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By:Nissim Amon
A few months before his death, the abbot of a Wat Suan-Mok monastery, gave a talk to some people who had come from far away to learn meditation. The monastery was located near the city of Surat-Thani, not far from the famous golden islands of south Thailand.
It was a hot day and even the flies were too lazy to fly. The group was sitting on straw mats under a big shade, and the old master, Ajan-Buddha-dassa, which means ’Buddha’s servant’, spoke slowly in a southern dialect, as a young blue-eyed monk translated what he said into simple English.
"The heart of Buddhism," said the old man, "is called Upadana. This one word contains the whole message of our teacher The Buddha. In order to liberate ourselves from suffering, or from our inner prison, we must personally uproot our Upadana. There are different streams or schools in the Buddhist Tradition: Theravada, Mahayana, Zen and Tibetan Buddhism. They all differ in names, techniques and rituals, but the essence of all of them is one - to uproot Upadana and to abandon it far away. This is the best way to get out of prison."
"I don’t know the English translation for the word Upadana," said the old monk with a smile, "but anyway, words will only confuse you. Please try to take it as a new word. Perhaps you will not understand it the first time, but let your tongues, mouth and brain be accustomed to it, and later to be one with the feeling of it."
"Upadana can be emotional attachment to things we love, or it can be attachment to material things that we care for, but it is mainly our own holding on, to our old thoughts and opinions which surround us like a high wall, causing a great suffering inside."
"Don’t feel sad or disappointed because you are not acquainted with the different Buddhist streams. Don’t be worried if you can’t learn in Sri-lanka, Burma, China, Japan, or Tibet. Actually, all kinds of studies are a waste of time. It is enough to understand your Upadana, which is the main path to happiness, the path that prince Siddhartha walked, and the path of all the Buddhas."
The guests spent the next ten days in the monastery, eating vegetarian food, dipping in the hot springs at the evenings, and devoting the rest of the time trying to understand what Upadana is and it’s relation with their actual daily lives. Ten days of silence, contemplation and isolation. Each person with himself, each one with his Upadana.
With every day that passed, deeper and deeper they went into it. They all discovered that they had opinions about almost everything in the world, many emotions, judgments, and possessiveness - a lot of work to be done.
In Zen terms, freedom from Upadana is described as "opening the hand of the mind". It is the ability to let go of our opinions, beliefs, principles and points of view, which we have taken and kept for so long. Yet, it is not so simple to refresh our fixed patterns of thinking together with our personality. One must keep the box of conclusions open, and to be able to see all things without the periscope of the prejudiced mind; to be fearless about dropping opinions and second hand principles.
In order to be free from your mind,
The teachers are trying their best
To wake you up into this very moment,
A moment that you should always treat
As if you see it for the first time.
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