A Conversation with Bhante Rāhula

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yweYjYqTVbQ

Interview by Lama Fede with Bhante Rāhula, a Theravāda monk in the Burmese tradition and founder of Paññābhūmi Monastery (Guadalajara, Mexico). We talk about his transition from music to monasticism, how to teach the Dhamma in Judeo-Christian settings, the limits of decontextualized mindfulness, and the challenges of sustaining monastic life in Latin America.

From music to silence

Lama Fede: Let’s start by telling each other a bit about ourselves. I try to read everything I can about each figure I interview, and I know that you were—still are—a musician. I wanted to ask you how it all began, before the ordination. I know you had a life dedicated to music, and that at one point you got married.

Bhante Rāhula: I was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, and I started with music in my adolescence. From the beginning, what drew me most was the creative side, improvisation. To make a long story short, because of my tendencies—a lot of curiosity about nature, science, and spirituality—music started taking me toward the sacred music of the world. I began studying with Native Americans, all the music that had to do with ritual or spiritual connection.

I started with classical music, sacred music—Bach and all that—and when playing it, my mind naturally gravitated toward the spiritual side of music. Later, what I was doing with improvisation didn’t fit within jazz; it was improvisation of sacred music. I practiced with Native Americans—the flutes, the drums—and I started incorporating it into my concerts and compositions. The group I traveled most with, the one that went to Europe, to Barcelona, played world music: Indian music—we had met in India, we were all meditating already, all practicing yoga—Turkish music, African music, but all of it related to spiritual music, the music of the mosques, and so on. We gave world music concerts.

That work took me around, made me move. I traveled a lot as a layperson, and I was already inclined toward spirituality. In my own search, after a very deep depression—around 2001 or so—I found Buddhist meditation, and what struck me most was the silence. They presented it to me as something where I would get silence, and that really drew me in. I started, and it was a transition: I ordained for the first time, and then I ordained temporarily several more times. It wasn’t full dasasīla, because I still had a wife, concerts, projects. I ordained temporarily five times, in fact. I had many opportunities to go back to music, to return to silence; to go back to my partner, to return to celibacy; to go back to open credit, and again to discipline and austerity.

All those spaces made the transition natural. I reached a point where the mind simply could no longer un-see what it had seen. Of everything I tried, music was like a carriage that took me to its own limit. I can say it from my experience: music has limits. I experienced it to the hilt, to the point of bleeding, and it has limits. There’s a point where music puts its hands in añjali to silence and says: “now it’s your turn to take it.” So I too turned to music and said, thank you very much. And now, silence.

The teachers say—and I agree, though I haven’t finished—that when one truly wants to dedicate oneself in depth, music is inadequate, because it remains dependent on the senses and external. If one wants to cultivate from within, it’s better to ground oneself inwardly. Now silence is what gives the direction.

Family, partner, and musician friends

LF: And how was this experience of going back and forth? I imagine you must have had many conversations about it in your family, in your marriage. Did they support you? Was it something strange? Because for someone born in Mexico, like for someone born in Argentina, this is an uncommon path.

BR: Two sides to it. With my family—from very young I made unconventional decisions. My parents were already in “now what has he done, now he’s a monk or he did an ordination” mode. For them it was just one more crazy thing. Now they are both very happy: they’ve already seen the change in this mind, from when I was a layperson with open credit for everything, to how it’s changed through the fence that monastic form opens up to train a mind. They’ve benefited. My mother, for example, practices. In fact, I started teaching because she asked me to. They’re very happy now, but originally it was just one more crazy thing.

With my wife, I had the great fortune that she ordained along with me. She was a nun twice. The first time, when I ordained in 2004, the day after I saw the opportunity at the monastery, I ordained—I was always the most curious one, the one who wanted to experiment. Since childhood, though I didn’t understand it back then, the seed was already planted. In fact, when I first learned about Saint Francis, I said: “there he is, barefoot, with robes, half-shaved.” I had that tendency, but also a lot of fear.

In adolescence I met some Hindu monks. I was born Catholic, but at age 12 there came a point where I realized the priest wasn’t doing what he was asking us to do, and something in my mind let go, in silence. I kept going to mass because my father is still very Catholic to this day, and they made me go, but inside I had already let it go. From age 12 to 19—I met some Hindu monks then. When they heard me play that music I was telling you about, music that wasn’t commercial, the master came and said: “you have the potential to be a monk, come with us, we’ll train you.” I was 19, and I felt a lot of pressure. I didn’t take the opportunity at that moment, but they had already told me.

Fast-forward to 2004, when the opportunity to ordain came up. I ordain, because I already wanted to. My ex-wife was there, she supported me—she’s also a practitioner, she got into Buddhism alongside me, she saw the benefits—and a few days later she came up to me and said: “How are you? How do you feel?” Wonderful. I was already in robes, a bit strange at first—how to dress, and so on. And she told me: “I’m going to ordain too.” I said: “go ahead, if you’d like, welcome.” And she ordained.

With her it was very easy. I ordained five times temporarily and she ordained twice, and she supported me in the other three: she herself would buy me the robes, donate them to me; the bowl she donated to me, because she knew its value. We studied Abhidhamma together for six years. They taught us as monks, both of us, beyond gender. Our teacher told us: “do you want to learn Abhidhamma?” “Yes, teacher.” “Do you have time?” “Yes, we’re freelancers, we give concerts and we can choose.” “I’ll teach you as monks.” And that’s how it was. She’s now an Abhidhamma teacher, which, as you know, is one of the most technical, delicate, and profound parts of the teaching. There was always that support. Even in my last ordination she supported me. Now our paths have separated: she’s married and I continue with the monastery in Mexico.

LF: That’s great, because it’s an important question—how one negotiates or organizes that. It’s not easy.

BR: Actually, I felt much more backlash—more resistance—from my musician friends, because my detachment forced them. I understand it this way now: many of the friends I had, I no longer see, and not because I didn’t reach out. The fact that I became a monk forced many of them to ask themselves what they were doing in relation to their own inner development. And not everyone wants that, much less to leave music. Even though I followed up with a lot of affection, the glue that held us together in friendship was music, and when music became silence, several of those friendships could no longer be.

It strikes me that three things often catch different people’s attention, and they’re surprised: leaving music, leaving sexuality and partnership, and leaving money. But I think between music and sexuality—the most sensory—that’s what surprises them most. Over time, they come to respect it.

LF: And what about habits? For example, here it’s very common to get together with friends and the friends drink beer. That kind of habit—didn’t it clash with you?

BR: I have the great fortune that this body was born very sensitive. From the time I was a teenager, when I went out with my friends, they’d tell me I was very cheap, because with two sips of beer I was already dizzy, wanted to throw up, felt awful. Biologically, alcohol was never my friend—that was the great fortune. With drugs, I did try some things; with marijuana, the same: I didn’t smoke, but they smoked next to me and I was worse off than the ones who had actually smoked. It didn’t take either. I had one experience with mushrooms, and it went so badly that it was a blessing.

When I was young, before I went off—in my early twenties—those same substances pushed me away. I was in India, at a Mahā Kumbh Mela, and I wanted to go to a Rainbow Festival, and the drugs in India, just imagine. I was 25, and something perceived in me—I’ll say it without trying to take credit, I don’t know what it was. Two or three times, a person told me, with such force: “you’ll never go there.” And I didn’t go. Now I understand it easily, as vipāka, as the result of previous actions: when it’s not your turn, it’s not your turn. In my case it wasn’t something I had to battle with. Even the drug dealer told me: “you’re not going over there, you don’t have that energy,” and he recognized it, respected it, and protected it. To this day I never saw him again; he just forbade me from going there.

LF: And that energy you’re describing—is that what you’d attribute to cultivation, to discipline?

BR: I wasn’t practicing yet then. I wasn’t Buddhist yet, nor a monk. It was just the frequency that could be perceived, and it was already heading in that direction.

Past lives, Abhidhamma, and saṃvega

LF: If I had to think about this in terms of the Abhidhamma framework—which is a question I often ask different specialists—thinking of bhavaṅga, paṭisandhi citta, cuti citta: how would you think about that situation, your experience, with that model?

BR: It can be described in clear terms. It’s probable—it can’t be confirmed, but at birth, at paṭisandhi—in the original consciousness, the reconnection—it’s probable that among the things already there was somanassa. Somanassa is a kind of mental joy or lightness; I do recognize that in this process, and my own teachers have said so. One can be born with upekkhā or with somanassa. It’s in the scriptures: a person who smiles a lot, it’s very likely they have somanassa. Well, it’s hard to recognize fully.

