Question: Dear Sayadaw, I want to share my story. I am a nun just ordained in this trip. Since I have been ordained I feel better having abandoned my daily life, my daily living and responsibilities, my future plan. I really see a nun’s life will be very beneficial and I think this is the right decision for me. Thank you for everything.

– “Before you became a nun, you could not change your life, therefore you cannot change your mind. That’s why there is problems. As a nun, you can be responsible to do good deeds more and more, you are not the only nun, there are many nuns, so also there will be many new nuns. That’s why if you are not trying hard, you may not satisfied by yourself, if you compare with other nuns. The longer you remain as a nun, the more nuns you have to deal with; if you’re grasping your life as a nun you will be grasping the life of other nuns. In this way there will be a competition, this is nature from society, not only human society but also for religious society. We should not be satisfied of yourself, you should emphasize to do good deeds more and more. I know you as a lay person and I also know you as a nun so I can see the difference from living the life of a lay person, this great. By changing your life from a lay person to a nun you can get many benefits. If you can change your mind, ignorance and attachment to mindfulness and detachment you can get amazing benefits. Most of lay people want to change their mind, their life but they are not relying on Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha, that’s why it is difficult to change their lives. You are still young, you have enough time to do many good things you can work for many people, as a nun you are free to do all kinds of good deeds. You should try hard.”

Question: As a new nun I am not able to detach from the way I am doing things. I see clearly that I am doing good deeds with too much attachment and it has caused many unhappy results. I think I should stop doing good deeds till I can detach better from my old habits. Please give me your advices, Sayadaw.

– “Attachment on doing good deeds is much more better than attachment on not doing good deeds. By not doing what is good we are sure not to get good results. By doing what is good even with attachment we are sure to get good results. For example, Thabarwa center is a big organisation. Many people young and old, sick and healthy, religious people and non – religious people are participating in Thabarwa center. Most of people in Thabarwa Center are doing good deeds with attachment for sure, that’s why the Center get many good results of doing good deeds even with attachment. If we are not doing good deeds because of attachment we are sure not to get good results. When we do good deeds with attachment we are doing with right views because knowing present attachment as attachment is right understanding, right view. That’s powerful. Knowing what is right is easy, but not to do what wrong and to do what right is difficult. So making mistakes is the nature of living beings we should try to accept the incomplete nature of living beings. That’s really important. Now you are greedy like other living beings you want to be complete but there are many things you don’t understand and you cannot do for sure. You should not rest in this incomplete condition you should try to accept and then try to detach from yourself; try to detach from grasping habits as your mistake. With this right understanding we should keep on doing good deeds together. Knowing the truth is the cause of correcting our own mistakes or weakness. We just need to know the truth more and more.”