The theme for this afternoon’s talk is ‘Less is More – Frugality, Renunciation and Generosity’. I will focus on the frugality and renunciation aspects first of all and then get to generosity later on.

First of all, it struck me how, if we say that our usual philosophy in life is ‘more is better’, if ‘less is more’, then ‘less is better’ – if you follow the logic – which is a good way of summarizing this theme.

This is an important topic for our times. Probably the kind of people who gather together at a Buddhist monastery on a Sunday afternoon are not those overly committed to consumption (what we call the ‘consumer society’ as if we were just a mouth with legs on) but that doesn’t have to be the way we see ourselves, even though this is often the way that society and our value systems are conditioned to operate. In the very wonderful little book called Buddhist Economics by Venerable Payutto, a Thai philosopher monk, he succinctly describes classic economics as: ‘Maximum consumption leads to maximum happiness.’ It’s the basic ethic of the consumer society. The more you consume then the happier you are. Even though we might say, ‘I’m a Buddhist, I’m not like that!’ I think it’s helpful to reflect that, if we look around and we see our working life, our family life, the society we live in, a huge amount of our conditioning is like that. The more that you’ve got, the happier you should be, so there’s an enormous amount of drive to get more. Maybe it’s not physical possessions but at least more status or more Facebook followers or more Instagram followers, more likes, as well as the usual more property, more money and more approval and so forth. So that ‘more is better’ as an ethic for our society is very strong I would suggest; even if we’re not overtly materialistic, or we don’t see ourselves that way, that can still be a very powerful driving force. That said, this is also not solely a modern thing – the search for happiness through material possessions, through the sensory world – this has been part of our life in the human realm since distant ages past.

Titre original : Small Boat, Great Mountain

La rencontre de traditions spirituelles incluant celles des enseignements de sagesse du Theravāda et du Dzogchen, deux grandes expressions du Bouddha-Dharma, est un des principaux aspects bénéfiques de la vie à notre époque. La révolution technologique nous donne la possibilité de voyager, de communiquer et d’étudier les traditions de façon aisée. La plupart des grands textes spirituels sont en ligne, et un flot conséquent de conférences et de retraites rassemble méditants, érudits et maîtres spirituels, pour pratiquer et confronter ouvertement leurs lignées, leur compréhension et leur connaissance.

L’effondrement des champs spirituels séparés qui a lieu de nos jours est à la fois remarquable et sans précédent. Pour la première fois nous pouvons apprécier une vue large de toutes les traditions et voir où elles fusionnent ou entrent en collision.

Las charlas agrupadas en este volumen son una selección que fue publicada en Silent Rain (1995) y fue editada y adaptada para la reimpresión de Rain on the Nile (2009). Las charlas que se publican aquí, en Solo lo Maravilloso Permanece, comprenden todas las disertaciones sobre el Dhamma del segundo libro mencionado. El material no fue anteriormente publicado en este formato. Como ocurre con el libro original Silent Rain, amable lector, lo estimulo a que las vea como la presencia de un collage de ideas e imágenes, arreglados de forma ligera para transmitir el espíritu y el significado, más que como un programa ajustado firmemente, destinado a la instrucción.

HISTORICALLY THERE HAVE BEEN differences of opinion about the relative merits of Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism and, if you read much of the literature, they would seem to be quite divergent in their approaches toward Buddhist practice – yet there also seem to be some tremendous affinities.

When I arrived at the International Forest Monastery in Thailand, I had never read any Buddhist books and I wasn’t actually in search of becoming a Buddhist monk. I was a wanderer, a free-lance spiritual seeker, and I just happened to turn up at this forest monastery that Ajahn Sumedho had established a couple of years before, basically as a place for a free meal and a roof over my head for a few nights. Little did I expect, some twelve or thirteen years later, that I would be doing what I am doing now. But when I went there and asked the monks about Buddhism, to explain things a little bit for me so that I could get a feel for what their life was about, the first thing one of them did was to give me a copy of a book of talks by a Zen Master, and he said, ‘Don’t bother trying to read the Theravada literature; it’s terribly boring, very dry. Read this, it is pretty much the same thing that we’re doing, and it will give you a sense of what our practice is about.’ And I thought, ‘Well, obviously these guys are not too hung up on their tradition.’ The book was Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.

So, one could see right from the beginning that, even though there is a strength to the particular form within any Buddhist country, one is not necessarily constricted or limited by that. I was there for months before I even heard of ‘Theravada’ and ‘Mahayana,’ let alone the differences of opinion between them. It seemed that when you actually lived the life there really wasn’t any great disparity, but if you thought about it a lot, and if you were the kind of person who wrote histories and books and had got into the political side of religious life, then that was where the divergences occurred.

I have heard Ajahn Sumedho recount a few times over the years that, for the first year of his monastic life, he had been practising using the instructions from a Ch’an meditation retreat given by the Ven. Master Hsü Yün, and that he had used the Dharma talks from that retreat given in China as his basic meditation instruction. When he went to Wat Pah Pong, Ajahn Chah asked him what kind of meditation he had been doing, at first he thought, ‘Oh no, he’s going to get me to give this up and do his method.’ But, when Ajahn Sumedho described what he had been doing and mentioned that it had had excellent results, Ajahn Chah said, ‘Oh, very good, just carry on doing that.’

So, one sees that there is a very strong unity of purpose; even though there might be historical differences between the two traditions, they are very much in accordance with each other. And one begins to see what the different Buddhist traditions are talking about. They get sectioned out into Hinayana or Mahayana or Vajrayana, as different types of Buddhist practice, but they are basically just different labels which are talking about attitudes of mind and, when the traditions are used wisely, then they will address all aspects of our mind, from the most selfish and mundane to the most exalted. They address all the different levels of our life, and it’s only when they are not understood, when people take them as fixed positions, that there is any conflict amongst them.