The possibility exists—and I don’t assume it—that previous seeds were planted, since from childhood I already had these aspirations. What are we all doing here? We were born in a Judeo-Christian culture—why are we here as Buddhists? What caught our attention? As we say in Mexico, if the river is making noise, it’s because it carries water.

At first it scared me a lot, because I felt very different from my friends. I liked different kinds of music, doing different things. I would ask my mother to take me to therapy, because I felt out of place with my classmates in middle school. Now I look back and say: of course.

It’s very likely that the taste for the Dhamma, or for inner cultivation, was already sown in the past. And hopefully all of us were born not only with alobha and adosa, but also with the root of amoha—with the root of non-desire, to a certain degree (that’s what gave us this human rebirth), a certain degree of non-anger, or love—that’s for sure. The Abhidhamma descriptions say that if we were born as human beings, we definitely have those two roots. What we lack is amoha, which is non-ignorance, or the appreciation of wisdom; that one also remains as a trace of previous lives.

I could say without assuming anything, just as a fact explained from the book—I’m not saying anything about myself—that if we already like this, it’s probable. My own teacher told me: “if you already like studying this, it’s probable that you already liked it.” Hopefully we have that root, because that’s what will give us the possibility, when we meditate—if we wish and train—to reach the jhānas or to become enlightened. There are many human beings in whom we all have the two roots, but this isn’t a guarantee. That’s why the teachers insist so much that we never stop studying and cultivating ourselves, because amoha—non-ignorance, wisdom—isn’t guaranteed as a human root in our mind. We need to cultivate it. Fortunately, we have clear methodologies, and let’s hope—at a minimum, and I think we can all say this—that when we die we’ll be, if not finished, at least better off.

LF: In our school, amoha is called something else: vidyā, which we translate as “science,” but it’s the same thing. There’s something interesting to me, and it is that in the tantric tradition it’s very common to say something similar to what you say you would tell your teacher. What they say is: it doesn’t matter so much whether it exists or not—one has to act as if. If one likes it, one should do it. But there’s always this idea of giving some kind of connection. There are practices to discover this business of previous lives, actually, and when a person advances to a certain level, one has to say “this is the incarnation of such-and-such person.” And I always say: it doesn’t really matter, it’s more of a narrative. Are there similar practices in the Myanmar Buddhism that you practice?

BR: It isn’t pursued in the same way, as in trying to know who you were in a previous life. But obviously it’s known. It’s known that children, before they identify with their new “self”—we all arrive very fresh. When we’re babies, we don’t know yet that we were Argentinian, Mexican, men, women. And that’s where babies—it’s scientifically proven in the serious studies that have been done on past lives—before they identify with their new chapter, they remember: where they lived, who their parents were, and so on. In Burma, in the entire Theravāda world, including Thailand and Sri Lanka, this is super accepted and super understood. It’s just that there isn’t so much of a search for who one was.

On the matter of past lives and being able to know them, we don’t need to go to the commentaries; the Buddha himself mentions it in the scriptures of the Pāli Canon. When a person reaches the fourth or fifth jhāna—depending on how it’s counted, whether via the fivefold Abhidhamma scheme or the fourfold Sutta scheme—if they so decide to train, because their mind is very stable and clear, they can begin to remember more and more easily in this life. And meditation itself gives us that gift: as one meditates, at the expense of what the body does with age, generally our memory and consciousness tend to become clearer. If a person has the stability of a jhāna, they have the possibility of going back not one life, but many lives, and recognizing. Understanding that this doesn’t liberate us: it’s just a tool, and the Buddha also warned that we should be careful, because it can be very seductive—“my past lives.”

The teachers say: be careful, don’t play with fire, because we’ve been all over the spectrum of beings, above and below. Once in a while you may have to see what you had to live through in one of the lower realms, and there are people who get “freaked out,” as they say, and it can give them a real scare. So the teachers say, “go carefully.”

What the Buddha did recommend this for wasn’t so much to know who we were—because that could generate the tendency of ego, “I am this one”—as an idea of permanence, which is exactly what one wants to remove: the attā. Anattā has to be fluid, not permanent. Thinking of myself as “I was this one and that one,” at least from my ignorant perspective, has dangers of identification: was I, or am I, and so on—it gives us more problems than help. But what the Buddha did recommend it for was to be able to recognize and verify that this isn’t the only chapter; to recognize the vastness of the cosmos and the possibilities we have in it; and mainly to recognize everything we’ve already suffered, to see if it gives us saṃvega.

I don’t know how to say it in Sanskrit: saṃvega, that spiritual urgency that makes you say: “hey, look how many times I’ve died, look how many children I’ve had, look how much I’ve cried.” As the Buddha said: the tears we’ve shed through our lives are more than all the seas combined. So that it becomes not ego, not identification, but saṃvega—spiritual urgency—and we say, “let’s stop this cycle.” For that, yes, the Buddha says: go ahead. And if possible, through the abhiññās, in the fourth or fifth jhāna, it’s possible for whoever has that stability.

LF: Yes, in Sanskrit it’s also saṃvega—Sanskrit is generally very similar. We translate Sanskrit from Pāli, which is a Prakrit; they’re very similar.

BR: It comes from Prakrit, right? They’re like siblings: Prakrit is the mother, and Sanskrit came out of Pāli. Technically, Prakrit is the formation of Vedic Sanskrit in that sense: Prakrit means dialect. Everything that isn’t Vedic Sanskrit is, technically, for Indians, Prakrit. But even Buddhist Sanskrit, which isn’t the same as Vedic Sanskrit, is a Prakrit of Sanskrit.

LF: They’re very similar. Only some consonants change.

BR: The formations change a lot: paññā, prajñā; ñāṇa, jñāna; nibbāna, nirvāṇa. They’re equivalent formations, but very similar.

LF: Just the r: kamma, karma. I totally agree with this. There’s a funny issue that happens in Vajrayāna—and this is purely my personal opinion, it represents nothing more than that—and it’s that in Tibet specifically, this concept was misused to the point that there’s a legal personhood assigned. That is, if I’m recognized as person X, I’m the owner of the properties.

BR: Quite something!

LF: “Sir, no. You like the name, but not the property.”

BR: (laughs) No, the property stays with other families.

LF: Rest easy, everyone. In Theravāda there’s nothing like that.

BR: Lucky for me. In Theravāda the stance is: “look, forget what was, recognize what is, and do better with what you have now, looking forward.” Without getting hung up on recognizing how great this process of suffering has been, no more than that. What do you have now? Don’t go back and dig into what it was. Recognize what’s there and work to purify the mind now. Sabbapāpassa akaraṇaṃ, kusalassa upasampadā, sacittapariyodapanaṃ: avoid evil, practice the good, purify one’s own mind. That’s the perspective.

Teaching the Dhamma in a Judeo-Christian context

LF: Knowing this, it’s a huge clash—for example, as a way of thinking and speaking in Judeo-Christian contexts like Argentina or Mexico, where there’s a soteriological idea of a soul that incarnates and then goes elsewhere. What are the challenges you find teaching in these contexts where that idea of spiritual identity is so strong?

BR: The challenge is beliefs. What we have going for us are facts. And facts are much more forceful and much more numerous than beliefs.

When people come with a belief, experience helps you recognize how much of a conversation can be had. But before getting to beliefs—and in fact it’s something I avoid—I’m invited to teach at the Franciscan University; this is the third year I’m going to the Friars. Priests have come to the Anatomy of the Mind sessions. I’m invited to ITESO, which is a Jesuit university, and we have a close friendship.

What’s led us there is the focus: the challenge is beliefs, so what I always try to do is focus on the facts. On the fact that “hey, do you get angry?” “Yes.” “Me too.” “Do you feel gratitude from time to time?” “Yes.” “Me too. It doesn’t have gender, right? There’s no woman-gratitude and man-gratitude. Even animals feel gratitude or get angry. There’s no Buddhist gratitude or Catholic gratitude or whatever.” We work from there.

