Ajahn Brahm - Falling is Flying: The Dharma of Facing Adversity

What do you do when everything falls apart?

In free fall, nothing is solid and there is nothing to hold on to. There is no way to control the experience. You have to surrender, and with that surrender comes the taste of liberation.

MASTER GUOJUN

Instead of trying to discipline your mind with ill will, fault-finding, guilt, punishment, and fear, use something far more powerful: the beautiful kindness, gentleness, and forgiveness of making peace with life.

AJAHN BRAHM

Most of us tend to live each day as if it will be just another day like nothing will change. It always comes as a shock when we lose a job, a loved one, a relationship, our health even though weve seen it happen again and again to those around us. Once we finally realize were not immune, then we wonder: what now? How do we continue when the terrain suddenly gets rough?

Meet your companions for this rocky part of the path: Ajahn Brahm and Chan Master Guojun one a teacher in the Theravada Buddhist tradition, the other in the Chinese Zen tradition. Youll learn from the honest, generous teachings of these two beloved meditation masters how you can still live fully even flourish when the road ahead looks steep and lonely.

Personal, poetic, instructive, and often laugh-out-loud funny, this is inspiring advice for people from all walks of life.

With unflinching honesty, Ajahn Brahm and Chan Master Guojun share the struggles theyve faced, even after becoming monks and respected teachers. We see how, instead of turning away in aversion from adversity, theyve used it as a steppingstone for finding the peace and happiness we all seek. I love this book!

TONI BERNHARD, author of How to Be Sick

In free fall, nothing is solid and there is nothing to hold on to. There is no way to control the experience. You have to surrender, and with that surrender comes the taste of liberation.

MASTER GUOJUN

Instead of trying to discipline your mind with ill will, fault-finding, guilt, punishment, and fear, use something far more powerful: the beautiful kindness, gentleness, and forgiveness of making peace with life.

AJAHN BRAHM

IN 2009 a group of four highly qualified bhikkhunis asked me for full ordination. It wasnt unexpected; discussions about the discriminatory practices in our tradition had been ongoing. Full female ordination in Theravada Buddhism had been missing for about one thousand years, and I had been told that it was impossible to revive it on legal grounds. This may not have been a big issue in Asia, but it certainly was a problem in Western countries such as Australia, where Im based.

The problem with ordaining bhikkhunis stemmed from their absence. The argument in Thai Theravada is that you need five fully ordained bhikkhunis to give full ordination to other bhikkhunis. If there were no bhikkhunis, as prescribed in the Vinaya (monastic code) to perform the ceremony, then ordination was impossible a Catch-22. This was an embarrassment to many monks like me. It made me feel like a hypocrite every time that I mentioned that compassion should be given to all beings. It was as if I was deliberately excluding women. As if my compassion was selective.

There were white-robed women, living in monasteries, following the additional eight precepts required of their gender, but they were assigned the same duties as white-robed men (anagarika) who were at the entry level to monastic life duties often regarded by Western Buddhists as inappropriately menial. And whereas the men had the opportunity to proceed to higher ordination, the white-robed women were denied this option only because of their gender.

Attempts had also been made to establish a brown-robed order of ten-precept nuns, called sayalay in Myanmar and siladhara in the West. Because such an order of siladharas had no basis of legitimacy in the Theravada texts, they too became regarded as second-class monastics, not given the same respect and courtesies as the male monastics.

I was informed, for example, that the following five points were abruptly imposed by some senior monks on a community of siladharas residing within the same monastery, without the courtesy of consulting them first.

The most junior bhikkhu is senior to the most senior siladhara. This structural relationship is defined by the Vinaya and cannot change over time.

In public situations such as giving a blessing, leading the chanting, or giving a talk, leadership always rests with the most senior bhikkhu present. He may, if he chooses, invite a siladhara to lead, but this in no way establishes a new standard of shared leadership.