,
and we make peace with that, basically. Um, but I think, I think what you said was perfect as well.
Are there any more questions, or comments, or sharings, or complaints? Whatever.
Complaints are okay too.
I actually have a question not, not directly related to meditation, but, um, something that sometimes bugs me quite a bit.
Um, so I was wondering, and you talked a little bit about, you know, how you were looking for the right ministry,
and one of them had nuns and nuns.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and I'm actually, I keep wondering about that. So why, why is there this separation?
And maybe it's a stupid question, but, yeah, maybe if you could just, um, say something about that,
because it's often so difficult for women, you know, to, um, tell me, like, this is what it feels like,
Well, first of all, it really bugs me that women are often, you know, mistreated and, yeah, not really treated the same way as men.
And sometimes it really shocks me if that's also the case in Buddhism.
So if you could talk a little bit about the, you know, why is there this separation and, you know, is that actually needed?
Sure. I think it's good if there's different kinds of monasteries because different things will work for different people, yeah?
So some people will be happy to live in a dual gender or maybe even no gender monastery.
There are also monasteries that don't, you know, completely disregard gender and everybody's a monk.
So I think it's nice that there are different monasteries because different things will work for different people.
Yeah.
One of the obvious reasons why there's a separation of the genders is, I guess it's from a very, gosh, it's from a very heteronormative, I guess, point of view, yeah?
So we're celibate, so the idea is that if you are a straight male, maybe it's a bit more comfortable for you to live amongst men.
And that's a way to support your celibacy and is similar for a woman.
So that's why there's that.
There's a separation and we have a lot of rules that revolve around that.
So the monks would not be alone with a woman and similarly we would not be alone with a man.
So I realise that in a modern setting that might sound a bit archaic and it's obviously from a very, it's a particular point of view.
But I think also because it is, it's so rare in the world to have female only monasteries.
That's why I like that Dhammasara is female only.
For me, it's very comfortable.
I feel very free and safe here.
And a lot, it's something that a lot of women say when they come here, especially if they've had the experience of being a woman in a monk's monastery.
That's a very different experience.
Yeah.
And when they come here, they've often commented on just how included they feel, how safe they feel.
How free they feel, we have 583 acres and, you know, you can wander freely, whereas if you were a woman in a monk's monastery, that might not be the case.
So I think it's nice that there are different monasteries that will cater to different people's needs.
But I also think it's nice for me.
I like living in a female only community and that's something that I value very much.
Does that answer your question?
Yeah, for certain.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, I think it's mostly the choice of women.
And it's, it's difficult that I guess there are not that many female monasteries at the same time.
I also think about, and you said, yes, it's, you know, kind of backwards in time.
Maybe nowadays where we talk about, you know, diversity and that we do not just have males and females.
We also have people who do not, you know, regard themselves as either or, and I also feel for them in terms of how
difficult it must be for them to find.
Find a place where they can go.
But, um, yeah, when I think about, you know, if I would ordain it kind of, I have to say that in boxing, that if I would, you know, like say I would like to have a certain
teacher and I would not be free to go wherever I would like to go and the teacher that I would like to follow.
Right.
So, um, for example, if I would, as a woman like to follow a drum bomb, I wouldn't be able to do that because it's a male monastery.
Right.
So, um, stuff like that is just, um, yeah, makes it sometimes difficult when I see that there's that separation between sex and gender, with which I sometimes feel
like that really necessarily seems to make things a lot harder.
Yeah.
And I think as the Bhikkhu, the Bhikkhus Sangha grows, and as the monk Sangha grows, you know, it's different types of things.