Eventually ideas come up from the person. I try never to open the topic on my part, because I have no interest in it. When one contemplates facts, it doesn’t feel threatening in any way. Well, of course—we’re seeing it. “Look, this is heavy, and if I let it go it falls.” Eventually people, on their own—at least after a lot of head-banging (I started teaching in 2016)—I got to the point where we only work with facts. Eventually the person themselves starts asking questions: “hey, Bhante, and what about the soul?” “And what about God?” And I just hand them, at cost, what the Buddha said: look, there are the first discourses, the Dīgha Nikāya. You can see what the Buddha said, consider it, and it’s what you see.

But once we have a common platform of facts, eventually—I dare to say, because my sister did it, my mother did it, and many students did it—the facts and the wisdom or perspective that comes out of them arrive, and they themselves make their own adjustments. Many people have said: “Bhante, can I keep coming? This does me a lot of good, but can I keep coming even if I believe in God?” Believe whatever you want. I’ll just ask one thing: keep them well identified—which are the beliefs and which are the facts. And remember that here, and the Buddha, focused on facts. Here we work on that. We’re all human, and that way we flow.

What caused me difficulties in the past—the headbutts I gave myself—was abruptly opening the conversation by saying: “hey, you don’t have a soul and God doesn’t exist.” That isn’t necessary. We’ve flowed very well, and so far the difficulties haven’t been more than practical, not ideological. People come and believe what they want, but we all cultivate ourselves to purify anger, attachments, sadness, anxiety. And about that, people and I are delighted.

LF: Yes, I have to say this is an issue that generates a lot. It goes back and forth with many teachers, when they start teaching anātman, for example, to people.

BR: I have a few tips now, if you want I’ll pass them along. One of the phrases that has become invaluable is this: I was asked, “master, what is the ātman?” I said: “look, I’m not sure right now what it might or might not be, but there’s something I can assure you: in nature, everything is recycled, right? When my body dies, what will it turn into? Will it just disappear? When I die, does it vanish?” “No, master, water returns to water, temperature dissipates into the environment, the earth turns into something else.” “True.”

The other phrase that has helped me a lot is: “and what can we say about energy? Energy is not created or destroyed either, it just transforms.” Young people these days are totally open to those ideas science brought. “Of course, master.” And the next question is: “hey, and our consciousness? Could our mind be energy? Could it be outside of nature?” From there the door opens and a conversation based on the recyclability of nature begins. And I tell them: “what do you think? Does the mind continue or not?”

Another thing that also helps me a lot is remembering that all modes of thought—with the exception of nihilism—all religions agree that at death it doesn’t end. Some say it goes up, others say down, others straight ahead; the only thing that varies is what happens afterward, but they all agree it doesn’t end. “Well, here it’s called this way.” And, looking at nature: if you see a tree that dies, another one grows. “I stay open,” is what I tell them.

In that openness we keep exploring, and to this day many people keep doing their own accounting. Eventually there are changes in perspective, but that’s what has helped me: taking it in that grounded way, rather than talking about the ātman or the Buddha’s negation. You can also tell them, at cost: look, the Buddha definitely—at cost, being faithful to scripture—considered that believing in a soul that doesn’t change, something that doesn’t change in the universe, as we can already see, is an incorrect view. But the moment will come. Everything is prepared. “Let’s consider it, let’s see. But as for us being here, we’re here.”

LF: I’m very interested. The topic of ātman is probably the one that most challenges people.

BR: It’s the hardest one. That and beliefs in God or not—those are the only two. Beyond that, you can explore whatever you want: the nature of the body, recognizing saññā or the mind’s perception, our vedanā. But those two are the most delicate, and I wait until people want to talk about it. Besides, as monks we have the Buddha’s instruction: if they don’t ask you, keep quiet and you’ll look prettier. If they ask, we explore it as I see it from this perspective.

Animism, amulets, and protective practices

LF: You lived 20 years in Asia, and in Asia there are so many beliefs about spirits, amulets—cultural matters that attached themselves to Buddhism over the centuries. For example, in Thailand, in Myanmar, I met monks who make amulets. It depends on the monk, not all of them, but depending on how attached they are. The fortune I had, for example, with the Venerable Sayadaw Dr. U Nandamālābhivaṃsa, was that he is on the side that says: look, none of this is in the scriptures. The Buddha never talked about it; yes, he talked about the thirty-one realms of existence, but that animistic part—wanting to keep the mountain gods, this and that god, happy so they’ll protect us, as happens in Taoism or in Shintoism—those practices, the teachers I’ve had the fortune to relate to are always emphatic in saying: “recognize which things attached themselves culturally to Buddhism,” as happened to Tibetan Buddhism with Tantra, as happened to original Chán Buddhism with Taoism, and to Theravāda Buddhism with local elements. Go to the root as much as you can.

Texts, for instance, like the Āṭānāṭiya Sutta, which is part of the Dīgha Nikāya, speak of a protection ritual where the Cātummahārājas appear and are invoked. Is that a text you consider attached to the canon?

BR: It’s obviously in the canon. Same with the Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta, which the Buddha himself gave so we could be at peace with these beings, but not to serve them or keep them happy out of fear—which is ultimately what leads many people to the monasteries in Malaysia and Burma. There’s a strong belief in all the nats and spirits there; as monks, we end up having to help people who can no longer sleep, who are in paranoia because they “opened themselves up too much.”

The Buddha talked about the harmony that can exist, about how we can dedicate merit to these beings. In fact, the dedication of merit, when we share merit, really refers to those who have less than us: at the peta level, to all those below. Because if I share with a deva, the deva is already better off than me—what am I giving? It’s like giving money to my rich uncle. The Buddha always specified that we should support and be open to the whole spectrum of beings that apparently is there, but not as a matter of ritual or service, nor should we invent guru-related things.

For example, in Burma they don’t only have the nats, but also the people who speak with the nats, and those are human beings. From that has come what happens here with palm readers, astrologers, and so on, and a lot of abuse has been generated—at the economic level and in every sphere. That’s what the teachers say: careful, don’t get into that. See what you need to do: purify your mind.

LF: But what about the paritta chants, the protective ones? Are those done in the monasteries?

BR: They are. For blessing, and also as a reminder to the person of what they can do for themselves to stabilize. It always refers to practice, like the Maṅgala Sutta, which is the sutta of blessings. When one reviews the blessings within the Maṅgala Sutta, they’re all internal: it wasn’t that someone came and gave you the blessing, or put a rosary on your head, or anything like that. They all arise from ethical practice, from caring for mental stability, from practicing generosity with our family, from detaching ourselves, from associating with the teachers, from having a good relationship with them. They’re all blessings that come from within and that we have to cultivate.

In paritta, it’s often understood that the Buddha, with the monks, didn’t talk about parittas so much. Depending on where he was, the Buddha spoke to a very broad spectrum of people—from peasants, untouchables, to kings and monastics—and promoted different teachings to give them security. We now, as monastics or as friends, depending on where we perceive people to be, try to offer a certain kind of security in what they can digest at the moment. But eventually, when the mind had detached or felt secure in itself, the point always came back: “you’re fine there, let’s go practice; this is what’s hurting you inside, fear is at its root.”

Yes, protections are there. It depends on the master’s style. The teachers I’ve been with, who are a bit more attached to study or to direct practice in the caves, in the jungle, don’t promote it much; they do it almost only on request.

LF: And does that magical or protective part happen in the West, or is it something that stayed more in Asia?

BR: Teaching Western-minded communities, I tend—and those who know me are aware of this—to rarely speak of it. We already have a certain degree of aversion from the treatment we’ve had with Catholicism. Young people now are much more informed, and in general there’s a tendency toward aversion to the ritualistic and religious. I’m not that type myself. If I say “let’s pray for others” and all that, questions immediately arise. I think there’s so much work to do recognizing the negativity we carry inside and purifying ourselves from within, which is the blessing another person can give.

In general there’s more risk, or it may be less well received, especially with young people. For my part, when it’s asked I do it, but I don’t promote it much. Saying “let’s pray for others” in a ritualistic, religious way is already hard for me, because I can’t deny what team I’m on—what shirt I’m wearing. I can’t have people see me as something religious, and if on top of that I say “let’s pray” or things like that, I get myself into trouble.

When it’s needed, there are many ways to bring calm and satisfaction to a person without having to touch the esoteric. Something so close, right here in your face, is recognizing our immediate blessings, and how our mind is mainly inventing the fears we carry—it’s more of a negative imagination happening.

LF: Right, it’s a shortcut, an approach extremely based on the Abhidhamma, which makes total sense. Let’s get to work, what are you going to do right now here?

