Developing Samana Sanna

Yesterday, at the City of the Dharma Realm in Sacramento, I was giving instructions to twenty-eight novices who were preparing to ordain next month as bhikṣunīs, Buddhist nuns. It was quite a delightful time. Their sincerity was tangible.

One of the ideas I brought up with them is developing samaṇa saññā, the perception or recollection of being a religious seeker. We function out of our perceptions. We perceive something to be interesting or desirable, and we get excited. We perceive something to be worrisome or troublesome, and we start to have aversion or negativity. Perceptions are always informing how we relate to things. The Buddha encouraged us to develop the perception or recollection of being religious seekers. In that way, we can relate to the circumstances we find ourselves in and to the people we live with from a very different perspective. By perceiving ourselves to be religious seekers— those who are seeking peace—we encourage ourselves to always relate and act in the best possible manner.

So how do we conduct ourselves? What do we do as seekers? How do we engage in our responsibilities and duties in order to maintain a quality of peace? How do we fulfill that aspiration? We do this by reminding ourselves and recollecting, Yes, this is what I am, this is what I’m doing and most valuable for me to be doing—seeking peace, seeking truth.

As we take on duties or have contact and engagement with each other, we can relate to each other as fellow seekers of truth and peace, rather than as objects of aversion, attention, or interest, or just somebody else who can fulfill a function. There are times when we may think, There’s the person who does the computer work. There’s the person who is the kitchen manager. There’s the person who does this or that. We might see that person only in a particular role or having a certain type of personality. This really limits us and limits everybody else as well.

Instead, we can recollect ourselves as samaṇas and develop a perception of each other as fellow seekers of peace, fellow seekers of truth. This helps us support our own practice, our own daily living in a way that is peaceful and encourages us to live skillful lives in the monastery.

This reflection by Ajahn Pasanno is from the book, Beginning Our Day, Volume One, pp. 100-101.