FOR A FULL YEAR they had tried to get Tan Bodhipalo out of his cave and back to Pah Nanachat but he had refused to leave. Some people are recluses because an inner fire drives them into solitude. Tan Bodhipalo just didn’t like people. He did not seem happy in our community. He used to be a gospel singer, according to Tan Casipo. He had travelled with a church group from town to town, winning souls for Jesus throughout northern England. One day he realized he didn’t believe any of it. Like many others, he escaped by drifting to Asia, ending up in Ajahn Chah’s care. He seldom talked. If he had to speak it was always with much effort and a strained look of discomfort. His words were as terse as possible.
One day shortly after the recluse had returned to Pah Nanachat, the Ajahn noticed small sticky black spots on the floor during the early morning sweeping of the sala. He and Tan Bodhipalo bent down to look at them. The cave monk touched one of the tacky spots with his finger and held it to his nose.
“It’s bat shit,” said the Ajahn.
Tan Bodhipalo pressed the little black smear again with his fingers and shook his head. We all crowded round the spot. “No, bat shit is dry,” he said.
“Probably it’s bat shit,” said the Ajahn.
“I lived two years in cave,” said the monk. “I know what is and isn’t bat shit.”
On Wan Phra evening the Ajahn gave permission for laymen and pakhaos to come to his kuti for a dhamma talk while the villagers performed their chanting in the sala.
“These days I feel there is little need to say anything concerning the practice,” our teacher began when we had settled. A single candle lit his face as he spoke to the silent circle of hairless figures gathered on his balcony. “But since there are so many new faces, and since the responsibility falls on me as the senior monk to give a talk on Wan Phra, I guess I should say a few words. Perhaps you newcomers find it a bit difficult adapting to the discipline here. Some people come expecting to be given a course on meditation. We don’t give courses here. There is no need for all that. Many people come looking for something instant to solve their problems, like a ten-day vipassana retreat. There are such courses in other wats. People go to them and say the experience was really powerful. Then you look at them afterwards. There is no practice in their lives. ‘What happened to this great practice?’ you ask them. ‘I don’t have time for that now,’ they say. They get dragged back down into sex, drugs and success. Their practice disintegrates as soon as the course is over. For them it is just another experience. They are still trapped in their own ignorance. Here in Wat Pah Nanachat, things are different. Our practice lies within the daily routine. It’s a twenty four hour a day practice. Meditation isn’t something you do separate from other activities. Here it is your way of living. Sometimes foreigners used to complain to Ajahn Chah that there wasn’t enough time for them to meditate during the day. ‘Do you have time to breathe?’ he’d say to them. ‘How can you find time to breathe all day long if you’re so busy with other things? If you have time to breathe, you have time to meditate.’ So if you feel there is no time to meditate during a work day, remember this is just where meditation can begin for you. Be mindful of your work. This is meditation. Follow the rules and precepts of the community. The rules are the teaching we give you. We don’t teach with words but with our behaviour. For everything we do there is a rule. For this reason a monk is not distracted or confused about life’s details. He follows the rules to gain calm and peace. Suppose he is not certain about what is right according to the rules. Then he asks a senior monk. This increases humility as well as awareness. It helps us to remember that we are not individuals, we are a community.
“The rules are our source of harmony. For example, they bring harmony to how we eat. You new laymen probably don’t know this but it is forbidden to scrape your bowls or make chewing noises. Recently it’s been getting pretty loud down at the far end of the food line. I notice a lot of food is being swept up from your mats. There’s nothing more pleasing than silence and good manners while we eat. Also watch how you bow. Don’t just flop down on your faces. There is a proper way. When a monk asks you to offer him something, do it sincerely. Don’t tower over him. Kneel, and offer it with both hands or at least supporting the right hand with the left. Be obedient at all times. Be mindful of resentment and aversion when it arises. This is just ego, just personal desire. The rules will reveal your ignorance to you. When I was first ordained it really used to bother me that I couldn’t play my guitar any more. I was once a jazz musician. I was always tapping my fingers. I resented not being able to make music in the wat. This revealed my attachment. The rules show you what you need to renounce. Obedience is part of the cure. You learn not to cling to personal preferences. Then you can see things as they really are.
