Phalanyani

will be off line for 10 days up to 3 weeks. retreat with Ajahn Tong in Thailand

Bhante, Yasa and Sumedha are on visa quest again. If they get a long term visa, Sumedha will come back with the others, if not she will stay on in Colombo until Thursday and wait for her dad to arrive for her ordination on Saturday.

Here the air sounds grumbling, the daily thunderstorm is approaching. Two groups of different monkeys yell at each other. The clan which lives here is a smaller kind of Macaques. The intruders are Langurs which, in Hindu believe are reincarnations of the god Hanuman. Here they just behave bad and not like divine reincarnations.

Not a Buddhist teaching but if you wish to see some professional pictures of the monkeys we have around here check the link:

http://www.arkive.org/toque-macaque/macaca-sinica/

http://www.arkive.org/toque-macaque/macaca-sinica/

as for a Bhikkhuni …

I’m enjoying the air con that has been installed in the office to keep the computer and other electronical devices moist, fungus and mold free. Too late for the camara but may be it even helps for this. Thanks to the kind donor!!!

Sitting here in comfort I was thinking about robes and bowls. Although my life has become somewhat more difficult since I wear the monks robes I am so grateful and feel so fortunate that I can rightfully wear them. They are the only shelter. The flag of the Arahant I heard them say. May I, one day, be worth the robes and bowl.

Recently I was reminded of the world outside, how it runs, how people act when they don’t know the Buddhist principals or are new to them. How fortunate am I that I could have forgotten for a while.

People talk bad about others, turn what one said around an tell it differently, colleges try to make another look bad and themselves good, when they talk to the bosses. There is tale baring, back biting. All just to get what one wants, to pump up the ego, to get a good standing.

Friends,  do not get involved, do not fight for your right. Stand for it, yes – but don’t fight. You will lose the fight as soon as you agree in you mind to take part in it. Even if it seems you won the fight, you will have lost all wholesomeness and thus lost all that is important.

When you are insulted, scolded accused, step back, step out if necessary. Take what is given to you as if it were a garland of flowers, something that can beautify you, support you. You can grow. And when you mind is pure, when you did nothing wrong, in thought, speech or action, then all accusations, all unwholesomeness will not be able to sully you, all will pearl off like a drop of water from a lotus leave.

May you have good friends, good colleges and peace in your minds.

Haven’t been posting for long, there was not so much to say. Although life went on moment for moment. Most of those moments were silent and peaceful, some moments were joyful and silent, some with the intention to put the Dhamma in words in the forum for our friends outside in the world and in some of the moments I could observe disliking. This was, when we received notice that if I will not put on a blouse I will not receive any help for the visa for Sri Lanka in future. Female shoulders seem to be too different from male shoulders. It is a ‘tradition’ for nuns to wear a blouse but it is against the vinaya. Which would be more binding for me than a tradition – although I am far away from wanting to cause trouble. I am happy to keep the vinaya to the best of my knowledge and ability, but I’m happy as well to wear a blouse if this will bring peace to peoples minds. I don’t want to cause trouble. And I do not wish to be the cause of wet dreams for anybody It is a weird feeling being the only Bhikkhuni worldwide who is not wearing a blouse, at least at the conventional level it’s weird and on this conventional level I’m a harmoniser. On the ultimate level I was noting freshness and ease since I didn’t wear blouse.

For now I’m wearing my upper robe over both shoulders, see how this will be accepted.

This ‘blouse – issue’ shows the relativity of time and space, somehow. While Bhante is sitting there in monks radio with his robe wrapped as if he is in a monastery, showing one shoulder, here and now, – I’m sitting in the very same monks radio set up as if I were in public, both shoulders covered, out of the space in another time, where and when to keep the Buddhist principals is not possible in a Buddhist country.

Anyway, noting has become very easy as it is all just ‘sweating, sweating’. It is a good proof of patience.

And patience, friends, is one of the paramis, the great virtues. It is the antidote for anger. May this parami grow abundantly in my mind.

The thing is, patience is as long as it is. It is not possible to say ‘I have patience until here and not further’ and then what goes beyond the point designated as ‘not further’ patience ends. That’s no patience! That would be ‘holding breath’ before exploding.

