The Life of Wandering Monk

Okay, so welcome everybody to Amida Mandala, that's the name of the temple, isn't it? Yeah, and it's very nice to see you all, and I hope I don't waste your time in the next hour or so. Just, I don't know how much of an introduction you got via the email, I imagine very, very slim, yeah. So just to fill in a few basic details, I'm ordained in the Tibetan tradition, I ordained with the Dalai Lama in India, 12 years ago and have been living homeless in England but also outside England, like France. I've been in France and Spain in houses and monasteries but living quite a few of the summers in England just wandering around as a homeless monk. And I wasn't sure what kind of audience I was going to have tonight. I kind of get the feeling there's a mixture, a nice mixture here of like people who consider themselves Buddhist, people who don't consider themselves Buddhist, maybe some who are Pure Land. I don't know if there's anybody here who considers themselves Buddhist but aren't Pure Land. Is there anybody here?

No?

So it's mainly the Pure Land community that's come along, okay. So I thought, not knowing who was going to come, I thought I'd talk about why and how I chose to become a Buddhist monk and how I'm living as that. But also then leave it open for questions to go in any direction that you want to take it in. I don't have clairvoyant powers, so I couldn't actually sit here and attune to what kind of questions you might have, what kind of a response from me that would be most helpful for you from a talk, yeah? But from questions and answers, then maybe it'll open out into something more direct. So the question why, especially in our culture, being a monk is either something we simply don't encounter or it's something from a long, long time ago. Like, there's still a Christian monastic tradition in the West, but most of us don't have any contact with being with the monastic communities, either Christian or Buddhist, yeah. And I certainly didn't have any contact with it growing up in Liverpool. I guess that a kind of a feeling of faith just began to awaken slowly in me in my post-university years. I started reading about religions, Christianity, Buddhism. I did philosophy at university, so I had a lot of time to study and things like that. And Buddhism slowly came up on the horizon, and that was in the mid-1980s. And then I didn't ordain till 2004, yeah. I remember in the 1980s thinking to myself, without defining what I meant by this, that I wanted to be a 21st century monk, you know. And then around about 2001, I suddenly realized I'd done the hard bit. You know, I was still alive and I'd made it to the 21st century. So if I became a monk now, I'll be a 21st century monk, yeah? At least, no? And then I started thinking about it more deeply, and at the same time I ended up going to India increasingly. In fact, every year I was going to India at that point. And the chance to ordain with the Dalai Lama came my way. And I just jumped at it, you know, I kind of knew this was going to be an adventure. And in those early years or so, I ended up doing a lot of teaching in a Western Tibetan center in India, which, through which I did my ordination. And it was a lovely joyful year teaching there, and I remember though often being asked, "Why did you become a monk?" and I remember at the time giving very sort of standard answers, you know, "Well, I wanted to devote my life to the spiritual path and I wanted to simplify it and, you know, so I had lots of time and so on." But now I'd rather just say I don't really know, you know. And one thing I've learnt over the last 12 years is an increasing comfortableness with the idea that we don't really know what we're doing, you know. There's a sense of grace and blessing and things happening beyond our rationale and even beyond our imagination. And in retrospect, I feel that's kind of how I became a monk, yeah. I almost feel like it's a gift from the Dalai Lama rather than anything I earned or anything I created. I mean, I moved towards it, you know, he didn't kind of like climb through my bedroom window and say, "You!" I kind of, I kept asking like over a couple of years and the teacher I was studying with kept saying, "Not yet, not yet, wait a bit longer." and then eventually he said yeah. But at the same time I feel like it just came to me, you know, that everything fell into place and I had the chance to ordain with him. And I'm more and more comfortable with the idea of saying I don't know why I became a monk. But I just had this sense that my life as a monk would be a real interesting experience, and I wanted to take a chance with my life, you know, I wanted to take a chance with something that I knew was disappearing and unrepeatable. And I knew that whatever happened after I ordained, I would, by the time I, you know, if I reach, you know, properly old age, I'd be able to look back and I know I'm going to be thinking, "That was good, you know, that was interesting and it was meaningful for me," without knowing in advance what that was going to be. One phrase that always stayed in my mind in the years when I was thinking about it And I don't know how much you've had conversations or even thought yourself of going down a similar path, but I know from my own experience and the people I talked with, especially in India, the idea of becoming a monk, you kind of approach in a very tense and kind of, it's very important, you know, very dramatic and, "Should I, shouldn't I?" and it's kind of problematic and you really want to do it, but that just kind of relaxed. Suddenly, when the time was right, and I jumped into it and it was an adventure, it's been an adventure since then, and it hasn't been something I've regretted at any moment. But increasingly I don't really know why I became a monk, I just know that I'm happy being a monk, yeah. But there's the phrase, the blessing power of the vows, which I heard again and again, and reading about it and talking with monks in various traditions, not just the Tibetan one. Again, it was one of those phrases which I didn't understand, and I had no basis for understanding, of course, I didn't have any vows, yeah. But something in it rang true, and in my heart, something in it resonated with that, this phrase, the blessing power of the vows. I read about how the Buddha had the chance to live an incredibly, you know, a miraculously long lifetime, but he sacrificed that at the age of 80 and dedicated the merit of all of those remaining years for his monks throughout all future generations to always have food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. He said, "Anybody who follows my path will never go without food, never go without the requisites of life: food, clothing, shelter, and medicines." And that sense of trusting in something, stepping into that life. Certainly as far as my mum could see, I was bonkers, you know, it was like, and oddly enough I was the only one until my youngest brother, the 11th, to go to university, yeah. And I did business studies in my first year, management science, and my mum was so excited, oh he's going to make loads of money, you know. And then after one year I changed to philosophy and she goes, what's philosophy Martin? 