“Buddha laid down the rules over twenty-five hundred years ago. It’s probably the longest unbroken tradition in the world. Remember that the tradition is much greater than you are. Submit yourself to the rules and the monks and eventually you will learn that the path of discipline is not only the path to enlightenment, it is enlightenment. They are one and the same. The practice is enlightenment. Some people find this idea not to their liking. They want to get enlightenment in a flash. This way they become attached to something that doesn’t exist. Enlightenment isn’t a thing you get. So give up your desire for it. I’ve been a monk for ten years and only recently have I come to see this clearly. Only the practice is the true guide.
“Well, I’ve said a lot. All that’s important is to remember to be mindful and follow the rules.”
We bowed three times to our teacher in the darkness, then shuffled down his wooden stairs and back through the jungle to the sala where the villagers still chanted their praises to the Triple Gem. When we arrived, the Ajahn climbed into his ceremonial seat. There was a large crowd for the big celebration. The Ajahn gave them an appropriately long dasana while we munched our pickled olives.
Jim pulled at the end of my robe before the dasana was over. He motioned me to follow him out of the back door of the sala. We sat down together just around the outside corner. There was no moon this night due to the clouds. We could barely see each other’s faces.
“So what do you think of our Ajahn now?” Jim’s voice bristled with anger. “Just why is it we call that man our teacher? This is the closest thing to a teaching we’ve ever been fed by him. ‘Obey the rules and be mindful,’ he tells us. ‘And after thirteen years of following the rules, you’ll see that the rules are enlightenment!’ Does he think he’s enlightened?”
“I don’t think he was trying to convince us he’s enlightened. He’s not conceited.”
“He feels little need to say anything about the practice. Little need for whose benefit? He meant there is no more need for him to talk, he’s gone beyond all that. He gives a dasana only for the sake of tradition, not for our benefit. You think it’s not conceited to say other retreats are no good, only here in Pah Nanachat do you get the genuine tradition passed down from the Buddha over twenty-five hundred years ago?”
“He believes it.”
“Does he believe in the rules? Then why do we have all the loopholes like chewing tobacco and Coffeemate? He doesn’t care about the spirit of the rules. He’s mindful about how to get around them. He’s more like a lawyer than a monk. So we can’t drink milk after noon, but we can use non-dairy ‘milk.’ So monks can’t clean the water cisterns, but they make it clear we’ve got to do it. By the rules he’s right. I don’t sense any compassion towards the poor mosquito larvae though. Monks can’t cut plants but look at all the cutting and clearing he’s authorized in this place. When he decided to clean out the leaves in the compound, he knew that action was going to cause a lot of suffering to creatures. But as long as he didn’t personally kill anything he thinks he’s obedient.”
“We killed a lot of ants ourselves in that water tank.”
“But we’re not preaching the rules to others.”
“We took vows not to kill.”
“Do you think anybody minded that we unpolluted the drinking water?”
“The ants.”
“I don’t mind killing. But I do mind hypocrisy. I mind manipulation of a set of rules for your own personal ends. He says the rules teach you how to renounce personal desires, and he uses the rules to fulfil his own. I guess ten months of Thai Buddhism and culture is too much for me. All this hierarchy and structure is too oppressive. The monks don’t use it for mindfulness; they use it to stay on top of the status heap. They tell us there is no difference between people, then keep us in a rigid line at meal time. They say it’s to avoid confusion. But why do they sit on a platform while we sit on the floor? All our bindabat goodies go into the common bowls before we eat but then the bowls go by the monks first.”
“That’s pretty trivial, Jim. The monks are all sick of the sweeties they get on alms round.”
“You think so?” His eyes flashed in the darkness as he leaned close to me. “Do you know what I found in a monk’s spittoon after breakfast yesterday? A Mars Bar wrapper.”
