A Watch In The Ocean: From Silicon Valley To Ordination In Myanmar & Sri Lanka With Bhante Subhuti Bhikkhu

[Ai assist:] Integrating Presence and Echoes and Stories of Dhamma come together in this special swapcast to speak with Bhante Bhikkhu Subhuti, an American Buddhist monastic based in Sri Lanka.

Now in his 20th vassa, Bhante Subhuti reflects on the journey that brought him from lay life into monastic training, and on what two decades of living the monastic life have taught him about practice, discipline, and the mind.

The conversation also explores aspects of meditation practice, including his experience of developing and sustaining a contemplative practice within the monastic environment. Alongside the formal dimensions of Buddhist practice, Bhante Subhuti shares practical reflections and advice for lay practitioners—how the Dhamma can be integrated into ordinary life, and what can genuinely support spiritual development beyond the meditation cushion.

Chapter Titles (with approximate timestamps):

0:00 – Introduction & Welcome
0:35 – Meeting Bhante Subhuti
1:23 – Early Spiritual Journey & Be Here Now
3:46 – Discovering Buddhism in College
5:00 – Learning Meditation & the Computer Group
8:48 – Leaving Bayer Diagnostics & the Decision to Travel
12:16 – From Tibetan & Mahayana to Theravada & Goenka
16:10 – The Fiji Watch Story: The Turning Point
24:20 – Evacuation, India, and Commitment to Ordination
26:17 – Wat Pah Nanachat & Discovering Pa-Auk
29:29 – Arrival in Myanmar & First Ordination (2001)
34:05 – Visa Crisis & Moving to Sri Lanka (2007)
36:57 – Reordination & Doubts About the Original Ordination
41:12 – Return to Myanmar, Hawaii, and Later Path
44:22 – Current Life: IIT, Master’s Program & Present
53:31 – Concepts, Conventional Truth & Ultimate Reality
1:01:38 – Breath Meditation, Four Elements & Kasinas
1:10:08 – Overview of the Pa-Auk System
1:17:17 – Samatha, Jhānas & the 40 Objects
1:20:31 – Rūpa & Nāma Kammaṭṭhāna
1:24:31 – Dependent Origination & Vipassanā Stages
1:27:09 – Comparison with Mahasi, Goenka & Thai Forest
1:38:58 – Authenticity, Right Speech & Skillful Means
1:52:17 – Qualities of a Good Teacher
2:03:20 – Female Teachers & the Fourfold Saṅgha
2:05:17 – Advice for Lay Practitioners
2:10:22 – Closing Reflections

Bhante Bhikkhu Subhuti:

Ani Yudrön Echoes & Stories Of Dhamma:

Here’s just a outline of a sampling of a portion of the talk:

Josh: I’d like to jump into a key Dhamma topic: concepts. In basic practice, concepts like the body or the breath help us anchor attention. But as practice deepens, we learn that even the “breath” or the “body” are conventional concepts (paññatti), and the practice eventually requires discerning ultimate materiality (rūpa) and mentality (nāma).

Could you talk about the role concepts play in practice, how they can be wholesome (kusala), and where their limitations lie?

Bhante Subhūti: We must distinguish between conventional truth (sammuti-sacca) and ultimate truth (paramattha-sacca).

Even the Buddha used conventional concepts. He referred to himself, called people by their names, and addressed his monks as “Bhikkhus.” He didn’t walk around saying, “Listen closely, ultimate materiality and mentality over there!” He didn’t speak exclusively in terms of kalāpas (subatomic units), cittas, or cetasikas in everyday conversation. In the Sutta pitaka, the Buddha spoke in conventional terms so people could understand. The Abhidhamma provides the detailed “scientific footnotes” underneath those conventional statements.

Think of it like water. Conventionally, we call it “water.” In ultimate chemical reality, it’s H_2O—hydrogen and oxygen molecules. Even a chemist asks for “a glass of water,” not “H_2O.” We need conventional language to communicate.

How Concepts Function in Practice:

Samatha (Concentration): Uses concepts as objects. For example, in mettā (loving-kindness) practice, the object is satta (living beings)—which is a concept. In kasiṇa meditation (like earth or white kasiṇa), you focus on a concept derived from physical form.
Morality (Sīla): Relies on conventional concepts. To break the first precept (killing), there must be the perception of a living being (satta-saññā). In ultimate reality, a body is just shifting physical elements, but morality operates in the realm of conventional awareness.
Vipassanā (Insight): Deals strictly with ultimate realities (paramattha)—discerning physical and mental phenomena, seeing their true characteristics: impermanence (anicca), suffering (dukkha), and non-self (anattā).

The Mistake with Breath Meditation:

Many practitioners confuse ultimate physical sensations with the concept of the breath. When people focus on the breath at the nostrils, they often start focusing on four-element sensations: hardness, heaviness, heat, or movement.

Hardness/Heaviness = Earth element
Heat = Fire element
Pushing/Motion = Air element

When you focus on physical sensations (temperature, pressure, tension), you are focusing on ultimate physical realities, not the concept of the breath.

To illustrate a concept: Imagine standing by a highway watching traffic.

If you look at specific cars—a red Ford F-150, a blue Tesla, a Mazda—you are focusing on specific individual characteristics.
If you step back and simply hold the general concept of “vehicle,” you ignore color, brand, or model, holding only the concept “vehicle.”

In Ānāpānasati (mindfulness of breathing), the breath must be taken as a continuous concept, ignoring individual elemental sensations (heat, pressure). Once the concept is stabilized, it transforms into a light mark (nimitta).

Josh: That’s a brilliant clarification. Could you give us a brief structural overview of the Pa-Auk meditation system, from samatha to vipassanā?

Bhante Subhūti: Pa-Auk Sayadaw did not invent a new system. He took the classic roadmap provided in the Visuddhimagga and the Abhidhammattha-saṅgaha and systematized it into a step-by-step practical curriculum.

Stage 1: Samatha (Developing Concentration)

Ānāpānasati or Kasiṇa: Practitioners begin with a samatha object (such as breath, Earth kasiṇa, White kasiṇa, etc.).
Nimitta & Jhāna: Through sustained focus on the concept, the light/nimitta appears. The practitioner stabilizes the nimitta and enters the four jhānas (absorption states).
40 Samatha Objects: Practitioners master the five masteries of the jhānas and work through various objects among the 40 traditional samatha subjects.
Four Elements Meditation: To transition toward vipassanā, practitioners analyze the physical body through the Four Elements (Earth, Water, Fire, Air).

Stage 2: Rūpa-Kammaṭṭhāna (Mentality & Materiality)

Discerning Materiality (Rūpa): As concentration deepens, the practitioner breaks down the physical body into subatomic units called rūpa-kalāpas. They discern the specific elemental compositions of the sense doors (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind-base).
Discerning Mentality (Nāma): The practitioner discerns mental processes (cittas and cetasikas) occurring at the six sense doors during cognitive processes (vīthi).

Stage 3: Paṭicca-Samuppāda (Dependent Origination)

The practitioner discerns the cause-and-effect relationships between mental and physical states across time.
Using deep concentration, they trace back causes into past lives (typically 4–5 past lives) and forward into potential future lives, directly verifying how past ignorance (avijjā) and craving (taṇhā) produce present existence.

Stage 4: Vipassanā (Insight Practice)

Only after fully discerning ultimate mind, ultimate matter, and their causes does formal vipassanā begin.
The practitioner applies the 40 modes of Insight (anicca, dukkha, anattā) to all physical and mental phenomena of the past, present, and future, internal and external.
This systematic contemplation (sammasana-ñāṇa) leads sequentially through the stages of Insight Knowledge (vipassanā-ñāṇa), culminating in Nibbāna.

Other conversations with Ani / Asoka:

Peace Walks Inward: Peace Pilgrimage, Resolving Inner Conflict, (Authentic) Dharma Lineages, Brahma Viharas and Navigating Duality with Asoka

Bridging Ancient & Modern: Bhutan’s Landmark Global Peace Prayer Festival With Asoka

Audio: Watch in the Ocean: From Silicon Valley to Ordination in Myanmar & Sri Lanka with Bhante Subhuti

In this transcript Ai removed timestamps as well as most misspellings corrected (names except Ani), technical terms, place names). Light punctuation and minor smoothing for readability while remaining faithful to the spoken content. Speakers clearly labeled.

Josh:
Hey, wholeness and welcome. This is Josh of Integrating Presence and I’ll soon be joined by co-host Anie, formerly known as Ahsoka, for this swap cast with her Echoes and Stories of Dharma podcast. We’ll be joined by guest Bhante Subhuti Bhikkhu. We didn’t do a formal introduction in this. You’ll soon learn all you need to know that an introduction would cover. So without further ado, here it is.

Anie:
Hello. Good evening, Bhante.

Bhante Subhuti:
Good evening. How are you today?

Anie:
I’m doing okay.

Bhante Subhuti:
Yeah, we just had a lot of chanting and it’s something I do every day. Nearly every day. We just had a sāmanera who we had a special day for because he’s flying out to Myanmar to go to the Pa-Auk study center in Pyin Oo Lwin. So he’s only 12 years old. So we had like a big… a lot of coconut lamps, coconut oil lamps. Yeah, we had maybe 20 of them or something. So it’s good.

Anie:
So well, you have had an interesting journey coming from being a computer programmer into becoming a renunciant and homeless, start living with uncertainty and completely different culture as well. You’ve written a book Going for Broke which is available on your website, and there’s a lot of reflection on your journey from starting to take this shift, turnaround in your life. Would you tell us a bit about how you settled in Sri Lanka eventually? Give you as much time as you need.

Bhante Subhuti:
Okay. It’s like having your own… I’ll try to give a shorter version. Yeah.

So for me, I got into spirituality probably when I was like 17 or 18. I think about 17. I asked my parents… I asked my mother to buy me a book called Be Here Now. Remember Be Here Now by Ram Dass. And surprisingly, it’s a lot of people’s first spiritual books, at least in my generation. But I really… it was just a little bit of curiosity of what spirituality is and what those… because I was just 17. Especially in the 80s there wasn’t really any spirit… you were really weird if you were into spirituality. And like the Buddhist section in the early 90s in Barnes & Noble… we used to have bookstores if you remember… and the whole Eastern philosophy section was maybe like three feet wide. It was like one shelf and one or two shelves on a bookshelf and that would include like Hindu and Mahayana, Tibetan, and there would be nothing in Theravāda. There’d just be maybe the Majjhima Nikāya or the Dīgha Nikāya and just a few other books. Maybe What the Buddha Taught might have been there and the Dhammapada.

So anyway, when I was in college I took a world religion lecture-hall thing by chance because it was my first year and I was just signing up for any classes that I could get into. And when I learned about Buddhism I thought that Buddhism would be a good religion for me, mostly because I didn’t party when I was in university. I didn’t drink, I didn’t do drugs. And so the rules… there’s only five precepts… and the rules seemed very simple for me. And so then I asked a friend to teach me meditation who used to go to UC Berkeley, which was one of the places you could find spirituality in the late 80s and early 90s. And he came back to a local school that I was going to and I knew his brother. He was like an older brother of a friend of mine and I asked him to teach me meditation and he taught me meditation how to count my breath and the basic… count up to 10 and back to zero. In the Pa-Auk method they say count… or even the Visuddhimagga actually they say count five is too small and 10 is too large so you should usually pick eight because it’s close to the Eightfold Noble Path. So but he taught me how to count the breath and I was just thinking like, should I light a candle? And he’s like, if you want to light a candle you can light a candle. I said, should I light some incense? And he says, if you want to light some incense you can light some incense. And so I did that and it was something that I kept up for a good portion of the remainder of my life actually.

