Comings & Goings
Ajahn Jarat, the abbot of Wat Pah Mettagiri in Thailand, will be visiting the Hermitage from April 21st – 23rd. Ajahn Sudanto has spent time with Ajahn Jarat in Thailand in the past, and it will be such a joy to have him visit us here – continuing to connect us to our Thai Forest roots.
Ajahn Jarat will join Ajahn Sudanto for two Dhamma events: both of the Tuesday evening meditations at Yoga Samadhi, and a Q&A, meditation, and Dhamma reflection at Portland Friends of the Dhamma, details here. He will depart the Hermitage on the 23rd to visit Abhayagiri. We are looking forward to his visit.
Tan Jotimanto will be arriving from Abhayagiri on April 23rd, and will be resident at the Hermitage through the end of August. Originally from Oregon, Tan Jotimanto took bhikkhu ordination in December of 2019.
Ajahn Sudanto will be away most of May at Birken for the Annual Birken Pacific Hermitage retreats, returning on May 25th. The community meditations (6:30-7:30 PM) will continue in his absence, led by volunteers. The 5:15-6:15 meditation will pause until Ajahn’s return.
Garden Parties
Many thanks to all for the well-attended and very helpful April Garden Party! With Ajahn away, there will not be one held in May, so the next one will be on Saturday, June 6th.
Vesāka Puja Celebration
Sometimes called “Buddha Day,” Vesāka puja celebrates the birth, enlightenment, and passing away (parinibbana) of the Buddha. It occurs on the full moon of May, and this year we will celebrate it on Saturday, May 30th at the Hermitage. The schedule for the day is from 10:30 AM – 1:30 PM.
- Arrive at 10:30 AM
- Meal to be offered at 11:00 AM, followed by cleanup
- At about noon, we will have time for chanting, precepts, and Dhamma conversation.
Save the Date
The 2026 Pah Bah will be held on Saturday, September 19th, and Sunday September 20th. More details to follow in the coming months.
Meditation – So Simple and Yet So Hard
excerpted from Ajahn Sudanto’s “Enjoy your Buddhist life” talk, June 2025 given at Portland Friends of the Dhamma
In essence, meditation is so simple and yet so hard… it’s just rare I meet the satisfied meditator, and in the circles I run, you would think if they’re out there, I would. This is not something exclusive to lay people, there are a lot of dissatisfied monks and nuns out there too when it comes to their meditation practice.
It’s almost like a little koan for me, it’s so simple. What are we talking about here? Attending to the body, watching your breath go back, go forth, or arousing the wish for goodwill for all beings. I have a sense of appreciation and compassion for why these things are hard, but at the same time the essence of it is so simple. It’s the simplest thing you’ve ever been asked to do, and yet it’s the hardest thing you’ve been asked to do.
More and more, I’m questioning the role of striving and over-identification that trips people up in their practice. There’s no simple one way the Buddha taught meditation. If you study the Buddhist suttas, there’s really a plethora of ways that he talks about working with the mind. And these days, when there is much more attention there is to the whole of the path, cultivating a skillful life, and arousing right effort in different ways, why is it we struggle? Why there is dissatisfaction?
Sometimes I fall back on just analyzing things through these Buddhist templates, they are very useful ways to analyze things. One of the most primary of these is greed hatred, and delusion. So why don’t I enjoy my meditation practice? Or why isn’t my meditation the way I think it should be? The short answer is greed, hatred and delusion.
I think greed is kind of a funny word as a translation for kama tanha, I know some people struggle with that. They don’t feel like a greedy person, especially when meditating. They think, when I sit down to meditate, how is it that greed is sabotaging my meditation? I think there are a few reasons for that. Maybe people haven’t studied or contemplated it deeply. And the word greed in English conjures up really extreme forms of desire. But even if you take the more moderate forms of desire, most people are not having a bad meditation because they’re sitting there dreaming of a pint of ice cream.
But greed relates to the very experience of everything we’re doing. How does greed provide an obstacle to enjoying your meditation? A very standard way is ideas and longings that we have for our meditation experience. We have greed for a different bodily experience when we sit down to meditate most of the time. We have a form of greed for different feelings. We’re often feeling that the whole thing that inspired us to meditate is we want to experience some pleasure. We want to experience some bliss. We want to feel good, and we identify that as meditation. We think good meditation is an easeful, pleasant, bodily experience, pleasant feelings; bliss would be nice.
Really focus in on the idea of our imaginings, the ideals that we bring to this. I have dim memories of when I started, and I had such crude understanding what meditation was. Despite all the books I was reading and the good talks and support, it really did take years to start to identify all the various ways that constructed these ideals of what it is that I thought I should be doing, what thought I should be feeling.
So, one of the things that makes it easy to enjoy meditation is to foster a bit more non-greed, be more open, set aside the ideals. Come back to the simplicity of it. What are the instructions, and what is the intent? Why do we meditate? The answer I like to come back to these days is that it’s a bit more formal way to operationalize right effort. The Buddha encourages us if we want to train our minds to recognize what’s coming up, make some choices about what to encourage and what to resolve, and based on our knowledge of skillful and unskillful states, to plant the seeds for skillful states to blossom and unskillful states to wane. So, meditation is a strategy to operationalize right effort.