In a new interview exclusive to SunSpace, former Buddhist monastics Thanissara — who contributed to The Time Has Come, Buddhadharma magazine’s current discussion of the second-class status of Buddhist nuns — and Kittisaro talk about the marriage of Buddhist practice and social activism. Part One follows here.
By Leslee Goodman
Former Buddhist monk Kittisaro was born Harry Randolph Weinberg in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the son of a transplanted New York City Jew and a Southern Baptist. A one-time national wrestling champion and a Rhodes Scholar, Weinberg originally aspired to be an M.D. before immersing himself in Buddhism. Former Buddhist nun Thanissara was born Linda Mary Peacock in London, England. The daughter of an Irish Catholic father and a Protestant mother, she left art school to study Buddhism and followed it to Burma, Thailand, and India. The two spent a combined total of more than 25 years in monastic life before deciding to relinquish their monastic vows to make another commitment—to each other, as husband and wife.
That was in 1992. Today, Thanissara and Kittisaro are the founders of Dharmagiri, a Buddhist hermitage located in rural KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. Dharmagiri’s main focus is to facilitate meditation retreats and provide access to Buddhist practice and teachings. However, because of the urgency of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in South Africa, the hermitage also initiated and supports several outreach and relief programs. In conjunction with Insight Meditation Community San Francisco (IMCSF), Dharmagiri launched the Woza Moya Project, which trains community healthcare givers in providing AIDS prevention education and treatment to rural South Africans; and the Khuphuka Project, which delivers high quality home-based care, paralegal and youth services, child protection and HIV and AIDS awareness and education programs in the KwaSani district of KwaZulu Natal. During their overseas teaching engagements in the last ten years, the two have raised funds to support rural education in KwaZulu Natal, providing computers, school sponsorships, water systems, and general support. Overall, approximately 15% of contributions received by Dharmagiri is earmarked to support these outreach programs.
In the last year, Thanissara involved herself in the struggle of Bhikkhunis—Buddhist nuns—for equal recognition and treatment in the Theravadan monastic order. (See Buddhadharma, Summer 2010, and our online discussion, here.)
In the following interview, Thanissara and Kittisaro talk about the marriage of Buddhist practice and social activism from their own experiences balancing work on the inner and outer planes.
Goodman: Buddhism talks about letting go of attachment to the things of this world and even to the goal of spiritual attainment. But isn’t this at odds with caring for this world and what happens to it?
Kittisaro: It can appear so, but remember that the Buddhist path of awakening is often called “the Middle Way.” The Buddha recognized that human beings tend to gravitate to extremes. In our ubiquitous quest for happiness, we tend to grasp at what pleases us and try to eliminate the things we think we don’t want. To steer between the path of pleasure and the path of pain is “The Middle Way.”
Ajahn Chah described this seeming paradox using the analogy of a teacher walking with his disciples along a road. One veers too close to the edge on the right, and the Master, concerned for his safety, calls, “Go left!” All the dutiful disciples write down, “Master says, ‘Go left.’” But then a few minutes later, another disciple has ventured too close to the edge on the left, so the Master calls, “Go right!” The dutiful disciples write down, “The Master says, ‘Go right.’” There follow countless arguments as the disciples try to make sense of the Master’s teachings: “Did the Master really say this?” “Aren’t the teachings contradictory?” “Was the Master confused?”
The “letting go” teaching is very important—perhaps even the most important teaching—because there is such a habitual tendency to try to impose our preferences on life. We tend to think there’s a “me” that we experience in our bodies, in our perceptions, and so we take everything personally. We cling to our circumstances: our health, our success, our praise. The first step in breaking this unconscious habit of assumptions is to recognize that what we are identifying with and grasping at is actually changing all the time. The dawn becomes the mid-day and then the dusk. The in-breath becomes the out-breath. The pleasure becomes the pain. Our confidence morphs into doubt. When we start to see this, we start to recognize that where we’ve been looking for happiness and certainty is by nature uncertain.
When we look for something where it can’t be found, we’re bound to suffer. Ajahn Chah says it’s like looking at a chicken and asking why it’s not a duck. We’re demanding from the ephemeral changing world something it can’t offer. So the teaching of “let go” is very helpful.
And yet, letting go does not mean “getting rid of.” It means “allowing it to be as it is. Let it come, and let it go.” When we do that, we start to notice pleasure and pain coming and going; praise and blame coming and going; feeling good and not feeling good—all coming and going. When we realize that these things both come and go, then we start to come in touch with an underlying understanding, an underlying “suchness,” that is not coming and going but remains constant through all the other comings and goings. The “letting go” teaching is very important for that insight.
What tends to happen though is that we turn this insight into “letting go” into an aversion to the world of people, the world of form and circumstances—which is where we associate our suffering. We don’t call it aversion, of course; we pretty it up. We tell ourselves we simply prefer being peaceful. At that point, we’re very close to the edge of the road and it’s important to head back toward the middle—to engage the world. Both letting go and holding on are capacities of the One Mind. It’s like a hand—which can open, but also hold. Maintaining any one fixed position of the hand is not natural; it’s paralysis.
Another classic teaching of the Buddha is caring, is kindness. The Buddha said we should look at every single being the way a mother looks at her only child, which she would protect with her life. That’s caring; that’s attachment. Yet, if we cling too much and don’t realize that ultimately all conditions change, then we don’t know underlying peacefulness.
Our Thai master, Ajahn Chah, gave another teaching on this subject. The monks in Thailand live in grass huts in the forest. One day a storm blew away half the roof on one monk’s hut. The monk said, “This must be a lesson in letting go.”
