A talk given at The Humanities Center, Ho Center for Buddhist Studies, Stanford University, California, on November 7th, 2018

When we consider Buddhism and Mindfulness – what are the prospects? What are the challenges? What can we look forward to? What direction are they heading in?

My first response is ‘Good question!’ The future is unknown. It is uncertain but we can possibly see various trends that are already taking shape. There are projections that we can make into the future. One small caveat that I would make is that sometimes things that seem to be obvious trends in a powerful direction, can collapse. And things that seem to be small, insubstantial and insignificant, can turn out to be the defining or dominant quality.

I will give a few examples. Theravada Buddhism was just one of many Buddhist groups. But because the school of Theravada spread to Sri Lanka, an island culture, there is a particular strand of Buddha-Dhamma that was sustained there. That strand informs what we now call Theravada Buddhism, which is the Buddhism of the southern Asian world all these centuries later. But at the time it was just one of many different schools.

Or going further back into history, to the era of the dinosaurs. Mammals are our physical ancestors. They were the ones that survived the effects of the meteorite striking the Earth. They made it through, after the era of the dinosaurs came to an end. They found ways to adapt and survive, and so, here we are. These are our ancestors, strange as it may be to consider that. So that’s a caveat in terms of the themes or threads that we see today, they might not be the defining qualities into the future. But the best we can do is to look at the picture as we see it now and extrapolate a little bit. Then to use that extrapolation to help us make skilful decisions and guide things in a helpful way.

This question of bringing the Buddha’s teachings to the Western world, and how they can function usefully here, has been very much the centre of my whole adult life. Since 1979 I have lived my life as Buddhist monastic in the West. That is nearly forty years. So, I have been very close to this question for a long time. Also, I am a kind of card-carrying flag-wearing traditionalist; I have been very much part of an orthodox order. I have been part of a group of people with a method of practice and a way of life that is very strongly informed by classical models and forms.

Along the way, however, I’ve also been collaborating with, and offering teachings to people who have not been using the classical forms. People who are not robe-wearing or not living according to the Vinaya, the monastic code of discipline. Over these years there’s been a constant dialogue between the forces of traditionalism, or the reference to the classical forms, and the endeavour to be authentic and relevant to the current age. It is a dialogue that endeavours to be sincerely representing those classical models, but to also be in a constant mode of adaptation. The Buddha-Dhamma is a living teaching. It is a living tradition. It adapts to, and needs to be able to work within, the environment in which it is established and is being practised.

For many decades there has been this dialogue between adaptation and authenticity. Over the years I have attended many Buddhist conferences and been involved in interactions. I have led events where sometimes there would be a lay teacher and a monastic. In July I was at a conference on mindfulness in Amsterdam. There were six hundred delegates at the conference, with one person in robes, me. I was invited to give a talk about stream-entry, which was one of the reasons I attended the conference. I thought, well, if you have six hundred academic psychologists, therapists and researchers who want to hear about streamentry, that is an interesting sign of the times.

When I speak about authenticity, I am not just referring to representing classical forms or ancient traditions. Ancient traditions like the robes, the shaven head, and the adherence to the Vinaya discipline. If we are talking about authenticity, it’s also important to see that in following the Buddha’s teachings we need to be authentic in terms of his pragmatism. The Buddha brought a teaching into the world that in many respects was a revolutionary teaching. That transformative quality of the teaching was not just a belief system, it was not just another set of costumes or forms or rituals. Rather it was a set of tools that he brought into Indian society in that era. A set of tools to help people transform their lives. That was what it was for.

With regard to authenticity, it is not just about being an authentic monk, just following the forms, reciting Pali suttas and carrying out the traditions and rituals of the ancient times. But authenticity is strongly connected with the question: how useful are you? How much can your life – what you do, what you teach, and how you are – be of practical benefit to the beings that you encounter? When people are meeting you and drawing upon your tradition or your teachings, to what degree can that benefit their lives?

So, this means being authentic in terms of the practical results of these teachings. When we talk about this dimension, it is important to recognize that there is authenticity in relationship to form and classical structures. But there is also authenticity in terms of the spirit and the intention behind the Buddha’s teaching. The effort he made to establish the monastic order and the fourfold assembly of disciples: lay women, laymen, and the monastic communities of nuns and monks. He spent the 45 years of his teaching career bringing that all together and establishing that in a way that could sustain itself over a long period of time.