'Well, it's like, just thinking about things.' And I could see on her face, she's supposed to be, but suddenly, he's not going to make any money out of that. And it's just been like, a steadily, I guess downward, but I'm comfortable with the image of downwardness, yeah. A steadily downward direction since then. Now she thinks I'm totally bonkers, you know. 'Why don't you claim unemployment benefit, Marnie?' 'Well, I'm a monk and this is my job, you know, and I'm not looking for work.' She goes, "You're crazy," you know, it's like, and at the same time, I'm safe because she's got 11 kids. She's got, I don't know how many grandchildren now, 17 and 8 great-grandkids. Some of them have been to prison, some of them have been married, some of them have been married and divorced, some of them have been married, divorced and married again. All of that's happened, you know, so a monk in the family doesn't really faze her. She's very, you know, she's just happy that I'm happy and I had that kind of freedom. So all these things have just been there for me and allowed me to go down this path. I had no idea as a kid growing up in Liverpool I was going to be even— I never even heard the word Buddha until I went to university, you know. We hardly went to church, to tell you the truth, you know. In fact, Christianity isn't really our religion in Liverpool, it's football, yeah. And as far as I'm concerned, that's still my religion, and Buddhism is basically my spiritual practice. And I have time to I pursue both of those things, most of the time I do. So I stepped into this world not knowing what was going to happen, but just trusting. And actually this has been, since I've started living homeless as a Buddhist monk in England, I realize now that actually trust is the thing I've been learning about in the last 7 or 8 years. For example, when I am in the forest, And the first, the first few times, if I go to a new forest, the first couple of nights I'm sleeping there, I'm kind of, kind of very conscious of noises and things like that, and whether people are going in the forest at night and things like that. But my intuition is pretty good, and I trust my intuition and my instincts, and I know within a night or two if it's okay to stay there longer, you know. I know if I'm going to be safe, and it's a lovely feeling when you when I, I go out on alms round, I camp in the forest. I try and go deep into the forest so I'm kind of hidden away. So then it's a 20-minute walk to the main road, then it's a hitchhike to a local town to go on alms round, which may take half an hour, an hour, and then the reverse journey. And when I'm walking back through the forest in the afternoon, there's this lovely feeling that the whole forest is my home, you know, and this is where I live. And it's like, it's very spacious and it's very quiet. And I'll be meditating on the tree sometimes and deer will walk past, and because I'm not moving, they don't even notice I'm there. Yeah, but then someone on a cycle will suddenly shout like a mile away, you can't see them, just behind the trees, and the deer suddenly goes off into the trees. Yeah, and I thought they would spot me because of my colors. And the rangers in the National Trust spot because of my colours. They always know I'm in their forest within a day or two, you know. And this is the kind of thing that makes me laugh as well, and also it is an expression of trust. On the one hand, I'm a Buddhist monk, which is the epitome of trustworthiness in most people's eyes, yeah. But on the other hand, I'm living this kind of like semi-illegal life where I'm wild camping all the time, and I'm not going to try and find out who owns the forest. It would take me all day. I'd rather just sleep there and see what happens, kind of thing. And the rangers, when they see me and they have a word with me, they say, "Well, we're fine with you being in the forest, as long as you don't light any fires." And I agree to that. And so there's this relationship where I can just relax and trust that even though I'm even breaking the law, no one's gonna mind, yeah. I can't remember if it's in a song or it's in a Bob Dylan film, film, um, where Bob Dylan's an actor, and there's a line which says something like, "To live outside the law, you have to be honest." Yeah, and that sense of, um, trespassing, if you like, you know, wandering around in, in people's forests and things and just camping, feels completely okay, you know, from my position, because I know I'm not going to be doing anything bad. Then, I mean, I pushed it a little bit beyond that boundary a few times in Japan on pilgrimage, A couple of times, not knowing where I was going to sleep, I just tried the handle of an office door, you know, or a building that looked empty-ish. It'd be open, you know, so I'd go, "Oh, I think I'll sleep in here tonight," you know. So there's a sense of, but there's a sense of it's playful and it's trustworth, it's trusting the whole situation. And then of course I'm trusting in terms of being got arms round and people communicating with me. Begging in our culture, it's kind of quite common now, I think, you know. Certainly when I go, I pass through cities and towns, I see a lot of it, yeah. I'm technically not begging, but I'm, I'm in that kind of general space, yeah. And very, very rarely, maybe 2 or 3 times, I've had people really have a go at me for the for living this life and saying, "Why aren't you working and supporting yourself?" and things like that. So I have to deal with little situations like that. But most of the time