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Relationship Advice from Two Celibate Monks - Ajahn Kovilo, Ajahn Nisabho

Introduction

Jim: Good evening everyone and welcome. This evening we have the privilege of having two Theravadan monks, Ajahn Kovilo on your left and Ajahn Nisabho on your right. They are from the Clear Mountain Monastery up in Seattle. They will do a guided meditation and then a talk.

I wanted to just let you all know that the monks live by the generosity of all of those who they teach and support. And so, if you would like to make offerings to them, there's a dana box near the door that you can put in cash or checks. And also, there's an online way to do it. So, I just wanted to make sure that you're aware of that opportunity. With that, I'll turn it over to Ajahn Kovilo.

Ajahn Kovilo: Checking, checking. How's the audio? Okay. Thank you, Jim. First, it's lovely to meet you all. Some of you we may have met before, others for the first time. First, just appreciating Jim's care for our support, but to make clear that we're well cared for. We go for alms every day, or most weekdays, up at Pike Place Market, and we have food and a dwelling. Ajahn Amaro has done the math and it takes about as much to care for a monk as it does for a Great Dane—not counting health care, probably, but that's provided for. All to say, all these teachings are really given completely freely. If people are inspired to donate to Clear Mountain's vision, fair enough, you're welcome to. But really, you should conceive of just the best way you can show your care and respect for these teachings is just to practice well. We just appreciate meeting you all.

For those who haven't heard of it, we were the Clear Mountain Monastery project until about two weeks ago when we got land, and now I guess we're actually a monastery with one shed. Each of us trained in the Thai Forest tradition, but really felt that there was a strong hunger and place for these teachings in the West and in the Northwest. We came about five years ago to see what could form out of faith, ours and others. Just coming to Seattle with open hands and beginning to go for alms round every day in downtown Seattle. The first time we went for alms, I think seven people gave in about a half an hour, and since then over five years we haven't gone hungry one day. You really see the goodness that there is in the world when you exist completely resting in it.

Similarly, Seattle is the most secular city in the US, and yet what we found is, just as many of you have intuited—I'm sure, because you're here—that these teachings are finding a resonance now that is meaningful, and that the family of practitioners forming at this time is a very potent force in the world. So though we're based in Seattle, to have the chance to come down and meet you all, some of whom we've seen on Zoom and others maybe we're meeting for the first time, is significant to us. Thank you for the invite to be here. Okay, well let's meditate together.

Guided Meditation

So coming to meditate, the first thing we find is the body. You want to allow the body to rest in a way which is upright, but not uptight. Allowing the central column of the spine to elongate upward, as if there was a string very gently pulling up from the top of the head. And then another string very gently dropping into the earth. And then around this alert and upright central column, you can just allow everything else to fully relax.

With the body resting upright but not uptight, you can now allow the mind to assume a similar posture, and bring awareness to the breath. As we start or continue this relationship with the breath, just remembering the principle of kindness in the beginning, kindness in the middle, and kindness in the end. And that's why we're here.

Starting out very consciously, watching the full in-breath and the full out-breath. You can use a meditation word like buddho, which means awake. You can say "bud" on the in-breath and "dho" on the out-breath. In training awareness in this way, training awareness with kindness. For the next twenty minutes, just see how kind you can stay with the breath. Knowing the full in-breath and the full out-breath. And when the mind wanders, very gently, very kindly just remembering that the breath never left, the mind is still here. Just coming right back. Kind in the beginning, kind in the middle, and kind in the end.

And in the middle of a sit, it can actually be helpful to remember this theme of kindness. So the object is the breath, but the theme, the mood, is one of kindness. Being with the breath, the beginning, the middle, and the end of every in-breath; the beginning, middle, and end of every out-breath, in as friendly a way as possible. When the mind wanders, just forgiveness and return.

Towards the end of a meditation, remembering kindness again. Wherever the mind has been running off to, just full forgiveness. And just kindly coming back to this new beginning. Knowing the breath. Very friendly. Just in the very last minutes of especially a group meditation, it can be really helpful to allow that kindness to expand. You'll find you don't need to push it out. You don't need to crank out the mettā in all directions, but just see if you can let down any barriers. Thinking, "May I be well, and may all beings be well."