So I learned how to meditate and kept meditating and then I saw some advertisements for meditation on the bulletin board and ended up joining what ended up being like some type of computer cult and teaching meditation. No drugs, no alcohol, but you sort of get high off of meditation. And everyone was like… you go to these parties where you just meditate and have fun and they were really high-vibe parties. They’re really cool and you mingle around and there’s like college students and there’s like other people who are a little older in their 30s or 40s and everyone’s a computer programmer who’s a professional and then later they want you to become a computer programmer as well. And so I was into it and I decided to try it out. It wasn’t my major in university. I was supposed to be a school teacher and back then… it’s not like computers nowadays… not many people had computers and at that time I didn’t have a computer actually. Very few people owned computers. We might have a computer lab. You had to take a test in order to go into the computer lab during that time. You had to prove that you could copy files by typing the commands back then and people were afraid of computers. And being a computer programmer is like you had to be really brave because the computers were not as friendly as they are now. And I ended up graduating with a degree in technology education. It sounds good for someone who’s going to become a computer programmer, but it has nothing to do with computer programming. And there’s another major called educational technology, which is about bringing technology into the classroom. That’s a different major. It’s reverse words.

So after I graduated I joined that thing and then I became a computer professional with a different degree. I ended up fast-tracking into the computer industry and they wanted us to make a lot of money and they told us how to do it and we went direct. My first job was contracting, consulting, and just straight in. And I never had like a full-time corporate job. And we learned how to do that and know our stuff cold and get into the business. And so I decided to leave that group because it was getting more businessy instead of spiritual. It used to be very spiritual. We used to meditate with the teacher. It was like really fun. Incredible experiences actually. And then so I decided to leave after I became a professional for like a year or maybe like a year or so. And then I just went to different jobs.

And my third job was working for Bayer Diagnostics, you know, the aspirin company, the medical pharmaceutical. They’re a chemical company actually. And we were making a blood meter. And the first… I was brought in because the project was late. The human blood project. It counts your red blood cells, your white blood cells, and this other thing called new… new XY. I don’t even know what those are. But we made this machine and then the second phase was an animal blood machine. And the animal blood machine I found out later was used for animal laboratory testing.

So I was a vegetarian at that time and there was one other vegetarian… you know, this type of stuff, you were like a weirdo back then if you were a vegetarian. They didn’t have vegetarian menus at restaurants. You know, I was there to watch Starbucks do soy milk lattes… like when they first started doing them it was like a secret thing that you had to know about. But so yeah, I was a vegetarian. There was one other vegetarian in the whole complex and she told me about this animal laboratory testing thing and I decided that I couldn’t work on the project and that I would leave. And I gave six months notice and I continued to work on the human blood machine. And generally speaking, the code is nearly the same for the animal blood machine except a little bit of a user interface to select which animal’s blood you’re testing. But generally speaking, especially from my end, the sections of the code that I was particularly working on… it was all the same. And so they told me to work on the human machine because I refused to work on the animal phase two project. And so they told me to just continue working on the human blood machine and they would copy my code into the phase two codebase. And eventually I had to leave. They were paying me lots of money and I wasn’t doing much work because most of the development was on phase two. And so they wanted me around because it was medical diagnostic equipment and I could fix my own bugs like in an hour and it might take someone two weeks to do it. So whatever they paid me per week, per hour, whatever, it was a bargain. But eventually I decided to leave and I gave them six months notice. And that was a catalyst for me to go traveling. It was something that I always wanted to do. I thought that because I was a contractor or consultant that I would have long breaks in between jobs because it would be difficult to get a job, but it wasn’t that way. And I just went from one job to the next and my jobs were very long-term actually, even though it was based on short-term hire. Originally it was short-term hires, but they ended up lasting a long time. So I never took a vacation. I barely took any days off. And then I just went all or nothing and I got a backpack and a ticket to go halfway around the world and I was ready for a big journey which I wrote about.

And I should backtrack a couple steps. I did Goenka. When I left that teacher, I started in the Tibetan world because it was closest to like what the teacher was doing. And then I went to the Mahayana world, Chinese Buddhism, Vietnamese Buddhism. And I was doing the teacher training course in a Vietnamese temple. And from there I learned about the White Lotus Sutra. And I learned that it’s okay to lie if you have a good reason. And I was like, this is nonsense. And I completely rejected Mahayana because of that. And at the same time we were assigned a book to summarize and teach. And I had picked The Wings to Awakening by Ajahn Thanissaro. These are the 37 factors of enlightenment called the bodhipakkhiyā dhammā. And it was a good book. And at that time we also had to do a retreat, a 10-day, 7-to-10-day retreat per year as part of this course type thing that I was doing, this teacher training course. And so immediately I became immersed in Theravāda and I rejected Mahayana, Tibetan. And I was just so amazed with the structure of the Theravāda suttas. And being someone who learned about education, we have a saying in the business: say what you’re going to say, say it, say what you said. And if you look at the suttas, you know, the Buddha, he will say, here are the five things of blah blah blah. And then he lists them out and he said, these are the five things, you know, and this is where it leads to. And then you reach Nibbāna. Sādhu, sādhu. So it really grabbed me about how straightforward the teachings were. There was like no mysterious… there was nothing mystical and it was very straightforward, it’s very common sense. And I was like, wow, this is what I should be doing.

And when I did my first Goenka retreat… and a lot of Westerners, now you can have many entrances into Buddhism and spirituality, but one of the main entrance ways back in the 90s, early 90s… actually this was in the late 90s… was to do a Goenka course. It’s one of the only things around. Otherwise you’d have to spend $200–$300 a night doing a Tibetan or doing the IMS classes. Actually they’re about $80 or $100 a night at that time. And so I did the Goenka thing and I really loved it. I just had so much faith in it because on the first night I ate a lot of extra food on the first night and then there’s like a video recording and he’s like, so you ate a lot of food didn’t you? And I was like, how does he read my mind? Then I was like, no, this is a recording. So I was like, he knows human nature. And so then I followed the teachings and I believed that you could do everything in the teachings that what he was teaching. So I had a really great experience there. And I remember on the 10th day they allow you to talk and they do loving-kindness. Everyone’s talking and I just want to stay in this… they give you this like pagoda room or something like that. It was just like when I got there I was like, this is all I need. I just need a little meditation closet and I’ll be okay. And I remember crying on the last day because everyone’s talking and I didn’t want it to end. And I wanted this to be my life.

And so step forward, go ahead a few years, not so many, a few more years. Then I quit my job, bought a plane ticket going halfway around the world and I thought maybe I could become a monk. We’ll see what happens. And so anyway, I decided to go to monasteries and look at monasteries where I would maybe stay for six, seven years just like someone in America looks at a college, a university and says, do I want to stay here for four years? So my brother and sister did extensive looking at universities to go and stay and doing the tour and I was dragged along as the youngest sibling. And so I looked at monasteries in the same way and I went to Bhavana Society. I went to Abhayagiri. I went to Wat Metta in America. And then I went off to Hawaii. And I got lost in Hawaii. And I was supposed to find retreat centers to volunteer at. They don’t let people volunteer there. Not like the Goenka courses. So I got lost. I was like living on the beach and I was just… I had a good time there. But it was like one of the times when I wasn’t meditating and I was losing my Buddhist path while I was in Hawaii in Kauai specifically, which is a place I actually went back to as a monk. I stayed there for five months and then I went to Fiji and this is where some magic happened. And you know I think you know the story but I was in the ocean in Fiji. We were playing a game called Shark Attack. I don’t recommend doing that, but we were pretending we’re in a Jaws movie. Okay. And you know, who could pretend that they were getting eaten by a shark the best? And I never do that. Never enact something like that. It’s so bad to do. But I was young and there were two other German travelers with me. We were in the ocean just doing nothing because that’s what you do in Fiji. And a couple hours later I looked at my watch to find out when tea time was… there was no watch and I lost my watch. And one of the girls said that she thought that seaweed fell off my hand, but it was actually my watch with a Velcro. Sorry about this.

And so I got a mask from the office from the backpacker place I was staying at and I started looking for it but it was nowhere to be found. And then later at night it was low tide and I started looking for it and I couldn’t find it at all. And then that night I started to think about that watch in particular which was a countdown timer for my meditations. It was my alarm clock for waking up early. And that was like sort of like my Buddhist device that I used to stay in check. But starting when I went to Hawaii and especially in Fiji, I stopped really using it for that. And so I started to think later that night when it was time to sleep like what’s happening to me? What happened? I was supposed to like… we call it sit and serve. I was supposed to volunteer at meditation centers and I became just like other backpackers. And obviously I was a little different from the other backpackers but nevertheless I was a traveler and I was living on the beach. I was living in a tent. And so I was thinking about it that night and then in the morning I woke up early which was while the sun was rising… for Fiji that’s waking up early… and I noticed that the tide was low again, the water was low again and I thought, you know, maybe I can find my watch.

And I started to think about all the times I wanted to become a monk but I just couldn’t get myself to really fully commit because for me I wanted to really just do it just once. The idea of a temporary monk just really didn’t seem… I heard about that but it just wasn’t something for me and I wanted to really commit and it was like getting married for me. And so anyway, I’m looking at the water. I see that it’s low and I’m thinking about, you know, well maybe I can find my watch. And I said to myself very quickly, because the mind is very quick while I’m walking out, I’m thinking about all the times I wanted to become a monk and I’m like, I’m going to do it. No, I’m not going to do it. I’m going to do it. I’m not going to do it. And I said to myself, if I find my watch… I’m thinking about how impossible it is to find a watch that’s been in the ocean for almost a whole day and the whole night. And I’m thinking about how difficult it would be to find it. And I was like, if I find my watch, I’ll definitely become a monk. No more games, no more fooling around. And you know, this is like a split second, you know, while I’m walking out to the beach and all of a sudden I see something in the distance, you know, it’s just flapping in the waves and it looks like seaweed and but it looks different than everything else. So I go a little closer and there I can see my watch strap. The watch is actually half buried in the sand. It’s half buried in the sand. And as the waves are going through it, it’s in the morning, the waves are calm. And I’m in like one and a half feet of water or something like that. And the waves going over it and it’s covering it with a layer of sand. When the wave pulls back you could see the face of the watch and the strap is floating. This Velcro strap. I still have it actually. So I’m just looking at it. I’m like, you know, I pick it up and I’m just looking at it and I’m just like, what did I promise? What was that thing I was thinking about, you know? And so I just… it was a really cool moment. I was like on the beach, you know, and I can just relive that moment when I tell the story. And I just remember just looking at my watch, you know, and just like, wow, like he got me. And yeah. And so I knew I’d become a monk at that time, but I didn’t know exactly when I would do that.

