..續本文上一頁really happy to live up in the mountains -- I even thought I”d spend my whole life living up there!
The Buddha taught to be mindful of what”s arising in the present moment. Know the truth of the way things are in the present moment. These are the teachings he left you and they are correct, but your own thoughts and views are still not correctly in line with the Dhamma, and that”s why you continue to suffer. So try out thudong if it seems like the right thing to do. See what it”s like moving around from place to place and how that affects your mind.
I don”t want to forbid you from going on thudong, but I don”t want to give you permission either. Do you understand my meaning
I neither want to prevent you, nor allow you to go, but I will share with you some of my experience. If you do go on thudong, use the time to benefit your meditation. Don”t just go like a tourist, having fun travelling around. These days it looks like more and more monks and nuns go on thudong to indulge in a bit of sensual enjoyment and adventure rather than to really benefit their own spiritual training. If you do go, then really make a sincere effort to use the dhutanga practices to ware away the defilements. Even if you stay in the monastery, you can take up these dhutanga practices. These days, what they call "thudong" tends to be more a time for seeking excitement and stimulation than training with the thirteen dhutanga practices. If you go off like that you are just lying to yourself when you call it "thudong". It”s an imaginary thudong. Thudong can actually be something that supports and enhances your meditation. When you go you should really do it. Contemplate what is the true purpose and meaning of going on thudong. If you do go, I encourage you to use the experience as an opportunity to learn and further your meditation, not just waste time. I won”t let monks go off if they are not yet ready for it, but if someone is sincere and seriously interested in the practice, I won”t stop them.
When you are planning to go off, it”s worth asking yourself these questions and reflecting on them first. Staying up in the mountains can be a useful experience; I used to do it myself. In those days I would have to get up really early in the morning because the houses where I went on alms round were such a long way away. I might have to go up and down an entire mountain and sometimes the walk was so long and arduous that I wouldn”t be able to get there and back in time to eat the meal at my camp before midday. If you compare it with the way things are these days, you can see that maybe it”s not actually necessary to go to such lengths and put yourself through so much hardship. It might actually be more beneficial to go on alms round to one of the villages near to the monastery here, return to eat the meal and have lots of energy left in reserve to put forth effort in the formal practice. That”s if you”re training yourself sincerely, but if you”re just into taking it easy and like to go straight back to your hut for a sleep after the meal, that isn”t the correct way to go it. In the days when I was on thudong, I might have to leave my camp at the crack of dawn and use up much of my energy just in the walk across the mountains - even then I might be so pushed for time I”d have to eat my meal in the middle of the forest somewhere before getting back. Reflecting on it now, I wonder if it”s worth putting oneself to all that bother. It might be better to find a place to practice where the alms route to the local village is not too long or difficult, which would allow you to save your energy for formal meditation. By the time you have cleaned up and are back at your hut ready to continue meditating, that monk up in the mountains would still be stuck out in the forest with…
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