When I was a teenager, I was given a copy of Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy. I found it really interesting. I especially liked David Hume, partly for his philosophy, and partly because he was an Edinburgh man, and I was an Edinburgh man too.
After University — I would be in my early twenties by then — I somehow learned that Buddhist philosophy was similar to David Hume’s. So then I got interested in knowing more about Buddhist philosophy.
I discovered that in West London, reasonably close to where I lived, there was a small Buddhist monastery called The London Buddhist Vihara. At that time it was located in an ordinary suburban house in Chiswick, though it’s since moved to larger premises.
I went along to this house in Chiswick one Sunday afternoon and knocked on the door. The door was opened by a woman named I.B. Horner. She was quite old by the time I met her, but for many years she had been one of the leading lights of the Pali Text Society. I don’t think she would have met T.W. Rhys Davids, but she would certainly have known his widow, Caroline Rhys Davids. [1]
It turned out that at four o’clock that afternoon, Miss Horner was giving a talk on Buddhist philosophy, which was exactly what I was looking for. So I went back at four o’clock and we had the class. I think the book we used was Walpola Rahula’s What the Buddha Taught, but it’s so long ago, I don’t really remember. [2]
After the class, there was a break of 15 or 30 minutes, and then one of the monks came down to lead us in meditation. I was vaguely curious about meditation. The philosophy was what I was really interested in, but still, I was curious.
I understood we would have to sit still for half an hour. I remember wondering, Could I actually sit still for half an hour? But I made it to the end of the half-hour. After that, I wasn’t quite so apprehensive about meditation.
In the course of my twenties, apart from that one book, What the Buddha Taught, I think I maybe read one or at most two other books about Buddhism. It was a very minor interest. And also I tried meditating at home just once, or possibly twice. That was it.
Then in my late twenties — by this time I had immigrated to Canada — I took a complete class on Buddhist meditation. It was a class on mindfulness meditation: noting sensory experiences as they arise. I somehow managed to misunderstand the instructions, so for something like six months, I did nothing but concentrate on the breath! Actually, this may have served me well, as I’ve noticed that people who go straight into mindfulness meditation rarely have any power to their practice.
In early 1988 I had a near-death experience. It wasn’t as spectacular as some of the ones you can hear about on YouTube. What happened was that I woke up in the middle of the night. It felt as though someone were pressing a heavy boot onto my chest — standing on my chest wearing a heavy boot. Years and years later, I learned that this can be a symptom of a minor heart attack.
Next thing I knew, I was examining a ceiling. I recognized it as the ceiling of my bedroom. Then I looked down, and I saw a bed with a body in it. And again, I recognized it: That was my bed, and therefore that was my body in the bed!
Next, I saw a kind of hazy light, off in the distance. I was drawn toward the light as if by a magnetic pull. The people who have the really spectacular near-death experiences, and who come back profoundly changed, actually go into the light. I didn’t go into the light; I just went towards it.
Then a voice over on one side said: “No. It’s not time yet.” Then I was drawn back into my body. The next thing I remember is I woke up in the morning feeling perfectly normal.
It was the strangest thing that had ever happened to me. A few years later I was reading a book about some unrelated subject, and it happened to contain a description of a near-death experience in it. So, I thought, that’s what it was! It was a near-death experience. But at the time it was just the strangest thing that had ever happened to me.
One consequence of the near-death experience, as I later learned it was, is that I became quite sensitive for about a year afterwards. I could sometimes get impressions off people just from being around them. In fact, for the first few days, I could tell what people were thinking just by looking at them!
Another consequence is that I became very interested in religion — not Buddhism in particular, but all religions. I discovered I could pick up a Christian radio station. We didn’t have Christian radio in the UK. In fact, I don’t think I’d ever heard of Christian radio in Canada, either. This was an American station, coming across the border from Blaine, Washington.
It was a sea of American voices. But once a day, this British voice would come on — a man named Derek Prince. I was quite new in Canada at the time. I’d only immigrated a year and a half previously. So I was curious to learn how this other British voice ended up living in America. Years and years later, I read his story. In 1962 he’d immigrated to the United States by mistake! But that’s another story.
So I got very interested in religion after that near-death experience. I took an evening class, which I think was organized by the University of British Columbia. It was on the subject of Thomas Merton, and it was taught by an Anglican priest who’d just obtained a PhD on Thomas Merton. It was very interesting.
Then I ended up going back to university full time for two years to study world religions. Among the subjects I studied was Sanskrit. I had two years of Sanskrit, which is enough to learn the basic grammar. Of course, I’ve forgotten it all now.
At the same time as pursuing this academic study of religion, I was also exploring on my own. I discovered there was a yoga ashram in the interior of British Columbia. So I started going there. I visited maybe four or five times. Being at university, we used to get several weeks off each year, so I had the time to visit.
The person who founded that ashram was a German woman, who had studied in India with Sivananda Saraswati in 1955–56. She was quite old by this time and not living at the ashram anymore because of the icy winters and the hilly terrain.
Another guest at the ashram told me about a spiritual teacher in Vancouver. I was really excited to learn about a spiritual teacher. I’d been reading Indian books, which often talked about gurus and teachers, so it was very exciting for me to learn that there was a spiritual teacher in Vancouver.
