Inspired by Monks and Nuns

In her simple Vesak message, Ayyā Medhānandī Bhikkhunī said at the Ottawa Vesak Festival to commemorate Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and death on 2nd May 2015 at the Ottawa City Hall;  

“It is the inner journey to understand self and the nature around us that helps us find happiness rather than the world of external gratification.”

The native of Montreal, is a former international humanitarian worker and the founder of the Sati Sārāņīya Hermitage, a Theravada Buddhist training monastery for nuns in Perth, Ontario.

Ayya Medhanandi Bhikkuni Satisaraniya

She also expounded on the importance of a core practice of meditation, along with moral behaviour, to enable wisdom to realize and deal with our three defilements – ignorance, attachment (craving and clinging) and aversion (hatred).

While this is part of the essential practice for a Buddhist monk, her message was for us lay people to consider a personal practice towards mindfulness to discern the good from the not so good.  This could lead to peace with self and others by dealing with our own defilements. 

I have a special reverence for those who relinquish the modern consumer culture to follow the path of the Buddha as a monk.  What a difficult challenge it must be to give up our primal nature for power, pleasure and to procreate.

I have known many monks in my lifetime.  I met often, my father’s spiritual friends like the Sri Lankan scholar monk Venerable Piyadassi, the German born Venerable Nyanaponika and Richard Abeysekera (who might as well have been a monk) who devoted his life to the Buddhist Publication Society (BPS) in Kandy, Sri Lanka. A scene like the three of them in this photo at BPS is  vivid in my memory. 

I realize what a privilege it was to associate with them from an early age and to later learn about their lives and teachings through reading and listening to stories.

Walks through the Forest

I looked forward to the walks with my father through Kandy’s pristine forest, Udawattakele to visit Venerable Nyanaponika’s hermitage when I was about 6 years old.  

(Thirty years later, while running a solar energy business in Sri Lanka, I was so happy to instal a solar electric system at this hermitage when American monk and scholar Bhikku Bodhi was there.)

The first time I remember seeing my father and Venerable Nyanaponika in a meditation trance in their lotus position  - their stillness scared me, as I thought they were not breathing.  I had my first conversation on meditation with my father after that.  

Venerable Nyanaponika, a Jewish German saw what was coming in Germany, made his way to Sri Lanka in the 1930s. He became a monk in 1936 under the tutelage of a fellow German, Ven Nyanatiloka (a former violin virtuoso Anton Gueth) who came to Sri Lanka in 1910 and established the Island Hermitage for western monks in the southern coastal town of Dodanduwa.  

Venerable Nyanaponika, was a great teacher and wrote many books on Buddhism and especially on the practice of mindfulness and meditation. 

He wrote this in his book The Power of Mindfulness. 

“One must know mindfulness well and cultivate its acquaintance before one can appreciate its value and its silent penetrative influence. Mindfulness walks slowly and deliberately, and its daily task is of a rather humdrum nature. Yet where it places its feet it cannot easily be dislodged, and it acquires and bestows true mastery of the ground it covers.”

I was influenced from a young age to carve out a sacred time and space for a regular personal practice.  I started exercising and running daily from the age of 13 and included a meditation practice.  Even though the morning push-up and sit ups dominated the later teen years and twenties, I managed to sit in meditation at least 3 times a week, to keep my practice alive.

Monk and his Motorcycle

In the 1980s in Canada, while at Seneca College studying Mechanical Engineering Technology, I cultivated a friendship with a young Jewish Canadian investment banker and motorcycle enthusiast turned Buddhist Monk, Bhante Vannassara at the Toronto Mahavihare Temple in Scarborough.  

His transformation from a heady life to a monk’s journey was fascinating, as I related well to his former life and intrigued by his current.  He provided intimate insights into renouncing all the things I enjoyed, to wilfully follow the path of the Buddha.  We had hours of conversation, usually in the evening, about what motivated him, what was happening to him - his thoughts, feelings and needs - as he focussed on the practice.  We often meditated together and discussed different aspects of the practice – focus, concentration, attention to quell fleeting thoughts and Vipassana – learning to see things as they are.

One evening, he interrupted an interesting discussion with, “that sounds like a Kawi 900, one the fastest bikes in the world and that was my last one” as a motorcycle zoomed by the temple.  He told me stories of how he would dare to take Toronto’s Don Valley Parkway – Gardiner Expressway’s sharp banked ramp as fast as he could, sparks flying from the foot pedal.  

He was not satisfied with the lack of meaning of the material world, so he was testing the edges of life with a machine. Then he found that he could do the same by going inward through path of a monk. Our conversations and my own inquiry revealed how challenging it must be to go against the grain, so I admired him much for renouncing the superficial temptations of life.  

As he advanced in his practice, put his Kawasaki motorcycle behind, he moved to a forest in the south of Sri Lanka around the same time I established myself in Colombo.   I met him once a year in Colombo, as he came to renew his Sri Lankan Visa.  

