Bhante, thanks for your compliments. I apologize if the mail has
upset
you. If so, I am sorry for letting it through.
As the moderator, and for the common interest of the group, can you
please tell us a bit about yourself? Thanks.
Self as memories, accumulated experience, familiar, recognized,
proved
`Educated' being, physical-mental phenomena, the `story',
And even that misled, mostly fabricated, glossed.
How does one answer that?
Born of sankharas, there was so much ignorance
When seen, is one free from it?
It has to be practiced over and over,
`Sila': is the natural response, can it be always wholesome?
`panna': the wisdom obscured by habit, ideas,
desires, 'personality', the spontaneous wisdom of `now', as hidden
by the habits and
Intentions, tendencies that make a `self'.
Thanks for the interest, but renunciation is a kind of death,
The person is not identified with,
One is outside society, a homeless.
From that point, I know, one is asked to look at what makes (him) a
monk.
But then, again, one is reminded of the burden, will have more to
carry back unto the mountain
To be part of the ancient, holy Buddhist tradition,
Can there be a better way to live?
Any one who wish to know
Is invited to come and stay awhile here, with us or otherwise
Citalla Pabatta the mountain of the happy mind
Is a well known monastery in the south of Sri-Lanka.
There are hundreds of caves, wind swept but quite dusty
The walls were smothered for the former Arahats,
One feels sometimes their spirit is still here.
A place of gentle wisdom,
No other place I saw where one does feel the Dhamma may carry one
through, as far as he may go, where freedom is indeed unbound,
uncompromising, full of love, internal, deep,
Spontaneous and thoughtful.
Can one be a one to adopt it, thoroughly studying experiences,
psychological conditioning,
Motives, greed, a sense of self, pride, and consider:
Social circumstances, others, conventions of thought, body and
speech.
And then, against the grain, Can one find happiness in solitude?
(We have the modern equivalent: to write about it )
There are wild animals: elephants and deer, leopards and languor
monkeys, there are winds from the southern Indian Ocean.
Not always so harsh, we have now the net, the main monastery is
rather comfortable, many visitors
It is quite popular with sri-lankan, increasingly seeing nation as
identity.
Brought to perfection in the most ancient surviving Buddhism,
It is deep and challenging for a foreigner.
Though almost instinctual, almost violent toward any `view' but
The doctrinally accepted, it is extremely sweet, a notion of
The Buddha word makes good.
We have rooms for guests, food is nothing to discuss, but
That's a prerequisite for attaining Jhana