The anxiety epidemic

LF: This brings me a bit to your teaching about the mind. Speaking a little about the Abhidhamma, this business of narrative loops that you say—that we often enter fears and generate things that benefit our own suffering—do you consider this especially important for a practitioner in a more lay world, to be able to understand it that way rather than in a religious or magical way?

BR: It’s super practical. Right now, for example, the anxiety epidemic we have, the way anxiety is rising in the population in general. I’ve said that anxiety is a form of fear: it’s something I’m imagining negative, because positive things don’t frighten us. “I don’t want it to happen”: that’s what generates my anxiety, negative anticipation. And fear—forget it, there’s nothing religious about it. It’s human: what our mind is doing.

How can we, through the tools the teachers left us, knowing this well? It’s hard to even call Buddhism a “religion.” The Buddha wasn’t God. Religare, in Latin, generally means to re-bind with a deity, and here we’re dealing with a methodology for becoming skillful with our inner processes. Right now I feel it as an urgency. The retreats I’ve been giving lately in every place I’ve been—Indonesia, South America, North America—are grounded in addressing, with these tools and inner clarity, the fears, anxieties, and stresses we’re carrying. It’s totally grounded and relevant to both laypeople and monastics.

It would be worth it, in the tone I sense in your question, to recognize that regardless of how we dress or what look we have, we’re equally human, and not so far apart. When I ask in my talks, “who feels aversion?”, I’m the first one to raise my hand. That already opens a path, cuts through many ideas. A lot of people literally come and ask: “you don’t get angry anymore, right?” With the assumption that the answer is no. “It happens sometimes. There’s impatience, but it’s gone down a lot.” That just levels the ground; the monk isn’t put on a pedestal: “you’re human like me, and even so, experiencing the same situations I live through, you can smile. Now I’m interested—what are you doing?”

We sit there, and I generally like to ground it a lot. Honestly, if you tell me: I’m a human being who decided to dedicate himself full-time to this, and has to dress this way because that’s the form, but we’re all human beings who try. That’s where I feel, and I hope the person feels the same, that we can walk together. Now it doesn’t get mythologized.

When someone prostrates to a monastic—this happened when I went to India, on our pilgrimage group—there was a family, or individuals from that family, who felt, as I felt at the beginning, that their egos didn’t want to prostrate or bow their heads before another person. The lady told me: “look, you could be my son, how can I address you as ‘usted’?” She said: “how am I going to address you as ‘usted’ if you could be my son? In fact, your uncle told me.” I told her: “look, it’s not about me as an individual. I know you could be my mother’s age. But it’s not about me as an individual; it’s about what the robes represent, and about what we’re sowing for the Saṅgha we want, so that it lasts well with a good relationship into the future.”

The lady took it a bit… But then, when we were at the Mahābodhi Temple in Bodh Gayā, there was a moment where magic happened. We came to one of the obelisks there, dedicated to reverence of the Saṅgha. I, to inform people, said: “look, I also respect the Saṅgha. I prostrate before my teachers, and I do the same service I see someone doing for me sometimes—because I’m the only one, I go and change the water, I go and bring the water to my teacher. I have that respect, and probably more, because I’ve seen it up close. What we respect of a monk is not the person—they repeated this to me many times—it’s the ethics he decided on. And just because he continues with the robes, no longer only for keeping the vinaya, that determination is what we respect.”

The lady was in front of me, and I could see clearly, as if in silence, the moment when she said: “now I understand why.” From that moment on, and up to now, all the hope that was there—when it became humanized and we recognized that what we respect is not the ritualistic-magical, not the position one holds, but, as the Buddha said, the content of that individual’s character and what they’re caring for, the banner they represent—that’s where the magical gets grounded and humanizes all of us. We keep walking together, understanding the role and the responsibility each one has.

The critique of decontextualized mindfulness

LF: This brings me to think of something else, now that we’re talking about the Dhamma and laypeople. Earlier you mentioned, when you would come out of your temporary ordinations, that as a layperson this is like “open credit”: if I have money, the fridge is full, I can open it 24 hours to the senses, travel, have whatever I want. When you can’t anymore—wow, for a human mind that sounds counterintuitive, because the world promotes exactly the opposite.

BR: I can tell you now: for a human mind—at least for this mind, which had a tendency, since being an artist meant I liked beauty, aesthetics, music—a mind with a sensory leaning couldn’t believe it. It scared me at first, but austerity is very, very healthy.

LF: Thinking about what you were saying about the Dhamma: an approach that has become quite popular today is the theme of mindfulness. I know you’ve given mindfulness courses. In my experience, the main difference—because mindfulness itself has thousands of currents today, but Jon Kabat-Zinn’s is based on an interpretation of Buddhist vipassanā—is the issue of vows, of the ethical container.

BR: I totally agree.

LF: How do you handle it? Because laypeople—even Theravāda laypeople, Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna laypeople too have vows, but Theravāda laypeople also have them.

BR: Five or eight, if they want to practice a bit more, for periods, or take them for life, which would already be getting close to being an anāgāmī—perhaps married, because they don’t have a “home.” Yes, they have that possibility.

I totally agree with you. Look, here as a monk it’s much easier for me; it’s harder for a layperson to speak about ethics and morality, because it’s still viewed with more resistance. From me it’s kind of expected: “well of course, this one’s a monk, he’s going to talk about ethics at some point.” It’s easy for me.

One of the things I consider even dangerous is the sheer number of people who only practice contemporary mindfulness, as promoted in the West. I can’t tell you how many people have arrived at the monastery—not only with many doubts and confusion, but with fears and paranoia.

Here’s why. The Buddha taught the Noble Eightfold Path, and of all of it, right mindfulness—sammā sati—is only one part. In the West, what has happened is that, since ethics doesn’t sell—it doesn’t sell mindfulness T-shirts or mindfulness mugs—it’s moved a lot by the huge industry it is. If you take a wheel, which is the wheel of the Dhamma, and leave it with only one spoke, it can’t turn.

All the ethics get removed: we don’t talk about “do not kill, do not steal,” because that already sounds like what we have aversion to in general, at least in the young: Christianity. As in “thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt respect thy neighbor’s wife, thou shalt honor thy father and mother, thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain”… Then let’s see what we have: effort—well, toss it in there somewhere; meditation—yes, we’re there. Meditation with a bit of this, but then we remove two fundamentals that also get little attention: right view—the understanding of the law of kamma, the Four Noble Truths, etc.—because, no, don’t talk about suffering too much, “how pessimistic Buddhists are”—so, off with it. And we also have right thought, which would be non-attachment. What?

Talking about non-attachment in our culture, dry like that, is—I’ve seen it because I’ve done it—like putting salt on an open wound. In our minds, especially the desire our mind carries, the word we can’t mention is letting go of something, renouncing something. Our mind doesn’t like it, the ego doesn’t like it, our brain doesn’t like being told what to do. So, off with that too.

Meditation remains a little bit, effort snuck in there in the middle a bit, and sati. The wheel can’t turn with three spokes. Many people start practicing mindfulness, mindfulness, mindfulness: what is my mind doing, what is my body doing. Great, it works up to a point. But as soon as an inner box opens—something that happened in the past, an aversion, a fear, whatever—since we don’t have the foundation of the other parts, of sīla—all the ethics that remove guilt, give us confidence, inner dignity, “I know I’m not harming anyone, I know I’m improving others’ conditions,” that inner strength—since that wasn’t discussed, when I see everything happening in the mind, where do I hold on?

Where do I put what opened up in the little box?

I consider—and it’s good we’re talking about this—that we all need to go back to the root with great responsibility. It doesn’t mean—I know of people who make their living giving mindfulness courses—go ahead with your business. We as monks, as you know, can’t do that; we can’t charge for it, and in fact the Buddha never said that it should be charged for. But anyway, if it’s going to be done, better that they work on that than selling, I don’t know, drugs or whatever. That would be better.

But I do hope sīla, samādhi, paññā are included: the complete body of the teaching. Because for a reason, with his vision, the Buddha could see: if we don’t have a good root, the tree won’t grow well; and if the tree doesn’t grow, there’s no fruit of wisdom. If there’s no fruit—which is ultimately what we practice for, not just for peace and efficiency—we need to take all the spokes at our own pace. I invite Western teachers to take that responsibility, and there’s beauty in it too. It’s going to be harder to talk about ethics, but there are ways to do it in a grounded way.

