Ajahn Amaro

It can be a beginning, but it's not going to bring about true happiness for us, intellectual knowing.

In a very kind of simple scenario that kind of illustrates that, uh, we can consider the, the teaching that I've often, uh, over the years, and I realize I haven't really talked much about it on this retreat, the teaching that I've often offered, uh, uh, that pertains to the action of clinging, particularly obsessive thinking, the action of thinking, particularly when we're in an obsessive narrative, and that we should, uh, uh, ask the question as we look at our thinking, "Is it useful?" So the teaching, of course, is, you know, if we're in a repetitive thought pattern, uh, to take a step back for a moment to observe the thoughts and ask, "Is it useful? Is it useful to be engaging in these thinking?" And of course, the subtext of that question is, is it serving me in my efforts to know a greater happiness in life, this thinking, or is it leading to suffering? So I can't tell you how many times over the years, not just on retreats, but certainly in retreats, I've talked to a student in a one-on-one or perhaps in a class, and perhaps you've been in some of those classes, and, you know, the student has said, you know, "I'm just in this thought pattern about my partner, and I can't stop thinking about what a jerk he is," or whatever, you know? Or, "I can't stop thinking about this thing at work." So, uh, so I'll say, "Well, you know, take a step back from the thinking and, you know, ask the question, is it useful?" And the student says, "I know it's not useful."

[laughs]

"I know it's not useful." You know, intellectually, the student knows it not, it's not useful, but that intellectual knowing barely helps at all in terms of the student's ability to abandon that thinking.

Right? Otherwise, they wouldn't come in and talk to me.

Yeah? Intellectually, we know that thinking isn't useful, but that intellectual knowing won't free us from that thinking.

[laughs]

Um, you know, uh, but nobody really is cut off from it completely.

So,

you know that Ajahn Amaro has got a list of suggested titles for the talks, for these Sunday talks during the Vassal now.

And he has invited different well, more experienced members of the community, whether they would like to choose one of these titles and give a talk.

So I got a list and went through that.

We'll take the time to, uh, be with our comforts and our discomforts.

We'll take time to, um, look after the needs of the present and not always be locked onto the promise of, or the threat of, of the future." My name is Ajahn Amaro, uh, more recently being addressed as Luang Por Amaro, and I'm the Abbot of Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, which is in the countryside just north of London in England.

And I've been an abbot here for 15 years or so, and I've been a monk about 47 years.

There's a story that you tell in that talk, Choose Life, Choose Inconvenience, about a question someone asked the Dalai Lama.

So it was in my early years as a monk, and when you get to about five rains, they start to ask you to give talks.

Now, I was used to great teachers like Rinpoche Medo, Ajahn Sujato, Ajahn Amaro.

These people sat on a high seat, and they gave a talk.

And now they're asking me to get on this high seat or in, in Chithurst it was the center of a kind of asana.

It's, it's just this process of coming into harmony with reality, with the way it is, with nature.

A couple of years ago, I taught a retreat here in, at IMS with, uh, Ajahn Amaro, who is the current abbot at Amaravati Monastery.

Do any of you know him, met him? Yeah.

He's-- I've known him for, uh, more than thirty years now.

It's so fragile, and it often feels isolated and lost, as Ajahn Sumedho was saying.

And then wisdom and compassion can arise when we get disentangled from all of that.

They arise on their own, and we start to taste or touch or sense into the possibility of what Ajahn Amaro called a disentangled participation with life, fully engaged in the world, but not tangled up in any of it.

There's freedom in that.

There was a, you know, an event here.

It was Ajahn Amaro's 70th birthday.

Hmm.

Really, you know, stretched it because to me the event wasn't the event.

Mm.

Und Ajahn Mann, also das ist ja, Ajahn Mann war auch der Lehrer von Ajahn Amaro, wo ich wiederum zwei Jahre im Kloster war in Thailand.

Also da gibt es eine Verbindung zu dieser Person.

Ajahn Mann war ein, ein sehr hoch Gelehrter.

It doesn't stay permanently pleasant or permanently unpleasant.

I remember when Ajahn Amaro and Ajahn Yenarat when I went to Svalbard, the island north of Norway, and we'd sit out on the glaciers, and it was very pleasant.

We had bundled up in warm clothes and everything was white.

Yet it could easily become very unpleasant when it gets cold.