And so I got comfortable in Fiji. I was like, hey, this is pretty cool. I’ll just stay here for a while. It was like $15 a day, I think, to survive with food and lodging and everything at these backpacker places. And basically could live there forever. Maybe it was $30 a day. Can’t remember, but I think it was $30 New Zealand. They had the same currency as New Zealand and that was like two to one at that time. But anyway, I was really comfortable there. And then all of a sudden… I was staying at a New Zealand-owned backpacker place and at that time there was a coup and they started to… they wanted to not let foreigners own businesses in Fiji and the main island was on fire, the main island, but I was on a small island and we had a meeting and they said, you know, just stay where you are. It was like living on the East Coast and during the LA riots in the 90s… it didn’t really matter. It was very far away. But lo and behold, someone decided to burn the place, you know, with the whole revolution or whatever. And so then I got evacuated to New Zealand and a little push out of my comfort zone. And then after New Zealand I pushed my trip through. I had like an itinerary and I wanted to just push through. I had an open ticket and I could adjust it. And I went to Australia after that and then I went to India and then in India I was at Sai Baba’s ashram then and I remember also doing like a challenge like if someone steals my slippers I’ll definitely cut this trip short and I’ll just head to Thailand to ordain. And no one was taking my slippers. The first day someone took my slippers and so then I was thinking, you know, like if someone takes my slippers I’ll cut the trip short but I remember at that time that I was hoping that someone would take my slippers. The slippers are flip-flops and sandals. In India they call that the slippers. In Asia and Hawaii they call them slippers. I wanted someone to take my slippers at that time and then I knew in my heart that I wanted to become a monk. It wasn’t like I was forced to because I found my watch. And so no one took my slippers and I was okay with it. And but I just knew in my heart that I wanted to become a monk at that time.

And so I checked into… I went to… I cut my trip short in India. I was like living on the plane and just checking… I’m living on the train. Sorry. I was living on the train like getting off the train looking at some things, taking pictures and then hopping back on the train and sleeping on the train and going to the next place because I really wanted to move things along. Went to Nepal and then I went to Wat Pah Nanachat and I wanted to do this. I wanted to start the monk process while I was still 29 because the Buddha was 29 when he left. And I walked into Wat Pah Nanachat the day before my birthday in 2000, October 5th, 2000. And so I went to Wat Pah Nanachat and it wasn’t the perfect place, but it was the best place that I could find. And but I really didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all. I remember someone saying to me, you know, like usually if you have business experience you don’t really do well in here. And it was true. I wasn’t really happy, but I was gonna ordain. And I like signed my life away and sent a DHL package to get rid of all the… to do all the legal stuff. And I went… the Abbot put me on this kuti Ajahn tour, which is like to see all these enlightened teachers. And I became less inspired. I was supposed to get inspired by it, but I became less inspired by it. And I had a book, Knowing and Seeing, which is Pa-Auk Sayadaw’s main book. It’s like cliff notes to the Visuddhimagga actually, on how to do it. And I had that book signed out of the library. Someone had just brought it from Burma, from Myanmar, a little bit before that. And the Abbot before he signed me up on that tour, he asked me what’s wrong. And he says… I said, well, you know, it’s not the perfect place, but it’s the best place I could find. He says, what’s your perfect place? I said, well, you know, I have a kuti on the mountain and I go down the mountain to get my food and I meditate all day and meditate all night and then I go to sleep and then I wake up, meditate, and then I go down the mountain to have my food and then I come back up and do this every day. And when I have a meditation experience, I go to the master and I say, Master, I’ve experienced something. And he says develop it or reject it. And then I go back to my kuti and I just do that. He says, well, you know, there is one place… this was Ajahn Jayasaro actually. And he says there is one place and he told me about Pa-Auk. We didn’t have really the internet, you know. It’s like nobody knew about Pa-Auk. You had to like know people who knew people back then. It was different clientele back then. And usually you were recommended Pa-Auk in the early 2000s and it was like… it was considered a dangerous place. I mean there was like six countries on the embargo list, you know, there’s like North Korea, Iran, maybe Congo or something like that and some other places and then there’s Myanmar, you know, like places you really just shouldn’t go, you know. And I went there.

So he told me about the place and I grabbed the book and I was reading the book while I was looking at these enlightened… you know, they’re supposed to be enlightened monks and I’m reading Pa-Auk Sayadaw’s book. And so I quickly just bought a plane ticket. I left and I bought a plane ticket to go to Myanmar. And I still had a credit card with me. And so I had arranged for my credit card to be paid while I was traveling and with my mother because she was a co-signer on my bank account and so I did a cash advance, bought a plane ticket and I went to Myanmar and at that time I was dressed in white clothes, white robes and I went in there and they don’t get many Westerners especially that time, definitely the ones dressed in like yogi robes. And the anagārika, the Thai anagārika robes. I just had, you know, a shoulder cloth, no shirt or anything. And it was January I think when I came there and I remember being in the line and the security people they were like yogi yogi yogi yogi and they just pushed me right through the line just like I was a monk as if I were a monk. When you’re a monk you get to go through immigration really quickly. So then I had Pa-Auk written on a piece of paper and I went into the Abhidhamma Propagation Society. It was like a booth and I said how do I get to this Pa-Auk place and they had a telephone there which was rare.

Anie:
Yes. So you arrived in Myanmar on your anagārika.

Bhante Subhuti:
Yes. Yes. So I’m in the airport and they pushed me right through like a monk. Monks have easy times in the airport in immigration. And but it was a little scary. I mean, there was like, you know, there was a lot of security and it was… I was going to a place where it didn’t have a good reputation, whatever. But I decided to go anyways and I just wanted to go to the monastery. And so I had a piece of paper and I went to… they had Pa-Auk’s name on it. I didn’t even know… it sounds so foreign and I had a piece of paper with me and I went to the Abhidhamma Propagation Society and they had a telephone there which is rare and they happened to know someone on the committee of Pa-Auk and so then I went to Pa-Auk. They put me on a bus. I got put on a bus and then they had someone pick me up from the bus station. Bus station in Myanmar is almost like an airport. Like they have… I don’t know if you ever been on a bus in Myanmar. They have like ladies who are like flight attendants on the bus. So yeah, most people take the bus like you would take an airplane in America. And so anyway, I go to Pa-Auk and it was just incredible. I was just like, sign me up. I want to… I definitely want to do this. And Pa-Auk Sayadaw was sick at that time. He spent a lot of time in Singapore. And then he had just come back like a couple weeks after I was there. And he’s like, when do you want to ordain? And I’m like… I was like, let me make sure my credit card bill is paid off and that I have permission from my parents. And there was like a whole big thing about getting permission from my parents. But I eventually did. And then I ordained. It was February 7th, 2001. And it was really really great. And there was 198 monks at my ordination day, but normal population day is actually about 122 at that time. So it was a very special day that I ordained and it was like the annual meeting of Pa-Auk which was also the full moon day and I asked if I could ordain on the full moon day and so I ordained and it was a really great life and we could meditate and I used to be very close to Sayadaw and used to walk up the mountain with him and he used to send me his extra fruit. Fruit was very difficult to get at that time and so it was good. We used to talk a lot. I used to suggest a lot of things like Americans do and so it was really good.

There was a problem with the visas. So one of the things I also wanted to fix before I ordained was a long-term visa. I say about… I say that in my “Where to Ordain.” Make sure you have a visa before you ordain. And they did my visa without going out of the country and coming back. And so they changed the class of the visa to a renewable religious visa without me going out of the country and coming back. And I was the first monk to actually do this new process. Someone knew someone who knew someone’s Buddhist country. And so you could do all this type of stuff. And so I was the first person to actually do this new method. And in 2007 there was a new minister, immigration minister, and he wanted to do things more by the book. And he was looking at the history of everyone who had… who was doing a renewal. And he looked at the original visa and he saw that mine was a tourist visa. And there was actually 300 other people, 300 other monks and visitors and whatever who had done the same process who changed a tourist visa over to a residential visa. And so then we all got kicked out. It was like 300 of us. We didn’t get kicked out, we just didn’t get a renewal. They didn’t tell me whether I was rejected or not rejected. And a lot of times in Myanmar the immigration office takes a long time and then you end up having to pay late fees as part of the process. Like you submit it eight weeks in advance, six to eight weeks in advance, and it ends up still being late, and then you pay late fees. And this also was a problem, but it was just part of doing business. So I had like $100 or so of fees and I just said okay I’m going to go to Sri Lanka. We had known some… we had every so often we have a group of monks from Nā Uyana who come to Pa-Auk to meditate and they’re usually the best of the best that they send. And so it looks like a good group of people and instead of the general population that we see and so I decided to go to Sri Lanka one way instead of going to Thailand up and down because I was allowed to leave the country and come back with a sponsorship letter and do it properly. I was allowed to come back but I decided that I wanted a change and that I would go to Sri Lanka one way for the same nearly the same price and so I went to Sri Lanka in 2007. So that’s how I ended up in Sri Lanka.

And then what happened was there was a lot of people reordaining at that time and I also decided to reordain as well because I had a lot of… I had some doubt about my original ordination because someone accused my original ordination of not being valid because I worried… one of the times during one of the questions I had a small bit of uncertainty and I didn’t… he… I didn’t really know but I said okay well they ask about whether you are free from government service and so I remember I knew that that meant that if you’re an active duty and you’re a deserter that’s what it means. But in between like the ceremony, they ask you twice. One is sort of for practice and another one is the real thing. And as soon as they ask me during the ordination ceremony, you know, are you free from that? I started to remember about being registered for the draft, something that all Americans have to do. And on top of that I had made a big thing over it too. So I refused to sign it until they threatened to put me in jail and then I signed it. So I remembered and I was like, does this count? Does this count? Does this count? And I’m like, no, no, it can’t count. I’m too old and I have college degree and there’s so many other reasons I can get out of it. And then I also thought I was like, well, there’s American monks. Obviously I met American monks before. If it was not possible, then they wouldn’t ordain either. I was like, you’re just acting crazy. You’re just worrying too much. And I said, I’ll say yes and I’ll check tomorrow. And so I said yes that I’m free from the obligation… I’m not a deserter and not an active duty. And it’s called rājabhaṭa. And the… I checked with a Sri Lankan monk who’s famous for accusing monks of doing the wrong things and he’s got a pretty big pointer finger. I didn’t know that at the time. I didn’t know that until much later actually. And he said, oh, you answered correctly, but it’s a moment of truth. You’re not supposed to be worried. You’re not supposed to be embarrassed. You’re not supposed to be afraid. And they tell you that. And so if you answer with… if you are worried, afraid, embarrassed, whatever, then it’s considered lying.

And so then, but I had… I didn’t fully evaluate this, okay? Because I had pushed out my doubt actually right before saying yes. Actually, it wasn’t like a conscious lie. I thought it was good enough. And so anyway, he said that my ordination because I lied, I lost my sāmanera. And then there was… there used to be a myth. It only disappeared like six years ago that you had to be a sāmanera in order to ordain as a full monk. And if you didn’t do that then your ordination wasn’t valid. And so anyway when I went to Sri Lanka this is like the epicenter of this type of doubt and so I got a little worried about my ordination. It all came back to me and so then I reordained. It had nothing to do with like Pa-Auk’s ordination procedure. It was just all me and it turned out like I think during COVID or something like that one of the teachers he says so why did he reordain? And I said the whole thing and then they had to research whether it mattered or not. And so it was only like in 2021 or something like that 2020 that people started to look at this, you know, whether it really mattered and you can ordain directly as a lay person actually. So I lost six years in my seniority. This vassa I’ll be 20 vassa but all in all it was part of the experience and you know we learned there was a lot to learn. I became a junior monk again and I went through the process of being a junior monk and so that was good. It was a good experience and I stayed at Nā Uyana for about six vassa I think it was and I stayed there until 2012 and then I went back to Pa-Auk.

There was a big heat stroke there. There was big sort of a heat wave there. And I needed to go to the mountains. And there was a retreat going on in 2012 at Pyin Oo Lwin. It was the first opening of Pyin Oo Lwin. In the news section is a… it’s a different section that you might know… Pyin Oo Lwin that there’s a few sections of Pyin Oo Lwin… Maymyo we call it… and there was a university section and it was just opening up and we heard that it’s cold there and one of my friends wanted to go there and I decided that I wanted to go too and we… I sent an email to someone I know and we got the sponsorship letters very quickly and we went as a group and then I was in Myanmar for some time.

