Ajahn
Pasanno: 30 Years a Monk
Fearless
Mountain:What
was your early religious experience?
Ajahn
Pasanno: I
was raised in northern Manitoba, 600 miles north of the U.S. border.
My religion was Anglican, which is Episcopalian in the U.S. I had a good
experience growing up as a Christian. It was a small town and a small church. My
family was reasonably devout. My father had grown up in the United Church, and
we took religious classes together. But by the time I was 16 or 17, I found it
difficult to maintain any kind of faith. I stopped going to church and taking
communion. I started to look for alternatives.
FM:
Did you
ever think you would become a monk?
AP:
I certainly
didn’t spend my years growing up dreaming of becoming a monk.
However, I definitely had an attraction to religion, and the mystique of
hermits interested me. But there were no Buddhists in northern Manitoba, or even
in Winnipeg, where I attended university. However, I did take an Eastern
religions class, which covered Buddhism. This reading motivated me to continue
the search. When I finished university, I had a vague idea to study Buddhism
some more. I was looking for a way to learn to meditate since I knew from my
reading that meditation
FM:
You really
jumped into it!
AP:
That really
opened me up. I had some powerful experiences of calm and concentration and
insight, which made me want to continue to study and practice vipassana. The
monks encouraged me to be ordained. I said, “No, I have traveling to do; I’m
not ready to make a long-term commitment.” They explained how ordinary it is
to do a three-month temporary ordination in Thailand. I thought I could handle
three or four months, so I was ordained. It
was there that I first heard of Ajahn Chah. One of the other monks encouraged me
to visit and pay my respects to Ajahn Chah. I had only been ordained for a month
or two before I was given permission to visit Ajahn Chah. I traveled up to Wat
Pah Pong to pay my respects to Ajahn Chah and was very smitten. One of the first
things he said was that if I wanted to train with him, I would have to stay for
five years. That was difficult. I wasn’t ready to make such a commitment. I
stayed for about a month and then took leave to go to another monastery,Wat Sai
Ngam, where I had an opportunity to do a lot of formal practice. I continued to
have many good experiences in meditation.What kept coming up was: “If I am
really going to do this, then I have to go back and give myself to Ajahn Chah.
Five years is five years. Don’t think about it.” I wrote, and Ajahn Sumedho responded and said I was welcome
to come for the Rains Retreat. However, my teacher invited me to spend the Rains
Retreat with him instead, and then he took me to Ajahn Chah himself after the
Rains. That delay was quite good. I had been all fired up to go back to Ajahn
Chah, and then there was an obstacle. I used it to let go of preferences. I also
settled in to a lot of formal practice and learned the Thai language, which came
in handy up in understanding the Laotian dialect they speak up in Ubon.
FM:What
happened then?
AP:
When you
have been ordained somewhere else, you are taken on as a guest monk. Then you
observe the practices and decide if you want to make a commitment to stay. The
senior monks keep an eye on you, too. After two to three months of waiting, I
was accepted. If any of your monastic requisites were not properly acquired, say
if you bought something with money, then it had to be relinquished. This happens
because most monks use money. Even if you had a robe offered but you had been
washing or dying it with detergent or dye that you bought yourself, then Ajahn
Chah would require you to change it. There is an excitement to get these new
requisites. The robes have been sewn at the monastery. The dye is monastery dye.
The robes are real forest monk robes. The bowls are usually bigger because in
the forest you carry requisites in them when you are traveling. If it’s
raining, you can at least keep some of your robes dry. Also, because forest
monks eat from their bowls, the bowl tends to be bigger. These bowls are
special, and one looks forward to receiving them.
FM:
It sounds
deeply traditional.
AP:
Yes, that
was the feeling of going to Wat Pah Pong: It feels as if the tradition has been
passed on since the Buddha’s time. There is an antiquity, integrity and
simplicity that was so palpable.What struck me was the peace. Things were well
taken care of. The diligence of the
monks and novices and the commitment of the laypeople were obvious. In such a
poor area as Northeast Thailand, the laypeople were out every morning sharing
their offerings with the Sangha. On the observance days there were lots and lots
of laypeople listening to Dhamma, meditating and chanting. You felt the sense of
a living tradition.
FM:
I’ve
heard that the laypeople stay up all night meditating.