Patience is now, patience is now, in every moment or it has been a delusion. Metta is now, metta is now or it is an illusion. Equanimity is now, is now and now or mara finds you.

There is more work for me to do on that.

yesterday we went to Colombo to apply for one year visas for Samanera Nagasena and myself.

It is a tiring trip to the city and applying for the visa includes many hours of waiting in different places for the entire process to unfold.

We got our visas.

the roof of the new building for meditators, which is for meditation has become a nice playground for the monkeys who live here in the forest.

I watched them playing for a while this afternoon. It is interesting how similar to us they are. In first place I thought of the similarity of social structures, movements on plain ground, etc.

Then I remembered the simile the Buddha used to explain how the untrained mind of an ordinary person works: The mind is like a monkey jumping from tree to tree. Indeed, those monkeys weren’t still for a second, even the elders, although watchful and alert, were moving all the time, no moment of rest , no time for stillness or peace.

How important is it to train our minds! This is the only way to raise our minds out of the monkey-mind-state.

Day before yesterday I left home (Wat Rampoeng) to go home (Ekayana Magga aranya). The good thing about being one who has gone forth from home into homelessness is, that there where one’s butt touches the meditation cushion, where one hears the good Dhamma and receives enough food, there might be home for a while.

Home in the sense that one is there, entirely, with body and mind. Nowhere else to go. At least until one leaves.

Am tired of traveling, tired of applying for visas, tired of samsara.

Truth is, there is no home, but love is there.

Back to what had become my home, Wat Rampoeng, in northern Thailand, the sister monastery Of our hermitage in Sri Lanka. It is, compared with our place in Sri Lanka, quite luxurious here. It is busy, noisy, close to the city, but still somehow a good place for meditation. I met Ana, a member of sirimangalo who went here to practice because the rooms in our hermitage have not yet been ready to live in. She had a good retreat, as it seems. She left yesterday. We met earlier but didn’t speak all the time – I didn’t want to interrupt her seclusion. I hope she will post some of her insights when she comes back home.

For me the time is quite busy, Ajahn’s birthday is on monday the 23rd. It is custom in Thailand to give gifts when its your birthday and you can afford, so we are packing things as give aways and tidy the whole monastery. My job is watering plants and picking leaves. Good jobs, solitary, done in silence and with a secluded mind.

Yesterday I met a woman whom I know from before, she organized that I was picked up and brought to the airport by the tourist police last time, when I left Thailand half a year ago. Was quite a spectacular departure Nun deported by police … Anyway today she came back to visit and bring food and other things.

After stumbeling over her yesterday I went to see an old Mae Chii. She lived in a wooden kuti and walked on all four because her back was broken and bent she could not stand upright since many years. Now she got worse and will probably die soon, as it seems. We can’t talk because I don’t speak enough Thai and she doesn’t speak English but just being there and holding her hands for about an hour was good for both of us. For her because she has not so many people who come and hold her hands and try to relieve her pain which she has with every-  even the slightest – movement. It seems as if one of her eyes got lost somehow but I couldn’t really figure out.

Did I lament over having shingles and rheuma and and and? Well, I better stop lamenting and try to be mindful as much as possible to have nothing but metta, mudita, karuna, khanti and uppekha as response to this world with its humans and devas and whosoever. The body is subject to old age sickness and dead, without exception. It is not worth clinging to this thing however much we try to change it and to avoid  suffering and the bodies decay, it will come – but the mind can be changed, it can be beautified, purified and made worthy.

we left on the 4th to Colombo, to meet a yogi, get books, work on the visas and go to attend on a ceremony at Mahayangana, where they say the Buddha has visited.

I was supposed to stay at the monastery in the city until I will leave Sri Lanka on the 11th.

It was very, very crowded and noisy there at this city monastery, full of people bringing gifts for the ceremony all they long. After being there for one night we decided to go back to the forest. Bhante made the careful proposal and we all agreed overjoyed to go back to the peaceful forest instead of attending on a large ceremony.

For me our decision means I have another week here.