I May Be Wrong by Björn Natthiko Lindeblad Caroline Bankler Navid Modiri Agnes Broomé

Author:Björn Natthiko Lindeblad, Caroline Bankler, Navid Modiri, Agnes Broomé
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

eighteen

Closed fist, open palm

After seven years in Thailand, I was a bit sick of living with only men. There were vanishingly few nuns in the monasteries there. Unfortunately, what’s true of most world religions is also true of Buddhism: women simply don’t have the same opportunities as men. Things may be slightly better in the Buddhist tradition than in some other denominations, but they’re still far from good. The cynical part of me suspects all the big world religions exist in part to keep women down. That is deeply tragic.

As it spread across the world, the Buddhist forest tradition I belonged to had, as I’ve mentioned, established an order for nuns. Its headquarters was located in England where a new monastery had also been founded. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough. I’d met some of those nuns (and monks from the same monastery) when they visited Thailand, and I liked them very much. For monks and nuns to live side by side felt rewarding and in many ways natural to me. It brings a certain sense of balance when male and female are allowed to coexist on equal terms. So part of the reason I relocated to England was this, possibly slightly un-monkish fondness I had for nuns.

Several of the nuns in England came to be wonderful and important friends of mine. One of them was Ajahn Thaniya, a New Zealander of tiny stature but extraordinarily powerful character. She was one of the three most insightful people I’ve ever met. She didn’t even need to ask how I was doing; one look at me was enough for her to know.

Another thing that drew me to this particular English monastery was that the abbot there was a monk who’d completely bowled me over – Ajahn Sucitto. He was the author and illustrator of a book that provided what I felt was an absolutely brilliant analysis of the Buddha’s first lecture. We had got to know each other in Thailand, as he often travelled there in the winter. To this day, he remains one of my closest and most important friends.

Ajahn Sucitto has that thing really good teachers, mentors or for that matter friends should have – an infallible sense of timing. He was always able to say the right words to the right person at the right time, and he always served up his lessons with a large helping of love. Accepting wisdom from a person like that is easy, even when what they say touches a nerve.

In England, I was happy to discover, we were served both breakfast and lunch. I was very grateful for this. I recall one of the monastery breakfasts particularly vividly. It took place relatively soon after I moved in. There were more than fifty of us – monks, nuns and guests – who had eaten together and after much debating we had managed to decide who was going to do what that day. It got very involved because there were a lot of

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