Mostly my weekly newsletters for prisoners

I’m not usually exactly what you would call a great traveller, that is unless you take into account the mileage I clock up every year visiting prisons and away on Buddhist related prison business. But last year was different. As usual I was away in January for the Ajahn Chah memorial event, and that was followed by a week in Burma and then another week back in Thailand. In May I was invited as a speaker to the UN Day of Vesak in Vietnam, and that was followed by a short conference on Mindfulness and another Vesak celebration at the UN building in Bangkok. In June every year at Wat Pah Pong there is what is known as the June Meeting, a huge Sangha gathering of monks from the various Wat Pah Pong branches mostly in Thailand but also from all over the world, and I went to that too. Then later in the year I was invited to an event at a new forest temple in Norway and in December I went to Slovenia to conduct the first ever novice ordination of a Slovenian in Slovenia.

Now this year, I’ve once again been on my annual trip to Thailand and Burma. The main reason for this is the Ajahn Chah Memorial Day on the anniversary of his death, January 16th, twenty-eight years ago.

I’ve written about the Ajahn Chah memorial event before and every year it follows much the same format but with the crowds never diminishing, but if anything, increasing, although as time passes and we all age it’s inevitable that practically every year there are one or two familiar faces missing from the front line of elder monks. It remains an extraordinary tribute to a monk who rose from very humble origins to become a teacher and inspiration to millions across the globe simply by being true to his monastic discipline, practising what the Buddha taught and talking about it in ways that spoke directly to the hearts and minds and experience of those who heard or have read what he said. As every year, in the afternoon there was a procession of many hundreds of monks followed by thousands of lay followers that from the main meeting hall then wound its way all the way out to and around the Ajahn Chah Chedi where his relics are kept, until with the entrances and steps packed with monks and the whole area gridlocked and covered in devotees the Acariya Puja was read out and we each made our offering of flowers, candles and incense.

Then two days later, I was off to Bangkok and from there to Mandalay. This too is becoming a habit. Our little party numbered five in all: me, Ajahn Manapo and three lay followers. From the same hotel as every year we went out each day to various beautiful and inspiring places.

We went twice to U Bein’s Bridge, an extraordinary affair, almost three quarters of a mile long, made of teak and spanning a huge lake that at this time of the year is partly dried up and cultivated, some of it already planted and some still being tilled by elegant high stepping white oxen. On our second day we were treated to a fabulous day out by a young lady who used to be at Warwick Uni and apart from when a certain football team was playing was a regular every week at Warwick Uni Buddhist Society and was its President for one year. She took us into the hills north of Mandalay to a magnificent cave that following a stream wound its way deep into the hillside. A cave made even more magnificent by the dozens, if not hundreds, of Buddha images placed here and there throughout its length. In some places these were grouped with other images to form tableaux illustrating events in the Buddha’s life. So, for example, there is the Buddha subduing Angulimala with, in the background, Angulimala’s mother who he was about to kill when he spotted the Buddha.  Then the same evening we paid a visit to the Jade Pagoda, a favourite now since we were introduced to it last year, a pagoda covered entirely with jade of various colours and types, the gift of one man. In the evening when all lit up and when most of the people there are Burmese it’s at its best. The almost casual but deeply rooted devotion of people in Burma at these sacred places is indescribable. There’s no forced or false piety, instead a moving, deep and abiding trust and affection that is almost tangible. The next morning, once again, we made our boat trip to Bagan down the mighty Irrawaddy. This colossal river absolutely captivates me. I’d love to spend more time exploring it. This year we were on the same boat as last year and again looked after by a young and very helpful Burmese woman keen to improve her English. A feature of the trip was a stop at a village where the local industry was the production of rather crude but practical earthenware pots. Last year when I was there, I wandered away from the main party and stood for a few minutes in a dusty pathway. Just then two women turned the corner bearing impressive loads on their heads. They had to pass me but one of them was wearing sandals. To her and the culture she comes from it would have been the height of disrespect to have walked past me with her sandals on, so she performed the impressive feat of bending and removing them without dislodging the load from her head before, still politely lowering herself, she passed by. That was the most unforgettable gesture of respect I’ve ever seen and would be a real lesson for modern Britain where the principle of respect seems to have had its day.

Yangon followed Bagan and here, as it is every year, it was the great Shwedagon that was the highlight of our visit. We deliberately stay in a certain hotel because of the perfect view we have of it, especially at night. This is the mighty Pagoda that dominates Yangon and has to be one of the most remarkable and holy places on earth. I well remember in 1987 a Burmese lady passionately insisting I must go there and how sceptical I was. But when I went, I was enchanted, and all these years and many visits later I remain enchanted. The effect, the atmosphere is indescribable.

By the time I flew back to Thailand, and a few days rest by the sea before my return flight to Heathrow, the coronavirus was beginning to hit the headlines. At Suwanabhumi Airport masks and concern were already visible. Nothing at Heathrow. But now the lockdown and a new and different world.

A PDF of my News & Musings as published is available here.

For many years now, September has meant for me one very important and unusual occasion, the Spring Hill Prison Buddha Grove Celebration. The Buddha Grove in HMP Spring Hill was built by prisoners for prisoners in 1992 and formally opened on a bitter October evening. After the ceremony the prisoners dispensed some soup that they had thoughtfully made to warm their guests. I, of course, didn’t have any but I suspect, though hot it might have been, delicious it probably wasn’t because some of the Thais present immediately asked if they could do the catering next year! And so they did and so they have ever since, with every few years a different group taking it on and only one year missed, right up to and including this September. Once again on Sunday the 16th we had a marvellous evening for our annual celebration of the Buddha Grove at HMP Springhill. Monks from five temples attended and contributed to the chanting. And as usual many Thai people gathered to offer the food, to give of their time and their culinary and flower arranging skills and to cook a Thai vegetarian meal for the entire prison and guests. We began the evening at the Buddha Grove with chanting and speeches.  Then after everyone had been to the dining hall and the food was over we returned to end the evening, as we always do, by processing three times around the Buddha Grove with candles, incense and flowers.

Now back to Burma. We left Ubon on January 17th immediately after the Ajahn Chah Memorial and drove down to Bangkok where we spent the night before flying to Mandalay the next day. There, our first stop once we’d checked in was a temple that proudly displays what it calls the largest book in the world, an extraordinary collection of 729 marble slabs on which were engraved over an eight year period from 1860 to 1868 the entire Tipitika, that is all the books of the Pali Canon, the oldest and earliest account of the Buddha’s life and teachings. It’s all in the Pali language and in Burmese script, and each slab is housed in its own mini temple, the whole collection covering 13 acres.

From there we drove out to a famous wooden bridge, U Bein’s Bridge. It’s almost three quarters of a mile long, rather peculiarly constructed and entirely of teak. It spans a huge lake which gradually dries up as after the rains the hot season advances. It’s one of several places in Burma to view spectacular sunsets and tourists armed with hugely expensive and complicated photographic paraphernalia flock here every evening to snap away. I’m afraid I deplore this craze to record everything instead of just being there. Time is a precious commodity, you know, and when you try to capture it, you miss it.

The next morning saw us at the old Royal Palace and once again I climbed the circular tower from where it is said that in 1885 Burma’s last Queen watched the British invading forces sailing up the Irrawaddy. Then in the afternoon we visited a few of the hundreds of temples clustered around the Sagaing Hill before a brief return to U Bein’s Bridge for the sunset and finally, as darkness fell, the Mahamuni Pagoda with its famed Mahamuni Image of the Buddha, the most revered in Myanmar.

Our third day was spent sailing down the Irrawaddy, previously known to the British colonialists and to Kipling as ‘the Road to Mandalay’. This is an enormous and majestic river and it’s a wonderful experience. We were on a smarter and faster boat than last year and it was only late afternoon when we pulled in to Bagan, home to a colossal number of ancient and mostly crumbling pagodas, just in time to check in to our hotel and walk down to a favourite riverside temple for yet another sunset. We stayed there as darkness fell and small oil lamps were lit along the terrace overlooking the river and around the pagoda. Unfortunately, on our boat down the river we’d been rather over exposed to the sun and I’d got badly burnt. I’m one of those fair skinned persons who can be cooked like a lobster and it’s not all that much fun when it happens. So, the next morning I was not at my best but on that, our fourth day, we did manage visits to some of the more prominent of Bagan’s two thousand odd pagodas before being dropped off at the airport in time for our flight to Yangon, formerly known as Rangoon and until a few years ago, the capital.

Here we stayed as in previous years at an hotel with a view of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda. This is a massive chedi, covered entirely in gold that sits on a small hill from where it dominates the entire city. It’s dedicated to the last four Buddhas and at each of the four cardinal points there is a temple and image of one of these four great beings. As you climb the stairs at one of the entrances it draws you on and as you emerge onto the piazza that surrounds it, it welcomes you. There you find all sorts: monks and nuns, lay people, tourists, children – all sorts – some walking and looking about them, some sitting telling their beads, some chanting, some meditating. It has a serenity and a life that’s addictive. We went there as soon as we’d arrived and stayed until closing time and early the next morning we were back there again.

Our five few days in this golden land were over all too soon. All that’s born must pass and our visit too had to come to an end but I hope we’ll be back again next year.

 

March, this year, began with a full moon. It was also the full moon that concluded the ancient lunar month of Magha. On another Magha full moon, more than two and a half thousand years ago the Buddha was staying on the Vulture’s Peak near Rajgir. Below him was the Bamboo Grove, the very first piece of land offered as a place where he and his disciples might stay. Suddenly, without any kind of prior arrangement, a great company of monks began to gather at the Bamboo Grove. Within a short space of time one thousand, two hundred and fifty monks had arrived and were sitting there. Every one of these monks was not only a personal disciple of the Buddha and had been ordained by him but was also an Arahant, that is Enlightened. Once they were all assembled the Buddha came down from the Vulture’s Peak and joined them and together they sat silently meditating into the night. Eventually, the Buddha addressed them and recited for them what is known as the Ovada Patimokkha.

