I know how reticent monks are to talk about themselves, but I cannot help but begin by asking about your own Jātaka story. How did you wind up as a Buddhist monk living in England? Well, where does it all begin? I suppose around the age of six or seven I started to recognize something of what death was about: that we all die. I remember talking to my brother about it and he said, “Oh, don’t think about it, it will be all right.” Now he is a businessman and I’m a monk. (Laughs.) I remember … [Read more...]
Ajahn Sucitto
Dhamma as Skillful Kamma
There is a rather humorous text in the Middle Length Discourses called the Kukkuravatika Sutta, or The Dog-duty Ascetic (M 57). In the Buddha's time, the so-called spiritual scene was full of people who did extreme ascetic practices. In this text, we’re told of an ascetic who likes to practice like he’s a dog. He walks around on all fours, traipsing in and out of puddles, and will only eat food that is thrown on the ground. And he has an ascetic friend who likes to practice like he’s an ox. This … [Read more...]
Working with Perception
What is perception? It’s the most immediate derived sense of an object: It’s a flower, it’s a car, it’s a person. There’s a mild impact, contact, a sense of, ah—something strikes the eye. There’s an immediate flurrying or movement around what that is. This becomes more apparent when you meditate and slow the mind down, so that you find some space between the rush of ideas and moods. Then as you’re abiding in a fairly spacious state you feel how things strike you. It could be pleasant, like a … [Read more...]