Relationship Advice from Two Celibate Monks

Ajahn Kovilo: That was great that so many of you know those words. And if you didn't, no worries, we didn't have chanting books. Ajahn Nisabho and I were visiting from Seattle, as Jim said, and visiting my mother who lives in Menlo Park. We are visiting for Buddhist Global Relief, which is a great organization that has a Sangha Council composed of Bhikkhu Bodhi, who's been with the organization from the beginning and was basically the founder with the vision. Recently he established this idea along with the board to have a Sangha panel. So, there's Ajahn Nisabho and I, two of the bhikkhunis from Sravasti Abbey (which is a beautiful community in Eastern Washington state), Ayya Anandabodhi (who was starting Aloka Vihara in California and is now starting a monastery up in Port Townsend, Washington), and a Zen nun, Dhammadipa. So, a really beautiful group of people. We're here for that as well. Next week we'll go up to the monastery where I ordained, Abhayagiri. We get to tap into this community and have come here a number of times, and it's just nice to see faces returning.

Tonight we thought a nice theme could be relationship advice from two celibate monks. [Laughter] We were thinking of going even more risqué with "marriage advice from two celibate monks," but that's a little bit too risqué, actually. If anybody out in the hall wants to come inside, we've got a bunch of chairs in here, and it's warm and friendly. People are oftentimes afraid of monastics, which is a very common phenomenon. There are a lot of bald spots up in the front in addition to our own, so people are intimidated.

But regarding relationship advice: a lot of people come to the Dhamma, certainly a lot of young men, and we learn about the Dharma through meditation retreats. Convert Buddhists in America often have vague imaginings about what it means to be a monk, what a monastery is, and they think that it's all about just being as macho as possible. If there isn't this remembering the principle of "kind in the beginning, kind in the middle, kind in the end," it can get really uncomfortable when you live with a bunch of competitive people.

There are suttas where the Buddha said, "Wander alone like a rhinoceros." If you can't find someone who is on par with you or better, then you should wander alone like a rhinoceros. It's a fairly long sutta with that as the refrain. A lot of us try that, and some people can do it, but I think most humans can't. That really ties into the Buddha's acknowledgment and framing of the whole of the holy life. Does anybody have any guesses? What is the whole of the holy life? Sangha. Kalyāṇamitta^[1], spiritual friendship. Ānanda, who was the Buddha's main attendant, came up to the Buddha very inspired and said, "Lord, I figured it out. Spiritual friendship, kalyāṇamitta, which literally means beautiful friendship, is half of the holy life." And the Buddha says, "Wait a second, Ānanda. Spiritual friendship, beautiful friendship, is the whole of the holy life."

So, the Buddha gave a lot of teachings about how to be a good friend and how to open yourself up to having good friends. He once taught King Pasenadi to specifically train himself using a particular way of speaking the Buddha had for injunctions or affirmations: "Thus should you train yourself. I will be one who has spiritual friends, spiritual companions, spiritual associates." Just remembering and training oneself is important because things can get really dry, and the Buddha framed that this is the whole of the holy life.

One of the frameworks he used comes up in a number of suttas called the six sārāṇīya dhammā^[2]. Sārāṇīya literally means "that which is to be remembered." Another meaning by implication is endearing dhammas, lovable qualities, or lovable ways of being. They are: behaving in ways which imbue loving-kindness through bodily acts both in public and in private, verbal acts of loving-kindness in public and in private, mental acts of loving-kindness in public and in private, being generous with your spiritual companions, having shared ethics (shared principles, shared morality, shared agreements), and finally shared view, which the Buddha framed as being noble and emancipating. It can be mutually wonderful when you have these shared principles that you can live with your friends with.

So we do that, and we look for ways to implement these different sārāṇīya dhammā into daily life. This term sārāṇīya practice is one which I came across in a very specific usage in Sri Lanka. I visited Na Uyana monastery, where the monks in the forest tradition have just one meal a day. It's a strict practice where we go through, get our food for the day, and put it in our alms bowl. But at this monastery, after the monks got their food, some would actually get up, walk down the row, take food from their own bowl, and give it to other monastics. They call this sārāṇīya practice: giving before consuming.

We took this principle and introduced it to our community up in Seattle as kind of a sārāṇīya challenge. Ajahn Nisabho's parents, who are Buddhists, asked him what they could get him for his birthday. What do you get somebody who doesn't want anything? He said, "I would love it if you all could do this practice of sārāṇīya, figuring out a way to give before consuming in some creative way. And even better if you could introduce that to the community." We opened up this opportunity and collected people's sārāṇīya aspirations. This is a very important principle in a Buddhist life: you can't let your Buddhist practice be rote. You need to find creative ways to keep your practice alive and instantiate your generosity. You could challenge yourself to carry around a backpack full of energy bars and aspire, "Every day I'm going to try to give away an energy bar." Or once a week, go to your local soup kitchen, or offer food to the monks at Pike Place Market. We collected all of these aspirations for about three months and then read them out loud over our New Year's vigil. It was just so inspiring.

