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BHANTE GUNARATANA
B.G.: No, here in America, in Florida; they were Vietnamese. I was in charge of ten thousand refugees.
L.M.: Was that after the fall of Saigon?
B.G.: Yes, in 1975, I was there with them from May to August.
L.M.: Were you working with a group of monks?
B.G.: With lay people, Buddhists.
L.M.: Do you still hear from some of those refugees?
B.G.: Yes, some of them, occasionally. Of course all of them are totally different now.
L.M.: They're back on their feet again. Another personal question: Bhante Gunaratana, did you always want to become a monk?
B.G.: Yes, I always wanted to be a monk. I always wanted to be a teacher. When I was eight or nine years old, my brother taught me the English alphabet. So one day I was practicing it, and some of my aunts and relatives asked me: What are you doing? I said my brother has taught me some English. Nobody spoke any English. And I told them: I will teach the dhamma in English, I will teach in English, somewhere. And they laughed holding their stomachs as they thought: this is a crazy boy. I don't know why I said that. But that is how I have lived my life for the past forty-two years or so.
L.M.: The Bhavana Society meditation center was established here in West Virginia in 1988, and it is a community for monks, nuns, and even some lay people. There are many lay or secular Buddhists here in the West who practice vipassana meditation. And quite a number of people also come here to Bhavana to learn, and some of them are Christians too. How then, does a person living in society practice vipassana meditation? And too, is enlightenment, or nirvana, possible for the lay vipassana meditator?
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