About This Answer
Ajahn Plien opens by teaching that the mind is the forerunner of all things. Everyone wants happiness, but reaching it is like travelling to Wat Pah Nanachat: take the wrong road and you get lost and anxious. The right road is mindfulness and wisdom, and the defilements are found only in one's own mind, seen clearly once it is still.
A monk returning to the West asks how to keep practising there. The answer is to make a firm determination to practise anywhere, put formal meditation ahead of busy work, find a quiet place, and seek out a competent teacher to ask. A monk living in solitude asks how to structure his time; a routine helps, but above all sati-sampajañña, mindfulness and clear comprehension, lets one see the mind's changes quickly.
The heart of the talk is the six temperaments (carita): lustful, angry, deluded, faith, intellectual and thinking types. Knowing one's type allows a suitable meditation object, such as foulness for lust, mettā for anger, or Buddho for the faith type. The thinking type keeps switching among the forty objects. Once the mind is peaceful, one turns to the four foundations of mindfulness, receiving different teachers' methods with humility.