Only three short verses long, this summary of the Buddha’s Teaching contains one particular verse that I want to draw your attention to and ask you to remember and often bear in mind. In translation it goes something like this: ‘Avoid all evil, cultivate the good and purify the mind; this is the teaching of all the Buddhas.’ I hope its meaning is clear. Do your best to control what you say and do and try to make sure that your actions and words do no harm. Keep well away from what is unskilful and brings no peace or happiness and do your best to promote what is good and productive of happy results. Then reflect, is that really good enough? It’s all very well but if your control slips or you forget, what then? Well we all know what happens. It doesn’t take much for bad words to escape your mouth or for you to do things that later you regret. And why is this? Isn’t it because your mind is not yet pure and still harbours greed, hatred and delusion? So, then there can be nothing else for it, you have to go further, to the very root of your bad behaviour, to the very place where all suffering begins. You still mustn’t neglect to be careful of what you say and do, that foundation in virtue is enormously important – it’s just that it’s not enough. But the peace and stability morality brings does enable you to gradually still and watch your mind – and so begin to gain insight into how things change, and how unsatisfactory and insubstantial they are. Thus, by seeing and knowing the true nature of things, the mind is eventually cleansed of greed, hatred and delusion.

At the celebrations of events like Magha Puja and at any important occasion the lay people always ask for and then receive and reaffirm the Three Refuges and Five Precepts. Having only a moment ago been speaking of avoiding evil and cultivating what is good, to help you do just that I recommend those precepts and suggest that you recollect them frequently and make sure they’re with you always, wherever you go and whatever you’re doing. And especially the least popular, the fifth, abstinence from alcohol and drugs. I know some people say it’s intoxication that you must avoid and therefore a small amount socially is alright but that’s not what the texts say. You don’t have to be unable to walk – even a sip is a breach of the precept. There is a saying, ‘First the man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes the man!’ We don’t say of the other precepts that a little bit of killing is alright or a little bit of stealing. No! In this practice it’s vital that you make your mind clear – how else can you begin to really see things as they are? That’s why we meditate and so if you’re determined to develop your mind there should be no place in your life for drink or drugs.

As many of you will know it’s been my habit for over twenty years to disappear to Thailand every January for around three weeks to attend the Ajahn Chah Memorial on the anniversary of his death. What hasn’t been my habit was to plan and book my trip well in advance but this time, since it was to be Ajahn Chah’s centenary year and a lot more people would be going, I thought I better had, so I did. But then as I’d always feared and why I don’t like planning too far ahead, the unexpected happened and I heard that on January 12th there was to be a ceremony at his birthplace where a gigantic stone pillar had been erected to mark the spot just a mile or so from Wat Pah Pong, his main temple. That was the day I was due to fly out but as soon as I heard this news I decided that I just had to be there for that. So, thankfully, I managed to change my booking to leave on the 10th – and then something else unexpected happened, I caught a very bad cold. So, it was all a bit touch and go. But never mind! I made it and on the morning of January 12th I took my seat at the ceremony marking the opening and the offering of this very special memorial at Venerable Ajahn Chah’s birthplace.

The three weeks that I was away fell into three distinct parts: first there were the few days in the NE of Thailand for Ajahn Chah’s Memorial; then five days in Burma, first in Mandalay, then a day on the Irrawaddy followed by Bagan and Rangoon; and finally, a week back in Thailand with a day or two in Bangkok and a rest on the coast at Ch’aam. For now, I’ll concentrate on the Ajahn Chah Memorial and report on the rest next month.

So, having arrived in Thailand in the afternoon of the 11th, I then flew on to Ubon and by the early evening I was safely settling in at a temple near Wat Pah Pong and being briefed about the programme for the following day. Next morning, soon after first light, we left to drive the few miles to Bahn Gaw, the village in which Ajahn Chah was born almost a hundred years ago. Arriving at the outskirts we left the cars and walked the remaining hundred yards to the site of his birthplace. There, now instead of the house in which he was born and the buildings that followed, there stands a twelve metre or forty foot high solid sandstone pillar with its crown fashioned to resemble a lotus bud.

Around it are sculpted stone railings with cement and stone friezes that depict scenes from Ajahn Chah’s life. The obvious inspiration for this impressive memorial ‘garden’ have been the huge stone pillars and stone railings erected by the Emperor Ashoka two thousand years ago in India to mark places of significance in the life of the Buddha. Those polished sandstone pillars, most of which have been broken, although one still stands at Vesali, were about fifteen metres tall. For this Ajahn Chah pillar, I was told it took three attempts by the quarry to extract an unbroken piece of stone large enough and then three days to transport it on the only vehicle in Thailand large enough for the job. Once erected and in position stone masons have spent the last four years working on it. Various monks have helped with the surrounding area and one, Luang Por Anek, has sculpted and crafted some of the stone work, particularly the two slabs you can see in the picture on either side of where I and the group are sitting. I think it’s a wonderful and hugely tasteful memorial to Ajahn Chah and like those Ashoka pillars I’m sure it will last for hundreds of years. And perhaps just like those Ashoka pillars, at some time in the distant future it will provide for future generations a clue that will lead them to learn of a remarkable man who rose from humble beginnings to live the Buddha’s message and in his own way teach and transform the lives of thousands all over the world. That’s what the Buddha’s teachings – and the example of people like Ajahn Chah – do, they change people utterly and for the better.

The birthplace ceremony was also the beginning of the five day event in remembrance of Ajahn Chah, for which thousands had gathered from all over the world. From the birthplace to Wat Pah Pong, the principal temple founded by Ajahn Chah, the road was lined with sunflowers and there were plenty more at Wat Pah Pong itself and around the Ajahn Chah Stupa. They were there to provide colour and decoration and in time, of course, an income for the good locals who had grown them.

Remember, I was still recovering from a nasty cold, so for the next three days I took it easy. On one day I did nothing much at all, on another just a drive and an easy walk through a large, wild forest temple where I lived for a year in 1973, and on another, first a visit to the free food stall sponsored and run by followers of The Forest Hermitage before a drive out to see an old friend and mentor who is in indifferent health but still manages to go on a long alms round every day in his electric wheelchair. I should have mentioned that to feed the thousands of devotees and hundreds of monks gathered at Wat Pah Pong, dozens, perhaps hundreds of food stalls dispensing free food were operating at all hours of the day and night.

   

   

Then came the 16th, the big day and the anniversary of Ajahn Chah’s passing in 1992. Every year since his funeral in ’93, the anniversary has been marked by a procession from the main meeting hall out to the stupa that houses his relics and then once the leading group have circled it and gridlock been achieved a tribute to Ajahn Chah is recited before we all place the symbolic offerings we’ve been carrying in or around the stupa. This year was much the same, only bigger because this year would have been his centenary and so the numbers were swollen with even more devotees from all over the world. It was, as always, a very moving occasion. Then in the evening that followed and through the night Dhamma talks were given in Thai and in English. Mine was in English.

And that was it. On the 17th it was all over, and people were rapidly dispersing to wherever they’d come from or to wherever they were going to next. For Ajahn Manapo and I it would be Burma next and so that afternoon we set off by car for Bangkok to be ready for our flight to Mandalay the next day.

In the Buddhist lunar calendar, each month ends on a full moon, and so on the full moon of Thursday, October 5th, the last of the three months of this year’s annual Vassa or Rains Retreat came to an end. On that full moon day each bhikkhu (Buddhist monk) so long as there is a quorum of five or more monks, must invite admonishment from the Sangha, or otherwise, if less than five, from however many monks are present. It’s an annual formality that reminds each monk that he’s in training and therefore will sometimes need help and correction. Because this is an important day for the Sangha, it’s the day we have chosen on which to celebrate the third of the Three Jewels, the Sangha; the other two, of course, being the Buddha and the Dhamma. In the suttas the word sangha, which literally means a group or community, is usually used in one of two ways: either it refers to the Samutti or conventional Sangha of ordained monks and nuns – bhikkhus and bhikkhunis – or to the Ariya Sangha of Noble Ones — persons who have realised one of the four stages of Awakening that commence with Stream-Entry. Those four stages are in fact a gradual and progressive peeling away of the ten fetters that bind us to the round of rebirth and perpetual suffering. Should you be fortunate enough to Enter the Stream that leads certainly to Enlightenment it will mean that the first three of those fetters, that include a belief in a self or personality, doubt and superstitious attachment to rites and rituals, have been overcome and discarded and you are bound within seven lifetimes at most to attain Enlightenment. Next comes the stage of Once Returner when a further two, sensual desire and ill-will, have been weakened and then you have only one more rebirth to endure. Thirdly, comes Non-Returner when those last two have been finally overcome and abandoned, then there is no more rebirth as a human. That leaves just five left to go, these are regarded as the higher fetters and therefore the more difficult to break free of. They are: the attachment to the realms of form and the formless realms, then conceit, agitation and ignorance. When they’re all gone, that’s when a person becomes an Arahant, an Enlightened One. These stages are clearly great achievements, not easily arrived at and therefore merit our admiration. Not only that, they are an inspiration and a reminder of what we could be doing. And so, whenever we recite a puja we recite not only the qualities of the Buddha and his Dhamma but also the qualities of this Noble Sangha. But let’s not forget the Samutti Sangha, the conventional Sangha, and its achievements and meaning for us. First of all, it is a source of stability and provides leadership and guidance. It has been in existence for a very long time, it stretches right back to the Buddha’s very first sermon. It was set up by the Buddha and during his lifetime he was constantly working with it and as things happened, refining and shaping it, and ensuring it remained fit for purpose – that of enabling one to make it from the hither shore to the farther shore, from Samsara to Nirvana, from bondage to freedom. And over the centuries the Sangha has guarded, cared for and against extraordinary odds maintained unadulterated, unspoilt, the Buddha’s essential message so that some 2.500 years later it is as clear as when first it was given. To this day, the Sangha continues to offer the opportunity for full-time training and practice. Yes, I know, it has had its ups and downs, and inevitably many of the ordinary mortals involved have lost and keep on losing their way but while the Sangha as an institution continues to exist, its great body of knowledge and experience along with what it stands for is not lost and remains to be used and regenerated. In both its forms the Sangha is a fabulous phenomenon and should be cherished.