Anie:
Yeah.

Bhante Subhuti:
So this 2012.

Anie:
Yes. And then so from there 2001 first ordination. Yes. Yes. 2001 first ordination then 2007 go to Sri Lanka 2012 go back to Myanmar. And then I stayed in Myanmar. I did some… I did a trip in Hawaii where I just wandered around Hawaii. I wanted to do that. It was like my dream. And then I took a monk who’s actually the abbot of IIT International Institute of Theravāda, but he wasn’t at that level at the time when we went. And then I went back to Pa-Auk and then I went again to Hawaii for this time for a year and a half. The first trip was six months and the second trip was a year and a half. And I was by myself because I finally memorized the Pāṭimokkha. So I felt confident that I could go alone after 17 years as a monk. I never went alone back to America and so then after that I went back to Pa-Auk and then we had COVID and then International Institute of Theravāda was opening up and I decided that I need some pariyatti experience and I also had a medical problem. I couldn’t meditate. Meditation was making it worse. And so I decided that I could just shift gears, sort of reinvent myself and still find satisfaction and progress in my monk life. And so I ended up at the International Institute of Theravāda, which is a pariyatti monastery. And I did that for two… two and a half years. I can’t remember which. And then I decided I wanted to phase myself back into meditation and also but do it slowly and I started a master’s program at a university in Colombo in Kelaniya and it’s just on Saturdays so you have a lot of free time and so I did that. It’s geared for working people. So that’s the stage where I’m at right now. I finished all the classes and working on a thesis and now we’re in the present.

Josh:
Well, there was quite a journey. Thank you for sharing all that. What really stood out for me that I hadn’t heard of anything is… since being a fellow American I guess here, you know, this notion of the draft and I had to do that too and this was before I was, you know, still completely asleep and I just want to say wow what a good fortune and kamma you have to come to the Dhamma the way you did. You know, a lot of the people I have gone through the dukkha… let’s just put it that way, you know. So it just made my heart so bright and uplifted to hear what kind of good fortune you had around this compared to… yeah. You know what I mean? But we all come in different ways and they’re all beautiful as far as I’m concerned to the Dhamma and… but this notion of the draft, you know, and so what I’m thinking or what’s coming up is like did they give you everything they were going to ask you ahead of time? So my thinking is maybe they didn’t. Were they more spontaneous? Did they tell you what questions they were going to ask? Because if they would have told you ahead of time, you had time to reflect, but still, you know, and could you go to teachers and ask them about that, you know, or how did you manage that ahead of time for preparation, I guess, is what I’m interested.

Bhante Subhuti:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I read the… when I was in the… when I was in Bhavana Society, I read the Buddhist monastic code and I think I talked with Ajahn Thanissaro. I think I read the Buddhist monastic code before that and I even called Ajahn Thanissaro. I met him and so I knew a lot about it and I knew the questions and normally you just do it in Pāli and I said I want to do it in Pāli and English and normally you just like read from a sheet you know and you just read the Pāli and I said I want to do Pāli in English. Okay we’ll give you Pāli in English and that was the mistake actually. I just should have just read from the sheet in Pāli and not really understood what it meant and I just gone through the motions. It just popped into my head like because at the time you were saying it… at the time they ask you twice. They ask you twice because during the ordination ceremony one time is actually technically for practice but it’s the ceremony. Okay. And then the other time is real. This is the standard ordination bhikkhu ordination. And there’s like 2 minutes, 3 minutes in between the two sets of questions when they ask you twice. And so all of a sudden it just pops in my head like so you have time to think because they’re doing some other stuff. They’re chanting some other Pāli and before they ask you again for real and then it just like popped into my mind and there’s a video I think there’s a video… there’s a blog post on this and I talk about the whole experience and… but I pretty much explained the whole thing.

Josh:
I’ll have to check that out.

Bhante Subhuti:
In my mind I asked the wrong… I was actually trying to help people who were reordaining. I was like why are you reordaining and they said that they had money. A lot of them they used money and so politically they were telling people there’s a whole political thing going on there. They were telling people that if you use money you’re not a real monk. Okay? Because you’re a sāmanera… 10 precepts and you take your 10 precepts just before your ordination too. And so then they have money in their pocket. They have money and they’re agreeing to the 10 precepts. Okay, they’re saying that they will take all 10 precepts and using money is not a problem actually. It’s… well it’s a problem. It’s not but it’s not going to cancel your novice ordination. Okay. But when you break five precepts, any one of the first five precepts, you break your… you break your novice ordination. And so you’re still sort of… actually we had to… you know how do you call… we had to like, you know, just really split hairs to try to find out and like Ajahn Thanissaro wrote me and he says don’t worry about it you know you’re still a monk you know you’re still technically a monk don’t worry about it and it’s just undesirable and but I had… I mean his letter just came just the night before I was going to ordain and I already told people I was going to ordain so then I just decided and then the night before also someone told me about the monk who accused me and that he’s… he also accused the mahāthera of bad things and so… so you’ve got the… decided and I went through it and I actually had Sayadaw’s permission. He was living in… at the time they wouldn’t reordain me unless there was permission from Pa-Auk. So I was just worried and then they decided to let me ordain and I got permission and Pa-Auk Sayadaw didn’t really understand my question and he gave me permission. So it’s a fascinating topic or something like that. People ask like why did you…

Josh:
I think it’s a fascinating topic of real-time Dhamma you know and it’s something that that’s really important this… and it’s… well you just illustrated the kind of Saṅgha… I wouldn’t say politics but the Saṅgha involvement that most of us or at least lay people… we don’t get to see behind the scenes of all the things usually going on like that a lot of times. So I appreciate you sharing that. The other thing it ties into American politics too with the drafts.

Bhante Subhuti:
I asked him… yeah. Yeah. I asked a mahāthera about this. He’s like… he has… he’s like a tipiṭaka Sayadaw. Okay. So he has like all the books memorized. Okay. And I don’t know they let me go… they let me go through it. They let me go through with this. And I asked another monk. I said well why did he let me do that? He knew that. And the monk said, if you asked the right question, you would have got the right answer. And all I had to do was ask was my original ordination valid or like… the issue was whether it was a lie. That was the only question I asked. And so then and there’s a whole other things. There’s a whole chain of events that would happen if it was a lie. And so it was very difficult and he was saying well it doesn’t really… it’s not much of a lie he said so what is much of a lie you know and so he was trying not to have me reordain because it was a problem there and but if I had asked like can a lay person directly ordain he would have probably said yes and another monk his name is Daw… Sayadaw Daw… Venerable Daw… he said that if I had asked the right question, it would have got the right answer. But you know, as Popeye says, I am what I am. So I think it’s great to show once you wear the bed sheet, once you wear the bed sheet and reordained, everything’s gone. So I’ll be 20 vassa this year, this rainy season will be my 20th vassa. I would be 25 already today. But I’m not even ready to be a 20-vassa thuga. People, my friend actually just said that to me. He’s like, you’re going to be a 20-vassa. You’re not ready for that. You don’t act like that. And because I act childish a lot of the times. So I’m like learning how to speak Sinhala and I’m speaking Sinhala like a baby because I don’t know how to speak Sinhala.

Anie:
So it’s probably better than mine though.

Bhante Subhuti:
No, it’s… I think that the innocence and the purity is something that should be rejoiced in and celebrated, you know, and for me early on I was confusing innocence with naivety and it’s not… it’s not the same thing, you know, innocence and… you know, it’s not the same as being naive. They’re completely different things and I was confusing the two. So it’s… I think it’s a beautiful thing to have this… when it’s called for and appropriate. Yes. And of course, balancing it with maturity as well. So that they’re both… those can I think can be held. But I think that speaks really well to how… the to the letter of the Dhamma and from what little I’ve heard of your teachings and sharings, I find really inspired that you seem to care deeply about, you know, I would just say like the pure Dhamma, you know, that getting… I shouldn’t say getting it right, but like what’s really wholesome and skillful and beneficial and what’s been handed down to us kind of as our birthright in the Buddhist teachings is really important to you and I find that really inspiring and you know so I think Anie will ask about maybe some of this later but I want to jump into some of the Dhamma questions we have and I don’t know we don’t… I don’t normally prepare and do script but I think it would help keep me on track so you know there’s still room for spontaneity here I think but let’s jump into concepts right. I mean just I’ll start with my own thing you know I’m familiar with kind of… you know an allay level of Buddhist concepts and they they’ve helped me so much you know and but then when I come to learning that even the breath is a concept and I’m like what… I just couldn’t wrap my head around okay it’s a con… the body is a concept then I get that a little bit more because you know where does like this skin really start and stop you know we’re shedding stuff so I kind of get that but the breath is like okay no this is embodied this is this is this is reality but no it’s… no, it’s the body is a concept, right? So as much as this has helped me, what I started… what I started to get to or drawn to this the system is there’s an emphasis eventually and of course I’m not there yet of discerning ultimate materiality and ultimate mentality because that there is an ultimate, right? And I practice with people who I have no reason to believe that they’re lying. That there’s a few that are that are at this level. And I don’t need to get into comparison, conceit, and things like this, but it’s so inspiring for me. And so I thought all the other people who blow this off that say, you know, we you don’t need to practice at that level or anything like that. I’m like, well, I need to see and know at that level myself before I can determine whether it’s needed or not. So it’s a long introduction to start with… you know just start talking about concepts and like what role do they play in practice and how they can be wholesome and useful you know how they can be kusala and and maybe how they can not so I don’t… it’s kind of a big topic but I’ll let you just run with it however you want here.

Bhante Subhuti:
Well, I think that we have a conventional truth and then we have the ultimate truth, right? And you know, even the Buddha, he referred to himself as a Buddha. He referred to other people. He used the word you, you know, he didn’t say, oh, nāmarūpa over there. You know, Tathāgata, right? Tathāgata, though. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, he was like, yeah, that’s true. But he called himself a truth seeker. He called himself the thus-come thus-gone. But actually you know he called people by name. Name is a concept. He… you know he didn’t… he called people. He called his monks bhikkhus. So bhikkhu is a concept. So he used these concepts. You know he didn’t say nāmarūpa. He didn’t say, you know, he didn’t start naming off the materiality, you know, everything in the third person. Materiality, you know, he didn’t say, you know, I’m… He didn’t… He didn’t say listen closely and I will tell you. He… I mean, sorry. He did say, “Listen closely, I’ll tell you.” He didn’t say… He says, “Watch my… watch my… watch.” He didn’t… he didn’t say like the… the words not… it’s just slipped from my mind as I wanted to say it but he didn’t say… it’s not coming to me but he didn’t… he didn’t talk about kalāpas. He didn’t talk about the cittaja rūpas you know causing the speaking. He didn’t talk about… he didn’t talk about the cittaja rūpas talking about movement. He didn’t talk about, you know, all the different types of consciousness and the vīthis and the whole way they work, you know, and but he just used bhikkhus and he used, you know, people’s names and, you know, and he spoke actually in the sutta level, he spoke in very conventional terms actually and what we do is we take the Abhidhamma, which is sort of the footnotes below that, and it explains it. So like we say water, I think I said this before. So we say water, you know, but like if we really looked at the scientific footnotes as to what water is, it’s H₂O, right? It’s hydrogen and oxygen, two oxygen and hydrogen. And it’s just easier to say water, right? But chemically, you know, in the ultimate truth level, it’s just elements, right? It’s just molecules. And so we have to communicate. And even the best physicist and the best chemistry person, he’s going to… he’s going to say, you know, you know, give me a glass of… I need a glass of water. He’s not going to say… he’s not going to say what he really knows deeply. He’s going to… he’s going to speak in conventional truths and he’s going to identify things with conventional truths.