there's a sense of people are really happy to see a Buddhist monk, you know, passing through their town or village. I've had people, one guy who was delivering vegetables to people's houses, he had a truck, he got the vegetables from Bristol, and was driving around little towns, I think 50 kilometers away from Bristol. He'd leave 4 o'clock in the morning and deliver them to people's houses. And he was driving down this lane once and saw me, and he just stopped and watched, you know, as I kind of came walking out of the forest. I was on my way to Armsround. And as I got there, he came up and said, "Wow, I never expected to see this. Will you drive around with me in my van for a while?" You know, and I said, "Well yeah, I've got plenty of time, you know, I've got this going on, so I can go later on." and we drove around and talked and in the end he gave me one of his sandwiches that he'd packed and then dropped me off in a town to go on alms round. There's that sense of just trusting in situations and trusting: A) I'm going to be safe and B) I'm going to be helped and supported in living like this and C) I also trust in a wider sense that it's deeply meaningful And I remember an incident which happened twice when I was looking after a house in Birmingham a couple of summers ago. Someone went on a long trip abroad with their kids and I looked after the house and the cat. And once a week I went into the city centre to go to the library, do a bit of shopping. And I don't know if any of you have been to Birmingham, but if you've been in any big city you can probably imagine the landscape I'm talking about. Just on the edge of the city centre you go trying to get under the busy roads, you've got those underpasses and they're pretty ugly, horrible kind of places and, you know, maybe people get mugged there occasionally. And I remember twice walking underneath them, going down one of those little arches and it's dark and it smells of urine and things and a lady walking towards me, like looking up to see who's walking towards me, you know, and just glancing around seeing where whether she was safe or not, and seeing me and her face just visibly melting in that moment, you know, like, wow, Buddhist monk, I'm, you know, this guy's not going to mug me, you know, a real sense of safety. And I realized when I thought about this afterwards that it wasn't me having that effect on her because she doesn't even know me, you know. What was having that effect on her was the robes, yeah, but the robes can't walk down the street by themselves, you know, they need somebody in them and living, you know, a certain minimal level, living that kind of life. And again, there's a lovely feeling of, well, just by walking through the world and just being natural and looking the part and keeping that kind of simple ethical sense of integrity, I can have a positive effect on the world. Yeah, in that case, a woman feeling very safe and In other cases, people suddenly remembering their kind of lost sense of spiritual aspiration and mystery in life and wanting to talk to me and, you know, sometimes people just stop me and want to talk for like hours on end and all this stuff comes out and it's, you know, I have to learn skills on how to handle that correctly and things because it's sometimes it's quite difficult to to know you can't help people. And there's actually in that space, I remember something Reb Anderson, the Zen teacher, said once about, which always I kind of try and keep back into. He said, in situations that need help, he said, be close to the situation that needs help and do nothing. This already helps. And I've been in those situations where I've just had to listen to awful stories from people, knowing that I don't have the psychotherapeutic skills to help them, you know, I don't have the life experience, experiences to share with them. My life's been, you know, pretty fortunate, not having any serious problems or anything like that. All I can do is listen and at a subtle level, all I can do is share the fact that I'm living a life which for me is very meaningful and quietly focused and concentrated. And there's a sense of, because I'm so visible— actually, yeah, when I was really, when I was in the '80s, I was thinking in a very idealistic sense about being a monk. I used to also say to myself, I want to be an invisible monk, you know. And I think that's what a lot of us are in the West, in a sense. In a sense, like lay practitioners. I've met quite a few lay practitioners over the years who are practicing much more deeply and with energy than the monks and nuns in the monasteries, you know. And that notion of an invisible monk I knew from experience before I became a monk. And then of course I become a monk and I'm very visible, yeah. And now I kind of feel like my goal is to become invisible again, yeah, while being you know, still a monk and still being visible. And here by invisible, I think I now mean completely natural and just trusting in this situation, this path, that it'll have some kind of resonance and be able to help people simply because it reminds them of things that they've lost touch with in their own heart and in their own mind— capacities, aspirations, dreams. It doesn't have to be anything of me, of mine. I don't have to embody wonderful spiritual qualities, you know, I don't have any wonderful spiritual qualities, so I'd have to embody something fake if I believed I had to do that, yeah. But I can embody, because it's effortless and it's already there, is a sense of just trusting in the Buddhist path and trusting in the fact that I've I'd moved towards it, yeah, in this form, not knowing what I was doing, still not knowing what I was doing, but with a sense of joy and faith. I remember reading about being a monk and the writer was saying most people become monks or nuns— whenever I say monks, I hope you understand I mean, you know, men and women together, yeah, that's often how we use it in Tibetan centers. I read that most people who become monks or nuns do so because life hits them for six in some way, you know. Something terrible happens that does not actually destroy them, but really hurts them and throws their life upside down, makes them lose faith in something, and they go, "Right, I'm going to become a monk." You know, there's a very strong renunciation element in that path. But a few people become monks or nuns out of faith.