“I haven’t seen a Mars Bar for a whole year,” I whispered.
“And it wasn’t the first. Do you think any bars will ever make it to our end of the line? But if we get one on bindabat, we are supposed to surrender it to the common bowl.”
“You may be onto something really serious here. If news of this got out we could have a revolt of the laymen against the oppressors in the sangha.”
“So maybe I’ve been in the country too long. But you should admit it, Tim, the farang at this wat who call themselves monks are nothing but a bunch of social rejects who have found a place where they can get free food, free shelter and free respect. They are complacent and their only concern is their perks at the top end of the hierarchy. They use the rules to fool the Thais, to fool us and to fool themselves. Nobody here is a strong meditator. Nobody here practises compassion. They say following the rules makes them noble. Look at them. Do you see nobility? It’s an act. They couldn’t make it on the outside and they have come here to hide. If they were really practising, they wouldn’t be talking about the rules.”
“How about Ruk? How can you judge? You’re too cynical.”
“I don’t know Ruk. But I think the whole place encourages the practice of mediocrity, not meditation.”
“I feel it too, Jim. But I don’t like to admit it. You know who we should watch as a litmus test?”
“Who? What do you mean?”
“Percy. If he fits in well here, decides to stay and be ordained, if he makes it, then I concede the point to you and I for one will get the hell out fast.”
He laughed. “You call me cynical?”
“One other thing we could do is test to see if the monks are really striving for the Buddhist ideal or just acting, find out if they are holy or if they are moral slugs. A friend of mine once said it’s hard to tell if some people are spiritually advanced and in blissful harmony with their environment or just ‘no-minds,’ too stupid and lazy to bother showing much ego. She said if you scratch hard enough, a no-mind’s ego will rise up spitting. It’s usually pretty nasty when you find it. So maybe we should scratch somebody hard. Do something downright malicious to see what kind of response we get, something really embarrassing. If the monks get upset, we’ll know their calm is just a lack of wind.”
“Bob, you’re revealing a whole new side of yourself tonight.”
“I’m just trying to be clinical.”
“You be clinical, I’ll be cynical. I admit, the thought of something like hitting the Ajahn with a bucket of cold water as he’s coming out of the toilet appeals to my baser nature. But I don’t think I have enough nerve to do it.”
“It would be good training for them, Boomer. A great opportunity to watch anger arise. Then they could overcome their personal preferences.”
“Like a preference for skinning us alive?”
“It would be a great teaching.”
We sat back in silence, two white robes against the dark sala wall, imagining scenarios for our test. It was rebellion. Although from the moment we arrived at Pah Nanachat we had been made twins by the community, our judgment of the sangha created an us-and-them situation. We both knew this. Our collusion in malicious fantasy drew us together—and apart from the rest.
“It’s easy to forget that we’re in this hierarchy too,” I said.
“It’s not the same. We’ve only been here a few weeks.”
“We’re pakhaos. We’ve taken vows without honestly believing in them. The Thais feed us on bindabat and bow to us. The laymen watch us and obey us. We don’t have to do morning sweeping any more. We’ve got our niche and we’ve accepted the perks that go with it. Couldn’t all we’ve just said against farang monks be directed against us too?”
“We’re not losers.”
“If we stayed you’d be considered a college drop-out and I’d be a shiftless wanderer. I’ve thought a lot about what you said about the monks stuffing their faces at meal time. I cram mine just as full.”
“It’s happening to me too, Bob. That’s why I complain about it so much. I’m doing it myself. Food was always just food for me before. Now it’s my only chance to eat, so I stuff myself like a turkey. I can barely stay awake to meditate through the morning. Drink time is even worse. Coffee really hypes up my system. Sugar makes me frantic. Normally I never drink coffee but here it feels as if it’s my right. I can’t have it at any other time and I’m hungry so, hey, bring me two big mugs of that delicious black drug to get me through to breakfast.”
