Buddhist monks

Tom Heneghan: Rasanath Das, an ex-investment banker turned Hindu monk, was spending recent Sunday afternoons leading Occupy Wall Street protesters in meditation until police cleared their camp at New York’s Zuccotti Park this week.

The 32-year-old monk isn’t sure now where his next session will be. He’ll keep following the protesters to lead meditation, though, convinced they will only roll back the inequality around them if they find equanimity deep inside.

“Anger won’t solve anything,” he told Reuters. “We have to work from the heart … there is so much distrust now.”

Das has been a discreet presence at the protests, leading short sessions …

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Forest monks portrayed in photo exhibition

September 6, 2011

Venerable Ajahn Cagino, 43, lives in a cave with two snakes and eight bats. The cave is 2km from the nearest village in Mae Hong Son in northern Thailand. Nestled in a deep valley hemmed in by high mountain ranges that border Myanmar, Mae Hong Son is isolated from the outside world and is covered with mist throughout the year.

“I’ve had enough of wandering,” says the Malaysian monk of Thai Forest Tradition, which is a branch of Theravada Buddhism.

For 12 years, Cagino had been walking through the remotest jungles of Thailand, before settling…

See also a slideshow of the exhibition below.

The monks and I: Teaching and learning in Thailand

March 31, 2011

Foreigners are being invited to teach English to Buddhist monks at two temples in Thailand — at a cost of hundreds of dollars.

And staff at one temple claim that many visiting instructors “experienced nirvana temporarily” during meditation sessions.

The temples, Wat Luang Phor Sodh in Ratchaburi and Wat Doi Saket in Chiang Mai, run slightly different programs, but essentially offer the chance to learn about Thai culture while teaching English.

Foreign teachers have to pay for their own lodging, food and other expenses, as well as their airfare to and from Thailand. And though all of the saffron-robed monk students are male, the temples welcome both men and women teachers.

“All English speakers are welcomed,” said Dr. Barton “Bart” Yanathiro, a…

75-year-old American Buddhist who helps run the classes in Ratchaburi, about two hours southwest from Bangkok by bus.

Dr. Yanathiro is the temple’s secretary for international affairs and assists with the Immersion in Buddhist English Program. He also manages the Buddhist Meditation Institute, which teaches meditation in English, as part of the World Buddhist University.

Dr. Yanathiro said the abbot and several monks at the temple already speak English, and “a foreign professor monk” heads the teaching program.

“We began informally two years ago, but last year was our official opening,” said Dr. Yanathiro. “We have had a total of 18 teachers and 85 registered students so far. Two teachers stayed long-term, but most came for one to two months.

“The [monk] students learn English from fluent English-speakers, and the teachers learn meditation and Thai Buddhist culture.”

Classes run from May 23 to September 7, and from October 10 to February 22, 2012.

When foreign instructors are not teaching the monks, they can study Buddhist Samatha-Vipassana meditation, in an English-language program led by Dr. Yanathiro.

“Numerous teacher volunteers have been able to meditate to experience nirvana, and get advice from Buddha or the Noble Disciples,” he said. “This is an undreamed of, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“Of 16 teachers since the very beginning, six experienced nirvana temporarily. An additional three transcended beyond this world to Dhammakaya, and another three more achieved trance states like heavenly bliss. The remaining four only attained inner peace.”

All of the monk students are male, but both temples welcome male and female teachers from abroad.
Asked about their purported temporary experience of nirvana, Dr. Yanathiro replied: “I am using the official definition, where one actually sees and communicates with Lord Buddha and his disciples.

“Most amazing is the personal instruction some have gotten directly from Buddha. One was taken to a volcano and told to jump in. When he did so he became one with the earth. In another meditation he became a tree. Another teacher-meditator experienced becoming a leaf on a tree which then fell to earth, decayed and became part of the earth.

“They see Buddha and the disciples. Communication is by direct telepathy, so language is irrelevant. One does get clear verbal communications, but more impressive are their descriptions of experiences such as feeling oneself becoming a tree.”

None of the teachers reported any side effects from their trances.

Tibetan Buddhist monks will construct colorful, sacred mandala

March 25, 2011

The University of Redlands will welcome a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks from Drepung Loseling Monastery to campus from April 4-8, when they will be constructing a mandala sand painting.