LF: Yes, I totally agree. This, for example, happened to me. Right now they’re using mindfulness for snipers, and that, as a Buddhist—of course, it works or it doesn’t work—but personally it seems to me a horror.

BR: That reminds me of an example from the Abhidhamma when they describe the mental factor of samādhi, the concentration of the mind. It says: look, a cardiologist doing open-heart surgery has two minutes or the patient dies. He has to do what he has to do. That concentration. Or a sniper waiting for someone to come to the window, with the intention of killing them for money, the most vile thing possible. Both have very strong concentration. Concentration by itself—is it good or bad? It depends on the hand behind the concentration. That’s why the Buddha, when giving the Noble Eightfold Path, talks about sammā, and there’s the right and wrong version of each factor. If you use concentration with a negative intention, it’s going to be dangerous for someone to have that training.

That has been so throughout life, even with knives: with a knife we heal someone or kill. What it depends on is the hand. With inner training, just like a boxer, we have an extra responsibility. It’s a crime for a boxer to fight in the street, and it should be a crime for meditators to fight in some worldly activities, because their mind is… Yes, likewise: the people who do it, governments do it, the governments push it for that. For me, that problem is decontextualizing it.

LF: Hence all my questions. It’s decontextualizing, editing things out.

BR: That’s why all my questions have to do with context, with how it can be adapted in our culture now.

The 50/50 technique of internal and external attention

LF: I wanted to ask you: I was reading about the attention method at Paññābhūmi Monastery, if I remember correctly, the 50/50—50% in the body, 50% in the mind. What do you call it? The minimum.

BR: The minimum. The minimum balance, 50-50.

LF: Can you tell me a bit about how this balance works?

BR: This balance I learned from the Venerable Sayadaw U Tejaniya. He uses it specifically—it can be applied to everything, it’s very useful—but initially he talks about it through meditation-while-speaking. He says: look, if the other person speaks the same language as you, if they speak Spanish, you don’t need much attention to understand what they’re going to tell you.

The minimum balance he prescribes, which is the optimal, is that the most important thing that happens in a conversation is what happens inside of us, because what we offer the other person depends on the reaction we have inside.

Our responsibility isn’t what the other says, but what comes out of our mouth. He says the just minimum would be to have 50% attention—to start experimenting—with 50% in the body, anchored, as I’ve been doing right now, feeling the weight of the body, the touch of the chair on my back, the clothes. The mind is anchored in the body, already doing some kāyānupassanā, as in the Satipaṭṭhāna. And another part is doing cittānupassanā: watching its movements and intentions, a little of the question “why do you want to say that?” That minimum 50% is used in that; the other 50% in listening, recognizing the conversation, and so on. That’s the minimum.

Once it occurred to us to ask him, he said “play with those percentages.” I asked him: “what percentage do you use?” He says: “since outside I already know what’s happening, and inside is what’s most important, I use 70-30.” Some people said: “master, isn’t that disrespectful? Aren’t you not paying attention to the other person?” And he told us something wonderful: “on the contrary. I’m taking care of myself—of what I’m giving the other—and I’m taking care of the other, of what I’m going to give them, and of the presence I’ll have in what they’re telling me. I’m understanding anyway, and the conversation goes well. I’ll know how to take care of myself when this mind doesn’t like something and has a reaction; I’ll be able to recognize it in the body or in the mind itself, when it makes a judgment about what was heard. And I’ll be able to tend to it in time, because of the space I’m dedicating.”

In fact, when you’re talking as now, if you have a percentage of attention inside and another outside, the mind tends to relax, because our emotions or reactions don’t ambush us—which is what often unbalances us in daily life. After finishing a conversation, the only thing one does is adjust: when I’m silent on the street, walking, just looking at the buildings, as I did when I arrived here, one can have 90-10, 90% inside. One is really using the moment when riding in a car to practice, anchored in the body, knowing clearly what the mind is saying and its intentions, recognizing “do we fuel it or not?”

In contact with someone, depending on the urgency or importance of the topic, it varies. If one needs to go out—for instance, if a person falls and has to be attended to—what does it require? Outside. But we keep a percentage inside. We can go varying it; it’s a very practical tool, and it never lets us abandon ourselves.

As soon as we release ourselves, our mind drifts, and we already know its tendency is the habits it has cultivated—almost always.

LF: To see if I understood, let me try to put it in my words. What you’re proposing is like two modes. They’re modes of citta, but they’re modes in which manas, so to speak, goes in different directions. The perceptual sensory external mode, which has to do with what one hears, what one sees walking down the street, outward perception. And a mode that has to do with more internal discourse, the phenomena of the mind: the mind is watching itself at the same time it’s experiencing. What you’re saying is that the trick is to balance that, to realize. If I think of it in terms more as I’d think of it, it would be between contact and craving—taṇhā—between contact and reaction. If you can make a space in between, that’s the moment of liberation; it’s releasing the reactions.

BR: Now that you put it that way, you’re in fact describing the links of paṭicca samuppāda. Between contact and what’s going to happen: because we have nāmarūpa—we already have body—and the saḷāyatana, the six senses, are already there. As long as we’re alive, they’ll gradually decline in clarity with age, but they’ll be turned on. Contact and sensation arise. That’s vipāka: up to there we’re in fruit, that’s what gave us the fact that our eyes can see what they see, that we’re here seeing what we’re seeing. Besides, without nāmarūpa we can’t think it. Exactly, so from nāmarūpa to here, it’s already arrived. But this is precisely what you just described: it establishes our post of contemplation and administration, before the negative reaction is triggered.

In paṭicca samuppāda it refers just to a desire, but remembering that desire is “I want” or “I don’t want.” If I said “I want,” then lobha and dosa are already there, and the ignorance above them: who wants, who doesn’t want? “I, me, mine,” and so on, and then the wrong view about nāmarūpa. But if we establish—as you just said—our point of contemplation at that inflection, “no, no, no, don’t go off on me, not toward adhesion or toward desire”—the whole experience has already come, amalgamated, and furthermore:

LF: At that point right there.

BR: One can begin to play with how much you’re outside or how much you turn the radar on the mind itself. It’s like that movement: how much it goes, the mind is commenting on what is—“well, I see, I hear such-and-such,” or the mind is like this. As if we watched ourselves with a camera, slightly in profile: watching the mind and the experience at the same time. And you can give it 60-40, 70-30, 90-10. It’s as if we placed ourselves at that little point.

LF: It’s interesting, because in Mahāyāna it’s not framed this way, but with that Mahāyāna model, what’s interesting is that the percentage would change. As the master said when he said 70-30, I understand that 70 is inside. Mahāyāna tends toward 90% outward, as a way of training what’s inside. They’re like different training styles, and one can vary.

BR: You can vary the 100%, because one might be the one who wants to be educated—when a person is confused and totally 100% in the conversation, they’re internally lost, have reactions, emotions, sadnesses, and don’t even interpret well. That would be the situation where inner work is needed. Within that, one can experiment. When one experiments, there’s a point where one starts playing with the percentages. There’s a point where one has 100% and he—not just me, but another person—the master arrived and scared him; he was chatting with someone, and suddenly I saw: he was so much 100% inside that the door of the ear closed. Imagine. He was already 100% inside. But neither 100% inside nor 100% outside: finding that middle point.

And of course there are different practices. For example, as you mention Mahāyāna, when one is practicing mettā, pay attention!—your percentage also varies. Not to mention with compassion: one is in the loka, it varies, but never let go. As a dear teacher says: let the kite fly as high as you want; when we cut the string, it ends up tangled in the mind.

LF: That’s the problem of the famous “empathy.” I always say it’s overvalued. In mindfulness there’s a lot of empathy, which is “I put myself in the other’s place and suffer as the other does.” The problem is that if the other is unwell and I make myself unwell, we’ve done nothing. The only thing we did is add more suffering in any case.

BR: Compassion can get contaminated. If we recognize others’ suffering and see that we can’t do anything, how many of us, unskillfully, have gotten depressed, angry, upset with the perpetrator, doing the very thing we wanted to remove? We have to recognize that even our noble tasks, if we’re not attentive, can get contaminated. Love with attachment, compassion with sadness, depression, or anger, and so on. All of it—because nothing is worth it.