When I got back to Vancouver, I got in touch with this woman, which I now regret. We shouldn’t get involved with spiritual teachers. We should only have one teacher, and that’s Jesus. But at the time I got involved in this teacher and her group.
Then in the mid-1990s I did a 12-day meditation retreat in Washington State with an American Buddhist monk named Ajahn Sumedho. He as living in England at the time, though I think he was originally from Washington State. He’d come to visit his family and also to lead this retreat in rural Washington State.
Later, I started learning Pali on my own. Once you’ve got Sanskrit, you can just get a Pali grammar and dictionary and some texts, and start learning Pali.
I discovered there was a small Thai Buddhist monastery in Vancouver. A lot of westerners who get interested in Buddhism go to meditation groups. But to me, because I’d started my study of Buddhist philosophy at a Buddhist monastery, Buddhism meant monks and monasteries as well as meditation.
So I discovered this Thai Buddhist monastery in Vancouver, which was actually quite new at the time. I think it had only been there since about 1994. I started going there for the chanting and meditation on Sunday evenings. Usually, I was the only one there apart from the monks!
I learned that this monastery was one of six Thai Buddhist temples in Canada, all founded by the same person. He was a senior Thai monk whom the Thais called Luangphor, which literally means “Venerable Father.” Viriyang was his given name, and Sirintharo was his Pali name (his ordination name as a monk).
Luangphor had established these six Buddhist temples in Canada. And in 2002 I had the opportunity to ordain as a Buddhist monk at one of his temples for the duration of one rains retreat, which is a three-month period where it rains a lot in southeast Asia — the monsoons. In most religious traditions, if you become a monk, that’s it. You’re a monk for life. But in the Buddhism of southeast Asia, they have a tradition whereby young men can ordain as a monk just for one rains season.
So I spent three months as a monk in this tradition. I had to go to Calgary for the ordination ceremony, because to ordain a monk you need what they call a sīmā, which is a sort of formal boundary for the monastery. The sīmā is itself created by a special ceremony with lots and lots of monks. Calgary was the only place we had this sīmā. So I went there for the ordination. Then I lived at the Thai Buddhist temple in Edmonton for three months.
Luangphor was part of what’s called the kammaṭṭhāna tradition. Kammaṭṭhāna literally means workplace — place of work — or you could say, sphere of activity. But it comes to mean, in the Theravada Buddhist tradition, an object of meditation, of which there are traditionally forty. Most people, if they know only a little bit about the Buddhism of southeast Asia, know that the breath is one possible object of meditation. But there are thirty-nine others. And in the kammaṭṭhāna tradition from the forests of Thailand, the object of meditation is the word “buddho.” It’s used as a mantra: you just mentally repeat the word “buddho” to yourself.
My teacher, Luangphor, he had learned this practice from an older monk named Ajahn Mun. You can get a biography of Ajahn Mun [3] and also a book about his practice [4] that refer to the “buddho” mantra practice.
(By the way, I once came across across the question, Why “buddho” and not “buddha.” The answer is that “buddha” is the stem form, which you would never see it in an actual sentence. “Buddho” is the nominative singular, i.e., what what you’d see if it is the subject of a sentence.)
Luangphor Viriyang Sirintharo taught that meditation with a mantra builds up “mind power.” I’ll document a little of his teachings on this subject.
Once we were walking up near a water reservoir in North Vancouver. Luangphor looked at the reservoir thoughtfully for a few moments. Then he explained that mind power was like the power of the water in a reservoir. Normally, our mental energy is like an unharnessed creek. We fritter away our energy on useless thinking. But if we dam the creek, then we build up tremendous power.
I think this particular dam wasn’t used for hydroelectric power, but you get the principle. If we temporarily dam our useless thinking, as we do with a mantra, then we build up mind power.
This mind power can be used for advanced practices such as healing and insight, but it can also be used by ordinary people to make them more effective in their jobs and their lives.
So I spent three months, one rains season, as a temporary Buddhist monk, doing mantra practice. Then, when I came to the end of the three months, I went back to lay life.
Now, in the Theravada Buddhist scheme of things, becoming a monk is the highest possible thing you can do with your life. So, having done the highest possible thing, and come out the other end, I was at a loss for what to do with myself.
It’s interesting how God sometimes reaches us at these times when we’re at loss as to what to do. If we have our own ideas, God can’t get through to us. But if we allow him, then he can reach us.
[1] The Pali Text Society was founded by Thomas William Rhys Davids, who was its president from 1881 until 1922. His widow, Caroline Augusta Foley Rhys Davids, succeeded him as president from 1922 until 1942. Isaline Blew Horner started her studies of Pali on a visit to south Asia in 1921 and was president of the P.T.S. from 1959 until her death in 1981.
[2] Walpola Rahula’s What the Buddha Taught was first published by Gordon Fraser in 1959 and has been republished many times since.
[3] Ācariya Mahā Boowa Ñāṇasampanno, Venerable Ācariya Mun Bhūridatta Thera: A Spiritual Biography, trans. Dick Sīlaratano (Forest Dhamma of Wat Pa Baan Taad, 2003).
[4] Ācariya Mahā Boowa Ñāṇasampanno, Paṭipadā: Venerable Ācariya Mun’s Path of Practice, trans. Venerable Ācariya Paññāvaḍḍho (Baan Taad Forest Monastery, no date).