“”This session will end at 5 o’clock in the evening. After this session, a Vietnamese woman will be ordained to be a nun. She is 62 years old, she has 8 children. She wants to be a nun for long time ago. As she did not have chance to be ordained in this center. Now she will be a nun today by me. She intends to be a nun for life-time. [And she will come and stay in our TNC Dhamma Nursing Home in Vietnam – Editor]

It’s difficult to understand about the life of monks and nuns. Only when we ordain we can be dealing with religious people and then we can have our own experiences of monk-hood and nun-hood. There are many difficulties as a monk or nun, especially for shelter, food, medicine and meditation or mindfulness and detachment. Only when we are ordained to be monks and nuns, we can understand clearly.
I became a monk in 2002, I can successfully establish my own meditation center in 2007. Before I have my own meditation center, I can not help to solve, to fulfill the needs of other monks and nuns. When I have my own meditation center, lay people have a chance to be ordained in my center. At Thabarwa center – Thanlyin, at the present moment, over 500 monks and 400 nuns are staying there. Some transferred from other monasteries or meditation centers, many of them were ordained in Thabarwa center. As a lay person and a meditator, I don’t have many chance to deal with monks and nuns. Only when I became a monk I have to deal with other monks everyday and with nuns sometimes. In this way, I get to know more and more about religion by my own practice. I, myself, became one of religious person, that’s why my knowledge about religious people is sure.

As monks and nuns, we become real children of Buddha. There are many good points to be the children of Buddha, besides there are also many difficulties and problems also. Good points are limitless and beyond works. Only by our own experiences we can understand more and more. Weakness are limited, it can be solved when there is the right time if we are doing good deeds in the right way. As a layperson, we have many responsibilities to the society, as a monk or nun, we have not much responsibilities to the society, that’s why we are free to do good deeds as much as we can. We can get another supports from the other monks and nuns and meditators.

We can also have much supports from devotees who taking care of Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha. As much as we are dutiful in our responsibilities, we can get more and more belief and supports from monks and nuns. I have to use or sacrifice the whole of my life and belongings to fulfill the need of the people who are concerned with Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha. That’s right to do, that’s why there are many Thabarwa Nature Center in the country and around the world. More and more monks, nuns, meditators and lay people are staying and working in Thabarwa centers worldwide. Most of the teaching are more theory, less practice. My teaching is more practice, less theory. Therefore it is really useful for those who are able to do. Besides, we emphasize in teamwork, that’s why we have chance to get success from teamwork. Besides, we emphasize the followers, not much the leaders.

Therefore, most of followers are free to do good deeds in our center. Traditionally, we emphasize to get success on whatever we do; in our center, we emphasize to keep doing what is good whether we understand or not, whether we get failure or success, whether we are able to do or not. In this way, we become skillful in doing good deeds continuously. That is the cause and result continuously. Traditionally we used to learn about good cause and good effect or result. In Thabarwa center, we are learning about both good cause and good result, bad cause and bad result at the same time. Traditionally we used to learn from one of the masters; in our center we are learning from everyone, not only from the different masters, but also from each other, between meditators and volunteers. Everyone can be both teacher and student at the same time. It is easy to understand but the method we use is doing or not doing only, experiencing or not experiencing only, knowing or not knowing only, using only or not using only which is deep and difficult to understand. But if we are able to do good deeds continuously like this, we can understand this method which is the only middle way.””