You may not know this but all the Buddhist prison chaplains are members of Angulimala, the Buddhist Prison Chaplaincy and four times a year we have a day together at The Forest Hermitage. Not all come every time but usually twenty or more spend the day here with me. We meditate together, some rather fine Thai food is provided by some of the Thai ladies who regularly come here and we have a chance to discuss both prison and Buddhist matters. For our meeting in September we were blessed with a lovely sunny day and held our meeting outside in our small marquee. That gave us the extra space we needed to comfortably accommodate a slightly larger gathering than usual attracted, no doubt, by the presence of the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Peter Clarke, who joined us for the afternoon. He’s a very nice man and generously gave us a good talk and answered a range of questions. When it was over I presented him with a copy of a new book that had been launched at a conference in Thailand that I had spoken at in May. Published by Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University Press, it’s called Common Buddhist Text – Guidance and Insight from the Buddha and is an anthology of texts from the three main traditions of Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism. It’s rather good and I’m hoping it could provide a basis for a general Buddhist curriculum within the prisons. I brought back a few copies and I’ve had some more sent so I could let all the chaplains present take a copy too. So, there we all are in the photo clutching our respective copies.

The merry month of May, the month when we usually celebrate the anniversary of the Buddha’s Birth, Enlightenment and Parinibbana, known traditionally as Vesakha Puja or Vesak, was for me this year a most unusual month. First of all I had to go to Thailand for a few days to speak at a conference on Mindfulness and then later in the month back here in England there was a five day meeting of the Elders of the Wat Pah Pong Sangha that I had to attend.

In February, on the last day of my visit to Burma and Thailand, I called at the Thai Buddhist university of Mahachulalongkornrajavidyaly (MCU), the university that a few years ago honoured me with a Doctorate. While I was there it was suggested that I might speak at a conference they were planning for May about my experience in prison chaplaincy. I was interested because although I have been doing this for forty years and Angulimala with its team of Buddhist prison chaplains has been active in British prisons for more than thirty years, the international Buddhist world has hardly heard of us. This conference was to be the third organised by the International Association of Buddhist Universities (IABU) and was called, ‘Mindfulness: Traditions and Compassionate Applications.’ It was to have three main areas of interest: the first would look at the Texts, another the Meditation Traditions and the third, Contemporary Applications of Mindfulness. However, as the plans gathered steam my role switched from speaking on Chaplaincy in the Contemporary Applications section to talking on Ajahn Chah’s approach as one of the Meditation Traditions.

I flew out on the evening of Thursday, the 4th, arrived the following afternoon and early on Saturday morning set off for MCU and the conference. Monks and nuns men and women lay Buddhists, scholars and students, from Buddhist and other countries filled the vast hall where the opening ceremony was being held. Once we had all taken our places, there was a pause while we waited for the guest of honour, the newly appointed Sangharaja, to arrive. The Sangharaja is the monk appointed by the King to head the Sangha in Thailand. As he entered the hall and made his way down the central aisle, he stopped several times to speak to a number of us before taking the stage, where, having paid respects to the Triple Gem he gave a short speech of welcome and formally declared the conference open. Then he left. The rest of the morning was occupied with more speeches and the inevitable photo call, which was a pretty impressive operation and a hot one out in the midday sun. After that there wasn’t much for me to do for the rest of the day. The next morning was an even earlier start for the opening of a new building before the conference’s three symposia got under way. Unfortunately, during the night we had had a massive electric storm and the outdoor preparations for that early event were mucked up. Setting it all right and restoring power and so on then took so long that the morning’s programme had to be shortened with the consequence that although Pa-Auk Sayadaw, who was first on, managed the whole of his prepared speech, I and the monk that followed me had only about 25 minutes each.

The gist of what I had to say was that Ajahn Chah’s method of encouraging mindfulness relied on certain structures. There was the physical layout of the monastery with its air of calm, logical serenity; then the structure of the day, the routine of morning and evening chanting and group meditation, the walk for alms to a nearby village, the ritual of the one meal, work and personal time to do one’s washing, memorise and meditate; then the backbone of our training was the observance of the Vinaya or monastic discipline which we had to learn and practise; and finally, the various duties to be performed for our seniors and other monks. All these structures were used as tools to develop and encourage a practice of mindfulness. I didn’t have time to do much more than give an outline but the synopsis introducing my effort, was included in the conference book where a number of the talks and contributions were published in varying degrees of detail.

On the third morning we all transferred to the UN Building in Bangkok to celebrate the UN Day of Vesak. Traffic around Bangkok can be a nightmare, especially early morning and so I had been told to take my time getting there as nothing of importance would be happening in the morning. I rolled in at about 10 o’clock and as I was being shown to my seat I was told that my speech – the first I’d heard of it – was due in about ten minutes! I think I did all right. In the afternoon, after yet another huge photo call and loads more photos – I had my picture taken so many times! – the popular Princess Soamsavali made an appearance and presented some of us with a very nice Buddha-Rupa each. Once the afternoon’s proceedings had wound to a close we all made our way by bus or car to Buddha Montone, a huge and beautiful park to the West of Bangkok dedicated to the Buddha. It’s set out as a mandala, which is what montone means, with a huge fifty-two foot high image of the Buddha at its centre and around it areas dedicated to the Buddha’s Birth, his Enlightenment, his First Sermon and his final Passing. Here we gathered, again with the Sangharaja presiding, for a ceremony of chanting. When that was over and the Sangharaja had left, we went in procession to the Buddha Image and circumambulated it three times. It was a very moving occasion.

And that was it. The next day I was on the plane back to England. In what was left of the week I managed to attend Buddha Day ceremonies in a couple of prisons, then on the Sunday was our public celebration of Vesakha Puja at The Forest Hermitage.

Towards the end of the month our meeting of Elders of the Ajahn Chah tradition and Wat Pah Pong was held at Amaravati. It was a big occasion over five days with a lot of monks from the various Wat Pah Pong branches throughout the world. There’s not much here to say about it other than it was a useful and enjoyable time.

As you can imagine, these two events rather disrupted my normal routine and if you will add to it the work being done to re-roof the Forest Hermitage I’m sure you will understand that my practice has had to adapt to unusual circumstances. But that’s all right, that’s how it should be because, you know, nothing stays the same and everything, well, practically everything, is uncertain and we never know quite what’s round the corner. We have only two certainties: that we will die and that everything else is uncertain! That’s it.
Be well and be happy.

By now it’s pretty well known that I’m away every January. I go to attend the memorial day for Ajahn Chah, held every year at his forest temple, Wat Pah Pong, in the North-East of Thailand on January 16th, the anniversary of his passing twenty-five years ago. It’s an amazing occasion, hundreds of monks gathered from the many branch monasteries all over Thailand as well as various far flung parts of the world, and thousands of white clad lay devotees, also from all over Thailand and all over the world. In the afternoon, following sermons, one for the laity and another for the monks, there’s a procession that wends its way out and around until it encircles the Ajahn Chah Chedi. Once gridlock is achieved and everyone is still, a dedication to Ajahn Chah is read out and then everyone surges forward to lay their offerings in and around the chedi. Far from diminishing as the years go by the crowd seems every year to get bigger and bigger and I expect that next year it’ll be even bigger as then it will be Ajahn Chah’s centenary.

In the three weeks or so that I am away I usually also visit friends and one or two other places that mean something to me. One of them is a charming little forest temple on a small island not too far from Wat Pah Pong. Its importance lies with the fact that here there once lived an extraordinary monk about whom we know very little, except that it was from him that the great Ajahn Mun, he who revived the forest and wandering tradition and inspired Ajahn Chah, learnt meditation. The silence that surrounds this monk, the fact that he wrote nothing and lived back in the days when there were no recording devices, not only adds to the mystique but reminds us that the silence he cultivated was the silence of a still and penetrative mind, a mind that cuts through to the very heart of wisdom and understanding. On that island they have preserved the hut in which he lived and in a chedi, specially built and dedicated to his memory, a few glass fronted show cases display his coarse hand-woven and hand-sewn robes, his almsbowl and a few simple, personal requisites. Monks like him, like Ajahn Mun and later Ajahn Chah, were extraordinary. They lived simply, had little and few expectations, could walk and wander for miles without map or compass and whatever their austere life threw at them, they could put up with it and learn from it. They had no audience and their aim was to leave no trace. Their’s was a way of discipline, contentment with little, endurance and the ability to watch their mind.

How times have changed. Even when I was a young monk living in the forest, we had no phones, nothing very special to eat and sometimes not much of it, practically nothing to read, letters went out only once in a while and took forever and you know, it didn’t matter. Well, we have to accept the world has changed and there’s no going back to that simplicity but there’s nothing to stop us drawing inspiration from the past and admiring the sheer courage, determination and tenacity of those great monks.

After a few days in North-East Thailand it was time to fly down to Bangkok and there board another plane for Mandalay in Upper Burma, described in the guide book that a Burmese couple in Warwick had thoughtfully provided us with, as not only the cultural heartland but also the spiritual hub of Buddhism in Myanmar. In and around Mandalay and across the mighty river on the Sagaing Hills are so many beautiful temples and ancient pagodas. They say that almost two thirds of the many thousands of monks in Burma live in and around Mandalay. And of course there are the nuns too, resplendent in their pink robes. We were so lucky, that same Burmese couple in Warwick had laid on for us a car and driver and so we spent two and a half days touring the many temples, the old royal palace, and climbing up and down countless steps. Then on our last day, as the dawn was breaking we embarked on a rough old boat to travel that great river, the Irrawaddy, immortalised by Kipling as ‘The road to Mandalay, where the flyin’-fishes play.’ We, of course, were leaving Mandalay, going back down that mighty river that flows the length of Burma to Rangoon and the sea but our destination was Bagan. For ten hours, from sunrise to sunset, we were on that boat, tacking back and forth across this tremendously wide but not very deep river, the captain faithful to a navigable channel. You might have thought it would have been boring after a while but not at all. It was absolutely marvellous.

When we disembarked it was already getting dark and by then we were tired but before us we had a day and a half to explore the crumbling ruins of Bagan, this magical place that teems with ancient brick built pagodas, many of which house huge and extraordinarily inspiring Images of the Buddha. You have some in this year’s calendar. Again, it was a lot of walking with many steps to climb up and down, and it was so hot.

Then lastly, there was a short flight to Rangoon and straight to the wonderful Shwe Dagon. This must be one of the most remarkable places on earth, a place that you just can’t get enough of. It’s a huge pagoda dedicated to the last four Buddhas and covered in gold, surrounded by all sorts of lesser temples and smaller pagodas and where you go just to be there. Some people are meditating, some telling beads, some are simply strolling and chatting but everyone is cocooned in a great cloud of respect and devotion.