people ordained all these different kinds of places will come up there are like i believe
empty cloud um there they they have people mugs of all genders anymore mario hello ajan thank you
for your wonderful and touching and emotional talk it was very helpful i have a question when
you said living in a monastery and being a bikuni is not like going on a retreat do you mean that
you encountered um conflicts or difficulties that you and had encountered previously in lay life
or do you mean um the conditions that you are expecting to like develop the path and
well i do do you yeah i think i do i think so before i visited the masara for the masara is
the first monastery that i ever stayed at and so before that i was doing these 10 day
goenka vipassana retreats which they're quite common so many of you might have heard of them
so when i came to stay at the masara i foolishly thought that living in a monastery would be doing
like doing a very long vipassana retreat so on a 10 day retreat there's like 10 hours of formal
meditation it's completely silent um there's a bell that tells you you know when to eat when
to sit when to do what and i got to the masara and i was like oh my god i'm going to do this
i'm going to do this i'm going to do that because i'm so busy its a long day i just
got to the masara and i was like no bells they used to there was at that time there
was a morning tea bell so they don't fail to tell you when morning tea was um and there
was some structure obviously there were the meal times but there was a lot of unstructured
time and there was also work that needed to be done right especially if you're a lay person
or anagarika you do the cooking and the driving um and i guess what i've learned is when you stay
in a monastery for a long time you also kind of come to understand these feelings there
of accumulate duties you have all these jobs that you have to do yeah you um i'm also the
maintenance nun at damasara so whenever something breaks uh you don't have to go have a have a look
so it's not like doing a 10-day retreat basically which is what i kind of thought it would be like
um and it it it's like a normal life in the sense that you have duties and you have work
um of course you have conflict you have a lot of people who live together uh you know you will
butt heads with people there will be people who have strong personalities or maybe i have a strong
personality i don't know that's that's natural you put people um you know people who live together
and you will have there will be some degree of friction basically uh but i have to say the the
people i live with uh they're considerably nicer than the people i used to work with
so i'm not sure if that's a good thing or not i'm not sure if that's a good thing or not
so they're much more high-minded i guess so we have that in common um one thing that has helped
me kind of deal with that that just this it's nice to be on retreat right it's nice to be
quiet and have lots of time to meditate and there are periods where we do that as well but there's
also periods where we uh need to do work and engage with people we have to do zoom talks or whatever
um and a nice way for me to sort of uh i guess bridge that gap or is to have this framework of
the eightfold path as my practice so when i um my practice is not just when i sit down and close my
eyes my practice is the eightfold path so even when i'm working even when i'm helping people
um when i'm trying to look at someone who makes me feel good i'm trying to look at someone who
maybe i don't like so much with kindly eyes all of that i'm cultivating the eightfold path yeah
um and so and when i when i'm cultivating the eightfold path that supports me when i'm on
retreat and when i'm on retreat the energy the peace the stillness of mind um any wisdom that
i might gain that also helps me in the rest of my life basically so that is that kind of what
you were asking
thank you
thank you thank you yes it was my question yes thank you
one one more follow-up on that question so if like is there any time when it's part of the
change here i i guess my question is like how do you change your mindset on that like sometimes you
get caught up
sorry sorry i didn't quite understand the question
i think it's like i think it's like sometimes like when
when when difficult encounter with people or like you have difficult experience they're essentially
they can be part of your practice like yeah they can be part of your practice yeah they're like
they're part of the practice and you can use them to cultivate good qualities but i think sometimes
times it's like you may be just too caught up in that difficulty itself and then it is hard to like
change your mindset sometimes so how do you have this kind of like experience and how do you do
that to change your mindset like from i really hate that person to to to like no no no i i see
i look at him with kindly eyes i don't appreciate certain things yeah no um well it is definitely
part of the practice and it's also it's just natural that we're not we're not enlightened
beings so we will you know we lose sight of the fact fact that it's part of the practice and we
get caught up in our aversion or anger or whatever or irritation um i guess it's my personality i'm
probably less
likely to express that but i'll be like grumbly i'll be grumbly about it inside or i'll you know
i'll be upset and i'll go off and you know be upset on my own or whatever but you just it
doesn't last right whether if you get angry or whatever it it passes and then when it passes
then you have some perspective on what happened um and the nice thing about living together in
a community is that you have that opportunity to then um
you
you see the same person the next day so then you can try again you know you can try and look at them
from a different point of view and also like i said all the people that i live with here are very
high-minded they're also they're also cultivating the eightfold path yeah they may not be perfect
just because we shave our head and put on these robes it's not like your defilements go away you
still have the same mind um but they're all cultivating the eightfold path and they're all
trying their best so it's
it makes it much easier i feel even when there are these little rubs because they're also practicing
so it's easier to come back to to come again and then sort of mend those things i have a conversation
about it so geetha i think you're muted going back to the previous and the previous question
um recently um there was a visit visiting teacher here um aryanani who has asked this question about
live
as monastic practice which is better kind of a flavor to the question and
her answer kind of reminds me of what you said about your own practice
because she was saying well it depends what you mean by practice if you if you're following the
eight-fold path it doesn't really matter where you're doing it the context varies but that's
basically what you're doing and that's what you're saying that everything all eight path factors have to be in the practice.