“Maybe we’ve got the purpose of this wat all backwards. It doesn’t protect us from temptation. There are just fewer enticements. That makes temptation stronger. We feel justified in indulging because we are disciplined the rest of the day. That just reveals craving buried within. The Ajahn’s right. When we eat anything we want any time we want, we never stop to watch our desire and greed. Here it’s all focused on one meal and we really feel it. Pah Nanachat is no refuge from samsara, it’s full of it.”
“Samsara is in our minds.”
“Right. Being in a monastery doesn’t make any difference. There will always be temptation as long as there is inner desire.”
“So why are we here?”
“To watch our breath.”
“To follow the rules.”
“Maybe the rules are only a beginning. Let’s forget the mindfulness crap and just follow the eight precepts we’ve vowed to keep, in the spirit in which they were meant. The whole point of vowing not to eat after noon is that we eat to live. If we stuff ourselves like gluttons before noon, we break the spirit of the rule. My eating is out of control. I’m going to go back to a strict vegetarian diet and only one sweet per meal. I think maybe together we should fast. Skip one meal each week.”
“That’s forty-eight hours without food!”
“We can do it. We don’t tax our bodies at all on an average day. I used to fast regularly.”
“I’ve never done it. Okay. I know it will do me good. When? Tomorrow?”
“Morning after Wan Phra with no sleep is a rough way to start. Let’s make it the day after. We don’t want to do this as a show. We don’t tell anybody. We go on alms round just the same.”
“You like to make this hard, don’t you?”
“It’s the natural ascetic in me. Why not? We supposedly go on bindabat for the sake of mindfulness anyway, not because otherwise they won’t feed us. So we’ll sit in the line and just pass all the food by us, stare at our empty bowls through the meals and help wash the spittoons afterwards as usual.”
“Do we wash our clean bowls too? What about the other precepts?”
“Don’t kill—not even ants any more. The spirit of the rules means no destructive thoughts and no anger. Maybe we’ll have to reconsider the scratching experiment. It’s a form of killing just thinking about it. Don’t steal. That means don’t be greedy, don’t envy. Not even Mars Bars. No erotic behaviour, no lust. No incorrect speech—Jim, that means no more lying to ourselves as if we were better than everybody else; no pride. No high or comfortable bed. That means no laziness, no sloth, no mid-morning naps, even on the floor. Jim, do you notice—these precepts seem to fall right in line with the seven deadly sins? Gluttony, anger, envy, lust, pride, sloth . . .”
“What about ‘NAGAGITA VADITA VISUKADASANA’?”
“No singing and dancing, perfumes, garlands and shows? That means no vanity.”
“Watching a show is vanity? Singing is vanity?”
“Self-distraction. No shows and music because those distract you with the vanity of life. They fill your mind so you can’t meditate. Think of what we do with TV back home. The mind never has a chance to be empty. There’s your seven deadly sins.”
“But Ajahn Bob, there are eight precepts and only seven sins. What about refraining from drugs and intoxicants? Can we skip that one or does it mean no coffee for me?”
“It makes you agitated? Then drugs make your mind unstable and you break the other seven.”
“I think we’ve talked for a long time.”
“How do you feel?”
“Not tired.”
“Me neither. Must be past two. Maybe we should go back inside and meditate awhile before morning chanting starts. It’s the first Wan Phra I haven’t dozed off in.”
“It’s been better than three cups of coffee.”
We grinned at each other, and rose stiffly to our feet. Inside, the hall was almost empty. Percy snored softly against a pillar. Tan Bodhipalo’s severe form paced slowly back and forth along the rear of the hall. It began to rain.
I could not find my red cup on the way to coffee break. I took the chewed white one instead. From time to time this happened. A new layman or guest occasionally used it, not knowing it belonged to me. I had to tell the offender, whenever this occurred, that it was my personal cup. Then I would ask him to use another. If coffee had already been served, it was a good chance for me to practise not clinging by letting another drink from my red. I loved this little cup dearly. Newcomers must have scratched their heads over such possessiveness in a pakhao.
