Question: Hello Sayadaw, I am practicing meditation at home, I wonder if chanting before or after practicing? How and how long should I do it? Thank you.

“If you are used to chanting you can continue. That is not essential though. Keep doing that then you will understand not really need to do chanting. You should understand doing something new is more difficult than do what we used to do. So no need to change by force. You should try and decide by yourself depending on your changing conditions or her changing mind. Just adjust or stop to be more convenient or in harmony with your changing wisdom or mind. There are many things we cannot say for sure. Depending on the changing time, place, person, and condition, we should try to make the right decision.”

“I have been teaching here in Phuoc Son for over 4 years. But this trip is different from the former ones. Unexpectedly, there is a group of Thai joining. Most of them are the leaders of their own monasteries, they are sure to learn from this retreat a lot, so also I can learn from them about their experiences. That’s great. In the Myanmar group also, most of the people are from outside the center, also many groups among Myanmar yogis. That’s why it’s worth teachings in this retreat because many different people are doing good deeds together here. This retreat becomes the beginning of future international meditation retreat not only in Vietnam but also in Thailand and Myanmar. Besides, we are not doing like this deliberated, it happens naturally. Really great. I have been teaching many meditation retreats not only in Myanmar but around Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, the US, and Europe; also in Australia, England. But this retreat is the most crowded international one. It’s just processing, we have chances to learn more about teamwork. Without our own experiences, it’s really difficult to think about international teamwork. If we can do our best in this retreat, we are sure to do better in future retreats. Actually giving, donating together is easy; keeping precepts together is not much easy; practicing meditation together like this is the most difficult. But for all of us, it will not be difficult in the future. If more and more people are able to do good deeds together, we can do many things, we are sure to overcome many difficulties. We just need to continue doing good deeds again and again. In this way, most people in the world can be together as Dhamma friends. If we are able to do so, it leads to the peace and development of the whole world.”