..續本文上一頁 Vinaya discipline.

　　RW: Does Ajahn Chah expect his monks to teach at one point or another

　　AS: When they are ready, he has them start teaching.

　　RW: Then, most or all of the monks will one day teach

　　AS: It also depends on the monk. Some monks cannot teach; they just do not have that kind of ability -- that is, in a structured way. Some teach in other ways, just by their living example.

　　RW: You said earlier that you had many difficulties when you were at Wat Pah Pong. What were they

　　 Of course, in the beginning you could not speak the language at all. I am sure that was a big one.

　　AS: Well, it is just a strange culture and language. In that situation one has to give up practically everything that one is accustomed to in one”s own life.

　　RW: How did you deal with that

　　AS: I just did it, actually. I do not quite know how to say how I dealt with it. If one wanted to stay and learn from that place, one just did what one had to do. I managed to change my ways to adapt to their ways.

　　The Thai monks were always very kind. It was not a place where people made things difficult for one. There was always generosity and kindness. It was just getting used to doing things in different ways, eating strange food and speaking a different language.

　　RW: Sometimes, when people from two different cultures meet, a kind of cultural arrogance may arise from one side or the other, or both. Did you encounter this

　　AS: Well, yes. The Thai people have feelings like anyone else about their culture and society. However, we all shared in common living in a monastery, where the emphasis is not on cultural inheritance but rather on the Buddha”s teaching. So the cultural differences did not seem to be of any great significance to anyone.

　　I was much more sophisticated than they were. I had travelled a great deal and had lived in different places and knew much more about the world in general. Their superiority to me was in their ability to live so well and to coordinate in the only tradition that they knew. Oftentimes I felt very clumsy and foolish, like a very oafish person, because I did not tend to have the physical coordination or agility in bodily action that they had.

　　RW: We were talking the other day about traditions and routines, and how a complacent attitude may arise towards one”s practice. There is often the tendency for a young monk to be very strict about his vows and to keep a strict discipline. Later one finds one is not really digging in or doing the practice seriously. One tends to become mechanical in one”s actions and maybe that will to discover the truth becomes stifled by the weight of the organisation or the tradition. Did you find that kind of degeneration at Wat Pah Pong

　　AS: Well, I did not find it for myself, because I had plenty of motivation on my own -- and I did not let any tradition stop me. Yet I could see that some monks were not very motivated. They were in it just because it is their tradition. Therefore, they tend to sink into habitual living as a monk.

　　Ajahn Chah is quite an expert at pushing people out of ruts. Yet he cannot keep doing that all the time. One cannot expect him to play nursemaid to all the monks. I think he did that very much at first. I noticed that he now takes it all much easier and leaves it pretty much up to the monk to develop. That is the way it should be. This is a very mature practice. The teacher should not be constantly called up to prod and arouse the students. We should do that ourselves. Yet there are Thai and Western monks who just seem to sink into habits. They would do that anywhere they were. They do not have that ”urgency” in their lives.

　　RW: I think you are poking fun at me... Krishnamurti says, ”The guru”s role is to point out. Finished. Then let the person learn. If he inquires…

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