AP:
Yes, they
stay up the whole night, once a week on observance nights. For myself, just
arriving, it was difficult to sit still for even an hour. You were not sitting
still on a zabuton and zafu with a few foam props. You had a one-layer sitting
cloth on a concrete floor. Some of the people would sit for two to three hours
and then do some walking meditation, and then sit for a few more hours till
dawn. Close to dawn you would do chanting. It was awe-inspiring. It also felt so
healthy, the interaction between the monastic community and the lay community.
There would be people coming to make offerings, ask questions or pay respects to
Ajahn Chah. Laypeople would also help out at the monastery. You had a real sense
of the monastery being a focus for community.
FM:
When did
you become abbot of Wat Pah Nanachat?
AP:
It was in
my ninth year as a monk. I hadn’t really planned on it. I had been at a branch
monastery that had about a thousand acres of beautiful forest, surrounded on
three sides by a reservoir, and I hoped to stay on for a long time. But one of
the monks came with a message from Ajahn Chah asking me to return to Wat Pah
Nanachat to start to learn the ropes of being an abbot. Because Ajahn Chah asked
me to do it, I did it.
FM:
He saw some
qualities in you that you had perhaps not seen in yourself?
AP:
I found I
had to rely on what he saw in me rather than what I saw in myself. It was pretty
miserable to have to be in that position, to be perfectly honest. There was
obviously a sense of excitement and willingness to take it on because I had been
asked to, but it certainly wasn’t easy. It was difficult being in a position
of leadership and having more responsibilities, mostly just dealing with people
much more. Among the great sufferings in the universe, dealing with people is at
the top of the list! From my perspective, I didn’t have a choice. I had to
make it work somehow. I had to learn from it.
FM:
Has your
practice changed much over the years?
AP:
One of the
meditation practices I have done from day one, and still do, is mindfulness of
breathing. I have experimented with a variety of methods, but mindfulness of
breathing is my home base. Of course, it has been refined and become a lot
clearer in how to use it skillfully. The Buddha’s teachings have a certain
simplicity, and the profundity begins to shine out of that. Other ways it’s
really changed is that there is a whole lot more ease than when I started. At
the start there were a lot of good intentions and effort, but it was not so
easeful. I enjoy the practice more now than when I began. It has so much more
clarity and contentment.
FM:
How is it
to be co-abbot here?
AP:
It’s
helpful to share responsibilities and to have somebody to consult with.
Furthermore, there is not just one person at the top of the line who is the
single role model. Ajahn Amaro and I have different temperaments and provide
different models of how to be as a person. It’s also helpful to see that there
are different ways to practice. It gives people the opportunity to breathe a bit
easier and figure out for themselves what is going to work for them rather than
just emulating the ajahn. I’ve tried to keep my focus at Abhayagiri on
spending most of my time at the monastery. I want to be available for the
training of the monastics, for people who want to take on monastic training, and
for people who want to come to the monastery to practice here.
FM:
Is the
monastic training here different than in Thailand?
AP:
There are
definitely differences. In Thailand, it is a more autocratic model. That’s
just how it works. In America there is an expectation of being involved and
consulted in decision making. Also, the tendency of American society is toward
so much busyness. We have to be very conscious not to let the monastery get
swamped with that same kind of hyper-organization, where everything has to be
scheduled and there is very little free time.
It’s easy for that attitude to drift over into the monastery.
FM:
I have
heard that in Asia people like themselves more and don’t seem to have as much
self-hatred as Americans do. Would
you say this is true?
AP:
I don’t
think it’s that people like themselves more. They are just not so confused
about themselves, and there is a higher degree of acceptance of themselves.
There is not the same kind of complicated analyzing, proliferating and assessing
that goes on in Western minds, particularly Americans’!
FM:
How is the
emphasis of practice different in the West?
AP: I tend to steer people in the direction of what is conducive to harmony. I ask them to be really clear on their virtue, precepts and generosity. People are so wrapped up in themselves, so up in their heads that they don’t recognize the value of fundamental qualities like generosity and kindness. Generosity is not just material but includes generosity of time and serviceand giving of themselves. It gives a lot more confidence. There is a mystique that says: if I figure myself out, then I will be all right. But there is no end to that. People are so distant from themselves. This is why I also emphasize mindfulness of the body. It’s not immediately apparent how important it is to be centered and focused in the body. However, it cuts through the mind’s obsession with itself, its comparing and evaluating. The constant asking of what is the most advantageous thing for me. It goes on and on, this spinning out. Just coming back and being attentive to the body is the antidote. It might be the breath or the sensations in the body, the posture or the elements. The important thing is to be anchored in the body.
~ From Fearless Mountain, the Newsletter of the Abhayagiri monastery, USA, October 2003.