To form an image of a mandala—a Sanskrit word meaning sacred cosmogram—millions of grains of sand are painstakingly laid into place on a flat platform over a period of days or weeks. Of all the artistic traditions of Tantric Buddhism, painting with colored sand ranks as one of the most unique and exquisite.

The mandala sand painting begins with an opening ceremony, during which the Lamas consecrate the site and call forth the forces of goodness. This is done by chanting, music and mantra recitation and will take place on April 5 at 12 p.m. in the Memorial Chapel.

Visitors are welcome to view the creation of the mandala in the Memorial Chapel on Tuesday from 1- 6 p.m., Wednesday and Thursday from 10 a.m.-6 p.m., and Friday from 10 a.m.-12 p.m.

Traditionally, most sand mandalas are destroyed shortly after their completion to symbolize the impermanence of existence. The closing ceremony will be held on Friday, April 8 at noon in the Memorial Chapel.

The monks have created mandala sand paintings in more than 100 museums, art centers, and colleges and universities in the United States and Europe.

At Redlands, the monks of Drepung Loseling will also present two special events:

“Meditation: A Tool for Conscious Living,” a meditation session that will guide participants through practices of meditation used by Buddhists for healing and mental well-being. The session will begin at 5:20 p.m. on April 6 in the Memorial Chapel.

“Opening the Heart: Arousing the Mind of Universal Kindness,” a lecture on Buddhist theories on love and kindness held at 6 p.m. on April 7 in the Memorial Chapel.

All events are free and open to the public.

The monks’ visit is co-sponsored by the Associated Students of the University of Redlands Convocations & Lectures, the Banta Center for Business, Ethics and Society, the offices of the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Chaplain, Campus Diversity and Inclusion and the Vice President for Academic Affairs, the Department of Religious Studies and the University’s Meditation Room.

In other University studies of Asian Religions, this May, Religious Studies professor Karen Derris will lead a group of students to India to visit and study with His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, the head of the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. The students will engage in three weeks of conversation with the Karmapa on their concerns for the world and their place in the world. These conversations on the applications of Buddhism are part of the Karmapa’s ongoing project to offer Buddhist teachings relevant for Western college-age students.

The events can be followed on Twitter at www.twitter.com/uofredlands. Look for the hashtag #monksredlands to search for related posts.

Buddhist monks meditate on the 37th floor in Sao Paulo, Brazil

February 21, 2011

Photo credit: Nacho Doce / Reuters

Buddhist monks from the Busshinji temple, meditate on the helipad of the Copan building in downtown Sao Paulo, Brazil, Feb. 18, 2011. Buddhist monks from the Busshinji temple in Sao Paulo meditate once a month on top of the 37-story high building, one of the tallest in city. Monks want to take meditation from the temple to the streets, and they consider the Copan building a Zen Buddhist mountain in the middle of the city.

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Encouraging journeys of self-discovery

February 5, 2011

Vancouver Sun: Tim Ward, author of What the Buddha Never Taught, says young adults should spend time learning what is meaningful to them alone

If you’re looking for the meaning of life, you’ll benefit from seeking it out yourself, said 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,’ ” Ward said. “I think that there is an answer, 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 just been released in a special 20th anniversary edition with a foreword by Canadian anthropologist and author Wade Davis.

“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.”

Ward, 52, lived in Vancouver for four years while completing a degree in philosophy at the University of B.C. in the early ’80s.

He’ll be in Vancouver for a pair of appearances this month.

“I love going back to Vancouver. UBC is kind of like a great, big family that I don’t get to see very often, and it just really thrills me to go back and be part of campus life again,” he said.

After UBC he travelled to Thailand and spent time in a Buddhist monastery, living life based on the rules of Buddhism.

His experiences practicing meditation, eating just one meal a day and learning to live alongside wild animals became the basis for this book.

“The time I spent among Buddhists really changed my view of the world, and my view of what’s important in my own life,” he said. “This is not a devotional book, it’s meant to be a journalistic account of what happened to myself and others while I was there, including the absurdities and the foibles and the institutional problems that you get when you try to run a community based on Buddhist principles.”

He says one of the key experiences for him was learning to live with creatures that we in the west tend to think of as vermin: tarantulas, scorpions, cobras.

“There’s one passage in the book where I describe walking along a path with a load of laundry and a king Cobra rears right up in front of me,” he said. “I did what we’re taught to do, be very, very calm, and the snake got that and it kept going down the path and left me alone. That was a key moment of realizing that nature was not out to get me.”

He said this experience changed him; he no longer saw the world as out to get him.