And so when we have practice in terms of conventional truth so like we do loving-kindness for people for beings… it’s a sattasaññā… sattasaññā is the object of loving-kindness and that’s a concept. It’s… as long as you are not looking at the paramattha… as long as you’re not looking at like the ultimate truth is like the… on the atomic level for mind and matter then you are dealing with concepts. You’re dealing with concepts. So this is the difference between samatha and vipassanā. But vipassanā you take real realities and then you see them and then you apply the three characteristics to anicca, dukkha and anattā. It’s impermanent, suffering and non-self. And so you… you did… you… I think I lost you actually but I’ll just keep… I’ll just keep talking.

Josh:
No, I’m still here. Yeah. And to sum up, you know, the Buddha said we use conventional language, but we don’t get fooled by it. So generally speaking with concepts like loving-kindness, we have concepts, you know, of a person that we’re giving loving-kindness to. And in any of the four brahmavihāras any of those right and so we’re giving it… it’s actually sattasaññā… you have the perception of living beings and you’re doing loving-kindness this way. When you follow sīla you know actually… actually we’re supposed to see like the human as dead right… we just… we even have a chant. We have a chant with the four requisites. After we do the four requisites, we have a Sri Lankan chant that we do. It’s in Pāli, but it’s in the Sri Lankan tradition. Maybe it’s in the Thai tradition too. We share a lot of things with the Thai tradition in Sri Lanka. And we say… we say nissito. So it’s like… it’s not a being, it’s not living, right? And because if we look at it in the ultimate reality in just elements, okay, this is like I’m just a dead robot, you know? Warning, warning, warning. So I’m just a… I’m just a robot with software and elements and… but with morality in killing like you perceive life, right? So you have to perceive life in order to kill in order to be guilty of that of killing. So we have to apply concepts to morality in the precepts even like just basic ones like the first five precepts. So we have to use… we have to use concepts but for samatha and… and maybe this will clarify something for you is that concepts don’t change. What can you say more about that’s why we… so if we with the breath okay a lot of people get confused about the breath okay so what happens is most people end up paying attention to four elements when they’re focusing on the breath. What are they… what are they doing they’re focusing on the touch of the breath okay and the touch of the breath happens because of four elements striking the body door. They usually focus on there. There’s hardness, roughness, heaviness, softness, smoothness, light. Right? So these are the six qualities of earth element. Usually people focus on heaviness and they usually get uncomfortable because they’re focusing on heaviness or heat, you know. So this is the fire element. They might be focusing on flowing. Normally you really technically… I covered this before that in the ultimate reality world you don’t… you don’t experience… you don’t experience a water element but or flowing cohesion you don’t really experience that actually on the paramattha level on the… for the pathavī for the kāyadvāra for the body door and then and then there’s the air element which is pushing pulling and supporting so usually if you’re focusing on the breath, you’re focusing on one of those. Especially if you’ve done like a Goenka course or something like that, you’re feeling sensations and stuff like you get really confused. And so that’s focusing on realities instead of focusing on concepts. What is a concept? Breath is breath.

So how do I explain it? So sometimes I explain it like traffic. So you’re in America, right? And you’ve been in Thailand, right? So you can just… no, just Thai forest monasteries. I haven’t been yet. Oh, sorry. Sorry, that was a rhetorical question. Yes. Yeah. So in America, there’s lots of traffic. You might have a clear lane and there might be just endless cars. Okay. So if we look at… if the instruction is to look at vehicle as a concept okay then you have… you look at a… and you’ll see like oh this is Toyota there’s a Mazda this is Tesla this is this is the Ford F-150 this is a white car there’s a blue car there’s… so these are different characteristics of cars we have the make manufacturer different type of vehicle could be a motorbike too and but they’re… if we look at vehicle then they’re all… it’s like a shared general characteristic. And so if you’re driving by and next time you have… next time you’re driving and you have traffic in the opposite lane, take a look at all the cars and try to only pay attention to the general characteristic. That’s what actually what a concept means. And you could look at the books behind you and you can… you can look at a bookshelf and you can just pay attention to the quality of book instead of thick book, red book, blue book like this. So you can just pay attention to the general characteristic.

Josh:
That’s right. So you can… I was going to say yeah the… or the example I’ve heard too is wood. So whether it’s a wooden table, you know, sawdust, you’re burning it or, you know, it’s still growing as a tree, it’s wood is wood, right?

Bhante Subhuti:
Yeah. I mean, that’s a little different though. That’s a little different. I mean, because it’s divided and… and I think… I think the idea of the cars, like I told you… yes, that’s a good one. Is good. And to pay attention to… you can also name something and… and I think that’s very useful is to just know its presence without the characteristics of the four elements. Exactly. That was a huge game changer too. I was like what body sensations are just the four elements changing? Oh, I thought that was… you know what I’m supposed… yeah. So it’s really interesting. So I think we can use this as a bridge to the Pa-Auk system because… well in my own practice I switched to… pathavī kasiṇa because I was having so much challenge with the breath. I have all these good teachings on how to do breath meditation and am I… am I disrespecting this teacher if I don’t do it their way and then this way and then I was really confused like how is a nimitta… what does light have to do with breath and I could get to like maybe a concept of the breath and knowing it as a concept but then it’s like how is that going to bridge over into light and this and that and so it was just really helpful to set all that aside for now and doing earth kasiṇa but what I… so for… I’m probably… everybody listening to this earth. You’re doing an earth kasiṇa.

Josh:
Yes, I am. Yes. And it’s so lovely and wonderful and so great and there seems to be just a really a natural draw to it. Yeah. Go ahead.

Bhante Subhuti:
Oh, good, good, good. I remember I read the Visuddhimagga and while I was at Wat Pah Nanachat I was like making my own earth kasiṇa and I didn’t know what to do and I’m just reading the book and trying to make an earth kasiṇa and I remember I saw like Pa-Auk Sayadaw… you know I read Knowing and Seeing I’m like oh my god there’s actually a teacher who knows all these objects and you know and who can teach and I was like wow this I got to go and I just had this Dhamma urgency and I just like went but… but that’s good if you feel connected with it. It’s good actually. You know, people like search, you know, long and hard for the… for the different, you know, for the exact color of earth actually. But and they might think that it’s like really difficult to find, but actually it’s, you know, the time of the Visuddhimagga, they didn’t have pavement and there was just earth everywhere.

Josh:
Yeah. If you can go to the Ganges River, too. Yeah. Go ahead.

Bhante Subhuti:
Yeah. I have a short video where I’m walking on a path, okay? I’m walking on a dirt road. It’s like that perfect color and I’m like, you know, just like, you know, people struggle to find the right color and this and that and I never really answer like, you know, here it is right there, but I’m just like walking and just filming the road while I’m walking. And so yeah, I hope it works out for you with earth kasiṇa and white kasiṇa. Also usually people like white kasiṇa. Usually usually people who get confused with earth element with breathing they do well with… they do well with the white kasiṇa.

Josh:
Yeah. You know and I think even the people do different things. People like… people like space there’s one person I know likes space. So… there’s always something special that people feel connected with. But let me tell you one thing that in the Pa-Auk system they will… they will let you do ānāpāna for years and years and years and they’ll only change you if you ask.

Bhante Subhuti:
That’s what I had to do. That’s right. With my teacher. Yes. Yeah. I asked Sayadaw once and I said why don’t they change people and he says if they ask we change if they don’t ask we don’t change them this is the rule I remember him saying this to me maybe around 2004 or something like that and I didn’t know that… told me that more than 20 years ago and I still remember because it was such a shock that they would let people do that. Yeah so I guess you know the people listening to this will probably have some background. I’m imagining there’s… there’s some that won’t though. So I think maybe we’ll just… we’ll just how about a brief overview. I mean so from my understanding it’s… it’s a big mixture of Visuddhimagga and Abhidhamma but it’s also firmly grounded in suttas too. The… Pa-Auk is a village in Myanmar. Okay. And it’s the name… it’s a concept. It’s the name… it’s the name of the village in Myanmar near Mawlamyine and Pa-Auk Sayadaw… he was… he was practicing in the forest and the previous Pa-Auk Sayadaw… the previous… there was a forest monastery in that outside of the village and it’s called Pa-Auk Forest Monastery and the leader the abbot of that is called Pa-Auk Sayadaw… sayadaw means teacher so he’s the abbot. They might have other monasteries but he was the teacher of that forest monastery. So they call him Pa-Auk Sayadaw because of that. So this monk who is the second one he was ready… he was going to die soon and he decided that Pa-Auk Sayadaw would be the… he asked him to be the abbot of this monastery which was very small but had a lot of land and so it was very small in population but had a lot of land and so he took it over and then a couple of weeks later he died or something like that the second Sayadaw and Pa-Auk became the third Pa-Auk Sayadaw. His real name is Sayadaw U Āciṇṇa. And it means habitual kamma, but we call him Pa-Auk Sayadaw. Pa-Auk Sayadaw Gyi. And now before we just call him Sayadaw. He was like the only… he was just say Sayadaw and like he’s the one. Okay. But after like 20 years you know like people he ordained actually became… you know 20 years they’ve been… became established teachers. So they called them Sayadaws as well and so then they called Sayadaw Sayadaw Gyi big Sayadaw. So that’s what Pa-Auk is. And if we want to just jump into the system and I’ll throw in comparison with kind of Thai forest tradition because Anie and I that’s where we met at Amaravati and we most of has been at practices there and so I’m… but I’m more diplomatic in things like I want… I also want the true real Dhamma to the highest level but I also recognize that there’s approaches that like on the conceptual we’re talking about that are skillful means for meeting people where they’re at currently on their journey, but not at the expense of distortion, too. So walking these lines between like what’s skillful and helpful and what’s the real true Dhamma and but at the same time also not causing divisions and schisms. Good. But you know, I just like to look at commonalities when I can, but also let truth be the guide and then how I go about doing that, right? Like the how is really important to system like the main things are… was the previous Pa-Auk Sayadaw was he practicing kind of the same approach and system as the current Pa-Auk Sayadaw and if we would just… if you just want to go in a brief overview of the samatha vipassanā phases I’ve never heard of that actually yeah.