This time Herman had it. I headed him off before he reached the Ajahn’s kuti where coffee was waiting. The Netherlander, a tall craggy-featured man in his forties, was apologetic. Percy walked behind him. He heard Herman’s apology. As he passed us, he raised a cupped hand to his mouth and whispered in a tone too loud to be confidential, “Yes, whatever you do, don’t take Tim’s red cup. It’s the only material possession he has.”
I laughed. I could hardly believe it. Percy had made a joke, a real joke that nailed me justly to the wall. Obviously I had underestimated his capacities. There was of course the faint chance he had meant it seriously, but from the mischievous look he gave me just before he spoke I concluded there was much hope for him. It was a look free of malice, yet brave enough for a good tease.
The heat of day dissipates in the late afternoon, allowing the tin roof of my kuti to cool. This is my favourite time of day. Robe washing finished, my wet sabongs dry on the line above my balcony. I rest, waiting for the call of the bell to evening chanting. For some reason mosquitoes can never be bothered to fly up to my porch at this hour, although I hear their hungry swarm below. They make walking meditation impossible. I sit on my straw mat and stare out into the jungle as dusk creeps upon it. I do not try to meditate. As I watch, my eyes become the trees, the branches, the scattered leaves and the squirrels chasing one another. My ears become the falling of twigs, animal chatters, the patter of rain. Occasionally a bird with a bright red breast and electric blue wings comes and sits on the small broad-leafed sapling near the kuti. He has a long dark tail plume which bobs up and down as he balances himself on the bough. Sometimes he whistles as if calling for a mate but he never sings his song for very long. He too seems to enjoy simply waiting for the night. Once I watched a snake chase a toad across my meditation runway. I thought of coming down with a stick to protect the victim. But then would I feed the predator as well? The snake was faster on the path but the toad gained ground when it hopped through a muddy puddle at the side. The serpent slithered and lost traction. I cheered the toad onward. The foolish creature took three hops past the water, jumped sideways and froze. The snake soon cleared the mud and followed the toad’s trail back into the leaves. It stopped, suddenly, just where the toad changed his course, testing the air with its tongue. Toad smell everywhere. The toad looked like a rock, immobile. The reptile raised its head and peered around, then lowered it again to the ground and slithered past, less than four inches away from its prey. When it had disappeared into the bush, the toad turned and hopped rapidly back across the path to safety.
I sit on the porch and watch. A toad, a snake, a bird, a branch, a jungle enveloping and penetrating us all. Light does not leave the jungle gradually, but in sudden dramatic darkenings. Suddenly the trees dim. Then twilight falls. The jungle loses its complex features as vines, ferns and leaves merge into blackness. Over the whine of the mosquitoes, the elephant bugs begin their deafening thrum, sounding as if a symphony string section is hidden in the bushes. The music swells into a deep harmonic hum, fills the jungle’s fading forms with its vibrations. It sustains and unifies the indistinct shadows. Slowly the sound decrescendos to a single violin note, barely audible, quivering. A pause, a hush of silence between each movement. Then the symphony begins again, loud and throbbing, filling the evening air. Fireflies come out and flit between the black branches. They drift like stars unmoored from the sky, dancing freely below me, as if my view from the porch was a porthole into space. It is rapture just to sit, not conscious of meditating, not conscious of breathing, freed from the chattering of my monkey-mind. I let myself be absorbed in the greens, browns and blacks, the curve of a snake spine, the glitter of blue feathers, a blotch of toad. Slowly the colours blend together, lose shape and form, fade to black except for irradiated dots of glowing life, all united and intertwined by the thrum of the unseen elephant bug.
