I’m still processing My two days with Ajahn Brahm, I ended up having more conversation with him then I expected, while walking, subway, and car, and it was well worth it.
In terms of his talks, after watching him on YouTube for 8 years in lay life, there was nothing I had not heard before, but his actions were what impressed me more.
Two things that struck me immediately on meeting him were that he travels alone, without any other monks, attendants or an entourage.
The second was that he travels only with what he can carry in the small “monk purse” as I call it, and I thought I traveled light with a small duffel containing some extra shirts, bowl,sangati, and toiletries.
He did what we do at Bhavana, saying hello with a smile to everyone we walked past, and at google he opened the door for everyone acting like a bell hop and said “welcome to google” hehe.
It was great to hear his views and advice on monasticism, I feel a lot of it confirmed to me that I am on the right path in many aspects in my own monastic life, and I found it funny how much he was in agreement with Bhante G in a variety of topics. I tend to follow my intuition and conscience when it comes to things and it’s important to me that I check that intuition against the thoughts of senior monastics I trust, so I know I’m on the right track.
I’ve been lucky enough to have spoken with and gotten advice from, some of the most well known senior monastics in the western world, the gratitude I have for that is immense. I’m very young on my monastic life and will make many mistakes, this is why the guidance of senior monastics you trust is so important, until I’m one myself, if I live that long!
I hope you live long too because I need your teaching. This was a wonderful post. I smiled and felt joy when you said how Ajahm Brahm open the door and said, Welcome to Google.” Thank you for sharing.
ok, well I’ll try to live at least as long as Bhante G, but I can’t promise 🙂