Yeah.

And I think that was the case for me. I didn't have anything particularly disastrous happen in my life to push me in this direction, but there's always this feeling of faith, this feeling of this world is much, much bigger and has dimensions that are beyond our ability to imagine and understand. I have a sense— it's, it's, again, it's faith-based rather than experiential— I have a sense that it's not just us in the animals in this world, yeah. I read that like the Pali Canon where the Buddha regularly talks to devas and angel beings and witnesses where people go when they die and where they came from in this life. I have a sense of that is the world we live in, yeah, and I really appreciate that Buddhism gives me forms of practice and even a description of reality that acknowledges that. Bringing that more down to the Pure Land side of practice, which I guess is where most of you are coming from, I had this feeling that becoming a monk for me was almost like a form of like understanding the existence of Amida Buddha, yeah. Most people I guess become Pure Land Buddhists not because Amida Buddha in person steps in front of you to you in a vision and says, "Hey, check out the nenbutsu, you know, it's real, look at me," you know. How many people are fortunate to have a vision like that? You know, for most of us it may never— it's even 0.0% I guess who have had visions of Amida Buddha. But by taking monk's vows from the Dalai Lama, I feel like the work was done from the other side, which is how you understand the the mod light from the reality of us as foolish beings, overweight with passions, and the reality of the Pure Land with Amida Buddha resonating in that space effortlessly, spontaneously, infinitely in that world, inviting us into it. In a similar kind of way, I feel like taking monk's vows from the Dalai Lama, you know, who's considered the embodiment of Chenrezig in the Tibetan culture, was in a sense like Pure Land Buddhism for someone who can't even manage to have faith in Pure Land Buddhism, you know. Like, it's come right to me, you know, not just in terms of texts and communities and people talking about how beautiful the practice is and do you want to try it, but someone actually giving me these robes and the vows and the practice. And I don't know where, you know, I would never have been able to do do it by myself. No one can become a monk by themselves, of course. You have to receive the vows, yeah, they come from the Buddha through 2,500 years. And likewise, the Amida path is coming from Amida, completely from Amida, and our response is to, I guess, just get out the way, you know, to get out the way of what's coming towards us. And the way we get in the way, of course, is is by thinking we can do it by ourselves, yeah. So being a monk has become an adventure for me in terms of increasing my sense of not knowing what I'm doing, but trusting in the experience, enjoying the fact that I'm alive, you know, this unrepeatable disappearing life has a kind of a meaning to it, and just being natural and looking the part, you know, finally. What I have to do as a monk. I remember on one pilgrimage in Japan— I've done a couple of walking pilgrimages in Japan, like 1,000-kilometer walks where you visit like loads of temples and you're sleeping in a different place every night. In fact, it was my first taste of homelessness. I did that before I came home to England. And Japan still has the public bath system where you, for €3, you can go in, you know, put put your clothes in a locker, soak in hot baths for like 3 hours, have a shave and come out feeling like a million dollars, you know, and then go and find somewhere to sleep. I remember once coming out of the hot baths one night, going into a 24-hour convenience store and buying myself a cup of, a can of tea and a chocolate bar to have a snack before, because at that point I didn't even know where I was sleeping. I kind of had a sense that there were some trees next to the bridge and I was just going to check them out. And I walked into the shop feeling really clean and happy, you know, this was like day 20-something of a 36-day walk and I was in the groove and I was comfortable and I was happy and I was joyful, yeah. And I walked into the shop and I was really clean but then I noticed a line of salt down my robes, you know, because I'd been walking all day in the sun and that was salt coming coming out my body and then, what's the word, crystallizing on my robes, yeah. So my robes had this line of salt on them, but I felt really clean. I shaved my head as well that night in the public baths. And I had my bar of chocolate and my can of tea, you know. Not the usual sort of monk sim, especially at nighttime, you know, like 10 o'clock at night outside the supermarket. But I just felt really happy. Satya Robyn natural and I was clean and my head was shaved. And in that moment I said, this is all I have to do is be natural and look the part, yeah. And study and have faith in the path and continue just looking into it and trusting that for all my looking into it, something looks back at me and helps me in ways and forms that are much more resonant and holistic than I can manage. And feeling is a blessing.

You know.