Bhante Subhuti:
The Abhidhamma is everywhere actually. What gets exported to the West is actually a lot of the Abhidhamma rejection and so… but the Western… Western practitioners of Buddhism it’s very small and the… it’s actually fringe Buddhism with rejecting the Abhidhamma and the commentaries so generally speaking… I don’t know anything about the first and second Pa-Auk Sayadaw. I think that it was a Vinaya place and it was a place to practice. At that time most of the monasteries were… usually when people practiced it was just Mahasi. There was Mahasi, Mogok and there was a couple other methods but the main methods were Mahasi and Mogok. So I think the main thing was that it was a Vinaya place and they had dāna forest and I don’t know anything before that. So Pa-Auk Sayadaw he wrote these like five books. He wrote this like master thesis detailing pretty much the Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha and the Visuddhimagga which are both very practice based and he wanted to see if people could get jhāna. People didn’t believe jhāna was possible before really… before Pa-Auk they didn’t think it was possible they didn’t think it was possible to see mind and matter and so Pa-Auk Sayadaw he after he got his degree as a dhammācariya that means a teacher he passed some exam levels then he decided like can we see this stuff can we practice and actually do what people said and so then he started writing… he wrote these five books which were banned actually by the Saṅgha committee and it was like the Streisand effect and everyone got interested in these books that were banned. It wasn’t really banned. It was in order to make a Buddhist book to publish a Buddhist book in Myanmar need Saṅgha approval… Saṅgha committee approval and he didn’t get that… they didn’t want to approve his book. So he was known enough internationally at that time a little bit and so they printed the books in Taiwan and they brought them over to Myanmar and everyone wanted his books and so that’s how he became famous was from the Streisand effect of them not approving his book and everyone wanted… all the Myanmar people there inside they wanted to get his five volume set I think it’s called Nibbāna… so it means like big Nibbāna. And so basically you really have to be familiar with the Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha and the Visuddhimagga to understand what the Pa-Auk course is. Pa-Auk Sayadaw himself will say that he didn’t make anything up. He basically just took the content of the Visuddhimagga the Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha and sort of systematically layered it in a certain pathway so that you could practice. It starts off with the samatha course. So like we just said you spend years doing ānāpāna or whatever. Usually people who get successful in ānāpāna they… within a couple months few months the… you know nimitta will pop up and then they’ll stabilize their nimitta takes a couple months and then they start going through the jhānas. If they have the pāramī they have the pāramī if they don’t have the pāramī you got to work on it. This is when things get a little… this is when people spend years developing… even lifetimes and you just have to understand how saṃsāra works and just know that you’re developing for your next life or this life maybe you hit it this life. So there’s people… there’s one monk I knew who didn’t get it until 10 years. He didn’t get jhāna until 10 years of practicing. So people can get it at different stages, but most people get it within the first few months. If they’re really practicing, they’re really trying, they’ll get it within the first few months.

Then so they get these jhānas, which is a state of concentration, which is very deep. It’s very one-pointed, one focus. And it’s considered a superhuman attainment. And it’s where there’s extreme concentration on a single object. And it’s a little bit like the concentration is so strong the mind is only working on one single object. And a long time ago we used to have like when the processors were single processors and stuff like that and you had like… your computer got locked up or something like that or if you’re programming actually and you make a loop that doesn’t end. That’s usually what happens when you have buggy software in the 90s. And what happens is it just goes through a loop and it eats up all your processor time and it’s just doing one little thing. And if you don’t have the right logic in there, it just keep repeating. And so the jhāna is a little bit like that. So you’re spending all your processor time on a single object and so it becomes very powerful rather than being scattered. And so there are 40 different samatha objects. They’re objects of calm concentration. And we say so we say that and there’s usually four levels. First jhāna, second jhāna, third jhāna, fourth jhāna. So we… there are 40 different objects. Not all of them can get the jhānas. They can get the like neighborhood concentration, access concentration. Some of those objects like four elements doesn’t get jhāna. So there are 40 different objects and they go through all 40 objects. They try to get them to go through all 40 objects. Usually they can and then they do four elements which is also… it’s not vipassanā it’s actually a samatha object and then they bring them through the rūpa course they try to see like materiality all the materiality in their body at the kalāpa level which is… might want to say like atomic level when I say the atomic level it’s not like atoms in science I’m saying the atomic level in terms of English what atomic level means meaning like the basic building block level. And so they teach the yogis to see the materiality in the body and then to also understand how the six sense doors work and how the material… the materiality the sensitivity works in the eye and the ears and the nose and the tongue and in the body. And so they look at that and then they also look at the mind door as well and they see the different types of materiality in each of the sense bases. And then… so to give you some sense of time frame the samatha course the developing of concentration one-pointed concentration all 40 objects sometimes that can take nine months to a year and mastery where mastery you can do the mastery in whichever jhānas are involved too right so… oh yeah if they do the… the 14 ways I think you know about the 14 ways they used to never do the 14 ways.

Josh:
Just because I know about it doesn’t mean I’m anywhere close to it though.

Bhante Subhuti:
Yeah. But yeah. Yeah. The five jhānic masteries when you know… so yeah you said I was just saying just because I know about that doesn’t mean that I’m anywhere close to that which is… it’s an interesting but we are delayed a little bit. So it takes about like nine months and that’s like usually like… like after you get jhāna that’s after you get the first jhāna.

Josh:
Bhante I think if you want to just… I guess since most people will never… I would venture hopefully not though most people will never get close to the vipassanā stage why don’t you just sum up where we left off the vipassanā and then if you want to say anything about Thai forest tradition.

Bhante Subhuti:
Nāma after they do the rūpa kammaṭṭhāna then where they’re looking at the mind door, I’m sorry, they’re looking at these sense doors in the materiality sense. Then what they do in the nāma is they look at the mental… the mentality the consciousness and how the consciousness goes to the mind… how the consciousness goes to the sense doors and how it goes to the mind and how it does all these different… we could say preparatory consciousness in order for the javana to happen where the javana is where when we feel an emotion that’s sort of what you experience and also the jhāna concentration is also there in the… in what we call the javana process. So you learn the six sense doors and what we call vīthis or mental processes and you learned about… you learn about all the six sense doors and how they interact from a mental point of view and the rūpa you learn about the six sense doors from a physical point of view. Then after you do that then they have another sort of a… sort of like a review where you look at characteristic function manifestation and approximate cause of both nāma and rūpa. Is that correct? Yeah. And so then… so you really basically got to do the courses again and the rūpa course again and the nāma course again so you get better at it and then… and then the next part would be the dependent origination. And so that’s like the sexy stuff where you… where you get to see the past lives and usually you trace like four or five lives. Five lives is usually standard. Sometimes they do more. They do that in the back and then they… they do what you do is you end up doing the rūpa and the nāma course for each life. And so after you… after you do that so you do that for your first life and you connect… you connect the first life and your… your first past life and your present life together. You’re connecting them and so you’re seeing past causes and future results which would be the present life. And then you… you take those two lives and you go back another life. And then you go back another life like that. And so that’s what they do. And then they go into the future. So you have your present life causing future lives. And then you can go into the future. How many ever future lives you have? Potential futures. Yes. Potential future. Yeah. Potential futures. And that can change… future past doesn’t change but the future can change. So then when you finish that and there’s different methods for dependent origination. You start with the fifth method first actually which is like a beginner method and then after that then you start doing the… you start looking at there are 40 characteristics of anicca, dukkha and anattā… 40 characteristics of impermanent suffering and non-self and they look at that and this takes… this takes a long time to do because then what you do is you do each characteristic and you… and you do paṭiccasamuppāda again looking at each… you do it… you do it for the five khandhas you do it 40 times you do it like 200 times so it takes… it takes a long time these are the toes… these are the toes the 40 toes yeah this is called sammasana ñāṇa stage and so this is what they call vipassanā this is like when you make it to vipassanā. This is… it’s not really considered vipassanā after you do paṭiccasamuppāda and then you get like a 10-day Goenka course and… and it’s called vipassanā. So there are different interpretations of what practice is and maybe this will tie back to the Thai system. So the… the Myanmar system is actually based off of the text especially the Pa-Auk system. It’s based off of the text specifically the Visuddhimagga and the Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha… Bhikkhu Bodhi translated it’s called the Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma and so this is… it’s based off of the like pariyatti it’s applying the pariyatti it’s not really separate the pariyatti is like a road map and following that and the Pa-Auk of course brings back the faith in the pariyatti before it was a theoretical system that nobody actually practiced and it was… and people lost faith in it. They didn’t think things were possible anymore. And it used to be just an intellectual game almost of hopeful thinking. Maybe it’s possible. Maybe they were able to see this 2,000 years ago, but all hope is lost for the present. And so what they did was they gave up on samatha and they went directly to vipassanā of what they interpreted as vipassanā and this would just be feeling you know if it’s Goenka it’s feeling the sensations in the body so in the Pa-Auk definition how this is… this is paying attention to kāyapasādarūpa it’s like paying attention to one of the 28 rūpas in materiality course this is just rūpa kammaṭṭhāna actually it’s not even… they call it vedanānupassanā but it’s actually really sort of like kāya if possible. So then the Mahasi method is to pay attention to the sense doors and to try to anchor yourself with belly breathing in and out in and out and then to pay attention to the sense doors if they arise and they call that vipassanā and you can do like… you can do like a two-week vipassanā course you can do… you know a three-month the course, whatever. And so this is what they did.

The Thai forest tradition. Actually, they sort of just said, okay, well, monks lived in the forest. Let’s try to live in the forest too, and let’s practice and let’s look at the suttas. And they sort of had pride that they didn’t know what the texts were. They didn’t have this technical knowledge. Ajahn Chah actually was a scholar monk. He knew the Abhidhamma actually. But the other monks, they didn’t… they didn’t know what was possible, what was not possible. And so they had experiences and tradition. Yeah. Thai tradition. So they went into… they didn’t… they didn’t know much about pariyatti as far as I know and I think they prided… they sort of boasted that they didn’t know the pariyatti and they just sort of felt their way and I guess they had some monks who felt like they were enlightened and they told other people and whether they are enlightened or not enlightened it’s not for me to say. But they talk about things that are not in the text that are not possible in the text. Specifically, they talk about this citta thing and maybe it fits into the text and I’m just not aware of it. There are also stories of… there are also stories of like you know it’s in Ajahn Mun’s book that you know when Ajahn Mun became an arahant that the Buddha came to him and you know sort of gave him a nod and all his disciples who are arahants also sort of walked by him gave him a little nod and then previous Buddhas you know lined up with their disciples and they gave him a nod on the night of his arahatship. So this is part of the… this is part of Ajahn Mun’s book autobiography. I think it’s the biography of Ajahn Mun and it talks about this and this would be like not possible but then people say well in the commentaries they actually talk about how all the Buddha relics will come together and the Buddha will give a Dhamma talk and so they say it’s something like that to sort of justify it. So but I don’t… I don’t believe that it’s… it’s difficult for me to believe that that’s really possible. Yeah. And he says he… he said he would… he would spend… he’d spend… he didn’t sleep he would just you know sleep sitting up you know and so anyway that’s part of the tradition of Ajahn Chah they stay up all night and because that’s when you’re going to become enlightened the Mahasi method actually you stare at a clock for… you stay up the whole night like when you get to the advanced stage you stare at a clock I heard about this and I asked the teacher about this and he said yeah, it’s true. And you stare at a clock and then like 30 minutes… you’re up all night. Okay. And 30 minutes might pass like… like it would be like 1 second and you’re like wow 30 minutes passed and so then you… this would be going into Nibbāna or something like that. And so in the Pa-Auk world they would… they would say that this is going into a bhavanga. It’s like a deep sleep state and it’s often confused with Nibbāna and so you should be aware but then what they do is they can project their mind back and they can remember it. So whether it’s Nibbāna or not… there’s controversy… controversy in that and I think Pa-Auk said he might have been a little critical about that and I think that’s why his book wasn’t approved for publication and… use the… the thing is that you need… you need Vinaya in order to get the jhāna if you’re a monk you need to follow the rules and without Pa-Auk Sayadaw pretty much the rules wouldn’t exist right now in Myanmar because all the monasteries that… they’re either Pa-Auk or they… the monks themselves who are independent came from Pa-Auk most of them. So like Mahāvihāra I think that monk is Pa-Auk monk there’s also another monastery called… and they also… he’s Pa-Auk monk and then there’s all the Pa-Auk branches as well. So it’s like 60 branches now. So it’s become an institution. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So there’s one monk, his name is Sayadaw U… he’s, you know, if you got 60 monasteries and one monastery has a big problem, you know, once a year basically. You just got constant problems. I feel really… I feel really sad for him. He’s like always just dealing with a lot of stuff and he’s… he’s handling all the work that Pa-Auk Sayadaw Gyi used to handle and so… so anyway yeah so they have different methods and they have different explanations of what Nibbāna is. So some people say you should blank out it’s impossible to actually know that you’re in Nibbāna because there’s no consciousness so they’re confusing parinibbāna with the description of parinibbāna with the actual attainment of Nibbāna like fruition attainment so it’s phalasamāpatti so they’re confusing that and he’ll answer that say that it’s a wholesome consciousness and wholesome consciousness has sati in there and so you should be aware of what’s going on on the other hand bhavanga also is a wholesome consciousness there would be sati in there as well. So it’s difficult to… if you’re human you have a wholesome consciousness a bhavanga consciousness there would also be sati in there but we you know we experience that when we’re sleeping as well. Yeah. Yeah. That’s… sorry with the delay. Yeah. Yeah. So usually that’s the… those are the different aspects. Usually the Thai monks don’t come to the… now. Now if they go to Sri Lanka they don’t go to Nā Uyana they might go to a place I went to before it’s called… in… they might go there they might go to Meetirigala which is a Mahasi place usually stay clear away from Nā Uyana which is Pa-Auk method place and then or they just do like a trip you know just see the spiritual sites and then usually they when they go to Burma they don’t go to Pa-Auk usually. They don’t mix. They don’t mix well. But there’s actually one monk, I think he’s from Sweden or Austria and he went to… he was very interested in Pa-Auk and he went to Nā Uyana and he’s actually… he’s somewhat of a leader of the foreigners there. I’ve heard he’s supposed to be a really good monk and really good meditator I think. So I can’t remember his name but… so the Thai tradition… Thai tradition has a lot of… a lot of forest monk things which are very respectable and Myanmar is usually more… more based on sort of the meditation center monastery… it’s monastery they do monastery functions they do monastery things they ordain monks and they have kutis and everything is… it’s more sort of like like a farm a farm a meditation farm and… and it’s just growing. They have this forest life, you know, where they’re doing a lot of forest stuff. They even do this tudong thing. They live in the forest. They go to… I think it’s called… and they live in the forest, live in with mosquito nets and… so they do a lot of stuff. It’s… it sounds it sounds really wonderful but it’s… it’s not very nice to live under mosquito net. It takes a certain character to be able to do that. You know, it’s very very difficult. And so the Myanmar is usually a little more comfortable, usually a little more… they give nice and they make a meditation hall that’s really nice and… it’s more suitable for intensive concentration. Thailand, they want to be out in the forest. Sri Lanka is a little bit of both. It’s like a little bit of a mixture of that. It’s got a little bit of Myanmar. It’s got a little bit of Thai mixed into the system. So it’s a little bit in between both of those two systems that I’ve come to appreciate your sense of authenticity and remaining really very clear.