Respect was the theme of our pilgrimage: respect for the Buddha and for the Dhamma that can lift us and enable us to purify our minds. Respect too for Ajahn Chah who dedicated his life to living the Dhamma and making it available.

Here’s my December Newsletter. It repeats the account of the Spring Hill Buddha Grove Celebration in the previous blog but has some new stuff as well. It might not print very well but at least it should be readable on your screens.

Twenty-four years ago I was sat in the boardroom at HMP Spring Hill, a Cat D prison near Aylesbury,  with a group of prisoners complaining about having no dedicated place to meet and practise Buddhism. One of them observed that there wasn’t much space inside but plenty outside and from that sprang the idea to build a Buddha Grove – a Buddhist shrine set in a small grove of trees in the grounds, just a few yards from the main building and the Governor’s office. With men of all faiths and none pitching in it was completed in record time and at the rather grand opening one freezing November evening the men thoughtfully warmed their guests with soup, which I don’t think could have been described as delicious! So some Thai followers of mine who were there asked if they could do the catering next year. And so they did and so they have, the group changing and evolving as the years have passed, every year but one ever since.

This year, once again, on Sunday, September 18th, at what has become an established event in the Spring Hill calendar, the annual Buddha Grove Celebration and Re-Dedication, a coachload of Thai people turned up to feed everyone there that evening – the entire prison, prisoners, guests, staff and the few Buddhist prisoners in nearby Grendon as well. At what was for many of them their day off from another restaurant kitchen these good people gave of their time, their food and their joy in giving to cook a wonderful vegetarian Thai meal for over four hundred.

At the ceremony at the Buddha Grove that began the evening celebration we had monks from six temples chanting followed by short addresses from previous governors and myself. Sadly, one notable absence this year was Lord Avebury who died in February. He had never missed one of these until a couple of years ago when he became too frail to attend. Now this year we paid a special tribute to him and together with members of his family we planted a tree in his memory to one side of the Buddha Image. The inscription on the plaque reads, ‘In Memory of Lord Avebury. A friend to prisoners and of this Buddha Grove.’ Then everyone trooped down to the Dining Hall to queue up together and eat together, prisoners and guests alike. When that was done back we all came to the Buddha Grove to make a triple circumambulation with candles flowers and incense. And so the evening wound to a close with some presentations and a chanted blessing. An extraordinary evening in the life of an English prison!

As usual my thanks to everyone who helped to make this a wonderful evening, especially to Khun Peter, to Khun Ting and to all the good Thai people who gave so much and worked so hard. Anumodana!

This year I’ve been trying to revive my monthly newsletter, principally for the prisoners who, unfortunately, don’t have on-line access. So here’s the latest. It might not print very well but at least it should be readable on your screens.

 

Printed copies can be made available on request.

It’s traditional just before or in the early part of the Vassa for bhikkhus to go and pay respects and ask forgiveness of particular senior monks who may be living nearby or who are otherwise close and of the same tradition.

So, shortly before my birthday Ajahn Amaro came with a group from Amaravati not only to pay their respects and ask forgiveness but also to wish me a Happy Birthday.

Then yesterday, Luang Por Kampong came with his attendant monk to pay their respects and ask forgiveness and surprised me by being accompanied again by Ajahn Amaro and a small group from Amaravati. Luang Por Kampong is spending the Vassa at Bradford-on-Avon and I’ve known him for many years. When he first entered monastic life and was still in white prior to ordaining as a novice, Luang Por Chah sent him to stay at the remote forest temple on the shores of a huge lake where I was then living.

This year, Āsālha Pūjā, the anniversary of the first teaching the Buddha ever gave, fell on Tuesday, July 19th and the following day was the day of entering the Vassa, the annual Rainy Season retreat, incumbent on all bhikkhus and sāmaneras to observe for three months. As usual our public celebration had to be held on a Sunday when most people are free to attend and the nearest Sunday being the 17th, that was the day we chose. Now the 17th of July just happens to be my birthday, so, I’m afraid that was added to the celebration. Fortunately the weather was good, it didn’t rain, although to begin with it was a bit cloudy but around midday the sun came out and when we gathered outside for the offerings and the sermon that followed it was blazing.

My talk focussed, as you might have expected, on the Buddha’s first sermon. I reminded my listeners of what had led up to it: the Buddha’s Enlightenment, then his observation that the world and the people in it were obsessed with attachment and unlikely to heed him but how he had been persuaded by Brahma Sahampati that there would be some with but little dust in their eyes and therefore, reflecting that people, like lotuses in a pool, are at different stages of development but all seeking the light, thankfully, he decided to speak. For the first to hear him he sought out the five ascetics who’d been his companions when he’d been fasting and who had left him when he gave up that practice. And so two months after the Enlightenment there he was with them in the deer park where they were staying. Had you passed by you would have seen six weather beaten men, men who had lived rough without house or home for many years. They would have been poorly dressed and had it not been India where holy men and ascetics have always been revered, they would probably have been condemned and avoided. Had you crept closer you would have seen that one was speaking while the other five listened and what you would have heard would have been the Buddha outlining his message of the Middle Way, the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, the very same profound message that he was to teach for the remaining forty-five years of his life. At the end of the first teaching one of those five had a major awakening and became a Sotāpanna, which means he had entered the stream leading certainly to
Enlightenment.
Following my talk we circumambulated the Buddha Rupa three times carrying candles flowers and incense. And then I sat while, to celebrate my birthday, people queued to ceremonially bathe my hands.

It was a great day and I am thankful to everyone who helped make it so, including all the two hundred and more people who turned up on the day. Anumodanā!

 

The Memorial for Lord Avebury was held at the Royal Institution in London’s Mayfair on Thursday, June 30th at two o’clock in the afternoon. It was a terrific afternoon.

We drove down from Warwickshire and on our way did a loop off and back onto the M40 to pick up Jim who was a great fan of Lord Avebury and had corresponded with him for years. It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon and a smooth and trouble free journey. The only awkward bit was the last bit, finding our way through the oneway streets of Mayfair to the Royal Institution. We made it in plenty of time and were very courteously made welcome and taken to our seats in the lecture theatre where the main event was to take place. Unsurprisingly, there were so many of the great and the good mostly from the world of politics and the realm of human rights. You might spot in the photographs below Bianca Jagger in the same row as us and Jeremy Corbyn in the one behind us. He was one of the speakers and despite his current troubles sat through the whole afternoon.

      

      

This was what I had to say:

Good afternoon.

More than thirty years ago a certain prisoner told me that Lord Avebury, with whom he was corresponding, was a Buddhist. Then one evening I was sitting in another prison cell and the man I was talking to told me that he had complained bitterly that there were no books on Buddhism in the prison library. He said he’d written to Lord Avebury. ‘And look,’ he said and he pulled out from under his bed a box of Buddhist books that the local library had sent in for him – all because of a letter from Lord Avebury.

I thought I’d better get in touch with this man and so I did and over the years we became close friends and frequently fellow conspirators.

And now he’s gone!

When someone close to us, someone we love and admire dies we find ourselves face to face with the stark reality of Change. Change that waits for none of us, whoever or whatever we might be.

The Buddha once asked his disciples if what they experienced, what they were conscious of seeing, touching, tasting, smelling and thinking about was permanent or impermanent. Unsurprisingly they answered, ‘Impermanent.’

Then the Buddha asked them if what was impermanent and forever changing was satisfactory or unsatisfactory. Obviously what we cannot grasp or keep is bound to be a source of frustration and discontent and therefore the answer was ‘unsatisfactory.’

The Buddha went on, ‘Can it be said, of what is impermanent and unsatisfactory, that this is mine, this am I, this is myself?’ No.

And so we come to the true nature of our existence that the Buddha said we must see and understand if we are ever to learn to let go of greed and attachment and free ourselves of suffering. Our true nature that the Buddha described as being Impermanent, Unsatisfactory and without self, soul or substance.

Eric, I believe, derived great inspiration from these three characteristics. They were the driving force behind what he did. He saw that if the self was a delusion then the terms we use to separate ourselves and which generate greed and aversion are mere conventions, as such there is no reason for separation and no justification for the oppression of one by another. With the letting go of self, loving-kindness, for which Eric was well-known, blossoms. And if all is change, it means things can be changed and so whatever is unsatisfactory, whatever is a source of suffering, can be changed and changed for the better. As we all here know very well, that’s what Eric was dedicated to, to changing things for the better.

But now he is gone and all that remains is for us to love him, to remember him and to let him go.

When I last saw him he asked for some chanting at his funeral, which we did, and today as well. So to conclude, I’m going to recite one short verse that is usually chanted on occasions like this.

Aniccaa vata sa”nkhaaraa — uppaada vaya dhammino
Uppajjitvaa nirujjhanti — tesa.m vuupasamo sukho.

Impermanent are all conditioned things, Their nature is to rise and fall:
Having come into being, they pass, Release from them is bliss supreme – Nirvana.

After the speeches we were invited for refreshments and to view a little exhibition of memorabilia from Lord Avebury’s long and varied life.

Most generously it had been his wish that the donations in his memory should be made to Angulimala, the Buddhist prison Chaplaincy of which he was the Patron. Donations are still trickling in but so far well over a thousand pounds has been given.

At this year’s Spring Hill Buddha Grove Celebration in September we are going to plant a tree in his memory at the Buddha Grove.

I usually only go to Thailand once a year, in January. That’s my normal habit. But every year in June there is a big Sangha meeting at Wat Nong Pah Pong and I know I really ought to try and go to that sometimes. The trouble is not only the expense but the fact that I love the long, light, summer evenings here and I’m reluctant to be away and miss them.

This year I heard that there was something to be discussed at that annual meeting that I felt I should lend my support to and I was encouraged to go, so I went. It was only a short trip. I flew out from London on the midday flight on Tuesday, June 14th and I returned the following Monday, arriving back at the Forest Hermitage in the evening.