A bell sounds, far away in the darkness. At first it seems so distant, a clear sound as if made by striking a silver bowl, not an iron bell. The sound is sweet, yet makes me sad. It calls me to the sala, to human chanting, away from the jungle I have become night with. In the black air I stand, re-wrap my white robes around me, gather flashlight and bag, umbrella for the rain, and begin the walk to the temple. On this walk, if it is dry, my feet feel light and sure. I want to go barefoot and leave my torch at home. But red ants and scorpions use the path as well. The light is necessary to keep us out of each others’ way. I walk slowly and with great care. Toads scatter in the beam of my torch. In confusion they often hop against my legs, frightening me. Sometimes I glimpse Jim’s ghostly white form coming through the jungle from his own kuti. I wait for him and let him glide ahead when we meet. In the sala other dark forms join us. The Ajahn sounds his little gong and we drone our own song into the night. No mating call, the halting rhythm of our Pali chants. The Bhaddekarat-tagatha (Verses on a well-spent day):
Let not a man trace back the past
Or wonder what the future holds:
The past is but the left-behind,
The future but the yet-unreached.
In the present let him see
With insight each and every instant
Invincibly, unshakably,
That can be pierced by practising.
The morning of my fast with Jim, Richard did not come on bindabat. Ruk and I went alone. I was glad for a break from the Texan’s metaphysical banter. It fed my ego and destroyed my calm. Conversation with Ruk, however, came as gently as the dawn. His smile was always full of joy sufficient to refute all of Jim’s pessimism. I wanted to put to him some of Jim’s tough questions.
“Ruk, everybody says the monks at Pah Nanachat are very strict and dedicated to the tradition compared to other wats in Thailand. People come all the way from Bangkok just to feed us breakfast.”
“It’s a lot stricter.”
“Does that make the monks better?”
“It does to the Thais.”
“But does it really make any difference?”
“I think so.”
We reached the lotus pond, a small lake on the side of the road filled with green lotus pads. The flowers rose above the surface, folded open to reveal brilliant pink, purple or white interiors. Ruk stopped and gazed at the lake. When he was a layman, he used to come to this spot and play a flute. Now his vows forbade him. He sensed his answers were not satisfying me.
“When Ajahn Chah was still teaching, this wat was a powerful place. He was a real example to us. He had a rare talent for teaching the farang monks. He was hard on us when we needed it. I remember having to sit for six hours without moving while he gave a dasana in Thai. Sometimes before meal he would talk with the villagers while we sat staring into our bowls until the food went cold. He knew our defilements and he knew how to break them. Sometimes he would yell at us. I remember one morning he threw a monk’s bowl out of the sala window. He got really angry it seemed. But if you looked closely, there was nothing but calm inside. He wasn’t disturbed at all. It was for our benefit. Inside, nothing.
“Since he’s stopped teaching there has been nobody to take his place. Many senior disciples disrobed after his stroke. The personal master-student relationship had gone for them. He has sixty-four monasteries now but the monks who are teaching in them aren’t doing it with the same experience or wisdom he had. They are teaching what they were taught. Ajahn Chah taught what he knew. Some of them are still depressed about the condition of the master. We try to live up to his example but we can’t. Even Pah Nanachat is much more slack than it was three years ago. Our reputation is perhaps better than we are.
“The previous Ajahn flew to Bangkok once a month to give a dhamma talk at the World Federation of Buddhists. He’s very popular in Bangkok. Maybe you have seen his picture in a magazine? They treat him well down there because he was the Ajahn at Ajahn Chah’s famous farang wat. They think we are all arahants up here. After a few days in the city our Ajahn used to come back and get irritated when he saw the monks being lazy instead of practising. When he got angry there was nothing calm about it. He couldn’t change us. Sometimes he tried sitting and talking with the villagers about his plane reservations while our food got cold. But then the monks said he was just copying Ajahn Chah. This Ajahn got a lot of funding from Bangkok for building projects which caused some conflict with other senior monks who didn’t want to build in the forest. It’s costing eight hundred thousand baht to build the new bot, if it stays on budget. It will be in the new Thai style, all shiny paint, glitter and coloured glass. I don’t like it. We did have an ordination hall before, just a tin roof with no walls. It kept out the rain. I liked it. It was a good way to enter the homeless life.”
“Homeless life,” I interrupted, “I haven’t had so many possessions since I started travelling.”
“It was also his idea to get more land for the monastery.”
