Episode #183: Pabhassaro Bhikkhu
“I was born in southern Poland,” begins Sebastian Copija—at the time of our conversation still in robes, and known as Pabhassaro Bhikkhu—in a conversation recorded several years ago in Yangon, before both the pandemic and the military coup. “I grew up in a mountainous beautiful scenery, with a lot of nature.”
When Sebastian was just 12, he turned away from his Catholic faith, and developed a passionate interest in American and British music, particularly heavy metal, like Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Metallica. Soon after, he taught himself how to play the guitar. Little did he know it at the time, but this would be very first experience with any kind of mindfulness training. “I wanted to be aware of everything!” he recalls. “Every sound, every movement of my fingers, everything! I just wanted to be aware of everything.”
This led to a growing interest in understanding consciousness, and Sebastian began to read voraciously: books on Zen, the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh, psychology, NLP, and concentration strategies among others. He also experimented with various spiritual techniques, most notably a Hindu form of samathā practice… but found that nothing really gave him the results he was looking for.
The next big moment in his life happened when he was 17, and his parents took him on a safari to Kenya. There in the wilderness, feeling the wind on his skin and so far from his familiar life in Poland, Sebastian got a glimpse of a kind of a simplicity in life that could be totally free of desire, not tied to a job, family, a girlfriend, or any of the other usual trappings of life. But there was no one to show him how to pursue this ideal further, and eventually the concerns of life reasserted themselves.
As his musical journey broadened, Sebastian discovered jazz, which he says made him calmer and softened his heart. But it was contact with other musicians that had the deepest impact on him. “You see this very old guy in his 80s, just a grumpy guy complaining about every single thing, and you wouldn't really want to go close to him. But then this grumpy guy sits in front of the piano… and in a split second, he transforms himself into a three-year old child, and you see his eyes blazing with joy and with freshness and the red cheeks and he's playing for one and a half hours, and honestly the music doesn't matter! He just sees his joy, just feeling it in the whole room.”
While this realization showed Sebastian the value of opening his heart purely and completely, he also understood that the old musician was the same grumpy old man without his instrument. And so Sebastian came to the conclusion that perhaps music wouldn’t be completely fulfilling for him after all, as the joy and happiness that music engendered were conditional. “It took me many years to see that what I was searching has been hidden in the teaching of the Buddha,” he explains. “He was also trying to find stability, with all the unpredictable and changing objects. He was trying to find a joy that is independent, it is not conditioned… Freedom from entanglement has been, really from that moment onwards, the primary focus in my life.”
After graduating from university, Sebastian worked at IBM for a year but realized that a typical career path in business was not for him. So he decided to try something completely different, and left for Thailand to teach English. He was soon deeply immersed in Thai culture and language, and also received two job offers: one, a coveted spot at a top university, and the other, a volunteer position at a monastery teaching monks. “I stopped for a week, because I knew, I just felt, this is going to be the most important decision in my life!” He ended up choosing the less glamorous but perhaps more fulfilling gig as an teacher at the monastery, which led him to discovering the writings of Ajahn Chah, and ultimately, the suttas.
After six months as a teacher, Sebastian was invited to ordain temporarily as a monk. He was living at a very small monastery in a poor region of the country near the Myanmar border, and there was not much else around. “We had very little,” he recalls, “but somehow we had a lot of time to practice, like 12 hours a day, and all this kind of inspiration to practice, practice, practice. And now, I don't have a job! And I don't have any mobile reception. I'm here in the forest. Suddenly, I can just sit. And indeed, just three days after ordination, it was actually very easy to feel comfortable in the sitting posture, to really find a lot of joy! And time was passing. Actually, there were a lot of difficulties, like sickness, and it was severe. It's a very poor and very difficult area to live in. But this inspiration from seeing people in the village, seeing their generosity, their support, and those moments of joy of the sitting meditation, it all were just like, by the end of the first month, I knew this is it!”
Now Pabhassaro Bhikkhu, he eagerly learned from books and through conversations with fellow monks. He began practicing breath meditation, as well as using the kasina to develop samathā. He also found his first teacher, Ajahn Pramote, who was following the strict dhutaṅga rules while living in a remote area of the forest. Although Pabhassaro Bhikkhu committed to waking up at 3 am every morning to practice with him and other forest monks, their life somehow seemed a world apart. “I felt like what you're doing is impossible! It just felt like, how can you do it? It seemed like, ‘Are they some superheroes?!’”
But then as he began to reflect on his own path up to that point, he realized that maybe ‘the impossible’ can come true. “How is it possible that I'm waking up in the morning and it's cold, but I'm just covered in three blankets in the mountains, and I'm super happy and then super joyful and that was the feeling within the whole heart and whole body? And then I realized, ‘Oh actually, they're not special! I'm not special. There are thousands of forest monks in Thailand. At that time I just realized, this is what I've been looking for! These are the real skills, and the real abilities and the inner strength lies from simple things.”
Where Pabhassaro Bhikkhu had found all past worldly endeavors lacking some degree of fulfilment, he was now filled with faith in the Buddha’s path, and felt this was the very best use of his time as a human being. Wanting to practice in a more structured way, he enrolled in his first real meditation retreat, a ten-day vipassana course in the tradition of S.N. Goenka. He didn’t sleep the first three days, but greatly enjoyed his time, and the teacher, who was also a monk, provided him specialized instructions to continue his practice with when the course ended.
