Question: Hello Sayadaw. I had many unhappy memories from when I was a child. Those memories always come back very clearly when I meditate. I was trying to meditate alone in top of the mountain to leave them behind but I didn’t succeed. Now I am back to the monastery and really really don’t know what to do. Please give me your advices!

We need to find out the better way by ourselves. A man practising alone in forest and at monastery and at here are not the same. Teamwork here is better than in a forest and in your monastery. That’s why at the present, we should emphasize to practice like this if you are convenient with this, with me and here in this center. You should try to practice like this often to develop your skills and abilities of doing good deeds. Besides, if you are not able to practice like this with us, you should practice by yourself in forest alone and at your monastery also. You must be able to practice more to develop your abilities, you must try to find out which is better by your own experience. You should continue, even if you can not practice like this all the time. However practicing, wherever you are, until you can overcome from the memories of bad experiences, happenings, bad views. In order to be able to do like that, you should not think of yourself, you just think of doing good deeds, doing various kinds of good deeds, try to choose which is better for you until you can practice by yourself easily.

In Myanmar there are many meditation centers around the country. Besides, there are also many big meditation centers, they are practising seriously by their own ways, you can learn many things from many different meditation centers. It will make you developed quickly. It’s better if you go with meditation visa, then you can stay for long term. You should try to practice in the most famous meditation centers to help your own experiences about their good points.