Something to think about from Ajahn Amaro
Yesterday I sat a day-long retreat with Ajahn Amaro. I am very grateful for the opportunity as his teachings really resonate with my own experience and practice. Here are two little things he said yesterday that I thought were particularly worthy of sharing.
In Thai, the same word is used for both “heart” and “mind”. I’ve heard that if you ask a Thai person to point to their mind, they will most often indicate the chest. Of course most westerners would point to their head. Ajahn Amaro said that the word sati which has been translated as mindfulness in English (for a long time now - 150 years or more), could just as well be called heartfulness. In our common usage, heart indicates feeling tone and mind indicates thinking. Sati transcends both.
Also, Ajahn Amaro made a comment that in Buddhism we talk about “original purity” instead of “original sin”. That’s the idea of Buddha-nature. It’s a pretty beautiful and liberating concept in and of itself. Everything we need is right here.
More from Ajahn Amaro here and a little interview on how he went from psychadelics to monasticism here.
