Stairway to Jhāna

Episode #411: This is the second part of our interview with the meditation teacher, Tempel Smith, and it starts off with his decision “to commit to deep intensive Burmese-style meditation, break through some of these habits, and then find a more integrated lifestyle.” With this in mind, he boarded a flight to Myanmar with his friend Diana Winston, and ordained under Sayadaw U Pandita.

Although U Pandita’s reputation as a stern and very demanding teacher caused him some concern, he went to the Sayadaw’s monastery and began to practice. Tempel describes U Pandita’s style as a “ruthless investigation” which was uncommon among Western teachers, and which ultimately led to a deeper understanding of the second foundation of mindfulness.

After some time, Tempel became concerned about the intensity of the practice, and when he heard about the newly established Pa Auk Monastery, he decided to try it out, as he was especially keen to practice mettā intensively through jhāna meditation.

At Pa Auk, he would find a very different style of monastery. The monastics and lay meditators were more relaxed, and openly discussed scripture and practice between meditation sittings. Tempel also found the actual practice to be quite different, particularly the absorptive states that Pa Auk taught. As he progressed in samathā, he began to see lights, considered a positive sign that one’s practice is going well,. He even began to develop psychic powers, such as predicting the future. This, in particular, shook him to his core, and caused him to question Western notions of “the real world.”

This paradigm shift of reality began to affect his faith as well. “I was feeling that devotion to the Buddha, his teachings, the centuries of people practicing it, people rediscovering it at different times and re-encouraging that level of practice,” he says. “And then to see that it wasn't mythology, that it actually could be possibly more true than you might have imagined.”

In the next segment, we explore how he took these teachings from Myanmar back home to the US with him.