One day guided meditation program at Korat

In the teaching of the Buddha, there are 3 main principles that Buddhist always keep in mind,-- to abstain from all evil, to cultivate what is wholesome and to purify one's mind. Practicing meditation in the idea of Theravada includes all these principles which are said to be the heart of the Buddha’s teaching. To be more précised, meditation that we do is mindfulness meditation. For those who don’t know much about Buddhism, meditation has many styles. The way we Theravada meditate is called Vipassana or mindfulness meditation. The purpose of this way is to give the Buddhist insight into the nature of reality and accurate understanding of how everything works.

Aj. Jayasaro was an English guy who ordained as a Buddhist monk since 1980. He has been living in Thailand for 31 years so his Thai speaking is excellent. There are many Buddhist monks in Thailand so you may question why I am following his teaching despite the fact that he is not a native Thai monk. As I told you there are many styles of practicing that we can select one that matches our characters or natures. For me, I am quite a thoughtful person and sometime I think too much and distracted. The trick to keep me meditated is to connect my awareness to my body that can be my breath, my movement, my position, and etc. His teaching is passed down from Venerable Ajahn Chah as his preceptor. I have tried practicing many methods of meditation and found that his way of self awareness beginning with sending the perception to the body matches my nature very well. You may see I often do yoga. It’s because yoga is another way of mediation by having the awareness of body postures.

Meeting with Aj. Jayasaro is not so easy. He’s now living alone in a hermitage (much smaller than temple) at the foot of Khao Yai mountains in the northeast (Nakorn Ratchasima,--Korat). He will offer dhamma teachings twice a month at Ban Rai Thawsi which is close to his hermitage. The program begins at 8 am so we took off from Bangkok at 5.30 am. It was the first time to Ban Rai Thawsi so we got lost for 30 mins before arriving just in time. I was surprised by discovering that it was not too crowded as some places where hundreds of people are gathering and waiting to listen the dhamma from famous monks. I got a good seat in the pavilion where I could see and hear him very well. People were all polite, calm and well-behaved. I saw at least 5 foreigners there. We began with praying and then Aj. Jayasaro guided us to do sitting meditation for 40 minutes. After that, he gave us dhamma talk for another 45 minutes. The topics he spoke today are about his visiting the USA last week and the usefulness of giving. As far as I can understand, giving improves our self-esteem, giving reduces our greediness, and giving helps us see how strong our egos can be. Then we all moved down to give food to him and his following monks. All of us stood in line and put a spoon of steamed rice in his bowl. Aj. Jayasaro always smiled while he walked along the way to receive food from us, although the line was quite long and some parts of it were out of shade.

All the activites finished at 11.30am. I drove back to Bangkok with happiness and a great inspiration to continue learning and practicing dhamma in the path of this Theravada Buddhism.

(For those who are interested in how he teaches meditation, you can visit

http://www.thawsischool.com/dhamma-news/en_talks.html)

That day I had my new video camera with me so I tried it out. Let's see it and tell me how you think.


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