My Life as a Bhikkhu
by Ajahn Punnadhammo
My lay name is Michael Dominksyj. I was born in the year 1955 in the city of Toronto, Canada to working class immigrant parents. We were a Catholic family, but neither of my parents were very religious.
I certainly did not know anything about Buddhism. And yet there were signs of a connection. In the city of Toronto there was a very fine museum, the Royal Ontario Museum, which housed a superb collection of Asian art among other treasures. While other children my age were more interested in the dinosaurs and the Eygptian mummies, I felt an unexplained attraction to the Buddha images in the Chinese section. It gave me a deep feeling of peace to gaze on these serene figures. I recall asking an adult about them and the only answer I got was “That is the Chinese idea of God.”
About the same time, or a little later, I read in an encylopedia we had at home that Buddhism taught the goal of life was to seek Nirvana, which that old-fashioned British text defined as “a way of becoming happy by ceasing to exist, which is the sort of idea that only an Asiatic could understand.” I remember thinking at the time that there must be more to it than that. Nevertheless I did not follow up on my early intuition for many years. In my University days I was quite secular in my outlook and considered myself an agnostic. I took very little interest in religion of any sort. My field of study was European history and my thinking ran more to questions of social and political developments then to spiritual questions.
However, by the end of my studies I was becoming disillusioned with secular thinking. I knew that the deepest kinds of human suffering, loss, grief, loneliness, sickness and death were beyond the reach of any possible worldly remedy.
Questions like why are we here? Where are we going? What is the meaning and purpose of life? began to weigh on my mind. I could find no answers in my present situation.
I dropped out of the graduate studies program I had begun and with no definite goal in mind I reduced my possessions to what could fit into a back-pack and set out to hitchhike across the country, something which many young people did in those days. Just beginning on this journey gave me a tremendous sense of freedom. ARROW RIVER COMMUNITY CENTER
By a strange chance, which I now regard as a karmic connection, I ended up spending one night at a Buddhist meditation centre in Northern Ontario, outside of Thunder Bay. This was the Arrow River Community Center, as it was then called.
The teacher there was a Canadian man called Kema Ananda (born Eric James Bell). We stayed up late into the night talking about Buddhism and meditation, subjects which were quite new to me. I remember Kema going through the Four Nobles Truths. Hearing the First Noble Truth, the Truth of Suffering, it immediately struck me as not only true but obvious. I think I had already figured that much out for myself. I had to think about the Second Noble Truth, the Origin of Suffering is Desire, but it rang true also and seemed an important insight into life. Hearing the Third Truth, that of the End of Suffering, gave me hope and joy and the Fourth Truth, that of the Path, seemed like a wise programme which I immediately felt would be worthwhile to follow.
I left the next morning but I came back later to do a two week meditation course. It was conducted by one of Kema’s senior students and followed strictly to the method of the Burmese master Mahasi Sayadaw. This is the so-called noting practice where the meditator makes a mental note of each passing object as a sensation, a feelling, a thought etc. We followed a rigorous schedule, a hour sitting alternated with an hour walking for twenty hours a day with no breaks. The meal-times were incorporated into the meditation and every physical movement was to be carefully noted. It was the hardest thing I had ever done and I was tempted more than once to give up but I stuck it out and afterward felt it had been a powerful and transformative experience. I wanted more.
For the next ten years I remained associated with the Centre, doing several more retreats of two weeks up to three months. This was the decade of the 1980’s. About half the time I was resident at the centre and at other times I lived and worked in the city.
During times when I lived at the Arrow River Center I helped to build the facilities, which were very primitive and minimal at that time. These were periods of hard physical work.
Near the end of this decade I was working as a technician for the railway, a good job well-paid and with opportunity for advancement. And yet the draw of the spiritual life remained strong. When I heard that there was an opening in the long term retreat cabin (which I had helped to build under Kema’s guidance; he was among other things a master carpernter) I decided to quit my promising career and take the chance for a full year of solitary retreat.
So I moved into the Ridgehouse Cabin, as we called it, and began my retreat. My teacher Kema would come to see me about once a week but otherwise I had no human contact. I followed a schedule alternating between two weeks of intensive Mahasi style practice and two weeks of lighter practice during which I would meditate only part time, reading, exercising and going for walks filling out my day.
At the end of this year I did not feel any desire to get back into the ordinary lay life of work and play. I made the decision to become a bhikkhu. This was 1988. There was at that time no good options for ordaining in Canada and very few anywhere outside East Asia. After speaking to a Thai monk I met while visiting Toronto I made the decision to travel to Thailand and seek ordination at Wat Pa Nanachat.
Wat Pa Nanachat is a monastery located in Ubon province in the north-east of Thailand. It is a branch monastery of the Ajahn Chah tradition specially set up for the many foreign monks who choose to follow that path.
Ajahn Chah was a beloved monk of the forest tradition who lived from 1918-1992 . His deep Dhamma teaching combined with a down-to-earth style attracted many disciples and he became one of the most important figures of 20th century Thai Buddhism. Thousands of Thais ordained as bhikkhus under his tradition and by the 1970’s he was attracting a considerable number of foreign disciples as well. Wat Pa Nanachat, whose name translates as “Monastery of Many Nations”, was set up to accommodate these.