Having left here on Tuesday, it meant I arrived in Thailand early Wednesday morning. I was met and taken immediately to Yod’s place to eat and from there on to Don Meuang Airport for the domestic flight to Ubon. At Ubon I was taken first to Wat Pah Pong to join a meeting of  the Maradoc Dhamm, the organisation that looks after Ajahn Chah’s books and image. I didn’t stay too long. Then I went over to check in at Wat Pah Nanachat where I had a quick shower and rest before going back again to Wat Pah Pong for a preliminary meeting in preparation for the big meeting the next day.

Thursday morning I went for alms in Bahn Bungwy and then later on, shortly before midday, we went over to Wat Pah Pong for the big meeting. The opening chanting was already under way when we got there so we had to quickly find our places and join in. It all went as well as could be expected and after about four and a half hours of sitting there without a break, all the time hot and sticky, it was over.

The next day, Friday, June 17th, was Luang Por Chah’s official birthday. We’ve worked out that he was probably born on May 17th, 1918, so I suppose June 17th was when his birth was registered. Anyway, the Friday was his official birthday so a few of us went over to Bahn Gawr to have a look at the huge stone pillar that’s been set up on the site of the home in which he was born. The idea for this pillar originated with the stone pillars that the Emperor Ashoka set up in various places in India that were closely associated with the Buddha. Like those this one is one solid piece of sandstone and something like 45 feet high. They’re still busy working on it, sculpting it and so on and the whole thing with the area around it surrounded with Ashokan style stone railings and murals is supposed to be ready in two year’s time, which will be Luang Por Chah’s centenary.

                 

From there we went up the road to Wat Pah Pong and to the Ajahn Chah chedi to pay our respects at his relics.

That evening I flew down to Bangkok and from there I was driven to Cha’am for a couple of days quiet by the sea. And that was very nice with on both the days I was there some very welcome visitors. Then on the Monday it was an early morning drive to Bangkok, where I had a meal, got ready and then it was off to the airport for a very comfortable flight back to England.

Following on from a previous posting about January in Thailand I must tell you about our trip to Burma also in January.

After the big Ajahn Chah Memorial event at Wat Pah Pong and having shown some of our followers around a few forest temples, Ajahn Manapo and I went South and had a few days rest by the sea. Then in the evening of January 27th we were driven back to Bangkok and early the following morning were on a plane making the relatively short hop over to Yangon (Rangoon). There we had a little wait in the old colonial style terminal, now Domestic only in a rapidly expanding airport complex. When I first went to Burma in 1987 and was stranded unable to leave, I spent nearly a day in that building which then was the entire airport terminal but not anymore! Next we were loaded onto an old prop driven plane of doubtful vintage for the final leg of our journey to Bagan. This is where I’d wanted to go and very fortunately and very kindly someone had made it possible.

      

Our little party consisted of Ajahn Manapo, Ant who was once one of the leading lights at Warwick Uni’s Buddhist Society and is now Dr Ant and teaching at Naresuan University in Thailand, and Ken, a very generous Thai man who was once a student in London and Warwick and who generally looks after me when I’m in Bangkok.

      

Once we’d safely landed, located the car and driver sent to meet us, been driven to the hotel, checked in, tidied up and had a cup of tea, we set off out to explore. We only had that afternoon and the next day and before us lay 16 square miles of historic devotion that included some 2000 pagodas and temples built in the 11th to 13th centuries when Bagan was the capital of the Myanmar dynasties. We spent practically all the daylight hours at our disposal padding round these ancient, dusty and decaying monuments. Most contained huge and wonderful images of the Buddha and in at least one that we visited, the last four Buddhas. Nearly all were in desperate need of conservation but without an army of experts and a colossal budget there’s obviously not much more can be done than the occasional crude attempts we saw to keep them safe and accessible. Our last evening was spent in the temple pictured below, where we watched the sun gradually dipping behind the distant mountains, while on the river below a fisherman messed about in his boat and further upstream a large riverboat lay at its moorings.

       

Then the next morning we flew back to Yangon. We were met by a young man who had helped look after me last year when I was honoured with the Aggamaha Saddhamma Jotikadhaja title. He took us to his family home for the meal and from there to our hotel where we were given a room with a wonderful view of the Shwe Dagon, the colossal and amazing pagoda that dominates the city.

  

That same afternoon we went first to a smaller pagoda near the river where we were to meet a young woman who used to be one of my students at Warwick and from there with her as our guide we first took a look at the river, the mighty Irrawaddy River or Ayeyarwady River, the same river that we had seen at Bagan and that flows from north to south through Myanmar, before making our way to the great Shwe Dagon. Although you hardly realise it, as clustered around it are numerous smaller pagodas and ornate building, it’s built on the crest of a small hill that you ascend through a long walkway sheltering successive sets of stairs and escalators that gradually take you up and up. There as in all the pagodas we’d visited you go barefoot. At the top, surrounding the main colossal structure and bounded by temples and pagodas, is a space where you may walk, sit and meditate, tell your beads, stop and chat or look about you, or just be; all the while enveloped in an extraordinary atmosphere of respect and devotion. It’s intoxicating. We spent hours there and early next morning went back for more.

    

The next day after an early morning at the Shwe dagon, it was back to the hotel for our meal, then a short time with cold drinks by a lake followed by a brief tour of the building that housed the last great Buddhist Council before boarding our flight back to Bangkok. There, in Thailand, I had a couple of days left to visit a friend’s monastery before the long flight back to London and winter!

Sometime ago I was asked if I would give my support to the campaign to make Buddhism the State religion of Thailand. I was reluctant and did not believe that a State religion was a good thing. I thought that it damaged the religion that was chosen and that because of that favouritism for one and the resultant bias others would be discriminated against. But as I thought about it and began to write I realised that we in this country have discovered a powerful argument in its favour.

On the one hand, it can be argued that any religion is better off without the baggage of national, cultural or political ties; and that the ethnic and religious diversity within a nation is safer when there is not a dominant, national religion.

But on the other hand, it can as well be argued that a nation without a national religion is one bereft of moral compass and encouragement to virtue and integrity; and without a national religious commitment the diversity of faiths and the freedom to practise a religion of choice is neither understood nor protected.

Here in England the Church of England is the established religion headed by the Monarch and the latter of those two positions has been our experience. Religion has been protected, not only the national, established church but the various minority faiths as well. We are free to practise our religion of choice and diversity is respected. For example, in February I was invited to attend, along with the leaders of other faiths working in prison chaplaincy, a meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is keen to understand and support our work.

Providing therefore that it is tolerant of other faiths, I have come round to supporting the establishment in law of a national religion.

Buddhism exemplifies and actively promotes loving-kindness and compassion, tolerance and understanding and has long been at the heart of Thai culture making a priceless contribution to its welfare and development. I believe, therefore, that it deserves to be recognised as the national religion of Thailand.

This year my annual pilgrimage to SE Asia was in two parts, the first to NE Thailand and Wat Pah Pong for the Ajahn Chah Memorial Day and the second a short trip to Burma, to Pagan and the Shwe Dagon in Rangoon.

Every year but one since the passing of Ajahn Chah on January 16th, 1992, I have attended first the funeral and then the annual Ajahn Chah Memorial Days. Way back when these annual events first began I determined that so far as I could and for as long as they might continue I would be there every year. Since then I’ve only missed one year when I had the flu and couldn’t travel. I go to pay my respects, to remember Luang Por Chah and his extraordinary example and to go back to my monastic roots and to privately renew my commitment to do my best to practise the Buddha-Dhamma in the style and to the standards that Ajahn Chah taught. People sometimes, perhaps tongue in cheek, speak of this trip as my annual holiday, and yes, it is a break, but that’s not really what it’s about, really it’s a pilgrimage.

This year, having made sure I could be at the first of Warwick Uni Buddhist Society’s Monday meditation evenings, I flew out for Bangkok on Tuesday January 12th, arriving the following afternoon and then jumping in another smaller plane to go onto Ubon by the evening. Of course it was dark by the time I was met and driven to Wat Pah Nanachat where I was to stay for a few days but, nevertheless, it was good to be back. The following morning I only managed a short almsround to the people gathered outside the main gate and then after the meal I was driven to another large forest temple near the Cambodian border to visit my old friend Ajahn Nudang. Now in indifferent health following a couple of strokes, he’s a little bit older than me, a little bit senior and a very dear friend and teacher of mine. We’ve known each other for forty-five years. I spent the afternoon with him, watched him career around on the electric tricycle they’ve bought him to get about on and admired his new eating hall.

On the 14th I managed a longer almsround through the village of Bungwy and that day after

 

the meal I went over to Wat Nong Pah Pong for a meeting of the foundation that looks after the publications and image of Ajahn Chah. And from there we went to have a cup of tea with another old friend.

The next day was the big day itself, the 16th, the anniversary of Luang Por Chah’s passing in 1992 at the age of 73. We went over from Nanachat to Wat Pah Pong at around midday. That was just in time for the Dhamma Desanas, one for the laity and another for the monks.

Immediately they were both over we quickly assembled in the main sala and prepared for the procession that then slowly wound its way out through the old main gate, along the path that skirts the old boundary wall, down one of the avenues that approaches the Ajahn Chah Chedi and then partially around the chedi until gridlock.

Then groups of us took up positions at the four chedi doors and the Acariya Puja in honour of Ajahn Chah was recited. Afterwards we placed the flower offerings we had been carrying, paid our respects and retreated to the shade of the outside sala for cool refreshment.

This year amongst the thousands gathered at Wat Pah Pong there was a group of Thai people from England, people associated with me who often come to the Forest Hermitage. They had organised one of the free food stalls and their offering had been egg and chips! They were joined by another group, mostly from Bangkok and after the 16th for a couple of days we went together to visit some of the more local branch monasteries of Wat Pah Pong. One of them was Ajahn Nudang’s and another the huge and beautiful forest monastery on the banks of a colossal man-made lake close the Lao and Cambodian borders where I had spent my second year as a monk in 1973. And on the way back from there we called briefly at the small island wat where the great Ajahn Sao, the teacher of Ajahn Mun, had lived. Ajahn Mun had been an extraordinary monk who spent most of his life wandering in remote places practising meditation and teaching those brave enough and committed enough to stay with him. Almost single handed he revived the Forest tradition. For our group’s last day we went to Sakorn Nakorn to visit Ajahn Mun’s museum and on the way back we spent the late afternoon and early evening at the great chedi of Dhat Panom. While we were there I was privileged to be allowed to go inside the chedi and later I took great pleasure in being just outside the main compound, soaking up the atmosphere and listening to the birds roosting, the novices chanting and watching the light change as the evening drew in.

