Rugged Interdependency - Amaravati Buddhist Monastery

Golden Highways Revisited: 1998session in the day as well. It’s all very impressive, and palpably on the right track.There are also moves to do more events on dāna – Ajaan Thānissaro (Tan Geoff)ran a workshop this spring like this and the overheads etc. were covered fine. Inthe future we should push for more of this.Tan Punna surfaces late afternoon and we chat over tea. He is well and ArrowRiver is, as usual, just getting by as one steward hands the baton on to the next. Heis in good spirits and at ease with the life.The workshop kicks off at 7:30 and, surprise surprise, there is still more materialin the notes than can be got through in one evening – we finish at 10:00 anyway– oh well.Very low key morning sitting – it’s nice to have so little in the way of ceremonialsfor a change – and then into the splurge of talks and teachings from the ShiningOnes. The theme is The Teachings of the Thai Forest Masters, including Ajahn Mun,Ajahn Buddhadasa, Ajahn Lee, Ajahn Chah, Ajahn Maha-Boowa and Upasika KeeNanayon – by the end of the session (at 10:30 p.m.) we are all buzzing fit to lightthe town of Barre. Add the charge of Joseph Kappel (the former Ajahn Pabhākaroand my first teacher in Thailand) and John Massey (also an ex-monk and composerof blues Sutta arrangements) to the mixture and you wind up with a lot of wattagein the air. Come the evening session, after a bit of history of Ajahn Chah, and TheMindful Way, it’s handed over to Joseph and he fully takes the stage – it’s good tosee him in his glory like this, he has a lot to give and is at last (seven years after disrobing,following 20 years of monastic life) finding his voice in the lay universe. Asweet, poignant and unique session, filled with laughter and power. Golden talesof our Venerable Father and his children.April 5 thSnow! Falling endlessly in gentle white stellations of the grey air; it falls and fallsand falls and never settles – like the ceaseless barrage of perception and thought,sañña and sankhārā, landing in the mind of the Arahant, or rather not landing but dissolvinginto completion upon contact. Upasika Kee’s mind and diamond-swordedmanner fill the morning hours: let go and let go and let go and realize the infiniteemptiness of within. There is no other task in life worth doing.It has been announced that the afternoon session will conclude at 4:00 – afterAjahn Mahā Boowa and some midrashic sharings. To my amazement – despite thefull, bright and zealous energy of the session so far, less than half the folks reappearat 1:30… are they all busy writing?… Another two or three trickle in as the finalhours go by but they eventually have no words to offer. After Luang Dah Boowahas said his piece, (complete with the world-stopping, all-dissolving: “If there is apoint or center of the knower anywhere, that is the essence of a level of being”) –we take a breather and then cluster (the last 15 or so) for our final sharing. A fewsweet jewels come forth – especially Katherine’s Sixty Holy Women, Sandra’s Letterto the Ajahns and Dorothea’s tea party for all six great ones.Joseph has more to say and offers useful encouragement to the notion ofmonasticism in general. Over and over again the theme comes up of introduction32