Thee teachings at Wat Pa Nanachat are given in English. During my time there, we had monks from Canada, the USA, England, Austrailia, Germany, and other countries.
I took the novice ordination in Feb. 1991 and the higher ordination a year later. In Theravada Buddhism, the novice ordination is called pabbajā or the “going forth” and a novice is bound by the ten precepts. The higher ordination, when the novice becomes a full bhikkhu, is called upasampadā or the acceptance becomes it marks the acceptance of the new monk into the community.
Wat Pa Nanachat is a training monastery. There are often upwards of 20 new monks and novices as well as a few lay people. The Thai forest tradition puts empasis on strictly following the Vinaya which are the rules for bhikkhus laid down by the Buddha, of which there are 227 in all. The daily routine was usually as follows. We would rise for morning chanting and meditation at 3:30 AM followed by walking for alms in the local village. The meal would typically be at 11 AM. Under the Vinaya rules, monks may not eat solid food after noon and at Wat Pa Nanachat we followed the additional rule of eating only one meal a day. After the meal we would clean up our personal bowls and also the bowls of the senior monks and tidy up the eating area. The rest of the afternoon was unstructured until we met for a period of communal chores about 4:30 PM. After that we would share a hot drink of tea or coffee and listen to some Dhamma reflection from a senior monk. The day would end with an evening session at 7:00 PM which consisted of chanting, meditation and a talk on Dhamma. Our rest period then typically began about 9:00 PM.
I stayed in Thailand for a little over five years. Although Wat Pa Nanachat remained my home monastery in this period, I did spend some time in other places. I especially enjoyed the two retreat monasteries which we maintained in remoter parts of the country. These were Pu Jon Kom on the Mekong River opposite Laos and Tow Dtum in the south west jungle near Myanamar. Tow Dtum especially is very remote and difficult to access. It is in one of the last remaining pockets of old growth forest in Thailand and it teems with wildlife, even tigers and elephants. I felt blessed to be able to live and practice in such a place which I felt must be very much like what the monks experienced at the time of the Buddha.
I was staying at Tow Dtum in 1995 when I received a letter from my former teacher Kema Ananda back in Canada. He was dying of cancer and he requested that I come back to see him and to take over the Arrow River Centre after his passing. I sought the permission of Ajahn Passano, then the abbot of Wat Pa Nanachat who also happened to be at Tow Dtum at the time. Receiving his blessing, I began organizing myself for my departure from Thailand.
The return journey seemed very strange to me. After several months in a remote jungle hermitage, I remember sitting in the Bangkok airport in front of a large screen showing news on CNN and wondering what strange planet I had found myself on. Once back in Canada, it was surprising for me to experience the culture I had grown up in as somehow foreign. I had picked up enough Thai culturation that the Canadians now seemed like happy-go-lucky barbarians and the weather seemed brutally cold.
I arrived in Toronto in Nov. of 1995 and spent the winter in the city staying at the home of a friend. Kema was still alive, but fading and I spent considerable time visiting him. He passed away peacefully in Jan. of 1996.
I waited for spring to return to the place where I had first encountered the Dhamma, closing a big circle that had taken me to the other side of the globe. I moved into Kema’s old cabin and took over the management of the Arrow River Community Centre. I have been there ever since.
Since my arrival back at Arrow River, we have made many changes, beginning with the name. As a monastic establishment I felt the name “Community Center” was no longer appropriate and we had it legally changed to the Arrow River Forest Hermitage.
The Arrow River Forest Hermitage is located on the Arrow River south west of the city of Thunder Bay on 92 acres of wooded land. We now have seven individual cabins, a meditation hall and kitchen, a library and a workshop. We are in a remote rural location and are not connected to the grid so we have only the power we make ourselves with solar panels and gasoline generators. The climate here is very cold in winter, often reaching 30 degrees below zero Celsius, and we heat with wood, so preparing firewood for the winter becomes a major task every fall. Most of the time I am the only monk here, but we do host visiting monks from time to time.
An important part of the monastic tradition of which I am a part is following the Vinaya rules. For example, a bhikkhu may not store food overnight, cannot have or use money and may only eat that which has been directly given him by a lay person. These rules were wisely laid down by the Buddha in order to keep the monastic community integrated with the laity. In a Buddhist country it is typical for the monks to walk silently through the village each morning and receive rice and other food items from the villagers. In a remote hermitage like mine, in a non-Buddhist country, this means that there must always be at least one lay person resident at the hermitage to take care of the kitchen and to do the shopping.
As well, we cannot charge for any services we provide. Everything we do must be supported by donations only. These things mean that even as a solitary monk living in a remote place, I cannot escape the neccessity of being part of a larger community.
I do quite a bit of teaching nowadays. I give a weekly Dhamma talk at the Hermitage and several times a year I travel to teach in cities in Canada and the United States. I also do a bit of writing and have published articles in various Buddhist publications and have an upcoming book on Buddhist Cosmology presently (as of April 2018) in the publisher’s hands for final editing.
I have now been a bhikkhu for 26 years (as of 2018) and have been serving as abbot of the Arrow River Forest Hermitage for more than 20 years. I have no plans to go anywhere else and will remain where I am until I grow too feeble to chop wood and carry water.
This article was prepared for reading aloud as part of the ceremony for the first ever pabbajā (of Bhante Mihita) in Havana, Cuba, April 2018.