“Good grief, we’re not buying more land are we?”
“No. But he dropped many hints that donations of land would be a most appropriate offering. He will be coming back here, you see. The present Ajahn is temporary.”
“Ruk, that’s not even an honest business practice, asking for land donations. It must go directly against the precepts. And this wat is supposed to have a reputation for excellence and renunciation? Tell me, is it this bad all over Thailand?”
“Actually, the northeast is considered the one place in Thailand where Buddhism is still purely practised. All the great teachers of this century have come from this region. Maybe it’s because it’s also the poorest and most economically undeveloped.”
“The Dhamma Belt?”
“Whatever else you may say, at least you will find that here the monks keep the precepts.”
Ruk slung his bowl over to his right shoulder. We had reached the village gates. Our conversation ceased as, heads bowed in humility, we begged for our rice. When we had passed the soaring village wat on the far end of the route and were again back in fertile rice paddies, Ruk told me about the age old division in Thailand between forest wats and village wats. Wats like Pah Pong and Pah Nanachat are usually founded by monks who want to meditate. Village wats are for more social bhikkhus. They have an easier life, and usually become lazy. The people know that a monk who lives in the jungle is serious about the practice. So they will search out these monks in order to do services for them. They will build kuties, bring food, even donate land believing that their merit will be greater if the monks are holy. In this way the devotees of the forest monks bring all the temptations right into the jungle.
“That’s insidious,” I said.
“It’s generous. But it does make the village monks jealous, and it sometimes works out badly for the monks who want to be ascetics. But there must be plenty of Thais inhabiting the deva-realms because of it.”
“What?”
“Because the Thais are so good at making merit.”
“Ruk, do you honestly believe the Thais go to deva-realms for giving us rice-flour sweets? Let me ask you a riddle.” I told him the riddle of the king and the false arahant and watched him ponder over a reply.
“With a selfish attitude like that, I think the king gets no merit.”
“No, he sincerely wanted to give to an arahant.”
“Then since there is no real arahant involved, I suppose he doesn’t get the merit for giving to one but—wait, of course, the merit is the same. Beggar or arahant, there is no difference between people.”
“Right!” I was pleased that my favourite monk had given the correct answer. “But if the merit is the same, why do Thais prefer to give to holy monks rather than their own poor? If it’s the sangha’s fault for misleading them, isn’t that just plain immoral?”
“Perhaps they wouldn’t give to the poor.”
“We should tell them to.”
“It isn’t so simple. The Thais have their own customs. We are fortunate that involves feeding monks. We must live in harmony with them. They take care of us.” Ruk seemed defensive.
“I sometimes feel we’re a zoo for the villagers to come to and gawk as they feed us,” I said. “I suppose the farang monks are the only entertainment they have, but the sangha should be teaching more than merit and obedience. It seems the villagers give us their precepts to keep!”
“Do you remember Edgar, the English novice? He was here when you arrived, I think.” Ruk spoke distractedly, as if he was unsure of what he was telling me. “The villagers became upset with him because he had a funny habit of staring at things for long periods of time. He used to come on bindabat with me.”
“They said he was a peepah,” I said, recalling Michael’s coffee making from the first day.
“I was sorry to see him transferred to another wat. Fear of ghosts is very strong in the Thais. When I came back they told me fewer people were bringing donations for the morning meal. They are up again since he went.”
“Ruk—are you telling me the sangha had him transferred because he spooked the villagers? If the monks won’t stand up for one of their own against superstition . . .”
“We respect their traditions.”
“You mean we compromise the Dhamma.”
“I’m not certain that was why he was transferred. Maybe he left on his own.”
“Or he really was a peepah and just disappeared.”
There was a loud bellowing moan on the track ahead of us. Two Thai women had stopped a buffalo and cart to kneel in the wet earth as we passed. The beast panicked at the sight of Ruk. It veered and ducked away. The women jumped back to their feet, scrambling to control the buffalo and keep the cart from tumbling as the lumbering animal charged into the paddy, eyes white with fear.