..续本文上一页 live the holy life. So I very much connect with, that in the mind - my mind relates to Ubon Ratchathani as a holy place.

　　We can see it in England now, as people are developing the holy life, here. It”s no longer the England of the Colonial Era; we see a very different side, we”ve experienced something within this country, and in our mind - it connects with living in Britain. Being able to live the holy life through the openness and tolerance generated towards us in this country, one is pleasantly surprised and this is the rising up of the spirit too. Before I came to Britain I”d detetmined in my mind that I would only go and live in this country if I found I was offering something worthwhile to it. There was no point in just going to see it, or with a missionary attitude.. I didn”t feel any enthusiasm in going to convert people to Buddhism. I thought that the idea of conversion was repulsive. But the idea of going to Britain to try to offer something beautiful, and something that would help people, was something I felt I could do. And so that remained in my mind as an attitude of coming to England to add more sweetness, rather than to come here to pide and cause trouble and create more problems for the country or to take advantage of it in any way.

　　These are a way of looking at your life here, at what you are doing as monks and nuns living within this country. A way of looking at it no longer as being a kind of oddball or anachronism. When you are bringing something into the country that is delicious and beautiful, it may not seem at first that way, because it is different from what people are used to. Many people have that fear that we come here to make everything worse and poison the country. But to our own living of this life, in the right way with the right attitude, then the whole image changes from being freaky weirdoes who come here to cause trouble to being that which is worthy of respect, worthy of alms.

　　In the society we live in we begin to see that just the presence of good monks and nuns is making an offering to it by being examples. Then that gives great hope and inspiration to others if not necessarily to become monks or nuns but to live more skilfully and aspire towards higher than just getting along in the system. To me just floating along in the system is a hell realm. It is such a depressing idea, to use one”s human life to just float along the easiest way. You don”t do anything, you don”t offer anything, you don”t aspire to anything you just get by. So we can see in the holy life, the opportunity is here: at Amaravati and Chithurst, the occasion is here for that rising up.

　　With our contemplation of Dependent Origination we are actually being with the world rather than believing it to be the real world. We”re aware of it and understanding of it as it is, without being deluded by it through the conditioning process of perception and culture. So the empty mind is the receptive, because in that way of mindfulness, there is no need to name or call anything anything, unless there is a conventional reason for it. Then as we begin to realise the cessation of the world, we can begin to refrain from frantically creating more worlds to cease. We”re not trying to create anything because we are content and at peace with the way it is. Now really contemplate this, and know the attentiveness, mindfulness, before the opinions, views, desires and fears start arising. Now if you”re doing it for the wrong reason - out of desire and fear and ignorance - then of course you only receive despair. You feel that you”re always going to fail and meditation is going to be a lot of suffering for you. Even when you can get refined states of consciousness, you can”t hold on to them. The more you try to convert and impose refinement on…

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