Living in quiet contemplation

A handful of foreigners were among those who made their way to the Wang Gung Phuket Kalyanamitta Center on June 17 to learn more about meditation.

Phra Nicholas Thanissaro, 41, is not your typical monk. Born in London and a graduate of the University of Manchester, the highly articulate Englishman has devoted his life to teaching others the benefits of meditation. Fluent in Thai, he spent nine years in training before being ordained at Wat Phra Dhammakaya in Pathum Thani.

Although he currently spends about 70% of is time at the Dhammakaya Center for Buddhist meditation in Surrey, England, he was recently in Phuket to give meditation and ethics training to students at British International School.

While here, he also held a meditation session in English at the Wang Gung Phuket Kalyanamitta Center, behind Suan Luang Park. Among the handful of interested foreigners who attended was Gazette News Editor Stephen Fein.

 

Stephen Fein: What are your views on the Jatukham Ramathep amulets craze that is going on nowadays?

Phra Nicholas: Well, it’s an amulet which seems to be popular with a lot of people. But what is ironic is that it is not an amulet of a Buddha, but of some Hindu deity or god of some sort – I don’t know which one – but it seems to have caught on with a lot of Buddhists who seem to prize them.

SF: But they are being made and distributed by Buddhist monks...

Phra Nicholas: Yes, that confuses me. Normally Buddhist monks wouldn’t be involved in making things that obviously have nothing to do with Buddhism.

SF: Before I moved to Thailand I took a university course in Buddhism and I found it fascinating. When I moved to Thailand I thought I was coming to a place where people would be meditating a lot, but when I arrived all the ritual involved reminded me more of the Catholicism I grew up with.

Phra Nicholas: Hopefully without sounding partisan, there seems to have been a downturn in peoples’ true understanding of what it actually means to be Buddhist.

Many people have become so removed from what Buddhist practice actually means that there is nothing much left but a superstitious clinging to certain aspects of it. I think that this Jatukham Ramathep craze is just one symptom of that, but there are many other aspects too.

The weakness of Buddhism comes when people think they are Buddhist automatically, without practicing anymore. The main practices of Buddhism are generosity, keeping the five precepts and meditation. You become a proper Buddhist by practicing. But if you are a Buddhist in name only and your whole religious awareness is just superstitions, then you are really only a minimal Buddhist.

But if you look in the right places, you can find a lot of Buddhist scholars in Thailand – a lot more than in many other countries. But often the face of Buddhism you tend to come across in Thailand – your default face of Buddhism in Thailand – is not a scholarly one. It’s one of superstitions, for the most part.

You can see beyond that if you know what you are looking for, but many people don’t know what they are looking for anymore.

SF: Is the Dhammakaya Foundation part of the mainstream Buddhist Church in Thailand?

Phra Nicholas: It’s a movement within mainstream Buddhism to encourage people to get back to basics – especially meditation and teaching young people the actual teachings of Buddhism. Within Theravada Buddhism in Thailand there are two schools, Mahanikaya and Dhammayuthika, and we are in the Mahanikaya school.

SF: How long did it take you to become ordained?

Phra Nicholas: I lived in the main Dhammakaya temple in Pathum Thani for nine years before I was allowed to become a monk. The policy of the temple is that they like to make sure that the people who they ordain are sure that this is the life for them, rather than making a mess of being a monk. So there is a “probation period”, which in my case took nine years. I have been a monk now for 10 years.

SF: How many hours a day do you meditate?

Phra Nicholas: Normally two hours per day, one hour in the morning and one in the evening.

SF: Usually when I interview people I ask whether the person has any hobbies. Do you have any hobbies, or things you do that aren’t really connected with being a monk?

Phra Nicholas: Excuse me? (feigns slight surprise at the question) No, no that’s my life, I’m afraid. But I do a lot of traveling, I’ve been to about 40 countries by now, various things connected with Buddhism…most recently India and Indonesia. There seems to be a demand for meditation teaching in English.

SF: Is it uncommon to be a farang monk in Thailand? Have you ever had any bad experiences or conflicts?

Phra Nicholas: As a Western monk, you are an oddity wherever you go. If you go to the West, you are an oddity because you are a monk. If you come to the East, you are an oddity, not because you are a monk, but because you are a Western monk. But, in general, I find that it attracts people to ask more about Buddhism, so I think it’s a positive thing. I have never felt disadvantaged by being a Western monk.

SF: As someone in the media, I wonder what you think about media coverage of scandals involving monks? What do you think the media’s role should be?

Phra Nicholas: Well, such stories may have some truth in them because there are a lot of monks and in any population, if you have enough people, you are always going to find some bad characters in there.

People tend to overreact when monks get bad press and I think the media needs to have a responsible outlook on the way they report – or maybe decide not to report – incidents concerning behavior of monks. Even if a small minority behaves badly, it tends to undermine the whole livelihood of 99.999% of monks who practice well, help the community and are altruistic… It’s a double-edged sword because while the press should be helping to stamp out bad behavior, it makes life difficult for the rest who are behaving well.

One likes to report reality, but there is another side that maybe you should know about. I think the gutter press in Thailand may be framing monks to get stories. It is very easy to get a picture of a monk which he maybe didn’t intend and then run another headline under it.

Around 1996 and 1997 there seemed to be stories every day of this nature, as if there was a gang of people going around drugging monks, getting a scantily-clad woman to sit on the bed with them, taking a picture and saying “This is reality”.

SF: What did you do before you came to Thailand and began studying Buddhism?

Phra Nicholas: I was 23 and I graduated as a teacher, but I never worked as a teacher. I came out here. If I hadn’t succeeded I would probably be an English teacher somewhere by now.

I came here as a result of having met a Thai monk studying in England. At that time I was secretary of the Buddhist society of my university and he suggested I spend some time in a temple in Thailand.

SF: You go by your monk name now. What was your given name, and does it matter anymore?

Phra Nicholas: I changed it to my monk’s name in my passport.

SF: When you were growing up was your family religious?

Phra Nicholas: I was baptized as an Anglican, I think. I have a certificate somewhere [smiles]. My parents were not really enthusiastic churchgoers, but my grandparents were. Even they are happy that I am a monk now.

SF: How were they about it at first?

Phra Nicholas: They were disappointed that I didn’t become a Christian monk. Later they found out that Buddhist monks are okay after all – and that in fact they are very peace-loving, and so on.

My 85-year-old grandmother says it’s good and she boasts about it to all her neighbors… My parents came out at one stage to make sure that I hadn’t been brainwashed, and they went back satisfied.

They couldn’t get their heads around the idea that I had become so interested in Buddhism all of a sudden. But for me it wasn’t that sudden, as I had been studying it for 10 years.

Phra Nicholas’ last meditation session in Phuket will be at Wang Gung Phuket Kalyanamitta Center, behind Suan Luang Park, on July 22 starting at 1:30 pm. However, the sessions will continue, on the third Sunday of each month, with instruction by English-speaking Thai monks.

To get to the center from the Central Festival intersection, head south on the bypass road and take the first left at the sign to Wat Naka. Go past the temple about one kilometer and make a U-turn when you see the park on your right.

Take the next left into a housing estate and enter the third soi on the left. The meditation session will be held in the building just past the mansion.

For more information about the sessions call 081-3704005; 089-6476424 or 087-2838185, or email: tatphuket@tat.or.th or poolsuk@asianpremier.com