Conversation with Ajahn Panyavado

Conversation with Ajahn Panyavado

(Wat Pa Baan Taad, Dec. 1996)

Question: What is the role of spiritual companionship and mutual support in dealing with various emotional difficulties, emotional lack, especially in the case of Westerners? Maybe we do need more of this....

AP: Companionship is very important, the Buddha said that. But it should come about by the practice. If the companionship is not right, it's usually because one's thoughts are going out all the time. One is thinking about other people all the time, and there may be some criticizing of other people, thinking badly about them for doing this or doing that -- this is where the trouble comes. If one turns and puts all the criticism on oneself, then there's usually no problem. And one should also have metta for the others. The first thing is, one should not think badly about them, bad thoughts. This is very important. One must avoid bad thoughts. Any bad thoughts... okay, never mind, that's none of my business. Put them outside. Because one has to realize, if one has bad thoughts, that's going to infect oneself also, it's going to infect one's own world. So the thing is to keep the bad thoughts out. And also one should think that these people are bhikkhus, they are keeping a standard of sila which is higher than the average person, and because of that they are worth respecting. The best thing is then to drop it completely from one's mind and go back to one's practice. Because if one's doing the practice, if one gets any results in the practice, the concern with other people drops away. One gets on with other people quite easily and one is not terribly interested in what they're doing, what they're saying....

Question: Some Western bhikkhus have tried doing the traditional practice but found that it hasn't been successful for them because they have some culturally conditioned neuroses of various kinds which seem to be a preliminary obstacle to more refined levels. To what degree, in what way are Westerners different from Thais?

AP: I don't think that Westerners are very much different from Thais, really. There are some differences, but not much. As for the emotional troubles... they are kilesas after all. What's required to deal with that is to control the mind. If people won't control their minds, then the mind will always be thinking about these things, and when we think about these things all the emotional troubles immediately start coming up. Because they are thoughts after all, the first aspect of kamma. It is the asavas, the citta flowing out into thoughts. And if it goes strongly, it flows out into speech and then into action. This is the way of trouble. If we can keep the mind on the parikamma (meditation object), just on that, there is no problem. If you look at the hook-ups and hang-ups of people in the West, of course, practically all of them come from thought, from thinking about things. If they stopped thinking about things, they would have no problems. These are called arammana, arom in Thai, 'emotional hang-ups' in one way or another. When there are emotional hang-ups like that, see that they stimulate certain ways of thought, so that the person tends to think in that direction. But if you look, all you have to do is cut those thoughts -- and there is no problem, the problem disappears. The thinking is the problem. When you get people in universities and students having break-downs, it's because they are thinking too much, they never give their cittas any rest. The cure for that is to practise and to stop that thinking. When you stop that thinking, there aren't any problems, it's just like that.

AP: Well, when you look at it, all of those -- anxiety, loneliness, depression -- these are modes of feeling. They are arammana, and they give rise to modes of feeling. And when these feelings come up, then thoughts come up that correspond to those feelings. Say, depression... a person has depressed thoughts coming up, they grumble about the place, they feel bad and all the rest of it, it's their thoughts that are the trouble all the time. If they get down to look at their feelings, question them and analyze them, to look at what sort of feelings they are, then they will overcome them. But what happens is that the person gets a certain feeling, a feeling of depression, and instead of looking at it they start thinking in ways which correspond to that feeling. And once they are thinking in ways which correspond to that feeling, their minds go out, out into the world: "Oh, this is a terrible place, what's this life about, I don't want to live in this..." You'll find that there is always these thoughts going on creating trouble. If you turn around, put the citta inside and look inside at these feelings, anybody can overcome them. But it requires effort, and what's often lacking is the effort to do it, to be willing to do it. It's very often the fact that people who've got things like depression coming up, they cling to that depression. The kilesas want it, because it gives them a feeling of self. Without that feeling of self, they feel lost. This feeling of self is very important because it drives all sorts of things. To get a feeling of self, people will do all kinds of silly things, even in some pathological cases mutilate themselves.

Question: Isn't there a great difficulty in bringing the Buddhist teachings from Thailand to the West?

AP: I don't see why the teachings shouldn't go to the West. After all, people are born in the same way as they are in the East, their minds work the same way, the fundamental problems are the same, they've all got dukkha in the same way -- why shouldn't the method work in the same way? I don't mean that one has to transport all the traditions, that's not necessary, but the teaching is necessary. That can work in the West perfectly well. Of course people are used to their ways of thinking in the West, and they have to give up some of those... but they can do it.