So yeah, the essence I've learned from living this life has been one of trusting and of just relaxing and having a sense of I'm in the midst of mystery. It's not for me to necessarily define that mystery, but just to walk through it and actually enjoy it. The question I got asked most in Thailand when I was staying in temples there were, "Are you a happy monk?" 'At the time I wasn't, you know, it's like, because it was really difficult for me being in the Thai tradition. I actually, to make it clear, I ordained in Thailand 15 years ago just for 3 months. You can do a temporary ordination in Thailand. I just wanted to see what it was like being a monk before I ordained for life in the Tibetan tradition, because in the Tibetan tradition you get one chance and you're supposed to take it for life. And I had a friend who'd married a Thai Thai woman, and as soon as she heard I was interested in Buddhism, her mother, who had two daughters, no sons, so they couldn't have any sons going into the monastery and creating merit for them, she just grabbed me and, "Please go into the local monastery, we'll sort it all out for you, you know, it'll be really comfortable." She actually went into the abbot and said to him, "We've got a Western guy here, he wants to be a monk, I want him to have the best kuti in the monastery. I think it's that one over there, who's in it at the moment?" There's only five monks there, yeah. 'Can you get more please?' And the abbot's going, 'Sure, sure, no problem.' She was really like, I think she was the head of the women's institute in the village. And but this question of being, are you a happy monk? I found it quite difficult in Thailand because I couldn't speak any Thai, they couldn't speak any English. And when you're having the same 6-word conversation every day, it gets kind of exhausting. And it was chaotic in the monastery as well, you know, you get told this is going to happen, and 3 hours later this would happen, you know. But I was the last to know all the time. So at the end of it I was so happy for it to be over, but something deep in my heart thought, there's something in this now, you know, and I want to go further. And then the chance came up in India, 2 years later, and I jumped at it. I've actually since been back to Thailand a few times, and each time I go there it gets easier being in Thailand as well. So I guess it's just those that very first time stepping into the crazy world of being a Buddhist monk. They were all just farmers' boys who were being monks like me for 3 months, but specifically to get their motorbike, you know. No 3-month ordination, no motorbike. Simple as that. Okay, so they do their 3-month ordination and then they come out the other end and then back into the village. But there's a real sense of joy as well because it's very meaningful for them. Like, they've created this positive energy Meditators, they call it in the Thai tradition. And they were lovely guys to be around, but I just couldn't understand what they were saying to me. And they used to drag me off into adventures into the jungle barefoot, you know, and I was terrified of snakes and all kinds of— and they'd just be marching off through these woods, and they'd say it'd be like a 5-minute walk, and we'd be out there for like 2 hours, and my feet would be cut and things like that. But we'd get these wonderful herbs for the sauna and come back and have a sauna. And their practice was basically arms round, chanting morning and evening, and being happy in the monastery, you know, just hanging out and being relaxed. And that kind of eventually rubbed off on me, I think. Definitely as Westerners, we tend to practice with a very sort of ambitious kind of attitude, and with agendas and timetables and things like that. Even in the Tantric path, actually, As Westerners on the Tantra path, we get hung up on this phrase, "Tantra can get you enlightened in this lifetime," and we're really expecting to get enlightened in this lifetime. And when I was talking to one of my teachers who was living in a Tibetan monastery doing the 22-year study program that the Tibetan monks do, he learned Tibetan, was living side by side with them, I mentioned this line, he just started laughing and said, If you ask any of the Tibetan monks in our temple, are you going to get enlightened in this lifetime? They just laugh and say no, you know. But as Westerners, we've latched on to that phrase, that notion of tantra enlightenment in this lifetime. And just these little things have made me feel more and more that there's no end to this, you know. In this lifetime, the Dalai Lama and around the Dalai Lama, the whole existence of the Buddhist path, came to me, plucked me out of my aimless dopey life and dropped me in the middle of this amazing adventure, yeah. And it's only for this life, my monk's vows end at the end of this life, yeah. And there are times when I, I feel it so much I think I don't want to go to school again, you know. And I didn't have a bad time at school, but I can sense that it's difficult. I have a clear sense of of what suffering means now, which is the fundamental Buddhist sense of this world. I don't want to go back to— I don't want to be born again in that uncontrolled way and hope to strike it lucky, you know. I feel like I've struck it really lucky in this lifetime, and it might be once in a million lifetimes it happens for me, and I might just be blowing it day by day, you know, as I'm— the way I'm living at the moment. I don't know. I just have to trust it, but I don't want to that to happen. So I just pray that in my future lives as well, that I'll be lucky again. Or to put it in the other way, the infinite presence of the world of Buddha, of Amida Buddha if you like, will come and rescue me again and again and again until I completely awaken, yeah, completely let go of what's stopping me from being in that space. So there's that trust also in the future. I feel a lovely sadness that my vows will end at the end of this life, if I don't give them up before then, and 90% of Westerners do, yeah. And there's an anxiety there as well, you know. I don't think I'm any different from any of the other Western monks who ordained, heart on fire with faith and aspiration, and then 10 years later, what am I doing, you know. The monk who helped me ordain was a monk for 70 14 years, he disrobed 6 months later, you know. So I have this sense it could end at any time for me, and I pray that it doesn't. And on top of that, I pray that in all my future lives I'll meet the Buddhist path. I may not need to be a monk necessarily in future lives, but I pray that I'll have a connection with the Buddhist path that will be vibrant and ultimately one day be irreversible. Irreversible. Absolutely irreversible. That's when real faith and real joy and real power to help people effortlessly and spontaneously comes. I'd love to get to the point where just sitting on a public transportation system, doing nothing, saying nothing, can help every single person sitting around me, you know. And just having that kind of aspiration, not knowing how I'm going to achieve it, not even needing to know how 'just having the aspiration and trusting that all the Buddhas of the 10 directions want me to have the aspiration, want that aspiration to come true, and are going to help me in that path.' Just sitting and constantly touching that sense of mystery and magic and trust and vulnerability and time disappearing and this miraculous world, just trusting in all of that is my path. So I think I'll just let it kind of stop at that point. And as we said, we're going to have that kind of question and answer space. Some of you may think you've got a question but it's kind of a stupid question, yeah, but I always tell people that there's no such thing as stupid questions, yeah, there's only stupid answers. So the onus is on me not to give a stupid answer, yeah, but feel free to ask anything, even so-called personal questions, questions, you know, I'm kind of— I've been asked all kinds of things in the last 12 years. I remember my brothers, the first time I went home to Liverpool, and I never talk about Buddhism with them, you know, there's no point, they're not interested in Buddhism, but they're happy to see me, and I'm happy just to have them to have this imprint on their mind, in their unconscious, just this image, hey, we've got a brother who's a Buddhist monk, you know, he's part of our family now. Now, yeah. I don't need to talk to them about Buddhism. But I remember once we were sitting down to watch a match and they got all the beers out and, oh, you don't drink, do you, Martin? No. You don't have sex either, do you? No. What do you do for fun then? And I didn't know how to answer them, you know. I was like, but I mean, I'm happy, I'm really happy in my life. But the way they asked the question just totally bowled me over. I've been asked exactly the I've been asked the same question in 10-day retreats in India with 70 people in front of me and answered it in the beautifully logical Buddhist way, you know. But when my brother's asked me that question, like, 'What do you do for fun then?' you know, it just totally bowled me over. So ask whatever you want, yeah, I'm comfortable with that. And I hope that we can create a conversation together. Thank you very much. Satya Robyn. I have a question. Yeah.