After that I think I had a day when I didn’t go anywhere and then it was down to Bangkok, some old friends and a few days rest by the sea before – Burma. And I’ll tell you about that next time.

My  Dhamma Talk given at Amaravati’s Kathina 2015

I quite confidently thought I was coming here for a fairly easy time. I’m at that age when I quite enjoy having an easy time. However, I am very pleased and honoured to be asked to speak to you for a little while. I’m not a great talker, so don’t expect too much. I won’t be keeping you for very long.

It is very nice to be here; I enjoy coming to these occasions – and I quite enjoy too the connection because, as Ajahn Amaro has told you, I came over here with Luang Por Chah and Ajahn Sumedho, on what was supposed to have been a two month visit. It took me nine and a half years to get back to Thailand. I well remember the day when Luang Por Chah called Ajahn Sumedho and me together and said that he, of course, would have to go back, but we would stay.

I must say I was quite pleased really. We were in the Hampstead Vihara , which was the place where I first discovered Buddhism. At that time, I had known and had been taught by Kapilavaddho, who founded the English Sangha Trust. Before I went to Thailand, I went to see him, and he said to me, “You got to promise to come back. They go out there and they never come back: that Panyavaddho is never going to come back. You make sure you come back.” So I said, “Yes.” I promised I’d come back. So, that’s what I did.

And because Buddhism had meant so much to me, I felt I wanted to make it available, or help to, or have some involvement in making it available in this country. In some small way I’ve done that, particularly in the prisons. I didn’t seek out to go to the prisons. But rather the Prison Service back in those days had the Hampstead Buddhist Vihara as their address for matters Buddhist. So it was in 1977 that suddenly we had some letters and phone calls from prisons asking for someone to go to visit their Buddhist prisoners.

I remember I was on a train with Luang Por Chah and I asked him what he thought. I was a bit nervous about asking him as I was wondering what he would say. But I asked him what he thought about my going to the prisons and he just said, ‘Pai!’ It means ‘Go!’ So that was it. And I’ve been going to prison ever since. It’s been a long sentence! So long that I keep seeing not only the same prisoners again and again on sentence after sentence, but I’m even seeing their sons. I sometimes fear that I’m going to die in a prison.

But I quite enjoy what I do in the prisons. There have been some great responses from people in prison. Most of the Buddhists in prison have come to Buddhism while in prison. Lately, of course, we’ve had an influx of Vietnamese, but otherwise most of the guys I see – I go mostly to men’s prisons – have come to Buddhism while in prison, and it’s meant quite a lot to them. Some of them have made enormous changes, at great odds too. They don’t have the luxury that you have of being able to come to a place like this (Amaravati) or go to a book shop and browse the many books that are now available on Buddhism, and all that kind of thing. They can’t do that or look on the Internet and see all the stuff that is available there. They can’t do any of that. And they don’t have the opportunity to encounter a kind of Buddhist culture, as you do. And often, of course, their peers and friends ridicule them for what they are doing. But such is their commitment that they keep at it. And that is marvellous. You have to admire the resolve of some of these people, their determination to practise, to improve themselves, and to make changes. And that, of course, is what we are supposed to be doing with the Buddhist practice, to make changes, some very fundamental and important changes in our lives.

Today we have come to celebrate the Sangha. It’s a great Sangha occasion. In the prisons, a few years ago – well it seems to me now quite a long time ago – the Prison Service asked me what Buddhist festivals could be permitted. As we have people of different schools of Buddhism, and all that, and they would only allow us three festivals a year, I decided that we would celebrate the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha. So it was fairly easy, we chose Vesakha Puja for Buddha Day and Asalha Puja, the anniversary of the Buddha’s first sermon, for Dhamma Day. And then I decided to have Pavarana day, the last day of the Vassa, as Sangha Day.

Because of that I’m very conscious as I go through each year of celebrating and contemplating these three jewels. Lately as I’ve been going around the jails we’ve had some celebrations of the Sangha. So I’ve been talking to the men about the Sangha. About the Ariya Sangha, about the conventional Sangha and the huge debt we have to the conventional Sangha for maintaining and keeping alive the Buddha sasana for all these many years. It’s been no mean feat!

Some years ago, I was invited to a meeting about chaplaincy in hospitals. They assumed I knew something about chaplaincy because I had been going to the prisons for all this time. So I went along to this meeting, I sat through it, and they started talking about what criteria they should put in place when deciding whether a person was fit to be a Buddhist chaplain or not. They eventually turned to me and said, “What do you do?” So I said, “Well we have a form, people fill in a form, and on that form, on the back of it, there are some questions, like: How long have you been a Buddhist? What kind of Buddhist are you? Would you be willing to facilitate schools of Buddhism other than your own?” Then I said, “There are a couple questions about the precepts.” Suddenly, and this was an ad-hoc group of people of different Buddhist traditions, there was this kind of eruption. This woman I remember wittering on about, “There are a lot of Buddhists who eat meat and drink alcohol.” All I had said was “precepts,” and I hadn’t gone any further than that. I was a bit, sort of, taken aback. Eventually it simmered down and I was able to carry on. Then someone said to me, “What do you do if someone drinks alcohol?” I said, “I don’t appoint them.” MAYHEM! There was a guy from the Buddhist Society in London going on about some famous Zen poet who wrote the most magnificent verse and was drunk all the time. I don’t know what that had to do with precepts.

I came out of that meeting really quite shocked. I’ve been around a lot, and I’ve mixed with some of the most infamous criminals in the country and so it takes quite a lot to shock me but I came out of the meeting quite shocked. I thought, “My goodness, Buddhism has only been in this country five minutes and here we are wanting to ‘not bother’ with the precepts.”

So you see, what a tremendous achievement it has been, by the Sangha, to keep Buddhism alive for 2,500 years. It has not been easy. But the Sangha has done a marvellous job. I know that in some places the Sangha is not in as perfect condition as it could be. Inevitably there has been decline. Originally of course, the Ariya Sangha and the conventional Sangha were one. Those first followers of the Buddha who requested the going forth were already Ariyas. They were already Sotapannas. And so in those days the standards were much higher than we have now. There has been an inevitable decline, but that’s the way of it. That’s the way of all that is born, it declines, our bodies decline and eventually pass away. Everything, as the Buddha himself said, when he was near the point of death, and his follower Ananda was weeping, “How could it be otherwise, than that which is born should die?” And so it is that there is this inevitable decline. But still, the Sangha has maintained for this long period of time, the Buddha’s sasana. We can benefit, we have it, we have the opportunity that it affords to make changes in our lives, to improve our lives, to be better people. And I’m happy to say that people in prison pick up on that very quickly because, believe you me, having made terrible mistakes they are very anxious to put those mistakes right, and to somehow change themselves and change their lives. There is much more of that than you would imagine. And I’m happy to do what I can to help them along that way. And so we celebrate the Sangha; we celebrate the Sangha as the conventional Sangha and as the Ariya Sangha.

I remember Luang Por Chah saying to us on one occasion that at the very least you ought to expect to become Sotapanna. I thought, “Oh my goodness!” I hadn’t really considered very much at that point, attainments and so on but there it was, that’s what he said, “You should expect to be at least a Sotapanna.” I think it’s important that we do remind ourselves of the goal, of the purpose of where all this should be taking us, otherwise we can just get lost in the ceremonies and the lifestyle and not really do what we’re supposed to be doing.

I’ve been thinking too about the effect of the Sangha. Kapilavaddho was very keen, back in those far off days, that the Sangha should be established in this country. That’s why he founded the English Sangha Trust. He wanted a Sangha here. You know the presence of a good temple, the presence of the Sangha has an effect because you have there men and women, you have people who are doing something very unusual. That unusual work is an inspiration, and it changes the people who come to that place. It has an effect in that area. I noticed that in Thailand, you know. Occasionally I did some short walks, tudongs, I didn’t do very much of that, but I did a little bit, and it was noticeable when you went through a village where there was a good temple, the village was different. It was cleaner, tidier, and the attitude of the people was better. When you went through a village where there was no temple or there was no temple activity, the whole place seemed sloppier, dirtier and not as tidy. It makes a difference to have the presence of the Sangha. It makes a difference.

You know we live in a very imperfect world. A world which is constantly expressing those defilements of greed, hatred and delusion, and sometimes in terrible ways. Everyone here is, I’m sure, pretty conscious of what’s happened recently in Paris. A terrible expression of those poisons which invade and spoil the minds of all of us. When you have the Sangha, when you have the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha near you, things begin to change and change for the better. When people say to me, “What can we do when this sort of thing is happening, when this sort of violence and warfare is around us, what can we do?”

“What can we do?” Well, if you are Buddhist, there is a lot you can do. You can do some work on yourself: that’s a major contribution. And to support the presence of the Sangha is another major contribution. It makes changes, it alters the atmosphere, and it gives an inspiration to what is good.

People often come together for pretty unskilful purposes. It’s rare that people come together for what is skilful. I’ve thought about this particularly when I was in Thailand a couple years ago and I was at Luang Por Chah’s memorial day. Thousands of people gathered because of something good, fine and inspiring. Marvellous! And today you all have come here for something good. Marvellous. If you didn’t have the Sangha here, you wouldn’t be doing this. You’d be off at a football match or somewhere, or watching television or reading something which would be doing no good to your mind. But here you are doing something which is improving, beneficial, not only to you personally, but of course once you are improving yourself, you are improving your society, you are improving your family, you are improving everything! Marvellous!

In the light of this violence and unpleasantness, the Sangha is an inspiration. And what the Buddha taught, don’t lose sight of that. It’s very tempting when there is violence, when there is unpleasantness, when people are threatened and hurt, to respond in a similar fashion. Already we’ve heard people saying, not only in France but in this country too, that the perpetrators of that, and Muslims in general, should be shot, murdered and terrible things done to them. And it’s in a way understandable, people get hurt, angry and frightened.

