Episode #294: This is the second installment of Grahame White’s discussion with Insight Myanmar. He picks up the thread being back in Australia, running group sittings that grew in popularity. Joseph Goldstein was invited to conduct the country's inaugural ten-day course, setting off an explosion of interest. This soon resulted in the building of the Blue Mountains Insight Meditation Centre, complete with a Burmese style pagoda and relics brought over by Sayadaw U Lakkhana.
Over time, Grahame found himself in the middle of a tug-of-war at the center between emphasizing the more traditional forms of practice, and presenting a stripped-down emphasis of technique. Although Grahame favored the former in some manner, the center’s board chose the latter.
While there were few possibilities for practice in the West when he started out on this path, Grahame is not averse to the plethora of meditation styles and teachers available today in Australia, and around the world. He realizes that similar to the young hippies who unexpectedly assumed the mantle of imparting the profound teachings of the Dhamma to a Western audience, the present generation is trying to formulate and disseminate the practice within their own distinct context and society, including a message that is more inclusive of previously marginalized communities, and its relevance in a rapidly changing world.
In closing, Grahame, returns to the current horror that has overtaken Myanmar, the land which has given him so much. “There's been certain emotions going on in my mind, like shock and horror, and real sadness that the Dharma is no longer there in the sense that it was for many, many years,” he says, adding, “As these situations arise, they've been living with it for a thousand years, and up to the present day, and this one will pass as well...”