As you were talking, I guess I was reflecting on, you know, there's been chunks of my life where I've gone off and done, you know, traveled and not really have any agenda and just gone with the flow. And I feel like it's in those moments that it's quite, it's much easier to connect with that sense of mystery and trust.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, you just kind of fall into that space and off you go. I guess I'm looking for some advice because I do struggle about, you know, then coming back to this kind of life where there's schedules and you live by a diary and then you have a job that's from 9 to 5 and, you know, got to pay mortgages and rents or whatever. And it's, it's, I think it's, I struggle to then, you know, connect with that sense of mystery or the amazing wowness of every day that I think you can connect with more when you're traveling. Yeah, so I'm just wondering what advice you might have. To connect with that sense when you're not living that life that you are, you know.

Well, first of all, it doesn't necessarily happen all the time when you're traveling. I've met a lot of people hanging out in India for 3, 4, 6 months who have totally lost themselves, you know, and they're just like zombies and they're just going from one cafe to the next and maybe like smoking dope all the time, you know, it's easily available out there, and so that can happen as well, you know. And conversations can just resound around where you're going next and where you've come from, and it's kind of empty. So I mean, you're fortunate, Satya, you've had experiences out there where you, you wandered around, but at the same time you landed in things that were meaningful for you, yeah. But just, I just want to point out it's not, it's not always the case, yeah. And also I need to point out of course that I'm not in that zone myself, yeah, and it's very easy for me to give glib advice advice about, you know, just being in the moment or focusing on things that you really love in your life and giving them time and space. I don't know what the answer is to schedules. I do believe that we've gone totally crazy in the realm of schedules and in the realm of work in general, yeah. You know, people are either working 60 hours a week or they're unemployed. It shouldn't be like that. It's— I worked in a bookshop which which went in 6 months from, in my department, 9 members of staff to 2 members of staff. And the whole atmosphere just changed of time and space and the ability to talk to customers and things like that. So, I would encourage you to, as much as you can, step out of those schedules, yeah. Only you know how far you can do that. Yeah. But just bear in mind that you can step out of some schedules. You can just say no to things that don't really appeal to you, you know. The polite things you have to do, just say no to them. Yeah. And if you're living in your relationships with people with— and those relationships are essential. If you're living in those relationships in a heartfelt way and helping people and being radiant and stable, that's enough, yeah. But you don't have to be all the time connected up with things. But I accept the fact that it's very difficult and they just come around you without you even knowing. Not just schedules but possessions and like just if you look at the psychology of possessions, you know, you might have 100 CDs in a rack. You maybe listen to music, if you're lucky, a couple of hours a week, you know. That's like like one CD gives you pleasure for like 2 hours of a week, and then for the other 140 hours of the week you're having to dust them, clean them, at a very subtle level feel anxious about them being stolen by burglars, things like that, you know. There's this sense of, we've lost sense of what we really need, yeah, and we actually don't need very, very much at all, yeah. We just need enough to live on, and actually it's getting to the pointing out where precisely because people lack trust and insecurity, they're demanding very definite forms of security, yeah. People aren't comfortable anymore with like £1,000 in the bank. They want £10,000 or £100,000, yeah. They're not comfortable with one house. They want to have a house that they're renting out to someone else, you know, as well, and things like that. And there's this sense of the less we have in terms of trust and simplicity, the more security we need, we demand physical, concrete security, wealth, possessions and so on, which then actually pumps the insecurity of other people up further. So even if you can turn that around a little bit, that's great. And then finally, just wanting it to stop, even if you don't have any idea how it's gonna stop, just wanting it to stop is an aspiration that'll have fruit. One day, you know, that will come true for you in some way. And finally, helping other people's schedules to disappear is a great way to create that kind of lovely resonant energy where your own schedules will disappear. I have a question actually. Yeah.

It's more of a practical one. You mentioned at some point that you actually stand with your begging bowl for food.

Yeah.

Things like that. And I've noticed that more people generally who become more aware of their belief system or their bodies or what's going on around them are more careful what they eat and what they drink and use on their bodies, etc. Yeah, um, that's good. And there's all the talk about what you can afford and all the rest of it, but I noticed that you said that you're happy to have the liberty that, that's given to you. Do you feel that you've had to compromise that because you, because you needed, you need to walk back through the forest, for instance?

