Renowned Buddhist monk to visit White Salmon

For more than 30 years, Ajahn Jayasaro has been a Buddhist monk, but is originally from England. In the late 1970s, he began training and lived his entire monastic life in Thailand.

Now he will visit White Salmon’s Pacific Hermitage monastery and hold a talk at Yoga Samadhi.

“It’s kind of unusual because there aren’t that many westerners who have spent that much time living as Buddhist monks in Asia and then come teach in the west,” Ajahn Sudanto said.

Ajahn Jayasaro last visited White Salmon in 2011 right after the monks of the Pacific Hermitage moved to their home on Barnedt Road. At the time, Ajahn Jayasaro also gave a talk at Yoga Samadhi, which was attended by around 90 people, but in Buddhist tradition there is no set topic for the upcoming meditation and talk.

“In our tradition typically monks give spontaneous teachings. He’s written numerous books on a variety of themes and how Buddhist wisdom and teaching speaks to the problems of suffering especially, but more broadly the challenges of human life,” Ajahn Sudanto said.

After a brief stay at the Abhayagiri Buddhist Mona-stery in Redwood Valley, Calif., Ajahn Jayasaro and some of his Thai students will join the monks of the Pacific Hermitage in White Salmon. Ajahn Sudanto was a student under him when he was an abbot at Ajahn Chah’s international mona-stery in the 1990s.

During the last 10 years, Ajahn Jayasaro has also penned books on integrating Buddhist principles into the Thai education system. As a result, he is an advisor to multiple schools in Thailand.

“A passion of his over the last 10 years has been learning how you can take core principles from Buddhism to sort of augment the educational process,” Ajahn Sudanto said. “Some of these things are also popular in the west now, like integrating mindfulness and also emotional awareness and sensitivity, values of ethics and kindness and compassion to enhance the learning environment for kids.”

Ajahn Jayasaro will speak on Wednesday, Oct. 23, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., at Yoga Samadhi in White Salmon. The meditation and talk are free of charge.