Unexpected Freedom

What is Renunciation?good, bad; right, wrong; should, shouldn’t. This tendency toreact, judge and add on to our experience prevents us frombeing able to receive reality in a pure, undiluted form. Thepoint of living a life where one renounces certain options isthat by cultivating a conscious willingness to say ‘no’ tothings that we might otherwise want to have or do – thingsthat are not really necessary to our well-being – we use outerconventions to learn how to let go at a deeper level. We learnthe art of letting go. We call this process of learning a‘training’ because it takes some skill in applying effort.Unskilled effort in this area readily leads to blind andpotentially damaging repression.Picking Up the TrainingIf we want to understand renunciation then we have to try itout. No amount of talking about this practice takes us there.We only see what it really achieves when we make an effortand observe the result. Sometimes we are surprised at howgood it feels to know we can say ‘no’ to ourselves; it can evenbe intoxicatingly good. I recall translating for a newlyordainedyoung monk who was full of the inspiration thatcan come from having been recently received into therenunciate Sangha. He was asking Ajahn Chah for advice onhow to apply the various methods for cultivatingrenunciation and determination. This bright-eyed andenergetic fellow was telling Ajahn Chah how he wanted tomake a determination to spend the following three monthsof the rains retreat observing the practices of not lying downto sleep, not accepting food other than that gathered onalms-round, eating only one meal a day, wearing only thebare minimum of clothes, and so on. He listed lots of thedhutanga (ascetic) practices that the Buddha encouraged.121