“Where this really counts is in the Buddhist view, the entire world of your experience is a creation of your mind.

“Whatever is out there in the world is in a sense a reflection of your inner self,” he said.

“If you see the world as out to get you, you are a house divided against yourself. A kind of inner hatred, loathing, mistrust is taking place within you when you have that attitude against nature.”

Today, he works as a consultant for an international development organization, which sends him to Asia several times a year, but he’s never been back to the monastery where he lived in 1985, when he was 26 and seeking meaning in his life.

He still practises meditation on a daily basis, saying he particularly enjoys Tai Chi, because it is meditation in movement. He was even doing it while we were speaking on the phone.

“I find meditation in movement an easier way to drop into your body and change your mind from left brain thinking to right brain thinking,” Ward said. “I make sure to do that at least once a day, even for just a few minutes, to make this shift into this calmer, silent part of my brain.

“I do this to remind myself that I am not my thoughts. When you can step outside of that, you can immediately feel calm and relaxed no matter how many things might go on in your life that North Americans would say were stress.”

He says dissatisfaction is a natural state of the human mind and that people are always striving for a new job or to get more money, a better car, better friends or a better relationship.

“When we get these things we may feel a moment of relief, but pretty soon our brains find a way to be dissatisfied again,” he said. “When you see that that’s the human condition, rather than try to change your life, you can just try to be with that, and enjoy the life that you’ve got.

“But, too much of that can be a bad thing. There are kinds of dissatisfaction that I think are important to pay attention to.”

He cites the situation in Tunisia and his first marriage as examples of where it’s good to pay attention to dissatisfaction.

Today, he lives near Washington, D.C., with his second wife and he has a 20-year-old son from his first marriage.

He says that although Buddhists might not agree, his connection to his son makes him more concerned about global warming and the future of the planet.

“Every parent gets this,” he said. “When you’re connected to your kids, what happens in 50 or 100 years matters way more. When you’ve got kids you can’t help but be concerned about the future.”

He’s hesitant to say what it is that the Buddha never taught, saying it is the key to his book.

“The heart of Buddhism is asking what is the ego, what is the self? Is it something that in the west we see as a great thing, or is it something that is a fault in human nature, which if only we could get rid of it, we would be happy,” he said.

Ward is writing a new book, Zombies on Kilimanjaro, which asks how to balance the blessings of the ego with its curses.

” I try to take a middle way on this. I think that although the ego may be a cause of a lot of problems, it is a part of our human nature,” he said. “I think Buddhism doesn’t give a satisfactory answer to why we have an ego if it’s something we need to remove.”

Ward is the author of five books, including three spiritual travel and adventures based on his six years living in Asia.

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Monks in their midst

November 10, 2010

In a stretch of suburban Raynham, a community of ascetics is planning what may be the largest Thai Buddhist temple in the hemisphere

A quiet neighborhood along Raynham’s South Street East is slated to have an unlikely addition soon to its mix of modest homes and small businesses: an ornate Thai Buddhist wat, or temple, the likes of which won’t be found anywhere outside of Thailand, according to its principal designing architect.

The temple, to be called Wat Nawamintararachutis, or NMR Center, will celebrate the life of Thailand’s current monarch, who was born in a Cambridge hospital in 1927. Because of the Boston area’s connection to the king, the project has generated great interest both in the Buddhist community and within the government of Thailand. The Thai government has, in fact, agreed to bear the $16 million cost of construction, set to begin next spring, according to Eang Tan, a member of the temple’s board of directors.

The temple’s design is the fruit of a team of Thai and American architects that worked for five years to create a meditation center that would contain distinctly Thai Buddhist elements as well as some New England style. For example, while the temple will feature the stacked gables common to Thai Buddhist temples, the gables will be shaped more like those found in the region.“We needed to consider the weather conditions as well as the culture,’’ said the project’s lead designing architect, Been Wang, a principal of Architectural Resources Cambridge. “Thai gables have a curved roof shape and an overhang. These are more like New England gables.’’

The result will be a 109,000-square-foot complex with a four-story museum and temple building, sleeping quarters, and a large conference center, all clustered around a spacious courtyard filled with lotus-shaped fountains and fountains with lotuses. Wang said it will be the largest such meditation center outside Thailand.

Richard Cook, a temple member and an adviser for the project as it obtains the necessary permits, said the center will be notable for its size.