Anie:
I would like you to give us a sort of nutshell of what is from your perspective this authenticity and maintaining right Dhamma on track especially in a time where you know AI is coming into lives and people now can at the touch of a fingertips have access to a number of teachings and teachers who that may not not have been possible before. Double-checking dependent origination online can come up as with a lot of mistakes as well. So that aspect of authenticity is really important in how you present yourself and you present your knowledge. Something if you could say something about how to tell the truth sometimes and to tell it in a way that doesn’t discourage the person to continue exploring what is their own path because everyone enters the Dhamma in different ways. So there’s a sammā vācā. So there’s a right speech aspect. There’s an authenticity aspect. There’s an upāya aspect. Skillful means. And I would like you to just if you could just bring that together and say something from your perspective how how to approach that.

Bhante Subhuti:
We always tell the truth. Always tell the truth. And there’s no reason to lie ever. Okay? If you have nothing good to say, don’t say anything. Actually, I was talking and I just said, okay, I don’t want to say what this says. You know, I stopped myself. Okay. And so I think that that’s really important. But you’re saying like you want to… you want to tell someone you don’t want to discourage them from the path or something like that and you’re wondering how… how you should… how you should speak. You should… you should try to learn how to connect with people. You should try to learn like where you can connect with people. So in the Western world, people connect with loving-kindness. They really like loving-kindness. Who doesn’t… who doesn’t like loving-kindness? So… so you can connect with people with… with promoting you know morality. You can connect with people with promoting like a universal morality. You can connect with people with concentration, loving-kindness and also just doing wholesome things and… and mindfulness also people like that too. So you can connect with people just on that and you can just pick one of them, you know, loving-kindness, you can pick loving-kindness. So if you’re… if you’re doing loving-kindness, you’re going to… you’re going to be following a lot of the precepts anyways. So the question is like with being authentic okay and doing… doing the teaching. So I have a… I have a lot of faith in the commentaries in Abhidhamma and the suttas and the Vinaya you know the whole they call it the Tipiṭaka. I believe in everything and I believe in… in most even the subcommentaries and the what we call the parās. And so these… these handbooks like the Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha. So I really believe in these but sometimes they’re also a little off as well. Like when you get down to the third level and the… the subcommentaries end up and the handbooks end up being written by ancient elders. Okay. But the commentaries themselves were actually… theoretically, they’re according to the legend, they were actually part of the Buddha’s original teaching. They’re written in a different language. It’s… it’s all written in Pāli, but the language is different because it was translated into Sinhala and then… and then what happened was they lost the original Pāli and then they translated it back into Pāli. And so when they translated it back, it’s different quality of language. Like we have old English and new English. It’s… it’s not like that. Actually the… the newer Pāli is actually more complex and… and a lot of people try to read the… the commentaries and it’s… it’s very complex to read. People get frustrated… frustrated and angry that the Pāli is written in this way. It doesn’t necessarily have to be actually they… they have words that are like this long and… and it’s just… it’s just the way it was written. And so people… people get a little upset while they’re trying to figure out what it says and then they decide to reject it from there or they have difficulty believing stuff from there. Nowadays with AI, we’re able to explore without being a scholar. You can explore what the commentaries say. You can explore what the Abhidhamma says and the commentaries and the subcommentaries of the Abhidhamma etc. And you can… you can… you can read all that for yourself. Before you were taking the… you were taking the word of someone who… who read some of the commentaries and tried learning Abhidhamma or translated the Abhidhamma without learning it you know so started from the PTS they called it the valley of dry bones because they were translating… they were translating it just to translate it and it was just like lists to them and… and so they called it the valley of dry bones. And so people read this and then they… they start to… they might only say this like 20 15% of the time, but it sticks out. But the same is true when a lot of translators, they say, oh, I don’t believe this. Even Bhikkhu Bodhi does this. And… not often, but he does is like when he makes a footnote, he’s usually making a footnote about something that’s… that’s a little different than what you would logically expect it to be. That’s what the commentaries are there for, to clarify. And people don’t understand cross-cultural… when you go across… you know, across the whole world like… like as far as you can go actually you… people don’t understand how many cultures you’re crossing and… and when they see a spray gun, you know, for me it’s like what is this kitchen sink thing doing in the toilet and what are we supposed to do with that? And then an Asian person goes to a Western house and he’s like, you have like a toilet brush that you wash dishes with. You know, it’s like a toilet brush to them. And I even showed… I… I remember I… I actually showed this to a… I said, I want to take a picture of this this. He had a brand new one, so it was appropriate to take a picture. Usually they get really ugly looking. And I said, we’re in Myanmar. And I said, I want to… I want to take a picture of this. This. He says, why do you want to take a picture with this? I said, do you know that in America they wash dishes with this thing? And he’s just… that’s just disgusting. And so we have like the commentaries are and the Abhidhamma, you know, we’re talking 2600… 2600 years later, okay? And we’re also talking completely different culture. And so when people like read something like, how can this be? How can this be? And you know like in the PTS translation there’s a footnote like when the Buddha was dying it said that you could fit 60… I think it was 60 devas on the head of a needle and… he said oh this is just ridiculous they can’t… they can’t… they can’t imagine that they haven’t seen Fantastic Voyage it wasn’t made then but… but you know it’s… you know they have these things and… these things stick in people’s mind sticks in my mind because I read that actually in a paper book 20 years more than 20 years ago or something like that. So… so these things stick in people’s mind. They come up with a judgment. And then we have like this thing called EBT where they… where they… they reject the commentaries. They reject the… they reject the commentaries because the… they usually take the Chinese as an authority. The Chinese what survived in Chinese as an authority and the commentaries are different and the Abhidhamma is a little different. And so then what they do is they… they only take the where the Chinese matches the Pāli as an authority. You know then only this is really really true and… but you know Chinese is… you know they’re like the holders of the Mahayana which says you’re allowed to lie if you want to… to bring it full circle. Oh really? And… so they… so anyway in terms of being authentic… I think I think you mean about like the being authentic and true to the teachings and a lot of times I… you know like like we have third precept the third precept is actually you can’t have premarital sex okay and you know the way I tell people this. I’m like, you know, and for killing, you can’t… you can’t do abortions. You can’t even speak in favor of abortions as a monk. And the way I tell people this is… I mean these days I’ve been exposed to this and I understand it better and I understand that abortion is wrong. But I tell people I say look I’m a monk. I have to say this and I let… I let people know in certain ways. One person asked me… one person asked me if being a… a poultry farmer is okay. Okay. And this is her livelihood. And she’s asking me if it’s okay. And I said I can’t say it’s good. And so this is maybe skillful means where you’re always telling the truth. And but you’re still telling the truth but you’re saying it in digestible ways and so that’s… you have to… you have to be skillful in saying things that is right for the person but you know sometimes the Buddha… like there was the dog-duty ascetic there was an ascetic who pretended to be… he acted like a dog and… there’s people like this today in India. There’s even some guy in Japan who has a dog suit. He has like a $20,000 dog suit or something like that. And… you know there’s… and he asked the Buddha, is this really the way? You know what will happen to me? He says, don’t ask me this. He says, you have to tell me. So you can’t ask the Buddha more than three times. And so then he says, okay, I warned you. And he says, he says, at best your next life you’ll be a dog. He says, but if you’re telling other people, if you believe that this is the way to salvation and you’re telling other people to do this as well, you’ll go into the worst of hells. And so sometimes the Buddha, he speaks what is always… he always speaks what is beneficial. He always speaks at the right time. He always speaks… he always speaks the truth but it’s not always pleasant. Usually it’s pleasant. Sometimes it’s a bitter pill to swallow. He tells… he tells it like it is but most of the time everything is just wonderful that the Buddha says. Yeah.

Anie:
So this is interesting because it links up to a sort of corollary question I had on that and which is a question I like to ask and I have asked to several senior ājān or senior mahāthera and then I’m always getting similar… similar answers but I really would like to put it to you what are highlights quality for a teacher someone who is in a position who can teach the Dhamma, share the Dhamma and put it because it’s also not… but not not being proselyte so it has to be requested but again with computers and AI and everything everything is available at the fingertips in ancient times or earlier days people were taking an airplane and going to Asia to look for teachers so what are highlights… ancient times they… they would walk for days to visit a… right right ancient times what ancient sometimes last century meant as well like ancient but let’s say that what are the highlight qualities for a teacher like how it’s a question that I’ve heard being asked as well but it’s also a question that I have at heart because how do you actually choose to have a teacher and follow and there are some highlights so there is on one part it could be intuition in one… in fact, it could be just that there is a connection between what you’re looking for and what the teacher is having. But there are also some aspect of teachers that need to be there especially if the teacher is a monastic. So you know reference to a lineage or I would like you to speak about it otherwise I start talking about this and it’s a completely different answer. So highlights of teachers and another corollary about that is are there any female teachers that have ever inspired you or can you point to females in the Saṅgha as part of the four-fold Saṅgha where are the female… where are the women in there and that would be my final question.

