Unexpected Freedom Unexpected Freedom Ajahn Munindo printed for free distribution Dhamma talks by Ajahn Munindo ARUNA PUBLICATIONS Unexpected Freedom Dhamma talks by Ajahn Munindo Aruna Publications This book has been sponsored for free distribution. © Aruna Publications 2005 www.ratanagiri.org.uk www.forestsangha.org Aruna Ratanagiri: Harnham Buddhist Monastery 2 Harnham Hall Cottages Harnham Belsay Northumberland NE20 0HF United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)1661 881 612 Permission to reprint this book is hereby given so long as it is produced for free distribution and no changes are made to content or layout. Cover photo copyright Wat Pah Nanachat Contents Introduction Profoundly Simple 1 Simplicity, gratitude to teachers, determination, effort to remember, valuing insight, gentleness We are all Translators 15 Communal task of translating, discerning essence, respect for tradition, creative involvement, source and goal-oriented practice More than our Feelings 29 Cultivating mindfulness, Middle Way, right detachment, learning from everything, spontaneity and confidence Getting to Know our Emotional Household 45 Uncovering denied life, encountering ourselves, raw emotions, feeling empty, letting go of guilt, fearlessness When We Fall in Love 53 Capacity to be loving, absence of fear, undivided attention, pain of separateness, transformative power, intimacy No Blame 65 Capacity to hold anger, motivation, arising of good and bad, accommodating pain, right preparation Meeting our Anger 71 Restraining initial reactions, investigating assumptions, five degrees of distraction, conscious endurance, forgiveness Who Says it’s Wrong to Feel Afraid? 83 Questioning wrong-making, listening deeply, feeding on praise and blame, false energy, realising a new identity in awareness The Power of Paradox 91 Judgment-free awareness, multidimensional mind, compulsive judging, polluted awareness, not taking sides, relative forms Truly Comfortable 101 Finding comfort, friendship, sanctuary, ritual, storehouse of goodness, restraining sexual desire, frustration of preferences What is Renunciation? 119 Reclaiming our energy, nothing extra, just ‘do it’, not over-doing it, not morality, letting go of ego Prayer and Devotion 129 What is prayer?, caught not taught, giving direction to life, fearless prayer, insight practice, accumulating potential A Question of Identity 141 Investigation of self, natural and unnatural identity, daily-life investigation, abiding as awareness, at-oneness, anatta Alone Together 157 Monastic and lay lifestyle, encountering loneliness, learning from pain, living in relationship, healthy uncertainty And I Know I Should Let Go 167 Allowing, not doing, we have the authority, self-doubt, loss of identity, fear of insanity, unexpected release Contemplating Happiness 181 Real happiness, cultivating good companionship, wise frugality, discovering contentment as we approach death, real refuge Glossary Introduction So often we are trying to follow the Buddha’s teaching with the idea of becoming free from something – free from our desires, our personality, our anger, our suffering. It might then come as quite a surprise, when suddenly, in the middle of our striving to attain or get rid of something, we find our heart opening like a window, revealing to us the spacious vista of an unexpected kind of freedom: the freedom to fully meet ourselves as we are right now; the freedom to fully experience all the situations and emotions that seem to be obstacles to our happiness, without having to believe in or follow their apparent messages. What allows us to abide in that unexpected freedom, finding stillness and clarity in the eye of the storm, is a spacious, embracing awareness of the present moment, which for its liberating qualities lies at the heart of the Buddha’s teaching. This collection of talks is formed around the theme of this potentially limitless awareness. The inspiration to put this book together originated with a series of talks given by Ajahn Munindo at the beginning of the millennium in New Zealand. In those talks he characterised a practice centered on trust in a non- judgmental awareness of the present moment as ‘source- oriented’ practice, contrasting it to ‘goal-oriented’ striving. I was living at the monastery in Wellington where the talks were given and it was a great relief for me to hear his eloquent exposition of a theme I was struggling with myself, feeling Unexpected Freedom intuitively drawn to a source-oriented approach but at the same time keeping a half-hearted commitment to goal- striving. A predicament which led me into years of confusion in which I vainly tried to synthesize and reconcile the two approaches in my own practice. Finding myself encouraged by one of our senior monks to follow my own intuition was quite a relief, freeing up a lot of energy. Part of the newly kindled enthusiasm went straight into the effort to get the talks edited. With the help of a few good friends we merged them into one text called ‘We are all Translators’, the second of this collection. There was a particularly strong incentive for me to do this, having seen how many other people, particularly Westerners, shared the same response to the talks or the theme developed in them. And the reception of the talk seems to have proved its relevance, as it has now been reprinted in several languages. Soon after coming to Aruna Ratanagiri, the monastery at Harnham, in the north of England, where Ajahn Munindo is the senior incumbent, a number of other talks sprang to my attention that seemed similarly significant, adding perspectives and themes that felt like cornerstones of Ajahn Munindo’s way of living and presenting the Dhamma: ‘When we fall in Love’ with its appreciation of how to harness all of our enthusiasm for life into our practice; ‘What is Renunciation?’ explaining the need for a proper container in which our passions can be transformed; and ‘Prayer and Devotion’, concerning the engagement of our heart’s longings and aspirations in a way that usually gets little attention in Western presentations of the Theravada teachings. Then, over a period of a few months I heard Ajahn Munindo give a whole series of talks illustrating the application of present-moment awareness to various difficult situations and emotions, culminating in the ‘The Introduction Power of Paradox’. In this talk he succinctly formulates the essence of a source-oriented approach to practice: “Patiently allowing utterly frustrating dilemmas to be present in our here-and-now, judgment-free awareness – this is the path of purification.” With those talks fleshing out the theme opened up by ‘We are all Translators’, the idea of a book took on more definite shape, and after some initial hesitation (“Do you really think these things are worth printing?”) Ajahn Munindo warmed up to the idea. Finally, through the bequest of his good friend Sue Warren, who passed away in 2003, there arose the opportunity to print this book and dedicate it to her dear memory. In the first talk of the collection Ajahn Munindo shares his experience of his early years as a monk in Thailand and his relationship to and the teachings received from his first teacher, the late Ajahn Tate. The book then moves on to the theme of respectfully translating the teachings and the form of the inherited tradition into what is meaningful and work- able for us. This is a task that, as is explained in ‘We are all Translators’, we have to face individually if we want to receive genuine benefits from our practice. In his own efforts to meet this challenge, Ajahn Munindo remains faithful to the instructions on awareness he received from his first teacher: to “realise the difference between the contents of the heart and the heart itself.” The main body of the book develops the theme of this awareness, the heart itself, its inherent freedom and its relevance for receiving and transforming the various passions and problems arising in our life. The aim is to show how it is that in this cauldron of awareness, if our connection to it is strong, stable and clear enough, all obstructions can be melted down into their raw energies which then become available again to manifest in ways that are wholesome and Unexpected Freedom beautiful. As the Ajahn points out in ‘Getting to Know our Emotional Household’, this is essential, as “we need all our energy for the work of purification”, and whatever part of it we try to deny or repress for too long will go underground and eventually turn against us. The talks towards the end of the book offer reflections and practices that try to provide a supportive framework to hold awareness in its place, investing it with the strength needed to undertake its transformative work. This arrangement of the talks, then, follows a certain logic; however, it should be possible to open the book at any page and find some relevant reminder or a fresh perspective on the challenges we face in our practice. The talks were given at a variety of venues – at Aruna Ratanagiri monastery, during either the regular Sunday evening meetings or lay meditation retreats, during travels to meditation groups in Britain as well as in other countries – always to a lay audience, mostly with monastic Sangha presence, often addressing specific questions, and so in general trying to address topics of concern for both monastic and lay practitioners. They have, at least in part, been edited extensively to adapt them to the written format, to avoid repetitions or to clarify the argument where it seemed helpful. The quotations at the beginning of each talk are taken from Ajahn Munindo’s own rendering of the Dhammapada, published by Aruna Publications. They introduce the theme of the talk and pay homage to the Buddha by offering a reference to the Pali scriptures, the most ancient record of his teachings. Thai and Pali words (apart from Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha and some proper names) have been italicised where they appear in the first instance in each talk.