Meditation in Pa Auk Tawya, Myanmar

Making films, art, yoga. Participating - and telling about it.

Until I met with the Most Venerable Pa Auk Tawya Sayadaw who had one simple remark: "Do not show or tell anything until you have found specific deeper techniques. You will always give partial replies to questions. Not good for the people, and bad karma for you. Please go and meditate, and then you may say or write or show anything you want, because then you will understand everything."

I believed him.

I gave up my apartment in Amsterdam, sold or gave away all my "stuff", and will now meditate for a long time in Pa Auk, Myanmar. Not easy. One gets to the very root of existence when practising all the techniques described in the Visuddhi Magga - "The Path of Purification". A book written ±1550 years ago in Sri Lanka and teaching the same techniques, unchanged, that the Buddha taught in his lifetime.

It is an extra-ordinary experience.

Three rules are applied for good concentration:

Stop visiting people.

Stop talking.

Stop thinking.

"This is the real thing."

I cannot imagine that meditation can get more serious than this.

 The short film below was compiled from materials already prepared last year at a 4 months meditation course in the north, and will give a good impression of what the daily routine is like down at the southern Pa Auk main meditation Monastery near Mawlamyine in the Mon State.

For more information on Pa Auk Forest Monastery and for links to free book downloads please look under heading "meditation".