That’s why the quality: the importance of having that inner view, recognizing the mental movement at the moment of experience. And nothing happens; we’re recognizing, and we move on, on each side.

Engaged Buddhism: serving from practice

LF: This leads me to something. I know that Paññābhūmi, your monastery, has this Latin bias of committed action. “Engaged” Buddhism appears and disappears sometimes; there are teachers who are more about social engagement, like Ambedkar, like Thich Nhat Hanh, and teachers who are quite against that. Thinking about this idea of always focusing on purifying the internal, how do you see the place of training in relation to the social field, to protest, to social commitment?

BR: Look, protest—I keep it outside of my practice. I’m for service; if it’s while protesting, then what I do is out of the need that exists where the monastery is. In the nearest little town you see some things, there are very strong ambitions, there are leaders. Recently cars were set on fire in the streets, blocks away from the monastery.

LF: We’ve heard; the situation is very tough there.

BR: The situation is very tough. So, on my part, how can I not do something?

First, it’s already the natural tendency—it depends on the individual. Right now there are teachers who are for it, teachers who aren’t. The Buddha himself, in the teaching, already had teachers with tendencies. Some were more inclined to service. Or Mahā Kassapa, a monk who is fully within his right, going to the cave and practicing asceticism. Within the Latin monks themselves—we’re few—or monks in general among my brothers, each one already has their tendency. I have monk friends who physically and intellectually try not to have contact with the lay community. I have monk friends who are introverts, and even though they’ve wanted to help, they feel uncomfortable when they do.

For my part, because of my characteristics: after having been a musician, contact with others is my work. Not only was I already comfortable, I trained to be able to make contact—before with music, now with the word—with many people at the same time, and to swim together in a theme, whether musical or now in teaching. Based on those characteristics, plus in my case, when I started teaching—my mother asked me to teach—I had the idea of going to Mexico. We built the monastery with the savings I had from my lay life. Since I could no longer use money after renouncing, I bought something for my ex-wife so she could rent a house and live without working, and with the rest of the funds, we built the monastery.

My idea was to arrive and devote myself to training and eating. But one day, when my mother offered me a little tea in her kitchen, she went to the bathroom, and when she came back she stood frozen in the doorway. She said: “why?” Just “why?” But in a tone, you know, when we know our parents. I, “why what, mom?”, already a monk this time. “Why did you leave music, the concerts, the travels?” She’s very fond of music. I told her: “do you really want to know why?” I saw that this was an opportunity. “Do you know why? We’ll need some time to explain why I became a monk, why I left all that. Would you like that?” And so the sessions started.

I started teaching. At first it was her and two friends who had also asked, who knew I had studied this. You’ll see this on the Anatomy of the Mind channel. A small group that kept growing. Once a student couldn’t come, and I said: “oh, we’ll record it and upload it.” After that, people started arriving.

Why do I talk about addictions? The fact that I had worked with addictions. One day a director of rehabilitation centers came in. He listened to the teaching and didn’t say what he did for a living. He came several times, very interested, asking questions, and on one of those visits he said: “Bhante, I have all my teachers from the rehabilitation centers—heroin, cocaine, alcoholism. Could I bring them?” “Of course, bring them. This will help them a lot in caring for the kids, bring them.” They came. Afterward: “hey, Bhante, we have some centers—could you come with the kids?”

It was a wave that started with my mother, and after that, doctors started coming, priests came, two priests who found out I needed something there. People from a hospital directory come and tell me: “Bhante, could you use part of the Buddha’s teaching to humanize a bit? I see that young people are treating patients as if they were objects, and they’re very stressed. I already see the benefits of practice. Could you come to the hospital?” They invited me; I didn’t go to the hospital or to palliative care centers on my own. The palliative care one arose, and it’s one of what I find most satisfying: the tools the people caring for the dying are developing. That’s the most satisfying to date.

I started going to the drug centers, tending to the center directors, to hospitals, palliative care centers, universities. All of it was because of the people. With the tendency I also have—I must say it as humbly as possible—to support where possible, how was I going to say no to those in palliative care? To those in the hospital, to improve for my own family? To those dealing with drugs, given the size of the problem we have?

Within the generosity I could have in time, and because of need, I never planned it. It wasn’t “I know I do service” or “I’m against this.” I’ve never been against anything; I’m in favor of. I have that phrase from when they told Mother Teresa: “Mother, we want to invite you to a demonstration against the war.” Mother Teresa says: “ah, dear children, consider that for a demonstration against war I won’t have time. But if one day they organize a demonstration in favor of peace, I’ll be there.” From that perspective, I’m there. It’s for the good, to cultivate conditions and need forward.

Now, in my intimacy, in my confession: I realized there are moments when I’ve had to adjust. Adjustments have been made. When I saw that it wasn’t possible—there are so many addiction centers that visiting them all would have me traveling and doing only that—it was for that reason that a program was designed now to train the psychologists, social workers, therapists who are already there. Now it’s being very useful.

But on the other side, there’s been a cost to practice. Now, speaking of another percentage, what’s that delicate percentage for me now? How much energy—physical, intellectual—and time will go to service, and how much to my own training? How to find a way to be effective and serve as much as possible, and at the same time be practicing? It can be done, but there are more distractions, obviously, and I have to give myself the spaces I need. That’s my crossroads.

I’ve talked with my teachers. Four times I’ve asked the same question.

LF: Can I ask what the north, the Greek north, is?

BR: First, they were the ones who told me about that percentage. One of the teachers, within the Dhamma, told me: “look, service, he also serves—he trains monks, he’s a monk trainer. I also serve, but if service starts to take more than 50% of your energy, sooner or later you’re going to have a loss. Bhante, if you’re investing more than you’re earning, sooner or later you won’t make it. You can’t give more than 50%.”

Another thing another teacher made me see, which I hadn’t considered, was that it depends on the moment you’re in, in your life. He told me: “let’s see, how old are you right now? Think of yourself ten years from now. Will you still be able to travel the same as now?” “Oh, master, I’ve got it, I understand how things are.” He talked about percentages and applying them to time.

Another teacher, the Venerable Ajahn Brahm, who is my direct teacher but also interviewed me—we talked about this. He also made me see, and told me something very beautiful: “look, ten years from now, you can turn around and kick me if you want, but I assure you that you’ll thank yourself for not having stopped. It’s going to be such good you did to so many people—he says it having done it himself—it’s going to be so much good that you’ll thank yourself for it.” And he told me, in English, that the Dhamma “is the best thing you can ever do.”

The most valuable thing my preceptor gave me: he taught me by saying “look, I’m trying to cross, and if someone wants to make a little boat, then get on board.” That’s where I—between the bodhisattva path, which is talked about so much in Mahāyāna and which also exists in the Nikāyas—when my master said that, that’s where I did it.

Now it’s just a matter of adjusting, depending on age. I’m 51 now, and I project: at 60 or 65, will I still be able to be moving around? The knee already hurts. Adjust to the body, try at the same time to be as effective as possible. One already has a vision and the support of all of them. I also have to check my “practice-meter”: how much is possible, where am I? Depending on how much is possible, and if I’m running very low, with the responsibility of knowing I’m running low, what kind of service will I give?

Being responsible for that measure, and having the awareness that if the mind is running low on energy or stability, in that moment, responsibly, I need to do retreat. Throughout the year I’m also trying retreat; when I do it, I also take advantage of the opportunity with people. It’s still a challenge.

Is being a monk selfish?

LF: These colleagues you were talking about—in Mahāyāna, the bodhisattva, I know that of course in Theravāda, even with the bodhisattva as Maitreya, so to speak, the ideal of mettā, karuṇā, muditā, upekkhā is there—but for example, these colleagues of yours who don’t want to have contact with anyone who isn’t a monk, aren’t they somehow breaking that a bit?

BR: When one ordains, the Buddha—that is, in the scriptures one finds that the Buddha—only sent arahants to teach. When the first batch, as they say, the first group of arahants ordained, that’s when the Buddha said: “now yes, spread out in all directions, no two in the same direction. Now take the Dhamma, for the benefit of monks, for the common benefit.”

