Rugged Interdependency - Amaravati Buddhist Monastery

Golden Highways Revisited: 1998Wordless floating joy!We have a questions session to close the afternoon and I am still semi-wordlessuntil we’re halfway through – so it goes. The rest was rich and a hoot.Highly charged at teatime – discussing with Buzz and Taraniya the IMSimprovement issues – glad that Tan Punna is doing the evening talk. He puts outa good line on why the emphasis on dukkha (which a few voices had complainedabout) and many handy hints on practice outside the retreat situation, stressing theFive Precepts as the mainstay of sustained happiness. Flat batteries by the end ofthe day – for once I recline before 10:00 and go out like a light.April 18 thMorning reflections on having no future and spreading kindness and forgivenessthrough the world. After breakfast it’s backed up with a “cancel your plans to leaveearly” speech. The troops are shocked but one or two will see the virtue of placingDhamma before diaries. I told the story of Andrew on the Santa Rosa ‘96 retreat: ayoung man who had vowed to me he would not go crazy or run away, made themistake of falling madly in love (for the first time) before the retreat began. On theThursday morning he was seen rushing from the hall; a little while later he wassheepishly asking the retreat manager for jumper cables. He had got as far as hiscar to make the getaway but only to find a dead battery – No escape.Robert Armagno came from upstate New York to take the Five Precepts andBrent from Alabama came to ask for monastic training (someday). He’s a bright,bright light but, at 22, has the confusion of a dozen different elements in his Plans.With a bit of luck he’ll make it out to Abhayagiri one day but I expect the journeywill have a few surprise side trips in it for him. Burning with a mission to enlightenand save the planet (after 10 – 20 years of monastic training) I assured him was along, long shot but I admired his purity of heart and zeal.We instituted Noble Speech after the Sharing of Blessings and then had teawith Tara and Dan Goleman, who had come to visit us. Tara wanted to pick mybrains on the transformation of negative emotions for her coming book on thesubject. We ranged long and wide; from Buddhism in China to yoniso manasikāra,Dependent Origination, fear of letting go, Anglo-friendly Dharma language (emptiness/dukkha/desire,etc.) and a host of other aspects. Fortunately she had a taperunning. We only had a couple of hours and yet we covered an ocean of material;finished up with the puggala paññati (the catalogue of human types) and theBuddha families; what to do with greed/hate/delusion types, and their negativeand positive aspects. We decided that mohacarita (deluded types) were the hardestto teach and that perhaps the positive side of that tendency was the ability to bepleased/agree with anything.We gave the evening over to Dharma sharings and had a regal session – lastingat full energy until 10:15. The grandiloquent and the poignant, the simple and thewise, the grateful and the farcical, the opening of the eyes.45