Just the last bit didn't sound— yeah, I had to compromise that. What do you mean by that?

Uh, that it's not ethically grown, or it's non-vegetarian, or it's, you know, something—

The standard model for a monk is to accept whatever's offered, yeah. And we're talking, without getting too technical, we're talking about karma there, yeah. People may, for example, kill an animal, like in a village, and they'll eat that animal, and then on top of that they'll think, oh, let's we want to feed the monks, we give the monks some of this meat, yeah. And so long as the monks don't think that the animal was killed specifically to feed them, then they can accept the meat, yeah. If they thought it was killed specifically to feed them, they wouldn't be allowed to accept the meat. So there's that sense of— there's the whole ethical, you know, free trade thing, which is very complex in itself. You can never get to the end of actually analyzing all those things. Every now and then you read stories about so-called free trade. Isn't so-called free trade? No, it's impossible to know, yeah. There's that whole world, but for me, I just have to accept what people give to me, yeah. And there's two separate things. There's the ethics of what goes into making that sandwich. And then that's done in a sense. It's in that sandwich, yeah. But then there's the secondary action of giving it to me, yeah, someone performing an act of generosity, yeah. And often, you know, we get very sort of legalistic and sort of righteous about karma, but we're actually driven by karma, you know, we have very little control over our lives. The person may not be able to research on the internet exactly where, you know, their shoes, their clothes, their food, everything is coming from. They just have to trust in the whole situation. And they're exhausted with their life and their work and so on. So we're driven by karma. You can recognize the fact that it's all this karma in there, but we shouldn't be too sure that we can just control our karma. So I accept the fact that people offer me things and you know, it may be a sandwich which someone's been harmed in some way, you know. I mean, people offer me meat anyway, yeah, meat sandwiches, and I eat them. So for me, for myself, I just feel like I don't even want to be outside the total chaos of this world system, you know. I don't need to feel a purity which is police and like only certain kinds of foods and only this and so on. I believe that kind of ethical culture that's evolved in our society, ethical consuming if you like, yeah, has a positive side to it. It makes people aware of the interdependency of things. But it's deeply flawed as well, you know, because we don't know the full picture of these things. And I'd rather just trust in something much wilder the fact that we're all on this planet together, and other planets as well maybe, but just all here together, driven by karma, you know, by karma and delusion, to use the classical Buddhist psychology. We don't control the delusion in our minds, we don't control the karma we've already created, you know, it just keeps coming into our life. So I'd rather feel just a sense of I don't want to use grandiose words like compassion, just a sense of awareness and of sadness. That there are, you know, there are animals being eaten. And not just eaten, but slaughtered in awful conditions as part of our lifestyle. There's 15-year-old girls in Malaysia, you know, hiding their pregnancy so they don't get sacked. So that I can have socks that only cost $2.99. Do you know what I mean? All of that is going on. And there's no end to it, you know. I can aspire to a world where that will not be the case, yeah, and I can act in little ways about that. But to insist that my life be pure is totally impossible, and I'm kind of comfortable with that.

That's really interesting, thanks. I remember talking to someone a few years ago who was quite aware and what have you, and somebody said, well, let's me to McDonald's in central Birmingham. I said, 'Oh, it's far too late for McDonald's,' and all the stuff that goes with that. And he said, you know, he was from South America and he came over from another country that was really poor. He said, 'There's McDonald's, people have jobs, they pay something per hour, and you can have a full belly on £2.' Yeah. And it's got people in jobs. So, you know, yeah, there could be gone over what chemicals in all the drinks, which could happen anywhere. But I guess I saw that looking at the bigger picture. But what you're saying is like, is great because it's even a bigger picture, because we can't stop a lot of stuff that goes on, but we— but it's just keeping people, um, going really as well. So I just find that quite a wrestle myself really. So it's a really good answer, thank you.

Well, also something about the karma to be involved in issues like that yeah, and that's great as well, yeah. A lot of life, a lot of the expression of trust, if you like, in life is trust from a Buddhist point of view. Real trust is trust in karma, yeah. So if there's something deep inside you that wants to fight global poverty or, you know, the destruction of the NHS or whatever, you know, there's a million and one things out there, then if you can tune into your karma, if you can tune into what's deep inside you, you'll just make a choice. You don't need to justify it. And likewise, I've kind of just stumbled into this one. And at the same time, it feels like it— I'm true, even though I keep saying I don't understand it and it's kind of in the dark, I have a sense of I'm trusting something deep inside me, which is my karma, yeah, to go in this direction. I think we all have to do that. People used to say to me, ask me, oh, it's all fine being a monk, but what if everyone became a monk, you know, it's like it'd be like the end of civilization. I'd go, well, yeah, that's true, but what about, um, the Isle of Man, you know? It's like, it's, you know, it's nice going on Aldi to the Isle of Man, but what if everyone on Aldi to the Isle of Man, you know? There'd be, there'd be crushes and people would die. There wouldn't be enough food and water and people fall into the sea and drown. And, you know, and then, and the hospitals in England would have no nurses and doctors and things because they'd all be Aldi in the Isle of Man. One choice doesn't mean that every single person in the world has to make that choice, yeah? And you have to trust in your karma and use your beautiful life before it's gone, yeah? In a way that's meaningful for you. So, you know, if people do feel those issues, I'm happy for them to explore that, yeah? Yeah.