In fact, in the scriptures the Buddha always had the monastic stabilize themselves first. It makes sense. Along the way one can help. That’s why I say: as humans, we walk together. I haven’t finished, but we can walk. We should also recognize that I’ve been walking for more time, and many things you’ll probably face, I’ve already faced. Hopefully, while you continue—and that’s the challenge and benefit of teaching: when students start pushing the teacher, asking questions I hadn’t considered, it’s a blessing, a gift. We’re practicing for free: the suffering of another person, a suffering I haven’t experienced, makes me think of a solution based on the scriptures that might help them, I realize it helped them, and I learned for free without having suffered it. Hopefully the student’s push—and if one doesn’t stop, let’s keep walking, and if we equalize and the student’s potential surpasses, then we’ll learn together.

But yes, in the scriptures, the Buddha only sent those who had already arrived at the end to teach. So it’s not selfish for a monastic to first want to take care of himself; that’s also part of the monastic’s right to want to get out—in fact, that’s why we ordain. When one ordains, in the vows, at least in Theravāda, it’s not established “to continue serving others further.” That phrase doesn’t exist. It’s entering the Śākya clan to exit saṃsāra.

Monks aren’t violating anything. And I’ll tell you it’s not always that they “do nothing.” Many of them are translators; they’re studying, they’re making a contribution—it’s not public, but it is public. Others simply—and this is also in the commentaries—just by the fact of still having, in 2026, human beings who recognize the importance and the possibility of absolute liberation from suffering, just that such human beings exist, look how much we have. If sellers exist, if footballers and models exist, imagine also having this treasure: that human beings exist like us, who see the value of inner cultivation and dedicate themselves full-time to it. Ascetics, gurus, who are there upholding and testing the teaching for the good of all of us, keeping it alive, in flesh. And not to mention if they become enlightened—imagine if they make it.

In no way, if a person thinks it’s a selfish act—people have told me directly, even while I was serving others: “hey, being a monk is a selfish act.” My own former father-in-law told me: “see? I don’t know why we said we didn’t want to have children. Now that I see you as a monk, indeed, they’re not going to give me a grandchild.”

LF: No, but I’m not talking about being a monk. It’s when one is a monk and, having the possibilities to teach, to help other people, doesn’t do it. In Mahāyāna, for example, that’s a breaking of vows.

BR: One takes vows in proportion to one’s capacity, obviously according to one’s own capacity and according to the capacity of the person who comes. But once one takes vows to ordain, one should teach if required. It’s worth mentioning that many of these monks, even if they say they don’t want contact with the lay community, I’ve seen them teaching women, dedicating themselves to the university. They’re professors, dedicating themselves to the university. What they care for is that the monastery stays healthy.

LF: Healthy in the sense that there are no laypeople?

BR: No, no. That it continues faithful, that it continues active, caring for the multiple aspects of physical training—like making the robes, sewing the bowl, the vinaya, the salutation and the practice. Or even caring for the monastery itself, for its physical good. In general, they all serve the world. Some have written books within their practice; something is always being done. If you ask them, I think they do, but within their preferences they try not to have lay contact.

Why? Because leaving the monastery is a risk. If I’m in a cave in the jungle—imagine being in a cave in the middle of the jungle—the sensory impact one has is minimal compared to being in the Buenos Aires airport.

LF: In my experience, having done dark retreats, in caves, the mind itself produces so much story that it actually ends up the same. Yes, but okay, it’s the same.

BR: At a visual level, for example, in the cave there are no advertisements, brands, or other people. At the level of perceptual detail it’s not the same. There, one is much more sober, more neutral. In a cave all you have is earth around, some sound that arrives, or trees. When one is in the middle of the city, indriya saṃvara, the restraint of the senses, requires more attention, and one has to put in more energy than when one is alone among monks, or alone in the cave. In an airport with Shiseido and Louis Vuitton, cars and people, you have to work harder.

And also the frequency of the pleasures. We monastics, at least me, in this life, have been more years as laypeople. The tendency, the mind’s taste, is still there—or at least the memory—and the more one associates with those tastes, the more one has to keep working. That’s why, to care for their practice, monastics try not to expose themselves. In fact, the Buddha, when ordaining someone, would send them to the jungle, send them to sit under a tree, and there was a reason. They keep serving in different ways.

Forming monastics in Latin America

LF: So for you, is it key to the transmission of Buddhism to form more monastics in our own lands, in order to keep this form of practice alive?

BR: It would be good, because, as I said, demand is greater than supply. There are moments when I can’t. On that same trip, there were two countries where I said “imagine, three retreats, one after the other, is a lot, leading them.” And every country has demand. Right now, leaving Mexico already tired, look at the demand: last year it was eleven countries where the teaching was shared. This pace isn’t sustainable.

Monastics are needed. It’ll be demanded. At least in Spanish, those of us who are here are going to die in a little while. Who will continue?

LF: Let’s hope not—please, long life.

BR: Even if it’s 30 or 40 more years, that’s it. A new inspired generation will be needed, and it makes me happy that we’re chipping away at the stone and we’re starting to see a bit more of the relationship, how the monk is treated, what he does is understood. He’s no longer seen as a person who doesn’t do anything. In fact, I work more than with the gift. Much, much more.

The material challenge of sustaining a monastery

LF: We’re wrapping up. Two questions to close. One is, thinking about this—the spreading of greater monasticism in Latin America—a great theme that always comes up, and it’s normal because we live in saṃsāra, is the matter of maintaining and generating material means so that monks can develop, since they can’t work in the economic sense. It’s a struggle. I don’t know of an abbot—I know many abbots—who doesn’t have this problem: how to feed all the monks, have doctors, simple things? Even though these aren’t many matters, they’re needed. How do you see it?

BR: It’s a problem. I mentioned difficulties a while ago. In matters of teaching, of living with the community and the concepts of the teaching, I haven’t had difficulties to date. I had more before, but I’ve already found things that fit in culturally right away, and we don’t have to.

What we’re struggling with is maintenance. I already donated the monastery; I’m almost done. Fortunately, with the savings I had from my lay work, it was possible. I already put everything in. It’s no longer the land, it’s electricity, internet, food. Fortunately, for myself, I don’t need anything. I go out with the bowl—I’ll show you in a little video if you’d like, I can even publish it—to where I eat every morning in Guadalajara, in the community where I am. I go out, and Catholics give me food. I need one meal a day: I go out, and I have food every day. The robes last three years; I already have this one and one waiting, they already won the spot for me in Malaysia. I have six years of robes. Bowls, I have two. Three waiting. I don’t need anything. It’s the monasteries.

Our big challenge: I’ll tell you about funny situations. A German, a student, once came and said: “ah, Bhante, the Buddhist Vatican must love you very much.” “The Buddhist Vatican?” I didn’t catch it at first. I missed it. “The Buddhist Vatican.” That’s what she said. “The Buddhist Vatican must have much affection for you.” I turn, just like you, and say: “a Buddhist Vatican?” “Yes, yes. So that they gave you all the money to build this, the monastery, and all that.” I said: “no, in Buddhism there’s no Vatican. There’s no source telling you ‘go, build, you’re a missionary.’ We have to create everything ourselves, all the time.” She says: “exactly? Who did all this?” “He donated it.” “He donated it?” “Yes, I donated it with the savings from my lay life. If I had waited for it to be donated by the community, this wouldn’t have happened.” My sister, who was next to me, stayed quiet. When the German lady left, she told me: “hey, I didn’t know you were waiting for the donation from the Vatican.”

LF: (laughs) She’s waiting for the Vatican’s donation.

BR: How bad! That’s one. Just look at the idea: people believe we’re financed by the Buddhist Vatican.

Second, another thing. The relationship we have in the West with donation is “alms,” “giving alms.” I don’t know about here in Argentina, but over there in Mexico it was giving the spare coins so they wouldn’t jangle in your pocket, and you put them in the basket. The culture isn’t there, as they already know in Asia, where when someone donates something, they can donate an entire building. Because they say: “I have these funds, but I know that if I spend them on whatever I buy, when I die it’ll stay behind. But the kusala, the goodness I plant with this generous act, will support me for the rest of life, after death, until I’m enlightened. How do I gain more?” It’s a wisely selfish act. But they know it’ll give them more in the long run. In the Asian community they know we can do good, because everything material will stay behind. What do I spend on this? It’ll stay here, and the rest I’ll carry with me.