You just heard from Ajahn Amaro that I live in Warwickshire, in Shakespeare country. It’s real Shakespeare country. Shakespeare used to walk the lane that I live on. He is alleged to have shot a deer just down the road from me. It’s a very nice place. But around me, as I walk, and I walk quite a lot, I have a personal trainer, he’s a four-legged personal trainer, he takes me out every day exercising. As I go on these training walks, every day, I am aware of the bomb craters, the old bomb craters in the fields. We are quite close to Coventry and seventy-five years ago yesterday morning, Coventry woke up to utter devastation, after 11 hours of aerial bombardment. The city was wrecked. It was a terrible thing. And there around me are these memorials, these old bomb craters left by bombs that were dropped, let off as the Germans were fleeing the scene. I think about it quite a bit.

I was born near the end of the Second World War and I grew up with bomb sites in another part of the country. So I think about it from time to time. But you know, Coventry has been rather marvellous because it suffered in that terrible way, and yet, although of course, inevitably the first thoughts were to fight back, but then later – reconciliation! They have made a really big point in Coventry of working for reconciliation and for friendship. And that’s a marvellous thing. Because no amount of violence and treating “like with like” in that way, will bring anything good.

I remember when I was about 8 years old, not long after the end of the war, my father ran a football team and his football team suddenly invited a German team to come and play. So I’d grown up with this aversion for the Germans, and the only words of German I ever learned were in my comics, where of course the English soldiers were always beating the Germans, and the Germans were saying things like “Achtung” and “Himmel.” That’s all I ever learned. I remember sitting at the dining table one day and these Germans were coming to play my father’s football team and I made some ‘not very nice’ comment about the Germans, which I suppose I thought was clever of me, and my father, I don’t think he actually hit me, but he certainly put me down, “Shut up, enough of that. We don’t want any more of that!” That stayed with me you know. I really respect him for that, that’s one of my best memories of my father. Quite right, it’s over, and you have to repair, and the only way to do that, to deal with this hatred and aversion is by ‘not hating’. Sometimes asking people to love is a bit much, but you can not hate, not get caught up in more aversion, more dislike and disharmony. Let’s do what we can to bring peace into this world.

It will never be a perfect world, we have to acknowledge that. But we can do what we can to make it better, and doing what you are doing here today makes it a bit better. Supporting the Sangha makes it a bit better. Ensuring that the Sangha has a place and a presence makes it a bit better. Practising, yourself, makes it even better. Keeping the five precepts makes it better. Take them seriously, because they are so very important.

I go on all the time, with especially the young people who come to me, about that fifth precept. Because it’s very popular now to break the fifth precept. People don’t like much keeping that fifth precept. Society condones it and thinks that it’s part of ‘what you’ve got to do’. I used to be an actor and actors break the fifth precept pretty regularly I can tell you. But, there is a terrible danger in breaking that precept: go around our British prisons like me and you see the harm and damage that the breach of that fifth precept has done. People’s lives ruined in one night, one minute, because of overindulgence in alcohol or drugs or both. So be careful! Keep those precepts, you make the world a better place. Keep the precepts, develop loving-kindness and you make the world even better. Do it not just one day but several days. Try to keep the precepts with you all the time. Try to keep your mind focusing on virtues like loving-kindness and compassion and you change the world. This is the way. This is the way to defeat all the darkness and unpleasantness.

I won’t go on too much, there are other people you want to hear. But thank you very much for inviting me and I hope what I’ve said may be of some use to you and of some benefit, and do just keep coming here and keep practising and do your very best to make life better for yourself and for all those around you.

Sadhu, sadhu. sadhu…

With thanks to Ajahn Jotipālo who kindly went to the trouble of transcribing this talk.

Today I had intended to write up and with a few photos publish an account of my recent trip to Thailand and Burma. Only last Sunday I spent some time at the bedside of my great friend and Patron of Angulimala, the Buddhist Prison Chaplaincy, Eric, Lord Avebury, and showed him some photos of the Ajahn Chah Memorial Day and the three days that Ajahn Manapo and I had spent in Burma last month. Eric was very frail but quite lucid and we discussed what he would like at his funeral and the memorial to mark his passing, which he well knew to be imminent. ‘It’s all right, it can’t be helped,’ was how he viewed it. Earlier, with Lyulph, his eldest son, I had been to visit the family burial ground where his body will be interred. He was pleased to know that the snowdrops were in bloom.

Now he’s gone. He passed peacefully away shortly before 2am this morning.

Eric, so sorry you had to go but that’s the way of it and as you so often said, it can’t be helped. Thank you so much, for all you did for Angulimala, the Buddhist Prison Chaplaincy, of which you were the Patron for so many years, for all you did for prisoners and the oppressed, for being such a shining example and not least for turning me onto computers and modern technology. I’m so glad we were able to have some time together last Sunday and that I was able to speak to you on the phone a couple of days ago. All the very best for a good rebirth and may you attain the ultimate and secure peace of Nibbana.

http://ericavebury.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/lord-avebury.html

Before my New Year resolution to make a better job of looking after this blog, I’d better bring it up to date. Apart from that hurried post with the ‘before and after’ photo to mark the thirtieth anniversary of The Forest Hermitage, my last entry was four months ago, just as we were about to enter the Vassa.

This year Asalha Puja, the anniversary and celebration of the Buddha’s first sermon, fell on the last day of July with the Entry to the Vassa, the three month long ‘Rains Retreat’, following the day after on the first day of August, so we celebrated both on Sunday, August 2nd. It was a great occasion with a grand group of people, including a large party from London who arrived in the coaches organised by Khun Peter. The sun shone and following the triple circumambulation we sat on the lawn for meditation and a talk from me. My only concern as the afternoon wore on was that I and perhaps some others might end up with a touch of the sun. As usual people were so generous and the temple wound up better off by around three thousand pounds. Anumodana!

During the Vassa, while we’re not permitted to spend even one night away, except for a few specific and serious reasons and then only for a maximum of seven nights, contrary to what many people believe, we can go out and even travel, so I maintained my prison visits and even managed a few other commitments such as TBSUK.

The Theravada Buddhist Sangha in the UK (TBSUK) , which I Chair, was formed at my suggestion in 2007. It’s really an attempt to link the fifty or so Theravada temples and to bring together the many monks and nuns from various parts of the world who are currently living in the UK. We share various difficulties and together we can help each other overcome some of them. We meet twice a year in different temples. In March we met at the Oxford Buddha Vihara and in August we met once again at Wat Mahathat in King’s Bromley.  There, we spent some time developing the idea that had been discussed at the last meeting of a small conference in London to debate or discuss the problem Buddhists are having with the Muslims in SE Asia and Sri Lanka. After all, practically nothing has appeared in the media here about the murder of monks in Southern Thailand, nor the troubles in Bangla Desh which have spilled over into Burma. It was felt that finding a way to explain the concern could be useful. Then we turned to the progress being made to turn the TBSUK into a professional body. Gradually the vision for this is taking shape and its value as we build for the future is being appreciated. And almost inevitably – we never seem to get away from Immigration – concerns, complaints and difficulties were reported with Immigration.

On the prison front, as well as my regular prison visits I have made some to prisons that have no Buddhist chaplain and where we are having trouble finding a suitable person to perform that service; I have hosted and spoken to yet another gathering of prison personnel on the Prison Service’s World Faiths Course; and as the Buddhist Adviser to NOMS and the Prison Service I have attended meetings of the Prison Service Chaplaincy Council; also, here, we’ve had a couple of the quarterly Angulimala Workshops for members of Angulimala’s team of Buddhist Prison Chaplains, which have both gone well.

One day in September, the sixteenth to be precise, was for me a very unusual day. I spent most of the afternoon and evening in Soho. In the afternoon I had a meeting at the Groucho to discuss the possibility of my recording a reading of the Sutta Nipata. It’s the sort of thing I can do fairly well and I would love to do but after a very agreeable meeting and then later thinking it over I decided that this was a commercial venture that I really couldn’t participate in. It was also probably the least readable version of the Sutta Nipata ever that was wanted, so in a way it was a bit of a relief in the end not to do it.

The later part of that extraordinary day was spent a few doors further down Dean Street, in Royalty Mews at the Giles Foreman Centre for Acting, where I attended the launch of the long, long awaited book by Christopher Fettes on the Laban-Carpenter Theory of Movement Psychology adapted and brought to completion by the great and wonderful Yat Malmgren. I was taught at Central and then at Drama Centre by both Yat and Christopher. It was a really marvellous evening. I was early, one of the first to arrive, so I found myself a suitable and comfortable place to sit from where I could watch as people entered and greeted each other. The rain outside was atrocious and the traffic in places gridlocked and so Christopher was late arriving, which gave me time and opportunity to observe, to soak up the scene and to meet and chat with various people, some, like Simon Callow and Nicola Johnston, who I already knew, some who I didn’t but who had heard of me and at least one, Catherine Blatchley, who more than fifty years ago had taught me at Central and then at Drama Centre. Christopher eventually appeared and the launch got under way. Giles introduced things, Simon Callow made a brief speech and after one or two other contributions it was Christopher’s turn. Earlier he’d been heard to say he supposed he would have to say something – nothing very profound, of course. Well, when he started, at first no one could quite make out what was going on. What was he up to? Then all of a sudden the penny dropped, we were in a class. Christopher was giving a class. Fifty years melted away and like I suppose everyone else, I was on the edge of my seat! He may be eighty-six but I can tell you, the teacher is still present! Marvellous!

The next big event of the year for me was the Spring Hill Buddha Grove Celebration. Since it was built by prisoners in 1992, every year bar one, we have held an extraordinary celebration at Springhill Open Prison. As well as ceremonies at the Buddha Grove, a crowd of Thai people have invaded the kitchen to cook and offer a Thai meal for all the prisoners and staff. And with their customary amazing generosity they did it all again this year. In a letter to me afterwards the Governor described it as one of the highlights of the year at Springhill. I am so grateful to the Thai cooks and to the monks from several temples who joined me for the evening for the chanting and to lead the candlelit circumambulation.

In the month following the end of the Vassa, we can have the Kathina ceremony, that is, where five or more monks have spent the Vassa together. Needless to say, with only the two of us a Kathina at the Forest Hermitage was not possible. Instead we had a huge gathering – at least for us – at which robes and various supplies were offered. It was a tremendous occasion and of course, not only a celebration of the completion of the Vassa but of thirty years of being here as well. Yes, it’s thirty years since I came to live at The Forest Hermitage and, as they say, they’ve been interesting times! And I must say that not only for this event but for all the years we have been here we are so grateful for the generous support we have been honoured to receive.

