Greg Kleiman, Part 2
Coming Soon…
Imagine being an aspiring artist and having the opportunity to travel through a time portal to 16th century Rome and Florence, and able to apprentice with some of the greatest Renaissance painters. That gives you some idea what it was like for Greg Kleiman, an Australian spiritual seeker and aspiring monk, to travel to Burma during the Golden Age of Burmese monastics. He met and learned from some of the country’s greatest meditation masters, spending formative years in intimate contact, while living, studying, meditating, teaching, and traveling with them.
This is the second of three episodes bringing you Greg’s interview. If you haven’t heard the first one, we suggest you take a moment to listen to that, as it goes into his childhood and early spiritual journey. Every sentence in Greg’s interview is so chock full of information and fascinating description that it’s impossible to capture even all the high points in these summaries… all the more reason to make sure you take a moment to listen to the actual interview!
We left off just as Greg had discovered Jack Kornfield’s Living Buddhist Masters in a Tibetan Monastery in Dharamsala, India. One of the chapters was devoted to Taungpulu Sayadw, who taught Four Elements meditation and the contemplation of the thirty-two parts of the body. Greg was intrigued, as he always felt an attraction to the physical sciences, and was inspired to try and ordain under the great master teacher.
From the start of his spiritual journey, Greg had been open to studying all branches of Buddhism, but increasingly as he advanced along the path, he felt particularly moved to seek out its origins. That’s why he didn’t just stay in Australia and study there, but instead traveled to learn from forest monks in seclusion, paralleling how the Buddha imparted the Dhamma to handfuls of monks in natural settings. Greg notes how important it is as meditators to keep re-grounding ourselves in the Buddha’s own teachings, and not just rely on later iterations of them, just as the contemporary traditions.
Above all else, this means that meditators should keep their bearings by prioritizing the original teachings of the Buddha, something Greg reiterates more than once during his talk. He feels that centering one’s understanding in three fundamental Suttas is crucial towards this end: the Maha Satipattana, Anattā Lakkhana, and Dhammacakkappavattana Suttas. He taught himself Pāḷi in order to translate them, and still gets joy, inspiration and insight to this day every time he reads them. Greg uses those Suttas as a basis for examining the contemporary meditation traditions of the Buddhist world, and cautions meditators to be on the lookout for “propaganda,” that is, teachings or techniques from a particular tradition that cannot be traced back to the Pali Canon. Greg notes that teachers instruct others as they themselves have learned, and so their meditation techniques always have the most coherence and impact within their own system—that is why it is essential to examine them critically in their relationship to the source materials.
Along these lines, while Greg sees the value in learning under multiple teachers, he also feels it is important to follow the teaching of each particular tradition to the letter. Since many traditions claim the same source (which he notes in Burma is the Maha Satipattana sutta), yet can also seem to contradict each other according to interpretation, sticking to the guideline of taking teaching on its own merits is critical for the yogi to keep in mind. But again, he repeatedly advocates that to keep one’s bearings, yogis should keep reorienting themselves to the Pāḷi texts, the Eightfold Noble path and the Four Noble Truths. Greg likens finding the Buddha’s true teaching inside any iteration of a technique or system to panning for gold: keep at it, search out gold amid the muck, and it will eventually show itself… and above all else, don’t believe what you’re taught hook, line and sinker. The meditator needs to examine not only the teachings themselves, but their history, and the context they arose in, all while comparing the instructions with the Suttas.
And Greg says that we should be especially skeptical of even the 2nd and 3rd generation of teachers within a tradition. By that point, he says it’s like the game (commonly known as “telephone” in the US) where one person whispers a sentence to the next person, who turns and whispers it to the next, and so on, until the last person says what she heard aloud—and often by then, the sentence bears little resemblance to the original.
During the discussion, Greg goes deeper into the different traditions, teachers, and systems he learned about or experienced directly, in varying degrees of detail. First, he speaks about how much he respects the detailed map of nyan-sin, or the progression of insight, that Mahasi Sayadaw laid out (although adding that it doesn’t completely match up with the Visuddhimagga, which that tradition claims to have drawn it from). He remembers Mahasi telling him that he only taught meditation through the six sense doors, because that was all he was qualified to teach. He found Mahasi to be a serious man with a beautiful mind who didn't have to talk to fill the space; his presence was all mindfulness. As for Pa Auk, Greg mentions his system as the most complex and well thought-out of them all (a topic he revisits in depth later on). Similarly, he has wonderful things to say about U Jotika, who he also speaks more about later in the interview. Shwe Oo Min Sayadaw was “a real mindful dude” and Mingun Sayadaw was a “walking computer” in his ability to memorize suttas. The latter also suggested that Greg apply himself to the memorization of suttas that impacted him personally. Of famous teachers who had passed before he landed in Burma, he comments on how Ledi’s level of detail, understanding, and flexibility was just “awesome,” and how Mogok Sayadaw’s analysis of the Paticcasamuppada is brilliant in terms of how it connects all the dots. As for S. N. Goenka, he never met him or took a 10-day course from him, but had many friends who did. However, while Greg admires Goenka’s mission and what he accomplished, he feels that his organizational structure is much too confining, and more importantly, Greg and his fellow monks find that the Indian meditation master “interpreted things in his own strange way,” at odds with a classical understanding of the texts.