It’s something we need to inform in our culture. Even though I’ve informed it the same way you’re hearing it, campaigns have been opened. There’s actually a campaign now, thinking of all this crowdfunding stuff: if we can find 50 people who donate 20 dollars monthly—many people donating little, continuously—who subscribe via PayPal, and the monastery can be everyone’s sustainable project. It’s been open for two years now. Ricardo, from Uruguay, very kindly opened it. When invitations come up in the group of the 50 or 60 people that’s there, the percentage of people who, when an invitation is made, end up making a donation—not always recurring—or one person asks about the account, but nothing happens. That’s the literal situation we have: the monastery currently still can’t cover its expenses.

People ask me: “Bhante, how is it that the monastery keeps doing well?” Well, here too a personal matter. I made savings for my parents—I made one to set my ex-wife free, another for my parents. That fund is there, and that’s where the monastery has been sustained from to date, with my help. The whole community needs to support, because internet, electricity—everything comes.

In our culture, I say this at cost—I’ve been criticized for speaking with this frankness, and I thank you for asking me, for placing the trust in me—but I’ve decided to express it. The criticism is precisely for this, for expressing that the idea exists that monks are only there to give. There’s a phrase I love that a teacher says: “look, spirituality can’t fly among the clouds. Spirituality has to walk where we all are.” That phrase grounds me. I’ve received criticism, not for the giving—when giving, hellos and goodbyes all around—but as soon as a need was expressed, criticism even on vinaya grounds, which I had to research with my preceptors. That’s all there, settled.

That’s the reality we’re living now. What I want to do in the future, one thing I want to do before dying, I’d love to inform the community about the benefit the monastery brings to the community—not only to Buddhists, to hospitals, universities, children—and hopefully the community would feel inspired to support it, so I could die knowing that if another monk or nun comes, the monastery is there. I’ve been able to do it now because I have my parents’ fund. I continue going to Asia, where yes, when I go on retreat, they support me, but I have to keep watching. If the next monk or nun that stays at the monastery—I’ve already donated it to the order. It worries me a bit that the next monk or nun won’t have the connections or the socialization that I have to maintain contact with the communities. It would sadden me greatly if all the monastery’s work fell apart on this point.

I’m trying the best I can. With plans too—if possible, since my sister already ordained—I’m visualizing, if it were possible, to build a nunnery, to leave both monastic communities established so they have at least a place to live. Hopefully the lay community will generate the consciousness of the benefit of having a monastery. That’s the last thing I have: finding that so I can die peacefully. Right now I’d already die peacefully, at least for the monastery; if I leave the nunnery, that’s extra. Hopefully the monastery is already grassroots locally, being sustained. That’s the challenge.

LF: Bhante, if you’d like, afterward outside we can talk. We had this discussion in my school, and it’s possible to solve. We, every month, have contributions from everyone. With that we sustain and pay for all our locations. In our case, a maximum of 100 dollars, and then down to 30 dollars, in that range, all the people. They’re not millions, but they’re enough to sustain our different centers. If you need, we can pass it along afterward. We have a plan for that. A plan needs to be put together, content promotion needs to be done.

BR: Sure, with pleasure. But yes, of course.

LF: I’ll show you briefly: we have scheduled activities, who gives what, how everything gets put together. It’s a plan like any other—unfortunately, like any business plan.

BR: Yes, that’s how the world is.

LF: I think the doubts many people have—that everything should be free, fantastic—is because they don’t know the logistical reality it carries. It’s a great effort to put together a Buddhist organization, especially here. In Asia it’s obviously easier.

BR: Or there are other challenges equally, because there’s also other competition, there are other situations. Legislation is difficult. But we should never forget that, unfortunately, services need to be paid for, people need to eat. It’s not for the monk, it’s not for us. I have everything covered, the needs I have are taken care of. I don’t know anyone personally who’s gotten rich from Buddhism. Has anyone? Sorry if I break any fantasy. No, it’s that we’re monastics, we’ve renounced, it’s very difficult. But if the monastery goes on, it goes on.

Closing: gentleness and joy

LF: Bhante, to close, is there anything you would want to mention that we haven’t mentioned? In general, I think we covered it.

BR: I saw there was interest in monastic life, the transition from lay to monastic; we saw several unexpected things that came up, about practice, we saw some things. So just, humanizing: recognizing the importance we all have at the human level, regardless. I see the monastic as an athlete. We all know how to swim and swim several times a year; an athlete is on scholarship—“don’t work at anything, we’ll give you everything you need, just swim.” Monastics are like athletes of the mind, but at the human level we’re the same. We’re just dedicated to the max.

And the importance of our culture—we also talked about mindfulness, giving it ethics, that was addressed as a logo. What other thing would also be our culture, the Latin culture? Sometimes we put too much effort into practice and we forget to oil the machine. Buddhism talks about suffering, and we have to have strong maturity: what’s seen is hard. Sometimes, if we just go “give it, give it, give it,” doing retreats where I sometimes see things are too hard—“sit, stand, sit, stand, sit”—we crack our minds, because they were already coming in injured.

I raise my hand and say: rejoicing, enjoying practice, is beautiful. Nature is impressively interesting. Have curiosity, joy, and practice the sublime abodes—love, compassion—to have the machinery of wisdom well-oiled. Otherwise it gets… how did we say it?

LF: It rusts.

BR: It gets jammed. Without oil, it jams.

Part of the problem I see in most meditators, especially of our age, is that we come from a generation—our parents and their parents—where, because of the conditions under which they grew up and were born, if you don’t work, you don’t exist. We still have that mentality, and I see it a lot in practitioners of many years—twenty, thirty years of practice—who still have that “more, more, more,” and more is not always more. We need to improve the texture, soften, and recognize that joy—pīti—is one of the factors of the jhānas. Happiness and rejoicing: the Buddha put them there because they give texture and malleability to our minds so they can strengthen. It’s a factor of enlightenment: of the seven factors, three are passive and four active, and there it is, pīti, rejoicing.

There are two ways to move the horse: with the whip, by blows, or with sugar in front. Either way, the horse moves; I prefer the sugar. Let that be our practice. Let us have our machinery of wisdom well-oiled with love, with compassion, but really, directly, like this, not as a word up there, theoretically, but here, here in the face, in contact, as much as possible, in words. We’re very present, very hard, on ourselves and in our societies. I have to say it here as an external observer in the south: dear ones, I’m telling you. It could be some gentler treatment toward one another—you hear it, you feel it. I hear it because I come more from the tropics.

LF: Careful—that seems to me to be a very cultural matter. It happens to me, for example, in Colombia—in Colombia they speak the most gentle Spanish in the cosmos. You go to Colombia and say “excuse me, could you please give me your autograph to film?” And here it’s like they bark at you. But for us, we don’t register it as harsh; it’s like “kindly.” And then when I go to Colombia, I feel strange: they’re treating me well—do they want to rob me?

BR: That’s the thing: we’re already used to it. As an external observer, it’s not the first time. I don’t live there.

LF: Right. In Chile it’s harder, harder.

BR: I couldn’t tell anyone anything about my life. This is the relationship I have. Here they treat me very well. But it’s so naturalized, and that’s what worries me. As a friend I say: I raise my hand, dear ones, it’s a bit hard. A hard ground—no matter how good the quality of the seeds of wisdom—it won’t yield. Hence the emphasis on inner gentleness. Being more gentle with ourselves. That will reflect in others. If I socially live in a place like Colombia, with my high school friends we’re all rough, and everything’s fine. That’s the invitation; I raise my hand. Consider it as an external person, and I should add that I have no interest toward anyone. I’m not out of the world, but I’ve stepped out a bit. No one owes me anything here, and I don’t owe anyone anything. Besides, if I say it long, this ground is going to need more moisture. I see it and I sustain it. As a friend.

LF: I take it, I take it.

BR: Let’s be gentler with ourselves. Gentle. So that it can grow.

LF: As in Mexico, where they’re more gentle.

BR: Well, there’s everything everywhere. But yes, that’s what I’m saying.

LF: Excellent. Well, everywhere we’re all struggling, we’re all hard inside, but in general, yes, let there be good ground. You raised your hand. Who would disagree with there being more karuṇā and more mettā everywhere? Of course. Sometimes I’ve found that we are, but it gets lost.

BR: It’s what the teachers did. It’s my wish.

LF: It’s your wish.

BR: Yes, if you’d like, it’s my wish. And if you’d like, I’ll tell you selfishly: it’ll make my job simpler. In the work I have to do, going dressed and imprinting, it’ll make my work much easier.

LF: I take it, I take it. Bhante, thank you very much.

BR: Thank you very much.

LF: Thank you very much for being on this.

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