It's just, that's been a lot of food for thought, that's what it is.

Can I ask a question? Yeah, yeah.

Are people ever unpleasant to you because of your appearance and your robes?

Yeah, yeah, there's two examples I can think of, both on alms round. It's a very charged situation being on alms round. It's a fantastic meditation practice, you know. I get into much deeper states of concentration standing with my bowl, you know, 3 meters away away from a shop doorway. I have to be focused and watching what's going on around me, but I have to be, I have to not make eye contact with people, not talk to people. I have to make it very easy for people to ignore me and go into the supermarket, yeah, and not make them feel guilty about, you know, I'm not like, nothing like that, yeah. So I have to be aware because someone can just come up to me at any moment and start talking, and I have to be clear on that. So it's a lovely practice, and so But then things happen in that space, yeah. Like once, a couple of years ago, a born-again Christian came and said— I didn't know she was a born-again Christian until a bit later in the story, yeah. She goes, why did you choose to be— she just stopped there, excuse me, why did you choose to become a monk? And I started like answering the question, but it wasn't a question, it was just like a chance to rant at me, you know. And then a few seconds later she goes, oh, don't tell me, I know, you just got one airy fairy idea in your head, when you enter India, you go, "Oh, I just grappled with something and this is exciting." And, you know, she had no idea that I'd spent 30 years in this life, you know. I'm constantly questioning it. I'm very relaxed in that space and it's very calm and stable for me. If anyone was grasping at something, I think it was her with her born-again Christianity, yeah. But she went crazy and then she actually knelt down on the floor, started praying to Jesus for me, you know. So I'm standing there with my bowl and she's here, yeah. And I'm just watching her, I can't understand, then she finishes and then she stands up and then she calms down and goes, "Do you need anything?" I said, "No, I'm okay thanks, you pray for me, that's fine. Good luck." So that was one that just came and ended, yeah. I've had people question why I'm not working. So, but that was, even though I could see I could see the situation, I understood it, it still hurt me, which means I've got delusions in my mind, yeah. Like there was a guy, he obviously wasn't a carer, like a professional carer, because he wouldn't behave like this if he was. He was obviously someone caring for someone in his family, like it looked maybe his sister or maybe his wife, I don't know, they were about the same age. He was really tired, you could see it in his face, he was pushing in a wheelchair, and I was just standing there. I didn't even know he was there till he approached me and he just came up to me in my face and go, why are you begging from me, you know, can't you see I'm really, really, you know, you look pretty healthy, you can walk, you know, why aren't you working? And his partner's in the wheelchair there, yeah. I tried to explain to him, you know, I'm not begging from you, you know, I'm just standing here, arms round, anybody who wants to help me in this life can do, but you're free to walk out, I didn't even know you were there till you approached me. But again, it was like all this anger inside him, and it just needed to come out, yeah. And I knew that, and at the same time it still, you know, I'm not selfless, and it still hit, impacted upon me. But they're like, I've had like maybe 2 in 8 years. I mean, people get that kind of behaviour every Saturday night coming home from the pub, you know, for no reason, you know. So it, there's a sense of, I've been amazed by the positive reactions. I remember a couple of guys once coming towards me. The very first summer I did this, I didn't actually accept food in my bowl, I did it the Tao of Arden way, er, money. I just accepted food in my bowl. Now I accept food and money when I'm wandering around, but this first summer it was only food, and I was outside a supermarket and these two guys came in through the entrance, and they were a bit laddish, you know, and they looked at me and said, they didn't actually speak to me, they were talking to themselves but in a loud voice and I could hear them. Look at this, Jimmy, another beggar, you know. I suppose I better give him a pound. You know, he pulls a pound out of his pocket and goes to put it in my bowl. Oh, thanks very much, mate, but I'm only accepting food in my bowl. And he went, you are? I said, I just need food, you know. And he goes, did you hear that, Jimmy? He doesn't want my money. And then, and he was confused by the whole situation. And then perfect timing, this woman came up behind him and said, are you a Buddhist monk? He said, Yeah, so what would you like from the supermarket? I said, well, whatever you fancy, you know, sandwiches, fruit, biscuits, I'll eat it anyway, yeah. And she goes, okay, and then she went in, very matter of fact about it, and the guy just clicked, you know, we'll get you something, you know, and then they went into the supermarket, came out 20 minutes later with 24 bottles of beer, which is what they were going in for, yeah, and 2 jam donuts on the top, which are for me. Here you are, mate, you know, I hope you enjoy them, I'll throw them in. So there's that sense of things can just shift, you know, very, very quickly, positively and negatively, you know. So, yeah, I have had a few times like that, but I've been amazed by how little, yeah. And they are— there's almost no comparison to the number of times where people just stopped and said, "Wow, I never expected to see a Buddhist monk in my town, you know. This is amazing," yeah. Whatever it means to them, you know, it's up to them, whatever what it means to them. It's just that for me, I see it as a form of language, you know, some kind of expression, you know, and which has amazing resonant possibilities, and I'm very happy to be in that space. Satya Robyn.