The Buddha was once asked by a Brahmin, "Where should I give?" And the Buddha's genius response was, "Give where you're inspired." He didn't say, "Give to me, give to the Sangha, give to Buddhists." The next question was, "Giving to what is of great fruit and great benefit?" And the Buddha said that giving to beings who are trying to practice virtue or who are on the path is of great fruit and great benefit. We had people with all sorts of cool sārāṇīya practices of generosity, like buying a bird feeder and feeding the birds in their yard. If you can do this before consuming, that's the added level. Instantiate your giving in some very clear way that you do repeatedly at regular intervals.

We find ways to keep the same precepts and principles. In Buddhism, ethics or morality was framed by the Buddha with various adjectives. He said you should keep the virtue which is dear to the noble ones, which is praised by the wise, which leads to concentration, and which is emancipating. Having a set of moral principles of integrity that are praised by the wise feels freeing. It doesn't feel like you're putting fences around your life and your conduct. It feels forward-leading, inward-leading. It's not restricting my freedom but actually enabling my freedom. Part of our talk on relationship advice is that we're going to split it in half, so I'm going to pass the mic to Ajahn Nisabho and he can speak more about these sārāṇīya^[3] practices.

Ajahn Nisabho: Checking. How's that? Better? Okay. As you begin to practice, you gain certain superstars or role models in these different qualities. Sitting in front of you is a superstar of giving, which is Ajahn Kovilo. Before he travels, he'll load up a backpack filled with presents. As he was going through airport security this time, he got pulled aside because his backpack was so full of random stuff. As the TSA agent was unpacking, he said, "Careful, it might explode." She said, "Should I be running?" Horrible thing to say in an airport. Not advised by the monks! He meant it was going to explode with gifts. By the end of it, she said, "I want to be your friend."

The Buddha said, "If beings only knew as I know the fruits of giving, they never would eat without first having given. Not if that was their final morsel. But because beings do not know as I know the fruits of giving, they eat without having given. Stinginess overcomes their mind." Dāna^[4] is the first paramita, the first of the spiritual perfections. A close synonym for dāna is cāga^[5], which means to release, to give, to give up. Cāga is literally a synonym for Nibbāna. Ayya Khema says, "Anattā^[6] can sound like such a conceptual word, but really it's this motion: the opening hand." Note where you feel that knot in terms of giving. Is it time that you have difficulty giving? Is it the spotlight? Is it material? Is it opening your home? That is where you give. Push yourself a little bit. If time is what you lack, give time. This is how you sanctify a life, by sacrifice.

We had one man who took on the sārāṇīya practices, and whenever he would give to someone on the street, he would do it with three framings: he would lower himself to their physical level, he would learn their name, and he would touch their hand. What would it mean to take that on for a life? What sort of change would that affect in your heart?

This merges into the sixth aspect of the sārāṇīyas: right view that is noble, leading onwards, leading to the right ending of stress. This is the roof beam. One dwells in harmony with right view, in harmony with one's companions in the spiritual life. When Ajahn Kovilo was invoking the Buddha at the beginning of this talk, usually everyone is supposed to sit there quietly, and yet you all couldn't help yourselves. What a beautiful thing, this sympathetic resonance. Relationships in the world are often like tangled strings with entanglement, push, and pull. But the relationship of kalyāṇamitta is much more like sympathetic resonance. If you pluck a string in a symphony, every string tuned to a similar note all around will resonate at the same frequency.

A member of our community once said, "I've never felt closer to anyone than these people, and yet when I leave, I won't miss them." That sounds monstrous from a worldly perspective, but it's true. When people are inspired by the Buddha's words, they say, "It's wonderful, it's marvelous, as if what had been turned upside down has been turned upright, as if what had been covered has been revealed." The Buddha isn't giving us something brand new; he's revealing a sense of recognition, something we've known deep down. The beauty of kalyāṇamitta is that sense of recognition. "Oh, you again. Hi." As you create a spiritual community here at IMC or elsewhere, understand that there is no place for special friendship. Everyone's special, and no one's special, and that's very beautiful. We're all aligned with Dharma, and that alignment is precious.