So, Buddhism and mindfulness, how have things been progressing? Obviously, my perspective is biased. I would be presumptuous enough to say that mindfulness is an offshoot of Buddhism. But there are other mindfulness trainings that have come out of other traditions to certain degrees. I wouldn’t say that Buddhism has the monopoly on mindfulness. But I’d say that its presence in the world, particularly in the West at this time, has very directly sprung from, particularly, Jon Kabat-Zinn’s experience and practice. It has sprung from his life and his work, which has been very directly informed by Buddhist practice. In fact, at a conference in San Francisco in 2013, he said: ‘I’ve always used "mindfulness" as a placeholder for "the Dharma".’

There’s a lot of very powerful benefits that Buddhism and mindfulness have brought and are bringing into society. Nowadays, according to the statistics that I’ve been shown, there’s what might be referred to as an epidemic of mental health problems, particularly, depression and anxiety. Globally there are double the number of workdays lost per year from depression than from any other kind of injury or illness. It’s not just a personal issue, it’s an economic issue as well. So more than double the number of workdays lost around the world from heart disease, from hand injury, from eye injury, or back injury. Depression is the cause of more workdays lost. It is a huge social issue.

I also saw an extremely shocking statistic in the UK this year. It was reported in a reputable newspaper, that in the UK 40% of girls between the age of thirteen and sixteen had received some kind of psychiatric help or advice. That’s a staggering number. Forty percent! That is saying that in the UK 4 out of every 10 teenage girls in that age bracket have needed to go to a counsellor, psychiatrist or school medical assistant. One girl reported: ‘I need help. My mind is in such a state. I need support. I can’t handle my mind; my life is too painful. It is too difficult.’

I feel that mindfulness and Buddhism in the Western world, particularly Buddhist meditation, is doing a great job. It is doing a great service in providing resources that can meet those kinds of difficulties. Obviously, this is blowing our own trumpet a little bit. But the work that developed Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for depression gave excellent results. That work was developed by John Teasdale, Mark Williams and Zindel Segal, in the 2000s. This method of working with the mind, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), is directly informed by Buddhist meditation practices.

Prior to 2007, if someone had a repeated instance of depression the most successful methods for treating recurrent depression had a 5-10% recovery rate. So, if you’d had more than one episode of depression, you were 90-95% likely to have it come back again. Whether you had therapy, psychoanalysis, shock treatment or medication, no treatment had a better than 10% recovery rate. When they began to use Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, they had a 50% percent recovery rate. When they first published this study, the rest of the academic community said, ‘Rubbish! This can’t be right. You can’t be 500% better than anybody else. You’ve fudged your statistics. You must have made a big mistake, or you’re just wrong!’

They did that initial study in the UK, then they repeated it in the USA and got the same results. That’s when interest in mindfulness started to escalate because it was a massively impactful result for that approach. It’s not going to solve all the world’s problems. But this is one indication of the way that mindfulness and Buddhist meditation can have an extremely meaningful and direct impact on society. I feel very positive about that.

In terms of direction, another positive is that a number of government bodies are involved. There was a book published here in the US: A Mindful Nation by the US senator Tim Ryan. Then there was a similar title published in the UK: Mindful Nation UK, a publication which was supported by the United Kingdom government. It was describing effective programs in several fields: in academia, in education, in mental health, in physical health, in criminal justice and in the business world. The publication was about the introduction of mindfulness trainings in these different domains and the benefits that had been experienced.

A full 20% of the Members of Parliament who had signed up and put their names on this. That is a huge amount of support from Members of Parliament; it is significant that they are effectively saying, ‘Yes, this is something that I support, this is a good thing.’ It is a wonderful sign, that government, in a bipartisan way, can pick up these trainings. That they are saying, ‘This is something that the nation would benefit from, and we support its development.’ That is a very positive sign.

In terms of positive aspects of mindfulness and Buddhism, by my reckoning this is the sweet spot. We’re in the Goldilocks period for Buddhism in the West. You are probably unlikely to get a lot of votes by calling yourself Buddhist. It’s not as if, if you happen to born into a Buddhist family, that that will get you an ‘in’ at Stanford. It doesn’t carry any weight. It doesn’t carry a huge social cachet. We are outliers. We’re fringe dwellers. It is not an established religion in the West in any particularly strong way. It is present, but we are basically politically and socially powerless. So, from a spiritual perspective, this is great!