“There are recent temples built in New York City and Washington, D.C.,’’ Cook said. “This will be basically twice their size.’’

The only other Thai Buddhist temple in Massachusetts is the Boston Buddha Vararam Temple in Bedford, a small center situated on about 2 acres. There are about 4,000 Thais in the state, according to Laura Medrano, a US Census Bureau official.

The Raynham temple will boast such typical Thai elements as a 180-foot spire, cast in bronze and covered in golf leaf. The spire will be made in Thailand and shipped here.

Thai Buddhists are not new to Raynham’s South Street East neighborhood. A thriving community of devotees, from all over Eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, has gathered on weekends for the past four years at a modest farmhouse on the street. They chant and meditate in a small temple room and are counseled by a half-dozen saffron-clad monks. Meanwhile, younger members are schooled in Thai culture and the 2,500-year-old Theravada Buddhist tradition.

That tradition is one of two principal branches of Buddhism. Theravada, which means “way of the elders,’’ is most prominent today in Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka, according to resources at the Pluralism Project at Harvard University. Its beliefs are drawn from the earliest Pali writings, which are considered the most accurate source of teachings of the historical Buddha, who lived in India 2,500 years ago. The ideal spiritual model of Theravada Buddhism is attaining nirvana, where all obstacles and desires are extinguished.

Mahayana Buddhism, the other principal branch, was the first to be practiced in the United States, brought by Chinese and Japanese immigrants in the 19th century. The traditions of this branch of Buddhism are more flexible, drawn from a number of later teachings not related to the historic Buddha. In the Mahayana tradition, the ideal is a fully enlightened being who is engaged in helping others to become free of their suffering.

About 50 devotees gather at the Raynham farmhouse on a typical weekend, but during major celebrations that number can soar to 500.

The dream of this tightly knit religious community has been to one day construct an expansive Thai Buddhist meditation center in the Boston area.

The members had decided the complex would celebrate King Rama IX, Bhumibol Adulyadej, of Thailand, who was born in Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge and has been king since 1946.

“When we were looking for land, we looked in Boston, but we needed more space,’’ said Natthapat Saisena, a member of the Thai architect team. In 2006, a Thai Buddhist abbot who had helped develop a number of other temples in the United States bought the 50-acre Raynham property.

Abbot Phra Promwachirayan then traveled the world studying the elements of various Thai Buddhist temples.

“He then told me his vision,’’ said Wang. “This will be East meets West.’’

The complex will sit about 150 feet from the street, with the lot’s natural downward slope making the size of the buildings less obtrusive. Neighboring properties will be at least 100 feet away. About 6 of the 50 acres will be developed.

With the exception of the local building permit, which is pending, all approvals for the project are in hand, temple officials said.

One recent Sunday, 80 or so members of the temple community turned out at the farmhouse to get a look at a three-dimensional model of the NMR Center. Architects were on hand to talk about the project, scheduled for completion in 2012.

Newton resident Sue Sihatrai, a member of the Thai Buddhist community since 2002, said she looks forward to the groundbreaking.

“I was here when they first started wanting to build a Buddhist center,’’ she said. “I think it will be one of the most beautiful temples in the world. It will be perfect.’’

The Thai Buddhist tradition includes visiting the temple and bringing offerings to monks, who have few possessions of their own. In Thailand, the monks also go into the village for offerings each day, something that’s not possible in Raynham. At the recent gathering, community members organized baskets of gifts for them, like fruit and vegetables, packets of sticky rice and bananas neatly wrapped in banana leaves, and dry goods such as paper towels, toothpaste, and soap.

It’s likely to be a much busier scene in the future.

Once the new center is complete, 15 to 20 monks will reside on the Raynham property. Its dormitory will have room for 100, more than large enough to accommodate visiting monks and those staying for weekend meditation and cultural instruction.

As it is, the Raynham farmhouse already attracts people who come because they are interested in meditation, whether they are Buddhist or not.

“I came from secular meditation that evolved out of Thai Buddhist meditation,’’ said Ken Pitts, who moved to North Attleborough a year ago.

“I and several other people who come here are affiliated with a group in Arlington. Some are recovering substance abusers, and the monks are trained in counseling. Others are Americans interested in meditation.’’

Pitts, a regular visitor, said he tutors the monks in English and provides transportation when they run errands; one of them teaches a class at a nearby community college. He said he expects interest in the temple from those outside the Thai community to grow when the new center is completed.

Most Raynham residents have welcomed the Thai Buddhists to town.