There's a hidden image that circles all around the suttas of a song. The Buddha says one dwells in harmony with the Dharma. What does that imply but a note that we can align ourselves to? This becomes visceral. When are you wasting your time? In college, I lived a good life but I couldn't give myself to the things my peers did. I realized later it was wisdom. None of those things were worthy of my heart until I touched Dharma for the first time. Until you intuit that riverbed of Dharma deep enough to hold the whole of a life, what choice does the heart have but to fracture itself into a thousand turbulent tributaries of sensual desire? I was going down the West Coast after college, listening to podcasts, stopping for Taco Bell, reading The Hunger Games. Then suddenly, I stepped into a monastery for a few hours, intuited the silence, and knew that that is what I needed to face suffering and live a life that would not be diluted.

It is extremely rare to touch these teachings. There's an experiment run by Gene Weingarten where he had Joshua Bell, one of the world's foremost violinists, play in the subway. The day before he'd played in a stadium for people paying hundreds of dollars a ticket, on a multi-hundred-dollar Stradivarius. In the video of him playing in the subway, you see people just walking past without stopping for over an hour. You think he looks like a ghost, until you realize that he's the only real one, and everyone else is a ghost. What does it mean to have heard this note in your life? We all know that moment when we've stepped into a footprint that feels made for us, when we've touched the Dharma. Yet how hard it is to keep that alignment as the buzz and neon of the world call you to other places that taint your tongue, call your eye, and overwhelm your ears. Do not take a community like this for granted.

The Buddha said one first contemplates if one has abandoned the hindrances. I would specially note abandoning ill will, and not stabbing each other with "verbal daggers," which is a great phrase in the suttas. We can live our lives in a low-grade hum of ill will. Ajahn Amaro says mindfulness in daily life for most of us should be devoted to two chief purposes: keeping one's sīla^[7], and not dwelling in ill will. When you wake up, notice how the mind will scramble for something to constellate around, and ill will is so often the first thing. For the first fifteen minutes of the day, bring the mind to loving-kindness, mettā. Notice when contempt or the splinter of annoyance comes up. Giving up ill will again and again is how we put down pride and step into humility. Notice what leaning too far into politics brings up. You have a duty to care for the heart. No news before noon, or take one day a week apart from that. Practice yonisomanasikāra^[8], appropriate attention. Notice how quickly we can forget the bright gardens our hands work in for the vague whisper of a serpent.

The Buddha said, "Even as a mother cow would always know where her calf was, even so when one attends to one's duties, one never loses one's veneration for the training in heightened virtue, heightened mind, and training in wisdom." Imagine holding these teachings like that. A life lived merely for the purpose of a well-adjusted middle-class existence is a trivial and cheap life. We can live that life, but knowing it is for the purpose of awakening is what makes it worthy of our true trajectory. Your life can look very similar from the outside after you start to practice, but a Z-axis opens up, bringing beauty and intention to everything. How beautifully can we make every action? Life in monasteries is not very exciting or novel, and yet that's what makes it the prime course for purifying the heart.

Relationship is the place where that happens most profoundly. Terry Real said, "There's no place for objective reality in deep relationship." Notice the justifying mind that says, "Ah, who wouldn't be annoyed by that?" But when you touch those deep, ancient patterns, you're either operating as a yaksha^[9] or as a deva^[10]. Ajahn Kovilo and I decided that whenever one of us is operating from a vaguely yaksha place (like an ogre), we invite ourselves to take a picture and notice that that's what yaksha mind looks like. What a beautiful thing to have a relationship where you have to step into deva again and again.

Finally, the Buddha said one of the aspects of right view is that one's strength is one's love of listening to the Dhamma. Mother Teresa said that when she prays, she listens. People asked her what God said, and she said, "He listens back." What it means to listen to the Dhamma in our lives is to tune to that and align ourselves with it.

Q&A

Participant: This isn't directly related to the talk, but I was wondering if you could just share a little bit about the development of the land that you were able to purchase outside of Seattle and the development of the Sangha near there.