developed and whereas she was saying we tend to focus on the meditation part only as the practice
and she was trying to say no it's not it's much wider than that and it can be done as a lay
person or as a monastic and she's been both so uh it was it was nice to hear that yeah yeah i've
met her she's come here before she's very lovely but yeah whether you're a lay person or a monastic
stick you need to cultivate the eightfold path and and actually the monastic form should also
be supporting that all the rules that we keep it also supports us to um cultivate the eightfold
path so john you had a question oh yeah sort of a one serious question and one cheeky question
the cheeky question is um you have a favorite series maybe i'm i'm because i've become a
buddhist failure
recently i'm so used to having the you know the full full part sangha you know with the
bikinis the bikus and and the lay practitioners so that comes naturally to my
you know because that's what i was introduced you notice that even in bswa there's a you know
the the emphasis has been more the monastics coming to the friday and saturday um uh
and and i appreciate that obviously it's a little bit more difficult for the bikinis but
i you know i i my question is more i would like to see whether there's going to be a
ajahn brahm ajahn brahmali uh bikuni version coming out of samasara
and maybe you know being more dominant in the sense that um you know i think that that will put
a much better on on on the teaching of the sutras and that you get a much
broader better understanding rather than it all coming from a more
one gender-based i i maybe i'm biased because i kind of you know like i like the different
views coming particularly from the bikinis that i've listened to you know so but yeah you know
we don't get enough so so you know i'm not sure who does that's the roster actually
i know who does the roster in boriana but you know
anyway that's my question
So the first one, I feel like I have many, there have been many people in my life who
have played the role of a teacher, but there's maybe two people who in my heart I guess are
my main teachers and Ajahn Brahm is one of them.
The other one is a monk in Thailand called Lumpur Ganha, who I think, Ajahn Brahm talks
about him a lot, so a lot of Ajahn Brahm people know about him, so I've visited that monastery
a few times and yeah, in my heart I guess it's just like a sense of whose dhamma you
connect with and whatever, they're my teachers.
Also Ajahn Hasapanya, I have to say, having lived with her now for a long time, she's
just such a wonderful person.
She's such a steady, stable bhikkhuni who just like, she just keeps going regardless
of whatever goes on around her and like the longer I've lived with her, I've just learnt
a lot from her as well.
So those are probably the three main people, and then I also of course I like Bhante Sujato
and Ajahn Brahmali, they're the other people that I would listen to often.
To answer your other question, I feel like patience.
I think it's happening, you know.
I think Ajahn Muniswar has given talks at Dhamma Loka and I think Venerable Karnika,
Venerable Chanda, Ayya Pasada, they're all up and coming teachers, but we just need a
bit of patience.
I feel like there's that simile that Ajahn Brahm uses of the plant, like the kid is given
some seeds and they plant the seeds, and then the plant sprouts, but the kid is impatient,
so he's like trying to pull at the plant and he ends up pulling the plant down.
So don't pull at the bhikkhunis, just let them sort of grow naturally and I think it
will happen.
It takes a long time to grow an Ajahn Brahm, right, he's like what, fifty wasa.
So I think if we're patient, it will happen, and I think what you said about, because you've
come to Buddhism from what we have in practice.
bhikkhuni from Perth, it's nice to just acknowledge how rare it is.
I constantly tell myself, or remind myself how fortunate I am to be a bhikkhuni here.
Similar to you, most of my Dhamma experience has been in this monastery, so I don't know
a lot of what else is out there.
I have travelled a little bit now, and so I'm a little bit aware of what the conditions
are like for bhikkhunis in other parts of the world.
So it's just nice to know.
It's nice to appreciate what we have here, and also to help other bhikkhunis in other
parts of the world whenever we can.
Thank you Ajahn, I think I am very fortunate because I was at the right place in Perth.
Yes, and you come to Dhammasara too and feed us, so thank you.
Thank you Ajahn.
Any questions we can answer tonight?
Thank you very much Ajahn Achala for joining us, for the wonderful talk and meditation,
and for the Q&A session as well.
We look forward to seeing you next time.
I think we will be after the rings, probably.
So before we end, can you give us a blessing?
Sure.
Would it be okay for you to do that?
Sabha, sabha, santapavacchito.
Sabha, vedangati, kanto.
Nibbhuto, catuambhava.
Sabha, sabha, santapavacchito.
Sabha, vitiyo, vivacchantu.
Sabha, rogho, vinnasatu.
Mathe bhavatvan, tsukhidi, gayukobhava.
Abhivada, nasilisa, niccham, uda pachaino.
Chatharo, dhammava.
Thank you for your questions and for sharing, we will see you again in the next session.
Thank you for listening.
Thank you, thank you.