“I’ve gone over and walked the property and was invited to stay for lunch,’’ said Eric Hebert, who lives nearby with his wife, Jennifer.

“From the pictures and models they have, it looks like it’s going to be a nice place.’’

Christine Legere can be reached at christinelegere@yahoo.com.

Korean Monks discuss Buddhism, culture

August 6, 2010

In their traditional grey monk suits with shaved heads and wearing iPods, they’ve walked Park Avenue, listened to the concerts in Lincoln Park and played football in Lyndhurst—a part of their introduction in the Western world. The monks are a group of three Korean monks and four nuns from Donguk University in South Korea, and are staying at Felician College in Rutherford while studying English as a Second Language and learning about Buddhism in the Western world.

They live under a rule of 250 precepts. And on a typical day, they’re up at 4 a.m. for meditation, have breakfast at 6 a.m., and have university studies, chant three times a day and do agricultural work until sundown. While staying mentally and spiritually active, they also stay physically active and technologically savvy.

“I like football and soccer,” says Sung Cheol Lee a.k.a. “Great Wisdom.” Their trip to the fields in Lyndhurst was also their introduction to the American game of football.

“And I use Twitter for journals and chants. I have iPhone apps for chanting, ‘I Need Coffee,’ painting and a dictionary,” says Heyjun Changeon Kim, a.k.a. “Blue River.”

Lee, 19, and Blue River, 42, noted that it is customary in Korea not to use your birth name…

when you become a monk. At times, they spoke through a translator. Blue River has been a monk for 12 years. Lee is two years into the five-year journey.

Why learn English? “Globalization, the Internet; a lot of info is in English only,” says Blue River. “If I had the chance, I’d like to teach meditation in the United States.”

The six-week trip for the Buddhism and Meditation majors includes visiting temples, Ivy League colleges and museums in New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. They went to Dharma Drum University, Blue Cliff and Gem Mountain monasteries, Boston University, the John F. Kennedy Library, Harvard, MIT, Rubin Museum of Art at NYU, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“At Harvard, the opinions are concentrated in one study. I envy that,” says Blue River. “It made me think to concentrate more on my major, meditation,” he said, adding that he also minors in Architecture and Art History and is fascinated by scholarly writing on many religions.

In the nation’s capital, Lee said the two met with Congressman Dan Burton (R-Indiana), attending a ceremony commemorating the anniversary of the end of the Korean War.

For achieving peace, tranquility and physical fitness, Blue River reflected on Western meditation through yoga and Buddhism.

“The main point of the Western view of Buddhism is compassion,” Blue River notes, adding that he was surprised by Westerners’ vast knowledge of and interest in Buddhism.

Both men also believe that Americans lead in materialism and the science of medicine, for example. And the Western society has just begun to adopt spirituality into the mix. “I pursue spirituality. Americans sort of mix the spiritual and material and mental,” Blue River says.

He defines Buddhism as being “free from suffering.” “Buddhism began with a prince born in India 2,000 years ago. His mother died during childbirth, so he always thought about birth, age, disease and death. So he became a monk. He practiced for six years, not eating. He also realized the theory of cause/effect,” Blue River explains, adding that the reason monks never marry or have children is because marriage and child-rearing would yield material needs.

The prince found three truths, Lee adds.

“Everything is impermanent; nothing stays the same. Be selfless. Be free of suffering by erasing three poisons: greed, anger and ignorance. The key is to meditate in order to remove poisons. The goal is to be free of suffering. The idea is to achieve nirvana,” says Blue River.

Rules, however, vary between southeast regions of Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Vietnam and northeast regions, including China, Japan, Korea, Mongolia and Tibet.

“It’s stricter in the south,” Blue River says.

“The south has the same theories as the north, but different conceptions [of being a Buddhist monk],” Blue River says. “You can’t work. You can’t cook in the temple. In Myanmar, I had to go out [to ask] for food. You can’t touch money. When you take the bus, the driver has to take the money out of your wallet.”

Not quite ready to leave Rutherford for South Korea, Lee and Blue River thanked Felician staff and reflected on their stay.

“They’re like family. We have the same purpose,” Blue River says. “When we teach, we also learn. They learn about us and we learn about Western culture.”

Blue River will continue his trip in America in Maine to continue his meditation research.

[Kelly Nicholaides, North Jersey]

Vegetarian diet for five days reduces levels of toxic chemicals in the body

June 7, 2010