..續本文上一頁und in the village. They thought it was stupid. Some English people, as well as Buddhists, felt that we should adapt to the English customs. However, I decided to take it as it came. Rather than deciding whether or not I should adapt to the English customs, I simply brought the tradition and played it by ear. I felt it would take its own form, accordingly. If one trims the tradition down before even planting the seed, one often severs or slightens its whole spirit. The entire tradition is based on charity, kindness, goodness, morality... and I am not doing anything wrong. I may be doing things that people do not understand...

　　RW: In my own mind, and I imagine in the minds of others as well, the alms round might seem to be a type of clinging to form, to tradition.

　　AS: Then one is not being mindful. It would just be clinging to a method. Yet it is still better than what most people cling to, isn”t it

　　RW: I am not sure. Is it possible to place a value judgment on clinging

　　 However how does one keep the mind awake, day and night

　　 While performing certain rituals, chanting or on alms round, how can one avoid the repetitive, mechanical routineness of our daily existence

　　AS: Daily existence is mechanical and routine. The body is mechanical and routine. Society is that way. All compounded things just keep doing the same thing over and over. But our minds do not have to be deluded by those habits anymore.

　　RW: Krishnamurti says that ”religious people, those who live in a monastery, in isolation, or go off to a mountain or a desert, are forcing their minds to conform to an established pattern.” You said earlier that at Ajahn Chah”s monastery, you were conforming to an authority because you felt that previously...

　　AS: One is conforming one”s bodily action to a pattern. That is all.

　　RW: Yes, Krishnamurti says: ”forcing the minds to a pattern.” Minds do conform to an established pattern, not just the body. They are dependent.

　　AS: Right. That is samatha [tranquility, concentration] practice: believing in doctrines and absorbing into conditions. But that is not the purpose of Buddhist meditation.

　　RW: Samatha practice is conforming to doctrines

　　AS: If one believes in doctrines, the thoughts in one”s mind to accept certain doctrinal teachings, and reject those which do not fit. Then there is also the samatha practice of tranquility, where one trains the mind to concentrate on an object This practice calms and steadies the mind.

　　RW: And you are calling that ”an established pattern”

　　AS: Yes. The normal rhythm of one”s breath is an established pattern that you cling and are attached to, isn”t it

　　 It gives some tranquility to the mind.

　　RW: One does not ”cling” to the breath. Breathing happens naturally. One might say that one observes the breath...

　　AS: One focuses solely on the breath. At one particular moment one is concentrating and not noticing any other object.

　　RW: I do not quite follow. What does that have to do with the mind habitually following dogma

　　AS: Whatever is a pattern or a condition [sankhara], if one believes in that sankhara, one becomes that. If one attaches to any object, then one becomes that object. So, when one is concentrating on the normal breath, then one becomes that normal breath. Mentally, one”s form takes that, one becomes one with that object for as long as the concentration lasts.

　　The same holds with doctrines. They are the worlds of forms, conventions and habits. One can be likened to a (doctrinal) belief in the thoughts of others, in teachings and creeds, in what other people say, in Krishnamurti (which is the problem with his disciples).

　　Mindfulness is not clinging. What Krishnamurti is pointing to is the awareness of the changing nature, the way things really are in the moment. But he seems to d…

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