Yet while Pabhassaro Bhikkhu benefited from this experience, he also found the course environment lacking the more holistic approach that the monastic life afforded. He also worried that become a “retreat dweller” carried the danger of neglecting both study and peer engagement. So he decided to split his time between living in a monastic environment and taking intensive courses. He chose Mahasi as the tradition he wanted to follow for structured meditation; at the same time, he modeled his monastic training after the Thai Forest Tradition. It is quite unusual for a monk to have a foot in two, such different practices, which encompass cultural dimensions as well as technical differences. However, Pabhassaro Bhikkhu explains how he came to incorporate both in a way that supported, rather than confused, his practice:
“If that intention is very clear, if we know that we are practicing the path of renunciation, if we know that we are practicing the path of purification, if we know that we practice from freedom from suffering, then those… are tools to support, and to bring nutriment to the heart. That has been the most important shift in my way to see the practice. Rather than trying to see which is better, which is worse, but how to really see oneself as a monastic, a son of the Buddha, and to see one's teacher as the Buddha, and to try to connect with that teaching. Of course, having more experienced, good spiritual friends, referencing the suttas, checking and cross checking with other monastics; that becomes something very priceless, really. When this monastic path is really in the right way, in accordance with the teachings, with the suttas, with the Dhamma, with the truth, then there is nothing superior!”
Another important piece of Pabhassaro Bhikkhu’s monastic life is the value he places on close relationships with fellow seekers on the path. Sometimes these friendships result in the tangible benefit of learning from one another through discussing the Dhamma for hours. At other times, he might be spending weeks in silence, and just the physical presence of a fellow aspirant is enough. Pabhassaro Bhikkhu has also found that these close relationships inspire his monastic practice in precious and unique ways, as it further opens his heart by having the opportunity to connect with someone else. “Gratitude is a genuine feeling, not just a thought, but a genuine feeling that just expands the heart,” he notes. “It is actually very natural, from gratitude, to open up into mettā, into loving kindness, into karuna, compassion, or muditā, altruistic joy. Gratitude that is cultivated by being attentive and seeing all those causes and conditions of parents, and other people who are good to us over the years, and even those people who cause trouble, who hurt us.” Pabhassaro Bhikkhu was especially fortunate to enjoy such a relationship with his own brother, who stayed and practiced for some time in Thailand.
Pabhassaro Bhikkhu’s extensive experience in Burmese and Thai monasteries also allows him to contrast how the two cultures have embraced the Buddha’s teachings in slightly different ways, requiring him to switch behaviors and practices as he moves between them. For example, he finds that Thai monasteries emphasize a much more strenuous discipline than any Burmese monastery he’s visited In terms of practice, it alternates between the austere, Thai Forest tradition, and the Mahasi tradition’s slow walking and structured meditation techniques.
There are many monastic protocol issues to navigate as well. For example, Burmese monks are generally expected to shave their heads more regularly than their Thai counterparts, while Thai monks take the extra step of shaving their eyebrows. Pabhassaro Bhikkhu also describes a difference regarding alms bowls, “In Thailand, you are to put your alms bowl on the floor, because it's the most stable part, so it's not going to fall. In Burma, you put your alms bowl on the highest possible place, even if it's a small table. In Thailand, this is considered against the monastic tradition.”
Pabhassaro Bhikkhu feels any apparent contradiction is merely superficial, however, as the intention to open to the respective teaching and submit to the tutor’s guidance is far more important. “The practice remains, you just develop in your heart,” he notes. “You have to practice, as we are drowning in the ocean of samsara. And the more we practice, we realize that if we don't swim, we drown! And once you get a glimpse of fresh air, a glimpse of a small raft of above the surface, then you don't stop rowing, you don't stop swimming, you just see necessity of that. It doesn't matter if there are big waves! You have to move very roughly like in Ajahn Chah’s monastery, or the seas are very calm and you're just floating on the salty water like Mahasi, where you slow down and you take like 45 minutes to get to the dining hall. It doesn't matter. The speed is a perception, and if there is concentration and mindfulness, there is no difficulty to adjust from one practice to another.” Pabhassaro Bhikkhu also appreciates that going from one culture to the other allows him the opportunity to examine if he has become attached a particular meditation method or interpretation of Vinaya, and if so, he can practice letting go and accepting different styles.
Yet in the end, these Buddhist countries and cultures have much more in common than not. Pabhassaro Bhikkhu continues to be moved by the dedication that Thai and Burmese villagers show during the morning alms walk. “They don't serve old food, they serve fresh foods, so someone has to wake up at four am to cook fresh rice,” he notes. “ When we look at Western culture, ‘Oh, I wake up, I have to go to gym, or I have to make my hairstyle…’ Everything starts with ‘I’! But there are so many people [in Burma and Thailand] who start their day preparing food for us. This is the culture in both countries.”
[Update: Since this episode was recorded, Pabhassaro Bhikkhu has disrobed and returned to Poland, where he is once again known as Sebastian Copija. He now teaches meditation both in person and online through his new organization, Heart of Dhamma. A follow-up interview with Sebastian has been recorded and will be released shortly.]