The teachings and practices are available. There are good teachers around and there are good amenities and facilities. Here in the Bay Area, you have a lot of options, and not just from the Theravada tradition: the Insight Meditation Center with Gil Fronsdal or Spirit Rock. But you also have the Zen tradition. You have the Zen Center, Tassajara, and Green Gulch. From the Chinese lineage you have The City Of Ten Thousand Buddhas and the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery. And you have numerous Tibetan centres. There are many different traditions.

These are places that have a practical benefit. The teachings are here. They are practised in sincere ways. Most Westerners were not born into Buddhist families. Most of us have come into Buddhism through meditation and practice. We have come into the practice of mindfulness out of a pragmatic need, out of a personal interest. We’re not inheriting a tradition or a form from our ancestors or our parents. We are doing it because it helps. We are putting energy and effort into it because it helps.

In one hundred years’ time, I suspect that Buddhism will have put down its roots and it will carry some kind of social weight. Now it doesn’t. I feel that’s a good thing. It is a good thing to be an outsider, to be a freak. I feel it’s an advantage to be an outlier; to be able to use these traditions in a very uncluttered way. To relate to them not because there is an inherited value system, but because the qualities that the meditation, practices, and teachings possess, are of direct benefit. You can test that out and know that for yourselves. It is not just an inherited or an assumed value, but it is value that is coming from one’s own experience. So, I think: ’Make hay while the sun shines!’ Be glad that you’ve been born in this period. This is a precious time. It is a time of good opportunity, where these amenities, teachings and practices are available.

I trained in Thailand, where Buddhism has been established for about eight hundred years. There and in other Buddhist countries it is an ancient tradition. The Buddha’s teachings carry a lot of weight. Being dressed in a robe stands out. In the West you’re a bit of a freak. People come up and say, ‘What are you?’ Nowadays they say, ‘Are you from Thailand?’ You can stand on the London Underground, on the BART, and people will just squash up against you and not think twice about it. If you’re in Bangkok, if you get onto the Sky-train there, people will be kneeling the ground, hands in añjali, saying, ‘Oh please, have a seat! How can I get out of the way? Can I get you a cold drink?’ You are a rock star. As a monk you are a deity. There’s a huge amount of assumed value just in wearing a robe and being a monastic. It can be enjoyable, but also, there’s an automatic assumed worth just by carrying the credentials, by wearing the robe. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. But I feel that it’s helpful to be in a time and place where it doesn’t have that weight of custom and tradition and ancestry behind it. A time when its appearance is very fresh and alive.

Another one of the positive aspects is that the Buddha’s approach is a very experimental one. The Buddha didn’t proclaim ‘I’m telling you the absolute truth and you should believe it.’ There is a significant teaching, the Kalama Sutta (A 3.65), that caught the attention of the European intelligentsia back in the nineteenth century. The Buddha said, ‘Don’t believe things just because they’re told to you by spiritual authorities. Don’t believe things just because they make logical sense, or because your family follow these customs and have these beliefs. Take a teaching and try it out. See if it’s beneficial for yourself.’ That fits in very well with the scientific ethic. You have a null hypothesis, you create an idea, you try it out, and you see whether it works or not. What is the result? Right from the very beginning the fact that the Buddhist approach, in its core ethos, fits right in with western scientific method and critical examination, is another way that makes it very accessible.

At Amaravati Monastery we have a very broad and eclectic group of people who come to regular retreats and classes. It’s certainly not just Asian people. We have people from all religious ancestries and dispositions coming to meditation classes. There are many Westerners, Middle Easterners as well as Asians. They come regardless of whether they come from a Buddhist background, a Christian background, an atheist background, a Muslim background, or a Hindu background. Ajahn Sumedho said right from the beginning, ‘Don’t assume that the people who come through the door want to be Buddhist. They want to have instruction on how to make their mind more peaceful and how to understand their life. They want to know how to live more skilfully. So don’t teach in a way that assumes people want to be a Buddhist, or that they’re fed up with being a Muslim, or a Christian or that they’re going to benefit by shedding their old religion and becoming Buddhist. No, it’s important to speak in a way that completely respects people’s own preferences in terms of religious disposition, spiritual inclination, or the lack of it.’