At Amaravati in Hertfordshire it was a different scene. There there were many monks for the Vassa and their Kathina was, as it is every year, a Royal Kathina when the Kathina robe is offered by HM the King of Thailand. Once again I was invited and as a Chao Khun I was asked to recite the blessing for His Majesty. I was also asked to give a talk and so I took the opportunity to say a little about the importance of the Sangha, especially its role in the preservation of the Buddha Dhamma these many, many years. And following the murderous outrage in Paris a few days before and remembering the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Coventry just the day before, I also spoke in praise of reconciliation.

And so, once again we arrived at Christmas, a time to celebrate and be reminded of Peace and Goodwill; and the New Year, a time for a fresh start and renewed determination. To help that along we had our annual New Year’s Eve sitting and a healthy crowd joined us to see out the old and see in the New Year. A Very Happy New Year to one and all!

We have just completed the thirtieth vassa of The Forest Hermitage (วัดป่าสันติธรรม).

I have spent all of those thirty vassas here. It hardly seems possible! But, there you are, time flies and rolls for ever onward.

‘Life hath but one direction and time’s its only measure!’

The last two or three weeks at the Forest Hermitage have been something of a departure from the norm.

We lost Luke who had been my regular driver for the last three years. He decided he’d had enough of driving all over the place and spending hours hanging around in prison car parks waiting for me. This has been quite a blow and since then I’ve been struggling to make my regular prison visits. If anyone knows of a man – it has to be a man – who might be able to take on this driving job, three days a week, usually afternoons or evenings, please get in touch ASAP.

Then there have been a flurry of birthdays. Maureen was 85 at the end of June. Then Khun Ting had her birthday in the same week as mine, so on the 16th July it was off to Nottingham for a celebration at Khun Ting’s restaurant and the next day there was quite a crowd here at the Forest Hermitage, and the day after that, bearing cards (see at the top of the page for the selection), cakes and goodies for my 71st on the 17th.

A week ago Ajahn Manapo set off on a tudong walk around the Peak District. Not sure when he’s due back but it has to be sometime this week because on Thursday it’s Asalha Puja and the following day it’ll be time to enter another Vassa.

Asalha Puja is the anniversary of the Buddha’s first sermon, known as the Setting in Motion the Wheel of Dhamma, in which he expounded the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path as the way out of Suffering. That’s on the Full Moon of the ancient Indian month of Asalha and the last day of that lunar month. The next day the Rainy Season commences and with it the Vassa, the three month period when all bhikkhus have to remain resident in one place. This was ordered by the Buddha in response to complaints from farmers whose rice crops had been damaged by so many bhikkhus wandering here and there. In modern times it’s become more of a retreat period and a time too when many lay people join in by increasing their commitment to precepts and the practice of meditation.

As usual, our celebration of these significant events, occurring as they do on inconvenient weekdays, will take place on the nearest Sunday, that is next Sunday, August 2nd from around 10 o’clock in the morning. Do come if you can.

Shortly before I left for Thailand in January I was told that on Burmese Independence Day, January 4th,  U Thein Sein, President of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, had conferred on me the religious title of AGGAMAHĀ SADDHAMMA JOTIKADHAJA.

I was asked to present myself in Burma towards the end of February in plenty of time for the investiture ceremony on March 4th in the new capital of Nay Pyi Taw. I had to think what to do. I was due to return to the UK from Thailand at the beginning of February and I was obviously hoping to catch up with my prison visits and my Monday evening meetings at Warwick Uni. Then on Sunday, March 1st we had scheduled a Magha Puja celebration here at the Forest Hermitage and for the following Saturday, on March 7th, I had planned an all day workshop for Angulimala’s Buddhist prison chaplains. Neither of these could be cancelled or moved and I had to be at both. So I worked out that I could fly out on the evening of March 1st and return early the following Saturday. I checked with Ven. Dhammasami at Oxford with whom I was liaising and when my plans were approved the tickets were booked.

Unfortunately, a week after I got back from Thailand on February 4th I went down again with the same flu-like bug I’d had before and bronchitis again. It took two courses of antibiotics and a lot of care to make sure I was fit in time for that long-haul flight on March 1st but I just made it.

So, according to plan, on Sunday, March 1st, we had a marvellous Magha Puja day here in the morning and early afternoon and then when everyone had gone I quickly packed my bowl and robes and various bits and pieces and made for Heathrow. At Bangkok I was met off the plane by a very dignified gentleman from the Burmese Embassy who was there to look after me while I waited for the flight to Rangoon. Unfortunately, he could speak neither English or Thai and as my Burmese is practically non-existent our communication was limited, to say the least. At Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport I was joined first by Ken, who was to be my attendant for the trip, and then by Ven. Dhammasami, who had been attending a meeting at MahaChula University.

We landed at Yangon (Rangoon) a few minutes before 7pm on Monday, March 2nd and after being greeted at the airport we were driven to a nearby hotel for the night. Waiting for me at the hotel was a retired Burmese woman doctor who, when she was working at the hospital in Newport, used to come and see me at the little vihara I had on the Isle of Wight. That was thirty-two years ago and I hadn’t seen Dr Thet Thet Nwe since! A happy reunion. Thankfully my room had a bath and blistering hot water so before I slept I was able to soak away some of the aches and pains of my long journey. It wasn’t long though before I had to be up and back at the airport, this time to fly to Nay Pyi Taw, the new capital, where that morning the President was offering the lunch meal of the day to all of us monks who were receiving various titles and awards. It was only a thirty-five minute flight before we landed at this brand new, state of the art, international airport. Mind you, the international bit isn’t open yet and there aren’t many flights in and out but as with practically everything in this new, well planned, oriental garden city they have had the sense to think ahead and plan for the future. Thus the roads are extremely wide, even though there’s not much traffic yet. But I bet it’ll increase and when it does they’re ready for it. We were driven to the hotel and then almost immediately decanted into a small coach and taken to the massive hall where U Thein Sein offered the dana meal.

The hotel was a sort of upmarket motel with each of the several large bungalows comprising a pair of semi-detached suites. Ken and I had two large rooms, a hallway and a good sized bathroom, again with a bath and piping hot water. My meal the next day, that is on Wednesday, March 4th, the day of the investiture, was served in my room and soon after a buggy was at the door to take me down to the coach. Burmese monks invariably carry a large fan that they hold in front of them. The previous day for the President’s dana we had been equipped with bright yellow fans but now for the investiture it was deep red fans. I don’t know why nor do I know what was inscribed on them. The little coach, led by a motorcycle outrider, took us to the same hall as on the day before but this time we processed in through a fairly packed congregation. Glued to my red fan was a number in Burmese numerals, which of course I couldn’t read, and that was the number of my seat and generally my place in the proceedings. Next to my seat there was a box with above it a sign bearing my name and new title, a large framed certificate and a flag. It turned into a long afternoon, and much of the time I hadn’t a clue what was happening. At one point someone came along and presented the certificate and later on there was a sudden flurry of activity, chairs were pushed aside, young men appeared and off we went in a procession with several of these young men walking ahead bearing one’s flag, box, name plate and certificate and another following holding aloft a multi-tiered umbrella.

The procession went back down through the hall, then outside and onto the road, before rounding a corner and then proceeding along to where a line of tented stalls began, the first of which belonged to the President who made the first offering. The stalls mostly seemed to belong to Government ministries and various companies and contained the offerings they were to make, but it wasn’t only them, on both sides as we walked for what seemed ages our path was lined with crowds of people showering us with things they wanted to give us. Thank goodness for the small band of young men following me with large sacks. I don’t know now how many sackfuls were collected but it was several and a lot of stuff, which later we left to be distributed to some poor local monasteries.

The day after, Thursday, Ken and I were given a whirlwind tour of Nay Pyi Taw. We glimpsed from a distance the magnificent new parliament building and we paid a brief visit to the precise replica of India’s Mahabodhi Temple, the original built by Asoka at the site of the Buddha’s Enlightenment. Replicas of the other major Buddhist holy places were also to be seen nearby but for these we had time only to drive past for time was running out and we still had to eat, pack and make it to the airport in time for the afternoon flight to Yangon (Rangoon).

Later, back in Yangon, we spent the late afternoon and early evening walking around the magnificent Shwe Dagon, the huge Cetiya that is dedicated to and believed to house the relics of the last four Buddhas. Our small pagoda at the Forest Hermitage was named after it and called the English Shwe Dagon and has inside soil from this great Shwe Dagon in Yangon as well as images of the last four Buddhas all of which were presented to me when I visited during my short stay in 1987. With me and the group with me at the Shwe Dagon this time as we walked and talked was a young Burmese woman who two or three years ago was President of Warwick Uni Buddhist Society. All the while she was at Warwick, every Monday Neelam would be there for meditation, sitting bang in front of me. Every week, that is, so long as there wasn’t an important football match involving Barcelona!

On Friday, on our last morning in Burma, we dashed out very early to visit Dat Pon Zon Aung Min Gaung, the monastery where I’d stayed in 1987 and whose abbot, Ven. Sayadaw U Thila Wunta otherwise known as Aung Min Gaung Sayadaw, had stayed at the Forest Hermitage in 1988 and supervised the building of our English Shwe Dagon Pagoda. Afterwards, back at the hotel, it was time to eat, then pack and get ready and after a last look at the views of Rangoon from the hotel roof, we were driven to the airport in time to board Thai Airways’ afternoon flight for Bangkok.

At Bangkok I had a seven-and-a-half hour wait for the midnight-plus flight to London. So I escaped from the airport and went to the kuti where I usually stay in Bangkok and spent the time in relative comfort, showering and rearranging some of my baggage to accommodate some Buddhist rosaries that I wanted to bring back for our Buddhist prisoners. Then Ken took me to the airport and I was on my way back to England.

And I made it back to Warwick and The Forest Hermitage in time for the day-long Angulimala workshop.

Now looking back it seems almost like a dream – it was over so quickly. But it was a marvellous few days and I am so grateful to everyone who contributed in so many different ways to enable me to be there and for the honour that was bestowed upon me.