What a great talk with Ashin Sarana yesterday! We started by learning about his earliest interest in Buddhism and spirituality. Who would have thought that an early fascination with magic and Chinese action movies were the entryway for this Czech monk into the Dhamma. U Sarana went on to describe his (mostly unsuccessful) search for a Buddhist friend in his youth, and his eventual decision to leave his girlfriend in Europe for novice ordination in Sri Lanka followed by a three year degree in Buddhist studies. Now almost a decade in Myanmar, he came just as the internet became available in a country just beginning to open up, and while Facebook was exploding. He joined the social network initially only to make Burmese friends, as a way of practicing his written Burmese ability, and from there began to use the online platform as a way to answer wide-ranging questions on Burmese culture and history, meditation practice, and the Pali scriptures. This unwittingly led to a controversial incident last month in which he found himself the center of attention in his role to speak out against monks touching money, and U Sarana discusses this matter in detail on the podcast. He also mentions a number of other wide-ranging activities, such as his translation of 20 hours of Dhamma talks of Sayagyi U Ba Khin which were recently unearthed, his creation of two picto-dictionaries for English/Burmese/Singhalese/Czech, his upcoming video Dhamma series, his assistance on the Shwe Lan Ga Lay meditator's guide, his new meditation monastery, his search throughout rural Myanmar for a true arahant, and much, much more.
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"My name is monk Sarana (Ashin Sarana), as a lay person I was known as Jan Šťovíček. I am from Czech Republic, Pilsen City. Born in 1987, at the age of 20 I left to Sri Lanka because I wanted to become a monk, and preferably attain psychic powers. In Sri Lanka I was ordained ca. 6 months later as a novice. I realized that best psychic power that an ardent monk can attain, is Nibbana. The monastery where I stayed supplied me with peace and the most important necessities, so that I could dedicate myself to meditation, calm the mind, develop loving-kindness, get control over subtle greed and hatred, and keep equanimous even in difficult times.
I attended Buddhist and Pali University while staying in a village monastery in Sri Lanka. Thanks to the monastery, I could dedicate my time to the studies, and study not only what was required, but also additional subjects, such as Myanmar language. Because of the peace and freedom I gained in monastery, I was able to learn and understand great portions of Buddha's teachings - and to repay this wealth provided to me by lay people, I taught lay people Dhamma and meditation. Once I had a Dhamma discourse in Sri Lankan TV during the Vesak day, and ca. 10 million people were reportedly listening to my words. It was so successful, that it was repeated again next day in the morning. Also, I tought once loving-kindness meditation to ca. 3000 people, still while in Sri Lanka. In different monasteries I taught loving-kindness meditation to groups of 10-50 people, daily. At a certain period I was appointed to be a chief-monk, to increase moral of a whole village, when I stayed in a monastery where a monk just passed away. I believe the moral of the people increased, and their morality as well.
After four years in Sri Lanka I moved to Myanmar, with the determination that I will attain Nibbana here indeed. A few days after my arrival to Myanmar I gained the higher ordination, I became a bhikkhu. I continued to practice loving-kindness meditation under most positive conditions here in Shwe Oo Min, and with help of Sayadaw U Tejaniya's teachings I was able to penetrate the truth of reality in the way the scriptures praise it. Since then I helped a great number of visiting lay people and monks to understand the nature of meditation, and support them in purifying their views and methods, so that their practice progresses smoothly.
I am still staying in Shwe Oo Min monastery, and next year I plan to move to a true forest monastery, not only to meditate, but also to memorize another great portion of Pali Scriptures. Already here, apart from my meditation successes in Shwe Oo Min, I was able to memorize a great amount of Pali Scriptures and gain knowledge and understanding of both theoretical Dhamma as well as monk's discipline. These days the sayadaws here send the visiting foreigners 'monks-to-be' to see me and attend a basic course of monastic discipline under my guidance. Sometimes I am given the role of 'instructor' during higher ordinations. These then become monks for a short period of a month or so, and become lay people again. Thus by the help of a monastery lay people learn meditation, Dhamma, and themselves taste the peace and purity of monks.
I believe that the greatest benefit of existence of monasteries - and with it the support of monks - is that any other people can also become monks (temporarily or undeterminedly) and practice meditation, live in peace and purity. Monks in Myanmar are reported to increase people's moral, morality, happiness, peace, and especially wisdom in terms of non-greed, non-hatred, and non-delusion."
The Czech monk Ashin Sarana taught a series of lessons on the subject of "Dhamma", as the board above so neatly indicates. His students were several young Czech boys who were visiting the Golden Land for the first time and practicing meditation at a Yangon monastery.
Czech monk U Sarana has shared the following story as to why he wished to become a monk in Burma:
"I found that Theravada is rather more original than the other ‘sects’, so I just needed to find out where I have to go to live as a Theravada monk. I simply took an Encyclopedia and searched the term Buddhisms whereby I saw the list of Buddhist countries, and first was Sri Lanka. Later on I met other Czech Buddhists who old me about Czech Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka, so adding [to] the unrest in the Golden Land I was sure that Sri Lanka was the place where I wanted to spend the rest of my life (I was 18). When I was 20 I went to Sri Lanka and there I even searched information of ways how to get Sri Lankan citizenship. After a year I moved to a village monastery where [there] was a Burmese monk (he also attended the university). But he was so different from other monks I’ve ever met before. He’d never get angry with me even when I was bad to him. He’d never think of revenge or wish me anything wrong. He cared about my satisfaction and whatever (even slightest) difficulty I had, he really did his best to help. Whenever visitors had to come, we stopped all other work and prepare some delicious food just before the visitors arrived, so that they can eat just when they come. [And he] had around 25 years (vassa) of monkhood! A great Sayadaw when in Burma… I was truly realizing his position and his behaviour. The way [these Burmese monks] carried out their duties, their knowledge of Dhamma and Vinaya, their attitude towards other beings, their patience and self-sacrifice, their humbleness and effort to emphasize in different situations of other people, endless effort to help those who suffer—I had never seen a human like that! In my sight their behavior and attitude to life’n’problems were simply superb. And seeing them so, I decided not only to get my full ordination in Burma, but also to spend my life right there. Now, having spent some six moths in Burma, I can just jump so happy with my decision. Burmese people are truly wonderful. I can’t imagine better environment, people, culture, and historical basis for ardent monastic practice than in Burma. Here, I’m absolutely satisfied."
The following message concerns a site that features notes from Sri Lanka's Buddhist and Pali University.
In the words of U Sarana, a Czech monk at Shwe Oo Min monastery in Yangon, "Welcome at the crossroad of education. You will find here notes from Buddhist and Pali University of Sri Lanka, First Year. I hope that this site will help you to improve your knowledge (for students) and to make the burden of teaching lighter (for teachers). I sincerely invite you all to point out any improvements that can be done here and especially grammatical and factual mistakes in the notes which I publish here. If the lecturer or submitter of a note is not known to me or if he is wrongly mentioned, then please point it out also....You can download whole the collection of all available corrected notes for the first year at Buddhist and Pali University of Sri Lanka. It was written by me, ven. Czech Sarana. There are also some old notes from previous years and also excerpts from books. You may use as you like. All the things that are not from books, that means all the things that I have written or just the notes, all that is VOID OF COPYRIGHT."
The site may be found here, and there are numerous downloads available.