That is one of the great strengths of Buddhism and the mindfulness teachings. They offer a set of tools. They are completely faithful to their sources and faithful to the Buddha’s word. But they are not saying, ‘If you were wise, you would think like me. If you really want to straighten out your life, be a Buddhist like me.’ But rather, they offer some tools that can be used whether you’re a practising Christian or a Hindu or a Muslim, or you’re a sceptical materialist. These tools work just the same. Just like water comes out of the tap and it is water, whether you’re a Muslim or a Christian or a Hindu or you’re from Alpha Centauri. Wherever you are from, it is still water. So, the Buddha’s teachings function in a very practical and accessible way. In terms of the challenges and obstacles for mindfulness and Buddhism, they are many and various, one of the ongoing issues and discussions is commercialism; the challenge in the marketing of the Dhamma. I’ve been in many conversations and discussions with different groups and individuals over the years. Again, I feel we are somewhat in the sweet spot. Even if people try to market Buddhism, it’s not that marketable. It’s not a hugely compelling item. But still, it is drifting in that direction. Sometimes you’ll see meditation courses or mindfulness programs that do make outrageous promises. ‘Just pay $5,000 for this weekend and your life will be changed forever. You will be happy, liberated, enlightened’ and so on. These are very sweeping statements. I’m not quoting adverts verbatim, but I think we’ve all come across those pieces of literature and their promises.

I do feel that the commercialising of Dharma is an uncomfortable drift. When things have a big price tag on them, they have to be dressed up in a way that makes them interesting, sexy, and attractive. That means that sometimes the challenging aspects of the teaching may be trimmed out. For example, those teachings that point to your opinions, your middle-class value systems, your attachment to your appearance or to your wealth. And teachings like ‘renunciation’ or ‘unattractiveness of the body’ are deleted because they don’t help to fill the seats at your events.

It is an ongoing dialogue, but I feel the degree to which the challenging or less attractive teachings get edited out, or left in the fringes, is a weakness. That can weaken the teaching. In 1979, when our teacher from Thailand, Ajahn Chah, visited the USA, he was invited to teach at a ten-day retreat at the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts. He was asked to give advice to the teachers: Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, Jackie Schwartz (now Jacqueline Mandel) and Joseph Goldstein. They asked Ajahn Chah to give them advice as teachers. He said: ‘You will succeed only if you are prepared to challenge the attachments and obsessions of your students.’ The Thai phrase was literally, ‘If you’re ready to stab their hearts.’ Ajahn Chah had a good way of getting people’s attention. Because that is the kindness of the teacher, in being ready to point out things that students are deeply attached to. Particularly to point out the things that students really don’t want to let go of. That is the job of the teacher. That is the kindness of the teacher.

Probably there are a few doctors and surgeons here. How could a surgeon operate if you didn’t use a knife occasionally? These days there’s a lot of microsurgeries but you need the knife sometimes, to get to where the trouble is. That was pointed advice from Ajahn Chah. The kindness of the teacher sometimes needs to manifest as giving advice that’s painful or challenging. It manifests as giving advice that goes against the preferred version of the student’s reality.

Another story that comes to mind is from a friend of ours, a Tibetan lama, Tsoknyi Rinpoche. He would refer to editing the approach to Dharma practice according to your own preferences, as ‘California Dharma’. ‘Yes, I see, all things are empty, nothing is worth attaching to, but I simply like my comforts. I like to have a few beautiful things around but I’m not attached. I just like to have a beautiful home in Marin County, with a nice view, with a picture window looking out over the Bay. But I’m not attached!’

He was staying in a particularly beautiful house in Marin, and his host was from a very wealthy family, and he was talking in these terms. Rinpoche picked up a coffee pot that was sitting on the table, and he started tilting it towards the hand-made Turkish carpet. He asked, ‘How much did this carpet cost you?’ The host replied, ‘About $35,000.’ Rinpoche said, ‘So, tell me about your non-attachment...’ as he tilted the coffee pot a little bit more and a little bit more. ‘You say you really like this place and you enjoy having beautiful things around, but you’re not attached? So how not attached are you?’ And then he tilted the coffee pot a few more degrees. ‘Alright, alright, alright! I’m attached! I’m attached! Just don’t spoil the carpet.’ That was a very practical teaching. It is also the kind of teaching you get from the Thai Forest Ajahns. Teachings that are very to the point.