Ajahn Kovilo: Most forest monasteries in the US are one or two hours outside of major metropolitan areas. We really wanted to find land that was within thirty to forty minutes of the city so that people could come on a daily basis and really make it a part of their life. It took about three years of searching, but we found ninety acres about forty minutes from Seattle. Our landmark was St. Mark's Cathedral where we meet nearly every Saturday. The community came together and managed to raise the funds. We don't fundraise, but people were inspired. Our hope is to begin a three-phase project. Phase one will have two little huts (we currently have one shed), a dhammasala where people can come every morning to offer food and spend time, and a bhikkhunis' quarters for visiting bhikkhuni sisters. Phase two will hopefully feature a temple that could hold 300 or so people, as we're already at 120 people on Saturdays in a gym. And then in the third phase, perhaps up to 20 resident monastics. It's a long-term vision.

Participant: I'm curious if you have any thoughts about following the eighth precept, especially for lay practitioners. The eighth meaning not lying on high or luxurious beds?

Ajahn Kovilo: The floor is awesome, everybody. Sleeping on the floor is fantastic because you can train yourself to sleep anywhere. It's totally doable. Even if one has physical considerations that make it less easy to sleep directly on the ground, most of our monasteries will use a camping pad like a Thermarest. The official rule is not to have a bed with legs taller than eight finger-breadths—basically just something that's not luxurious. One of the cool benefits of sleeping on the floor is if you have a shrine in your room to orient your whole life towards, which we highly recommend. In every monastery I've lived at, there's a shrine in every hut. We orient our lives to that. As soon as you walk into the hut, you bow. You sleep with your head facing the shrine. If you're sleeping on the floor, it's very easy to just bow three times when you wake up and before you go to bed.

Ajahn Nisabho: The eight precepts are a really beautiful thing to hold once a week to cleanse, to orient, to have a landmark. The eighth one might seem silly, but when you wake up on a Thermarest, it definitely clues you in that there's something different happening.

Participant: On the topic of the eight precepts, I think it was the seventh precept about refraining from entertainment, but Ajahn Nisabho you inspired me a few months ago to cancel my Netflix subscription. [Laughter] Just refraining from streaming services or deleting the news apps has made my mind so much more peaceful. I also have a question: would you be willing to share what your favorite sutta is and why?

Ajahn Kovilo: We should start a club of people who get rid of their Netflix accounts! Favorite sutta is a hard question. There is a little book compiled by Ajahn Chah called Thus Should You Train Yourselves. It collects every time in the Pali Canon when the Buddha says, "Thus you should train yourselves: we will be ones who cultivate loving-kindness..." The main sutta in the Majjhima Nikaya where the Buddha references this framework the most is the Mahā Assapura Sutta, Majjhima number 39. It's worth memorizing parts of.

Ajahn Nisabho: There's one that has stuck with me a lot over the years. It's in the Kassapa Samyutta, called Like the Moon. Venerable Mahā Kassapa says, "One should approach families or householders like the moon." A monastic is not fit to teach the Dhamma if they think, "Having heard the Dhamma, may they gain faith in me." A monastic teaches the Dhamma out of respect for the intrinsic excellence of the Dhamma, thinking, "The Dhamma is well expounded by the Blessed One, apparent here and now, timeless, encouraging investigation, leading onwards, to be experienced individually by the wise." Ajahn Chah would always recite that before teaching. It's a reminder that this isn't about any of us; we've been given these gifts by the Tathāgata^[11].

Participant: My question relates to having conversations with friends who are not Buddhist. I've started to find it difficult to engage and socialize with my non-Buddhist friends as I deepen my practice. What is your suggestion?

Ajahn Kovilo: It's very common to find interests diverging with old acquaintances. When I ordained, some monastics told me to just cut ties with previous acquaintances who weren't aligned, but it was never in my heart to do that. Instead of juggling a bunch of coffee dates that feel like a waste of time, group those friends into two big brunches a month. Host them on your home turf where you can determine how it's going to play out. The note of giving and hosting is beautiful and will overwhelm the other strange notes in that mix.

If it's a family member you need to keep a relationship with, just having a friendly relationship and talking about whatever they're interested in can be helpful. In Theravada Buddhism, there is a big allowance for stepping back from relationships. In the Mangala Sutta, the Buddha lists 38 blessings of a Dharmic life. The ultimate blessing is Nibbāna, but the very first is "avoiding the foolish." So there is an allowance for stepping back when there's a need for that.

Ajahn Nisabho: You don't have to say you're Buddhist. You can just speak to different elements of the Noble Eightfold Path. "I'm trying to be really careful with my speech these days." Right speech can often manifest as questions or curiosity. It's fairly common to meet kind people, but rare to meet curious people. Make it a game: can I find someone's Four Noble Truths? Trace their words back to their suffering. There is Dharma in everyone if you look for it.