Ajahn Brahm ‘teaches the teachers’
Picture of serenity in misty Bandarawala: Monks on pindapatha
“Tiring but very worthwhile and very enjoyable,” was how Ajahn Brahmavamso summed up the retreat he conducted exclusively for monks and nuns at Bandarawela recently.
“Sri Lanka has been a Buddhist country for 2,300 years. A white monk is invited to teach meditation to monks and nuns there. Really they should come and teach us. At the start I felt scared at the thought of teaching the teachers – 150 of them,” he said at the Friday Dhamma talk he delivered in Perth just after his arrival from Sri Lanka.
Obviously it was a ‘first’ for Ajahn Brahm who gets invited regularly from numerous countries to conduct meditation programmes where mostly the laity participate. He spends a better part of the year touring.
It was Ajahn Brahm who suggested to the organisers, the Ajahn Brahm Society in Sri Lanka that an exclusive retreat for monks and nuns will be beneficial since they can learn the techniques and spread them among larger numbers.
At Bandarawela among the participants were non-Sri Lankan monks and nuns who are resident in Sri Lanka to either learn the Dhamma or have made Sri Lanka their home after ordination. The Sri Lankan monks were from various parts of the country. Ajahn Brahm’s talks were translated into Sinhala by Ven. Kusalanana Thera, who is currently in the United States doing post-graduate studies, for the benefit of some of the participants.
The group was a mixed lot both in seniority and age. There was at least one Mahanayaka Thera among them. Everyone found the retreat useful and interesting. At the end of the programme, one senior monk commented: “What he taught was very clear. Obviously he was speaking from experience. No looking at other techniques in meditation for me.”
Another senior monk who had come with a young pupil monk had to leave three days before the retreat was over. He left the younger monk behind saying, “Let him stay. He likes it and it is good for him.”
The resident monks in the village temples around Bandarawela were very cooperative in making the retreat a success and arranged for their ‘dayakas’ to bring the alms every day throughout the ten days.
The monks and nuns came on ‘pindapatha’ and collected the alms from a nearby location. The ‘grand finale’ was when monks in those temples too joined the participants at the retreat on the day after the programme to go on ‘pindapatha’ in the Bandarawela town. There were nearly 200 monks and nuns in total.
Expressing his satisfaction, a spokesman of the Ajahn Brahm Society was thankful to the monks and devotees of the surrounding temples, the staff of the Sri Lanka Tourism resort at Bandarawela and the public on the way they rallied round to make what he described as “a unique event in the recent history of Sri Lanka”, a total success.
Ajahn Brahm at the sessions (above) and in meditation in Bandarawala (down)