One other weakness that is happening in the West – in this trimming and editing of the Dhamma teachings to fit people’s preferences and opinions so that it is not challenging – is particularly with respect to mindfulness teachings and the absence of reference to ethics, the deliberate omission of teachings on ethics. For example, the Five Precepts that the Buddha established as guidance for the lay community. Those Precepts are very deliberately left out of the mindfulness trainings: such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). I’ve had long discussions and correspondence with Jon Kabat-Zinn, (founder of MBSR) on this and he speaks very strongly for the need to leave ethics as implicit rather than explicit, within those trainings. The same approach has been taken with respect to MBCT.

I’d like to read a piece in relationship to that. There’s a rich ongoing discussion within the field of whether ethics should be articulated or not. My own (probably biased) opinion is that it’s a weakness. It would be much more helpful to be more explicit, to spell things out in terms of what really benefits us as human beings. I would say that ethical guidelines, the Precepts, can be articulated and held, without them being seen as religious dictates or uptight Victorian formalisms. But rather the Precepts can be held as skilful guidelines for living wisely, carefully and compassionately.

As it seems very relevant to the theme, I’d read this extract from a commentary I wrote on an article in the academic journal Mindfulness. It addresses some of the aspects in the relationship between MBSR and the ethical field. The original article was written by Elaine Montero, who is from the University of Toronto, and her partners.

Jon Kabat-Zinn in 2004 defined mindfulness as: ‘Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.’

My comment is: ‘His definition is somewhat broad and though useful, is open to misinterpretation or misuse.’ On this issue, Montero et al. commented:

‘On the implicit rather than the explicit role of ethics in the teaching and practice of mindfulness. This omission of silā may result in concepts such as ‘non-judgmental awareness’ fostering a range of negative stances from self-indulgence to passivity. And this is where, in the absence of proper teacher-training, a poor grasp of concepts such as bare awareness, non-judgmental awareness, nonduality and so on, are likely to misguide participants into bypassing their experience rather than connecting with it.’

Then in a different section it says:

‘The response to this central issue concerning mindfulness-based interventions from the founder of mindfulness-based stress reduction is significant. Elaine Montero stated: ‘Reflecting on the choice to keep the teachings of ethics implicit, Jon Kabat-Zinn states that, “Each person carries the responsibility both personally and professionally to attend to the quality of their inner and outer relationships.” At the same time, he indicates that this must be supported “by explicit intentions regarding how we conduct ourselves both inwardly and outwardly.”’

Further, Kabat-Zinn, in 2007, responds to earlier concerns about the exclusion of ethics by indicating that personal and professional ethical guidelines are intrinsic to the delivery of MBI (Mindfulness-Based Intervention Programs.) He also argues that because there is a societal tendency to be incongruent with respect to inner and outer moral stances, an implicit teaching of silā is preferable.

My comments:

‘Jon Kabat-Zinn’s words here seem particularly carefully chosen, as though balanced on a tightrope between his acknowledged respect for the source of MBSR: “I’ve always used mindfulness as a placeholder for the Dharma” [Jon Kabat-Zinn, 2013] and his intention to make MBSR as accessible to as broad a field of people as possible. ‘However, the guidelines he gives are, from the Buddhist perspective, significantly vague, in my opinion. The statements that “each person carries the responsibility both personally and professionally to attend to the quality of their inner and outer relationships” and that one should have “explicit intentions regarding how we conduct ourselves both inwardly and outwardly” could comfortably be assigned to the fictional characters of Tony Soprano (the Mafia boss) or Walter White (methamphetamine cook).’ (That’s my comment.)

‘Of even more concern is the statement that: “because there is a societal tendency to be incongruent with respect to inner and outer moral stances, an implicit teaching of silā (ethics) is preferable.” This seems to state that, because there’s a disparity between the ideals people hold and what they actually do, it’s best not to talk about the subject at all. ‘If this is a correct interpretation of the comment – and again from a traditional Buddhist standpoint – this is a very dubious principle on which to structure a pedagogical approach and a system of would-be beneficial psychological practices.’

I was having a bit of a rant there, and I was wondering what Jon Kabat-Zinn would say about that. But he read it and to his credit, he was quite okay with it. But I felt that sense of things being implicit was so vague. And yes, Walter White (from ‘Breaking Bad’) he was cooking methamphetamine and making millions of dollars for his family. Yes, he was doing it on purpose, it was deliberate. He had an intention in mind. He was surveying his internal concerns. Yes, thousands of people are going to have their lives messed up by this, but it’s worth it because this is what my family needs to survive, because I’m dying of cancer. That is his ethic. That is the story of the whole series. And so, yes: it was deliberate. It was thoughtful. He is paying attention to the standard. And he is a meth cook.