Reflecting further, Greg compares Burma’s rich Dhamma history with the Thai Forest Tradition. He comments that as far as he can tell, the latter has no real textual or scriptural tradition, while in Burma teachers are constantly checking their methods with the scriptures in a critical way. But he has no lack of appreciation for the Thai tradition, commenting that many Thai monks clearly speak genuinely and wisely from their experiences of deep meditation.
Getting back into his own story, Greg describes his experience returning to Burma in January 1982, now ready to ordain as a monk with Taungpulu Sayadaw. Tangpulu Sayadaw was a beloved contemporary of Mahasi who traveled the country and spoke simply with country folk, giving short talks and meditation sessions. Because Sayadaw was already 86 years old, Greg knew he might not have long to learn under him, and so he considered ordaining under Ajahn Chah as his backup plan.
It turned out that Taungpulu Sayadaw happened to be away at that time setting up a monastery in Boulder Creek, California. While awaiting his return, in another instance of the serendipity that reappears throughout his interview, Greg bumped into someone at a Dharamsala library who had been with Taungpulu; he connected Greg with U Ba Aye, a disciple who had been former deputy minister during the Japanese occupation, and who promised to assist Greg in his aspiration.
While awaiting Taungpulu Sayadaw’s return to Burma, Greg decided to take a three-month retreat at a Mahasi center. By this time, each meditation retreat was becoming increasingly “easier.” During his first course with Mahasi Sayadaw, he could only manage five minutes of sitting at a time, although acknowledged that it “knocked out 50% of the chatter and stupidity.” This time at Mahasi, he was able to manage sitting for longer periods… meditating 20 hours per day was no longer an issue.
Greg notes that whenever he feels down on his luck or doubtful of his progress on the path, he feels a deep sense of joy that he met such dynamic teachers like Mahasi and Taunpulu in lifetime, and benefited from their presence in his life.
When Taungpulu Sayadaw finally returned, Greg traveled with him to Thailand. Serendipity reared its head again, as he met the 14-year old daughter of one of Taungpulu’s biggest supporters in Mae Sot, who would become his future wife many years later.
Eventually Greg became acquainted with U Jotika, another Taungpulu disciple. They lived together for several years at Migaduwon Monastery in Pyin Oo Lwin, and following Taungpulu’s death and U Jotika’s move to Pyinmana, Greg took on the duties of a Sayadaw there, becoming the only known instance in Burmese history of a Western monk taking on full duties of a Sayadaw at a Burmese monastery.
After some time, Greg began to hear rumblings about a young monk making waves, Pa Auk Sayadaw. It was said that he specialized in Four Elements meditation. In those days it was still extremely difficult to travel as a foreigner, so Greg sent two Burmese monastic friends whose opinion he trusted to check it out on his behalf and report back. One was a fervent Mogok disciple, and he didn't stay with Pa Auk more than a day; the other immediately took to the Pa Auk system, staying on and dedicating himself to the Sayadaw’s teachings. Still unsure with one vote for and one against, Greg inquired of a third monk if they followed proper Vinaya there, and whether he thought it would be worth Greg’s effort. The third monk answered both questions in the affirmative, so Greg sought the necessary permissions to travel there. Although Pa Auk Sayadaw is now known internationally, Greg believes he was the first Westerner to ever meet and study with him, even rooming with him for a full year.
Greg spends a lot of time talking about what a fascinating figure Pa Auk is. On the one hand, the great monk is quite orthodox in his approach. His system is directly grounded in the Pāḷi Cannon and Commentaries, in particular the Visudhimagga, more so than any other contemporary tradition. On the other hand, Pa Auk was also considered very radical because his teaching implicitly calls into question not only the validity of the Mahasi approach—the major meditation tradition in contemporary Burma—but pretty much all other traditions as well; many monks rejected him outright or ignored him completely. Senior teachers at Panditarama and Mahasi refused to even read Pa Auk’s books, and the press (then controlled by the government, which itself was linked to the Mahasi tradition) wouldn’t even publish them! And yet because Pa Auk was so extremely learned and gifted with a photographic memory, he always got the better of anyone who tried to dispute with him about his teachings.
Greg explains that early on, Pa Auk was quite influenced by the Four Elements meditation of Than Lyin Sayadaw and the ānāpāna practice of Kanni Sayadaw. Pa Auk also learned the Mahasi technique, but was ultimately not satisfied and went off to sit and study on his own for many years. When he emerged again, he had woven together his complex but well-integrated system. Although he used to stress Four Elements meditation first, Pa Auk first teaches ānāpāna now, with an emphasis on developing strong samādhi, which is then used as a springboard for Four Elements meditation and other insight practices. Greg says that Pa Auk has a rigorous perspective on what it takes to attain even the first stage of enlightenment, including, for example, the need to directly experience the workings of karma in all three time scales of the paticcasamuppada.
And that brings an end to Part 2. Be sure to check out the next and final installment of Greg’s interview, when he speaks about his warm friendship with U Jotika, and the Dhamma of some of Myanmar’s most notorious military generals.