As England begins to descend into Autumn, Luang Poh Sudhiro has been active sharing his understanding of the dhamma and some of his personal experiences with others.
On Friday, September 7th, Luang Poh Sudhiro shared the dhamma with an audience of over twenty at the Friend's Meeting House in Cambridge. He spoke of how he got the most out of his breathe, using it to overcome the excruciating and chronic pain from his liver cancer - since cured, how, as a soldier, he used his breathe in the Cambodian jungles to save the lives of his fellow compatriots along with himself, and how his mastery of the breathe helped save his life again when he was bitten by a venomous snake, slowing his heart rate down and calming his nerves so that the poison could not spread rapidly through his body. But Luang Poh, like all of us, will eventually stop breathing.
What will we do with the few breaths we have left?
The following week, on Wednesday, he visited a meditation group in Ely at the conference centre in the area of Cathedral, to offer his understanding and experiences to others and listen to theirs. They sat together silently and breathed and then chatted about a variety of topics, including the myopic attitude which many Westerners have towards practice. Luang Poh situated meditation practice carefully within a broader and more wholesome context of spiritual development and life which includes the practice of generosity, living a life of moral integrity, and, finally, of developing a deeper understanding of oneself. Without these other practices and aspects present, meditation's transformative potential is stifled and reduced to a mere coping mechanism for the vicissitudes of life, all-be-it a far healthier one than a beer or soap operas.
The dhamma is to be lived.
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