Ajan Brahm – The Western Monk Who Wears Eastern Smile

Introduction

Ajan Brahm is one of the hands full of world renown Buddhist monks in the modern era. His charisma has won over East and West despite the concern Buddhist and Non-Buddhists. Ajan Brahm has maintained his reputation in many ways as former physics student of Cambridge University, as a Buddhist monk who studied and practice meditation under Ajahn Chah, as a fine witted speaker, Buddhist counselor, writer and at the same time as a rebellious revolutionist monk. His approaches to modern issues are been seen as controversial. In this essay, our discussion about Ajahn Brahm mainly focusses on his early life in West and East, the challenges he faced, teaching methods and controversial issues and followed by the conclusion.

Biography - early life in the West and East

Buddhism formally introduced to West in the 18th century. Since then Buddhism spread East to West by many ways such as through books, by immigrants, missionary works and so on. Last two centuries westerners took refuge on science. As Ajahn Brahm explains in one of his dhamma discussion “westerns believed in science would be able to bring ultimate happiness. ” They seek happiness through material development, unfortunately, it was not found in it. Peter Betts was born in London, the United Kingdom on August 7, 1951and brought up above mentioned environment. He managed to get a scholarship on Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University in the late 1960s. In the university, at the age 18, he joined the university’s Buddhist Society where he first saw a Buddhist monk. After one year of his graduation he traveled to Thailand and in 1974 he entered the monk’s order in Bangkok.

Later that year he traveled to north-east Thailand and became a student of meditation master Ajahn Chah at Wat Pa Pong. Challengers he faced North-east Thailand even today also consider as one of the rural areas. The situation far worse in the 70s. Ajan Brahm explains challengers he faced in his Dhamma talks more often. Poor villagers all ways trying to feed monks with the best food they have. Whenever the saw western monks they offer to bawl full of sticky rice on top of boiled frog. Though this was a delicious meal for villages it was always an awful meal for whom never got used to it. It is far worse for a foreigner who practices one meal per day. Malaria was a serious threat in the 70s around Asia. North-east Thailand was one of the areas in Thailand highest rated Malaria patients were reported. Ajan Brahm explains how he was treated for his fever without having proper medication in the remoter hospital. Facing all those challenges he stayed 9 years under Ajahn Chah mastering his skills on meditation, Vinaya practices, and Dhamma perching.

In 1983 he was invited to Perth by the Buddhist Society of Western Australia (BSWA). It was not the end of challenges he was faced; it was the starting of new challenges. As a young monk in an unknown country where Buddhism wasn't familiar with people, he had to struggle to find four requisites. He had to cook for his meals, had to lay bricks and carpentry to build the monastery. Taking Dhamma to the new audience was another challenge. We can talk about it under his teaching.

His teachings

When we talk about the Teachings of Ajahn Brahm we can’t neglect his teacher’s influences. Ajahn Chah’s simple yet profound style of teaching has a special appeal to all of his disciples. Ajan Brahm also closely follow his master's way of teachings.

Ajan Brahm as a westerner effectively got close to the western mindset. Without preaching sophisticated philosophical teachings he started promoting happiness. The first thing he used the Eastern smile. The second was the sense of humor. Thirdly telling stories. When the audience got used to Buddhism he started meditation retreats expanding monastery providing facilities for yogis. Ajan Brahm highly speaks about Jhanic happiness in his meditation programs. He wants to challenge the mistaken concept of Buddhism is a pessimistic religion. He set himself as a happy monk and he encourages others to share his happiness through Buddhism. He has written many books and has given Dhamma talks under many subject matters. All those talks and publications include stories sense full of humor. As he says when people start to open their mouth to laugh he throw his wisdom pills to their mouth which means he uses the sense of humor to open wisdom his audience.

Controversial issues

As it is mentioned in introduction Ajahn Brahm is a rebellious revolutionist monk. We have to use different criteria to understand Ajan Brahm. He was born in the west and brought up in the western environment. Feminism or equal rights for the female is a modern-day topic. This background allows him to question tabooed topic of Bhikkhuni order in Theravada tradition. He believes Buddha was a radical figure in the ancient Indian and his religion should be rebellious too. 2009 he started Bhikkuni Higher ordination in his monastery in Perth. For this act, he was persecuted by being expelled from his own lineage (Thai forest monk tradition). Ajahn Brahm openly spoke about his support towards LGBTIQ community and at a conference in Singapore in 2014 said he was very proud to have been able to perform a same-sex marriage blessing for a couple in Norway. His argument is Buddhist teaching of compassion and non-discrimination don’t valid to them?

Conclusion

Throughout our discussion we have covered important parts of Ajan Brahm life under four topics of his early life in West and East, the challenges he faced, teaching methods and controversial issues. To conclude this entire discussion, we can understand Ajahn Brahm as a modern monk and new phase of western Buddhism. Though he is a radical Buddhist figure to eastern Buddhist masters we can see he is becoming an important and popular Buddhist monk in the west. One of the unique qualities of Buddhism is an adaptation to the different cultures. What we have to ask ourselves is “isn’t that Ajan Brahm doing?”