I saw his gradual inward retreat as his spiritual journey advanced. A group of friends and well wishers helped him to publish his book Wind Not Caught in a Net, which is a difficult read.  I keep going back to it as I advance in years and try to make sense of his deep treatise.   He has since moved to Myanmar to find more peace in deeper jungles for his continuing spiritual journey.

The Mahamevnawa Movement

More recently, before I moved back to Canada in 2011, I spent a day at a Mahamevnawa Temple in Matara, in a picturesque hilly property of hundreds of acres in the south of Sri Lanka.  I went at the invitation of industrialist Tissa Jinasena, the benefactor who built the temple.  He continues to manage the infrastructure and its utilities, so the monks can follow the authentic path of the Buddha in peace.  

The Mahamevnawa movement was started by Venerable Kiribathgoda Gunananda to propagate the authentic teachings of the Buddha, the Tripitaka Dhamma[i] in its original form, when it was seen as getting misdirected in Sri Lanka.  The temple welcomes any person, of any race or religion to go through the process to ordain as a monk.  Meditation and a life of virtue (sila) is the cornerstone of their practice to surrender the mind to understand the true nature of life.  

I had a fascinating conversation with Venerable Nawalapitiye Ariyavansa, the chief monk of the Matara monastery.  Ariyavansa Thero was a former finance professional as many of the monks are also former doctors, engineers and university students among others from various backgrounds and walks of life.  I was not surprised then to see their use of modern technology and social media to spread the Dhamma.

Learning from real Stories

My recent reading about many western monks who renounced their worldly life in books such as Seeing the Way – An Anthology of Transcribed Talks and Essays by Monks and Nuns of the Theravada Forest Sangha Tradition and a similar book Friends on the Path - Dhamma Reflections from Ajahn Sundara and Ajahn Candasiri, reinforces meditation as the core practice to this path.  Most of these monks were disciples of revered monk, Ajahn Chah of Thailand.  Their incredible journeys of giving up what we take so for granted – family, roof over their head, a place to sleep, carnal desires, food, security and safety from predators – are reflected so vividly in these stories.

Bhante Kovida, Jamaican born wandering monk and I have become friends over the last 4 years and his book The World is Myself - A Monks Travel Journal captivated me with wonderful tales of his travels.  The stories are interspersed with great wisdom he acquires from his mind and body practice where meditation and tai chi qigong is core.  

He introduced mindfulness to Health Canada in Ottawa, which has been received so well as a tool to deal with workplace challenges and uncertainties.  

Importance of the Meditation Practice

The Noble Eightfold Pathway is central to their journey as meditation – concentration leads to mindfulness.  Mindfulness leads to right view, wisdom, and right thoughts.  Right thoughts lead us to a life of virtue – right words and action and to a right livelihood. 

These monks show how they learn to act with virtue in the world, when they realize through their wisdom that karma – the cause and effect – the action and result of life, is all pervading.  The other realization is that all phenomena, whether mental or physical in this universe is impermanent (anicca).  Nothing is permanently satisfying or dependable.

I grew up knowing these simple truths on one hand and eventually realized that the material world is counter to this.  

I straddle both worlds keeping my senses open in inquiry, as competition tends to dominate my reptilian survival nature. The challenge is to find balance with my compassionate nature - open my heart to loving kindness, generosity and to live a life of virtue.  

Yet, I realize nothing is permanent and nothing is for sure – the delusion of certainty creates the suffering, if I am not mindful. 

This way I try to keep a check on the three defilements - ignorance, aversion and attachment.  As they ebb and flow, the notion of scarcity creates anxiety for the future, nudging me towards the edge to grasp and cling. 

Hence, the struggle continues to find that balance to discern between want and need, to keep greed in check and to live with virtue – as money and material life has its utility, especially when I have a family to nurture. 

I know it is my daily meditation, reflection  and the quiet time that helps to balance that dissonance within myself. 

It is a joy to be among these monks and nuns, steadfast on this path, to learn from them about their journey as they transcend the worldly life and find that state of happiness and peace on their path to enlightenment. When I realize our common humanity, I know I have choices too about how I may show up in the world. 

I am inspired by them to continue the mindfulness practice and inquiry without expectation and with patience as I learn to discern right view, right thought, right words and right actions. 

We forgive, we let go of those memories, because taking refuge in Sangha means, here and now, doing good and refraining from doing evil with bodily action and speech.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Bhikku Sumedho

Buddham saranam gacchami
I go to the Buddha for refuge

Dhammam saranam gacchami
I go to the Dhamma for refuge

Sangham saranam gacchami
I go to the Sangha for refuge.

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[i] Tripitaka means "three baskets," from the way in which it was originally recorded in the 3^rd century BC. The text in Pali was written on long, narrow Ola leaves,