Ajahn Chah came walking through the forest one day and saw this hut with half the roof blown off and said, “What’s happened here? Who’s living in this hut?” The monk came over and explained that the roof had blown off. Ajahn Chah said, “And?” The monk said, “I’ve done what you said, Ajahn Chah. I’m letting go!” Ajahn Chah said, “Letting go doesn’t mean abdicating responsibility! It’s not an excuse for being lazy!”
So we try to learn not to allow any circumstance to interfere with our underlying equanimity, but at the same time, we do what we can. In our speech, in our actions, we look after and care for the beings we come in contact with. It appears that caring for the world and letting go are in contradiction, but actually there is a paradoxical balance between the two teachings.
Thanissara: It is a paradox, isn’t it? It’s a paradox that reflects the paradoxical nature of reality. What’s required is to find some sort of balance. If we’re always engaged in the world, responding to others, doing good works, it’s very easy to become so invested in a particular outcome that we lose our equanimity. We can become consumed by stress because we can’t fix all that is wrong. The world is as it is. So we need that inner perspective that enables us to let things be, that allows us to step back. But as Kittisaro said, we can’t just become passive or detached because that creates another imbalance.
Goodman: It does seem as what we’re talking about is balance; yet it also seems that the more one engages, the harder it becomes to draw back. One is more likely to know people who are at-risk, or suffering, and this tends to keep one “in the fray,” or to make one feel that perhaps going on retreat at this particular moment is bad timing. How do you strike the balance in your own life and practice?
Thanissara: Well, we are living in an intense time. There are so many really pressing issues that it can feel negligent to take oneself off the front lines and go on retreat. Yet I do think that ultimately the greatest changes we need to bring about are those of consciousness. A dualistic consciousness, which divides the world into subject ‘me’ and object ‘other’, is more prone to act out of fear and grasping. Depth meditation, which retreats cultivate, awakens us to the reality that we live in a seamless world. In the silence of the heart, there is a depth of intimacy with all of life. One of my good friends experienced the tragedy of the death of her baby. She told me that if she thought about the baby she felt separate from him and became anguished. However when she allowed the thought to subside and just listened into her heart, into the silence, she was aware that there was no separation.
While action in the world is necessary, the deepest changes take place on a subtler, energetic level. To do that work—purifying the mind from ignorance, freeing action from distortion, sending out energy of non-contention or prayerfulness—this is the work of meditation. So it’s a false idea that if you’re on retreat then you’re not working in the world. It’s the way language discriminates, but the two are actually of one piece.
For example, people come to our hermitage in South Africa and are profoundly affected by the energy there, which is the result of people engaged in meditating, in practicing loving kindness—and also of doing the work of caring for the world. There’s no split. It’s all one piece and the most important piece is consciousness itself.
Goodman: Kittisaro often quotes Ajahn Chah as saying, “If it shouldn’t be this way, it wouldn’t be this way.” Yet we live in a world of great suffering. How do you reconcile Ajahn Chah’s teaching with the Buddhist precepts of “right speech” and “right action”?
Thanissara: At some level it’s obviously true—it can be no way other than it is right now. However our actions in the present condition the future.
Buddha didn’t just sit there and say, “Oh well, the world is at it is.” He acted. In fact he tried three times to prevent a war between those in his home country of Kapilavastu and the King of Kosala. Yet he wasn’t able to stop the bloodshed. He had to accept that this was a karma he couldn’t alter, but it didn’t mean that he didn’t try. On leaving the area, it is recorded that his beloved attendant Ananda asked him why he was so sad, to which the Buddha replied that his people would be massacred within the week.
Goodman: Wow. I never knew that. I don’t know if I find that reassuring, or discouraging.
Thanissara: Yeah. It’s definitely a reality check about the world we live in. And the challenge of practicing equanimity when we don’t have the power to change or prevent a calamity. We have to accept that we may only be able to add our drop to the bucket. Yet the only way the bucket will ever be filled is if we each add our drop.
Kittisaro: I’d like to add that Ajahn Chah’s saying “If it shouldn’t be this way, it wouldn’t be this way” is not a justification for inaction, or an excuse for shutting down our compassion. Rather, it’s an encouragement to notice when our mind is unable to bear the reality of the moment, and instead retreats into a compulsive, habitual response.
Things arise according to the laws of cause and effect. Ajahn Chah’s statement encourages us to bear with for a moment longer, rather than react habitually, which is frequently not a conscious or wise place of action. If we take the time to reflect, then even in chaos, even in sickness, we can see our circumstances as they are and not tack our judgments on top of them. We can allow the pain to come and go. We have the possibility of sensing the underlying perfection even in the midst of pain. That’s where nirvana is—in being able to recognize the essential unchanging perfection of the moment.
That’s not meant to say that one shouldn’t respond. The teaching is about clarifying the vision first. If we never deeply center ourselves then we tend to be driven by ideas of “how things should be.”
The Buddha didn’t teach any ultimate views. He taught that every view should dissolve, should encourage us to come back to a point of balance. Our time in Africa is an intense opportunity to deeply experience how things are and yet try to respond in our outreach work. We know that the more deeply we are able to open to pain and suffering, the more likely it is that we will be able to respond wisely, rather than compulsively.
These two things—learning to deeply accept and allowing our response to come out of that deep acceptance—are not in conflict. There can be deep acceptance and there also can be vigorous work to meet the suffering of the world and out of compassion strive to transform it.
Leslee Goodman is a freelance writer whose interviews and other articles have appeared in The Sun, Utne Reader, Louisiana Business, and other publications. Contact her at www.lesleegoodman.com.
Keep an eye on SunSpace for Part 2 of this interview, to be posted in the days ahead.
