About This Answer
Writing her questions because illness had taken her voice, a listener asks whether Westerners face particular difficulties with vipassanā and Dhamma, noting that Thais treat heart and mind as one. Ajahn Dtun, through an interpreter, says Western culture is accustomed to comfort and seeks happiness in material things, wealth, honour and praise. Such happiness only temporarily relieves unhappiness; without mindfulness and discernment people remain lost in the sensory world.
He contrasts Thailand's many meditation masters with the few teachers in the West, yet says some people here have a real aptitude. That is why he leaves his monastery to teach, partly from a past determination to help those with previous association with him. He jokes that he does not yet know whether his students are stubborn or good children.
On heart and mind, he explains that teachers use the words interchangeably for the mind, not the physical heart. On another level they differ: the body breaks into elements at death, but the mind does not.