Bhante Subhuti:
So in terms of a… of a teacher, whether it’s a lay person or it’s a monastic, I think in your context, you’re asking about monastics. You’d feel that this teacher has something to offer you that you’re looking for at the very minimum. So even if you just want to go to chanting, if the monk knows how to chant, then… then this teacher can be a teacher for you and can help you with developing the wholesome. It depends on… on what you’re… what you’re looking for. You have to respect the teacher in order to learn from the teacher. And this actually is one of the things that’s a problem with… with women who look for a teacher. So a lot of times the women don’t respect women teachers. There are… there are women teachers though, but… we’ll get into that later. So there’s… if you’re a monastic and you’re looking for a monastic teacher you… you would want to make sure that they follow the monastic rules. So we have sīla, samādhi and paññā right. So it would be very important to have a teacher who follows the basic first step of sīla and… so this would… this would be good and they… they know the rules so they can teach you if you’re a monastic and you want to… and you want to know the rules you should… you yourself should be eager to follow the rules. And so you’d want another monk who… who at least has that and he has the knowledge in the rules. So he can teach you or she can teach you the rules and lives by the rules, walks the practice. So that’s… that’s very important. Teachers make mistakes though. But it depends how often what they do, how they purify those mistakes, if they can purify those mistakes. So, usually you want to… if you’re a monk, I like… I tell people like where to ordain. I have an article called “Where to Ordain.” I think both of you have probably read that and I don’t even bother with… with places that don’t follow the rules because you can ordain anywhere. You can just pick any monastery and ordain. So, and they’re more common. It’s… it’s very rare to find a place that follows the… generally follows the Vinaya and but that’s… that’s if you’re looking for a place to ordain and then… then after that you know you do… you want pariyatti place do you want to learn about pariyatti and do you want to… do you want to learn about meditation and you know you… I… I guide people to try to figure out what their philosophy is because usually when they’re at the stage where they want to ordain their… their philosophy is already set like concrete and it’s very difficult to change them. And so my goal of that was to… to sort of like recognize that I couldn’t change them and to guide people in a place that could fit. And the big thing is called philosophy matching. So you want to ordain at a place that follows the Vinaya and you want to follow the place that… that matches your philosophy. Now the question is are you skillful enough to know what’s good for you? So a little kid would be like you know like he’d be like chocolate cake is what I should be eating and I’m going to eat chocolate cake because he’s a little kid. He doesn’t know what’s… what’s really good for him. Okay. And so you need… you need a parent say no you can’t have that and this would be a good teacher but he might not match the philosophy of his parents about chocolate cake and how much he can have. So in terms of what I think is correct is we should follow the… you know we have the Tipiṭaka there’s three baskets we should follow all baskets and then we should also follow the commentaries we should find teachers who develop the practice the meditation system based on that… that fits in that and it’s not just like one little thing and it says that’s the whole practice. I… you know, you can… you can do that. You can take one of the… you can… you can take a small part of the teachings and just make it your specialty. But… but you should understand that about how everything is connected, how… how everything sort of works together in terms of all the texts, the Pāli texts that we have. And you should… you should follow… follow that, have faith in that and see if they’re practicing that as well. But you might want to go to the pariyatti realm and a long time ago the study monks they didn’t follow the Vinaya and the practice monks they… they followed the Vinaya because in terms of the morality because you need sīla samādhi paññā… need… need morality to get concentration to get wisdom Nibbāna right so but wisdom comes before Nibbāna and so normally it was like that but actually nowadays there are places where you can learn the text and follow the rules at the same time. It used to not exist before. We would just say, oh, he’s a pariyatti monk. We still say that he’s pariyatti. I go to university. I… I encounter, you know, my professors, they’re… they’re… they’re you know, they’re… they’re pariyatti monks. There’s no other way to explain that. And I can learn from them. And I’m very respectful. I bow down to them and you know I’m like I recognize they’re more senior to me and I’ll… I’ll bow down to them and give them the respect. You have to respect the person at least and you have to understand that this person can give me something that I’m… I’m seeking and that it’s the correct Dhamma as well. You want to definitely see… you want to judge am I… am I following the correct Dhamma? That’s… that’s really important. And… you should see if it matches. So… so yeah we have… we have 89 cittas you know but where is this citta in the Thai tradition? So then they… they start saying well this the citta means something else or something it can match in the… some people will say it matches in the book and some people say it’s not in the book or something like that. So you… you have to decide what is… what is the… the real Dhamma for… for me the saddhamma. We say the saddhamma is the true Dhamma is… is what’s in the Pāli. So some people say well… well this is commentarial this is Abhidhamma. This is not real. I only follow the suttas. The suttas are very wide and you can… you can… it… you… you can… you can make your own path within the suttas and you also have to believe that the commentaries comes from there. You have to believe that the Abhidhamma comes from there. And so the Buddha even said that you know this is what the Buddha said. This is what the Buddha did not say. And so this is how we get the authentic teachings. We get the authentic teachers and… and so you… you look and see if you can get those authentic teachings and you always tell the truth and you… you try to be pleasant and try to avoid conflict, try to avoid things that would push people away and… and the best thing to do is just talk about baby Dhamma and… and talk about loving-kindness and try to stay away from that. Actually, my last… my last online baby Dhamma course was quite deep. So, I thought I’d just talk about like, you know, you… you see colors and you have an eye and you hear sounds and you have an ear. Then I started talking about and I have to because it’s just… I feel like I have to. And so then it became very complicated. You know, I was talking about mind moments and… and how the word hello sounds, you know, on a mind moment level. And… but… but yeah, we… we should just talk about loving-kindness and we can connect with people. In terms of female… teachers, like I said, the… the females usually don’t respect the female teachers and… and so they’re at a… at a… female teachers are at a disadvantage. It’s very difficult for… for female… like there’s… there’s more… there’s a lot of women who finish the course and very few of them are able to teach successfully. So… so the big thing is that the… and the… and the women need a lot of attention. There’s a lot more yogis also and I was always like well why don’t we just have them teach themselves and they’re like it doesn’t work and they… they… they don’t… it’s a… it’s a matter of the women not respecting… the monks can… we’re fine we… we’ll learn from our own… we’ll learn from our own but the… but the women actually choose not to respect the woman and when they don’t respect they can’t learn so there are… there… there are teachers is like Nina van Gorkom and Sujin. They… they are lay women teachers… with the especially with the Abhidhamma. I’m not really sure about other… other teachers. I don’t really follow them in order to… to judge. There’s different women who have some success with… with connecting with people like because they’re famous, but I don’t know what they… what they do. Yeah. So, because I… I have my teachers and I’ve learned from best. So, in terms of teacher, that’s… that’s all I can say in terms of the being authentic and not pushing people away.

Josh:
What advice would you give to lay people? We spent a little time talking about… maybe some monastic advice and those considering to ordain, but I guess in general some just general advice to… to lay people and study and practice and maybe just life in general, too.

Bhante Subhuti:
For lay people, it’s a lot wider in terms of what you can get from monks in terms of looking for a teacher. It’s very wide. And… because they… they have… you’re not looking to follow the monastic rules, you’re looking to get the knowledge. In terms of advice I can give for… for lay people in terms of the practice, in terms of their learning, in terms of what they’re doing, the main thing is to try to keep a wholesome mind. Try to pay attention to the mind and understand when it’s wholesome, when it’s unwholesome. Practice loving-kindness. It’s very important and to… to actually try to practice loving-kindness… in the Pa-Auk level. One of the problems with Pa-Auk is… is you don’t try anything until you get into the order. You know, it’s like a staircase actually. And but you can… like loving-kindness is one of the last things they teach in the samatha world. And so most people never even learn about loving-kindness, but you can practice loving-kindness. And… and one of the… one of the… one of the qualities or… or benefits is that it’s easy to do. It’s easy to concentrate the mind. It’s something very wonderful. And I hope that people can practice loving-kindness. If all you have is five minutes, okay, yeah, do it every day. Five minutes. It’s good. But you can also try to develop it and also to have loving-kindness… sort of a mindfulness on… on that and also developing these beautiful mental factors to have awareness of that and to see when you’re… when you have these mental qualities these mental ingredients that are beautiful when they’re not beautiful because then you’ll be in the wholesome not being in the wholesome and so you… you’ll understand better and also just by paying attention to those qualities of what is beautiful and what is not beautiful you’ll know on a practical level that the Abhidhamma is correct and… and then this will help you understand that the teachings are definitely… are definitely correct and that we should apply them to apply the teachings and just to apply something very… to try to take a very simple part of the Buddhist teachings that you’re able to do and try to incorporate that… incorporate that in your life because the teachings are very wide and you get really confused and you can just keep reading new… new suttas and… and they do end but it’s almost like they never end. Yeah. So you can always… you can just keep reading a new sutta every day and… and pretty much never get the end. And by the time you go to the end, you forgot the ones you read in the three… three years ago because three year cycle or something like that. So yeah. So if you can take like a small part of the teaching that can… can you’re able to do it simple and it helps you have a wholesome mind helps you have a beautiful mind helps you be more loving-kindness have more loving-kindness and but being beautiful and wholesome this is what is very important of course if you’re doing that then you’re following the precepts five precepts this is very important to follow the five precepts as like a minimum. You know, I say have a wholesome mind. Try to have a beautiful mind, but you also want to definitely focus on the five precepts. And… this is for those who don’t know, it’s said not to kill, not to steal, not to engage in sexual misconduct, not to tell lies, any type of lie, and to completely stay away from any type of intoxicating substance. So this is just basic common sense stuff. And so you have the… the base of the sīla and then you have the… you have the… the element of practice keeping the mind beautiful loving-kindness keeping the mind if the mind is beautiful you have the mind in the wholesome states the wholesome having a wholesome mind then your… then your actions will be wholesome and your speech will be wholesome and your mind will be wholesome and so that’s a very simple baby… baby Dhamma message and that’s… that’s what I try to… I try to push. Yeah. So I hope that this can… well this can help.

Josh:
Well sādhu sādhu sādhu thank you Bhante. Yes and that’s will be beautiful grounds for growing wisdom as well which will come overcome everything right and… and take us to the final goal someday if we stay on… stay on the true path. So, thank you so much for joining and… thanks Anie for… for suggesting this and… and sharing. And I’ll just throw it back to Anie to… to… to say anything she wants to do before we leave here.

Anie:
I appreciate your time, your patience, your availability to do this at a late time in the evening. You’re monastic. That’s why your schedule is very busy. Sometimes it is a thought that monastic just don’t just go and sit and do nothing but actually super busy and I know you’re very busy. So I appreciate your time, your patience, your availability and your kindness in sharing more than baby Dhamma. So and… thank you so much again sādhu.

Bhante Subhuti:
Okay. Yes. Yes.

Josh:
All right. And with that…

A Watch In The Ocean: From Silicon Valley To Ordination In Myanmar & Sri Lanka With Bhante Subhuti Bhikkhu

Audio: Watch in the Ocean: From Silicon Valley to Ordination in Myanmar & Sri Lanka with Bhante Subhuti

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Audio: Watch in the Ocean: From Silicon Valley to Ordination in Myanmar & Sri Lanka with Bhante Subhuti

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