..續本文上一頁 not the food was tasty. Borapet was what we had for our hot drink.

　　One of the monks went to central Thailand and drank coffee there. Someone offered him some to bring back here. So we had coffee once. But there was no sugar to put in it. No one complained about that. Where would we get sugar

　　 So we could say we really drank coffee, without any sugar to sweeten the taste. We depended on others to support us, and we wanted to be people who were easy to support, so of course we didn”t make requests of anyone. Like that, we were continually doing without things and enduring whatever conditions we found ourselves in.

　　One year the lay supporters Mr. Puang and Mrs. Daeng came to ordain here. They were from the city and had never lived like this, doing without things, enduring hardship, eating as we do, practicing under the guidance of an Ajahn and performing the duties outlined in the rules of training. But they heard about their nephew living here so they decided to come and ordain. As soon as they were ordained, a friend was bringing them coffee and sugar. They were living in the forest to practice meditation, but they had the habit of getting up early in the morning and making milk coffee to drink before doing anything else. So they stocked their kutis full of sugar and coffee. But here, we would have our morning chanting and meditation, then immediately the monks would prepare to go for alms, so they didn”t have a chance to make coffee. After a while it started to sink in. Mr. Puang would pace back and forth, thinking what to do. He didn”t have anywhere to make his coffee, and no one was coming to make it and offer it to him, so he ended up bringing it all to the monastery kitchen and leaving it there.

　　Coming to stay here, actually seeing the conditions in the monastery and the way of life of meditation monks, really got him down. An elderly man, he was an important relative to me. That same year he disrobed; it was appropriate for him, since his affairs were not yet settled.

　　After that we first got ice here. We saw some sugar once in a while too. Mrs. Daeng had gone to Bangkok. When she talked about the way we lived here, she would start crying. People who hadn”t seen the life of meditation monks had no idea what it was like. Eating once a day, was that making progress or falling behind

　　 I don”t know what to call it.

　　On almsround, people would make little packages of chili sauce to put in our bowls in addition to the rice. Whatever we got, we would bring it back, share it out, and eat. Whether we had different items that people liked or whether the food was tasty or not was never something we discussed; we just ate to be full, and that was it. It was really simple. There were no plates or bowls—everything went into the almsbowl.

　　Nobody came here to visit. At night everyone went to their kutis to practice. Even dogs couldn”t bear to stay here. The kutis were far apart and far from the meeting place. After everything was done at the end of the day, we separated and entered the forest to go to our kutis. That made the dogs afraid they wouldn”t have any safe place to stay. So they would follow the monks into the forest, but when they went up into their kutis, the dogs would be left alone and felt afraid, so they would try to follow another monk, but that monk would also disappear into his kuti.

　　So even dogs couldn”t live here—this was our life of practicing meditation. I thought about this sometimes: even the dogs can”t bear it, but still we live here! Pretty extreme. It made me a little melancholy too.

　　All kinds of obstacles… we lived with fever, but we faced death and we all survived. Beyond facing death, we had to live with difficult conditions such as poor food. But it was never a concern. When I look back to that time comp…

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