Rugged Interdependency - Amaravati Buddhist Monastery

Rugged InterdependencyMore Asian people are sitting on our meditation retreats these days; out of the80 or so gathered for one recent retreat at Angela Center, Santa Rosa, CA, therewere representatives from eight different Far Eastern nations.A lot has changed in New York City since my first visit there. Needless to say,the destruction of the Two Towers had a radical effect on the local consciousness,inclining a lot more people toward reflection and meditation. Many more seniorteachers visit there these days; New York Insight has a brimming catalogue ofevents and a steadily growing family of committed members [www.nyimc.org].Paul and Lili Breiter moved to Florida so that he would be in closer proximityto his agèd parents. He has now translated and published several books:Venerable Father, a memoir of his time with Ajahn Chah, Being Dharma (ShambhalaPublications), Everything Arises, Everything Falls Away (also by ShambhalaPublications), and Everything is Teaching Us, a collection initially published forfree distribution in Australia – these latter three volumes are all anthologies ofAjahn Chah’s teachings.Chuang Yen Monastery of upstate New York and Bodhi Monastery of Lafayette,New Jersey, have also been prominent in cross-tradition activity in recent years.The latter is a Ch’an Monastery in the lineage of Master Yin Shun.I first heard of it through Georgette Siegel; when she took me to visit there Iwas shocked to see, as I entered the front door, reprints of several Ajahn Chah andAjahn Sumedho books sitting on a rack, for free distribution. When I picked one upI was even more startled to see it had been printed by Chuang Yen Monastery. Theywere exceptionally interested in and knowledgeable about Theravāda Buddhism.In 2002 Bhikkhu Bodhi, an American Theravādan monk and scholar whohad been resident in Sri Lanka for more than 30 years and editor of the BuddhistPublication Society, moved in there and, in 2003, Ajahn Sundarā spent the RainsRetreat there as well.The journal of the Indian pilgrimage made by Ajahn Sucitto and Nick Scott,named in the account as Where are You Going? was finally published by Wisdom, in2006, under the title Rude Awakenings. Regrettably they felt that the entire accountwould be too long to be commercially viable so they only printed the first half –there is no sign yet of them undertaking Part II…In recent years several teachers of hatha yoga, all of whom have longstandingexperience with Buddhist meditation, have begun to develop styles ofyoga practice that include Buddhist principles. Among these are Jill Satterfield[www.vajrayoga.com], Mary Paffard [www.yogamendocino.org] and Sarah Powers[www.sarahpowers.com]; the former two have taught yoga on several of our ten-134