Rounding Out

　　the Practice

　　by Ajahn Tiradhammo

　　A talk given by Ajahn Thiradhammo at Cittaviveka, October 2003

　　Tahn Natthiko invited me to say a few words tonight, saying he wanted to draw on my experience of thirty years of monastic life. So this was a good theme for me to reflect upon. What have I been doing for the last thirty years

　　Over the years I”ve seen many phases in my practice, beginning in Thailand. To start with, I had a very simplistic view of practice. Having just finished university, my first idea was to spend six months in a cave in Thailand to sit in silence, and that”s it, that”s enlightenment. That was my initial fantasy. ”Just give me six months and it”s all over, I can go home again.” Enlightenment and then go home. Well that was thirty years ago, so you see how much of a fantasy it was. I think most people are like this though. Most of us start meditation practice with concepts, ideas, expectations and even such fantasies. In the actual experience of practice, we put these ideas and concepts to the test. We find out for ourselves. I could say that for me my efforts of the last thirty years have been to do with rounding out or balancing the practice.

　　I remember my early years in northern Thailand, sitting in my little hut, trying to keep my practice very simple. I would just sit there and watch the breath. I”d watch it for hours and hours and hours every day. I was in a meditation monastery so there weren”t a lot of distractions. There was nothing to do but sitting and walking meditation. It was not a forest monastery, so there was no routine: no evening meditation, no morning meditation. One was left to get on, on one”s own. I was quite serious at that time, or maybe just deluded - I don”t know which - and I really put myself into the practice.

　　I recognised that I had a great opportunity, because in those days there were few such opportunities in the West. So here I was in Thailand, a Buddhist country, and they were very generously offering me this place to practise in. So I practised for sixteen hours a day just walking and sitting, walking and sitting. There was nothing else to do.

　　Of course, with no distractions for hours and hours a day, for months at a time, the mind got reasonably peaceful. But because the monastery was on the tourist map of Chiang Mai, quite a few Westerners would come. One time, I remember sitting there meditating and I heard footsteps coming up the steps. The door opened and this tourist walked in. He saw me sitting there, so he came walking over and said ”Hello, I”m Joe Smith.” I looked up and said ”Hello, I”m ... errr ... I”m ...”

　　I couldn”t remember who I was! ”I”m breathing,” that”s all I could think of. Of course it wasn”t exactly a joyful experience; it was a little bit frightening. You know, I had to consult my passport to figure out who I was.

　　Those days of tranquillity were numbered because I practised so diligently that eventually even eating became a distraction, a disturbance to concentration. One can”t live very long without eating, so after a while I fell sick. It was a bit of a shock being sick, because I couldn”t keep up my meditation exercises, so all my confusion returned. Concentration or calmness of mind is a conditioned state; if one does concentration exercises for long periods of time one can experience concentration, but that concentration is conditional on the exercises. When I couldn”t keep up the exercises, all the confusion, all the worries, all the thoughts came back, and it was even worse than before. Not only did I have my usual confusion, but it was confusion in the context of having known tranquillity, so it seemed much worse. It was the usual confusion against the background of previous calm. So of course my first reaction was ”Bud…

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