So also in the scenario with Tony Soprano, the mafia boss in 'The Sopranos': what he does is deliberate, it is intentional, and it is for the family. And a few people get rubbed out along the way... Those things are not insignificant. Again, this is my biased viewpoint.

There is a way that our actions and our speech can be guided by concerns that there are results. There are beneficial results and harmful results. The Five Precepts create a very helpful standard of conduct to stop creating trouble for ourselves and for others. The Five Precepts are: to refrain from killing, to refrain from stealing, to refrain from sexual misconduct, to refrain from lying and to refrain from using intoxicants. They are a helpful standard for people so that they can live skilfully and kindly.

It doesn’t have to be a decree from above: ‘Thou shalt not…’, a diktat from outside, held as a Victorian moralism. But rather it is like the way the law requires you to have effective brakes on your car. If you’re going to be on the road, if you get pulled over, and the police want to check your brakes and they don’t work, then you’re off the road. So, similarly, I feel it’s helpful to think of these ethical guidelines in terms of driving safely amongst the other members of the traffic on the road.

Another challenge is the ongoing meshing of ancient traditions and patriarchal Asian societal forms, with an egalitarian Western society. That is an interesting mix. We must bear in mind that the Buddha was teaching 2,500 years ago. It was a very long time ago. The forms that you have in traditional Buddhist societies – such as Thailand, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, China, Japan, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Nepal, Tibet and into Mongolia, Siberia and so forth – are forms which have been the body of Buddhist practice developed over many centuries. There are a lot of challenges in taking those forms and planting them into Western society. Challenges in terms of what to keep, what to delete, how to adapt things, how to change things. It is an ongoing dialogue. In some respects, it is a weakness and a challenge; because some things don’t fit very well in terms of the customs, the traditions, the superstitions, and the forms. They are an uncomfortable fit in Western society.

Other things do fit well, but they are unfamiliar and strange to our perceptions. For myself, in my own community, that’s been a very rich ongoing dialogue. When Ajahn Chah first came to teach in Great Britain, he received an invitation from a group in London to visit their little monastery in Hampstead, in Haverstock Hill in London. He accepted the invitation and told Ajahn Sumedho and a few other monks that they should stay there. He said, ‘You can change the robes if you want to, and you can change the chanting. This is a cold country. You can adapt those if you want to, but you must go out on alms-round every single day.’ They thought that was a bit strange, they thought he would insist on the robes and the ritual forms. But why go on alms-round? 'Who is going to put food in our bowls in London?' But Ajahn Chah was insistent about the alms round. He said, ‘You must go out. Your job is to be the fourth heavenly messenger [the sign of renunciation]. You must go out every day.’ That became a very strong ethic for us that we have adapted a little over time.

But it is an ongoing question, and something that we’re working with, particularly with women in monasticism. In Asia, especially in Thailand, the nuns’ position, is a very lowly position socially. The monks’ position is very high. In the Buddhist world it’s probably the most stratified of any country. With our roots in Thailand, it’s a big challenge to develop a form whereby the female monastics have a comparable status, authority and responsibility within the community.

Ajahn Sumedho made some very courageous changes and adaptations back in the early eighties. Those adaptations informed the particular form that we have for women’s monastic training within our community. It an area is of very rich discussion, an ongoing dialogue between us and various different groups around the world.

That was probably the most gnarly area in working together. Back in the early eighties we had moved out of London. We had been invited to move to the countryside. The house in London was sold. We had been given a forest, and a house in the country near that forest was purchased for us. Then Ajahn Sumedho started carrying out ordinations. He was given permission by the Thai Sangha to be a Preceptor. He had already done some novice nuns’ and novice monks’ ordinations. So, the first ordinations for monks were in 1981. This was a very auspicious occasion at Chithurst so everyone went, ‘Oh, Sādhu, Sādhu, Sādhu! This is all very good! This is great!’

Each year there were a few more men going into the bhikkhu life. Meanwhile, the women had been coming and taking on the traditional Thai, Eight Precept form for women’s training, the maechee. And, very naturally, the people who were supporting the monastery were saying, ‘This is great that all these men are going forth and taking on the m