..续本文上一页 gotten to Bangkok. I remember sitting in the train on the way from Nong Khai to the capital. I didn”t want to talk to anyone. I just sat there with my high-minded thoughts about helping all beings, dedicating my life to their welfare, about the Dhamma and the Buddha. I was permeated by an overwhelming state of bliss. "What a wonderful state to be in!" I thought. That noisy, confusing and unpleasant city put paid to all that; in half an hour my mind was in terrible confusion.
From these experiences I was beginning to see that the way to enlightenment did not lie in being shut off from everything that was unpleasant, but rather through learning to understand all that we find unpleasant or difficult. Those particular conditions have been set for a purpose, to teach us. No matter how much we don”t want them, and would rather like things to be otherwise, somehow they will persist in out lives until we have understood and transcended them.
My hermit life ended soon after that. I was going to be ordained as a Bhikkhu, and would live with Ajahn Chah at a monastery where I wouldn”t be allowed the luxury of ascetic practice. I”d have to live in a community of monks and perform my duties, learn all the disciplinary rules that Bhikkhus have to learn, and live under the authority of someone else. By this time I was quite willing to accept all this; I realized that in fact it was exactly what I needed. I certainly did not need any more ecstatic blissful states that disappeared as soon as anything annoying happened.
At Wat Pah Pong [Ajahn Chah”s monastery] I found a constant stream of annoying conditions coming at me, which gave me a chance of learning to deal with the Five Hindrances. At the other monasteries in Thailand where I”d lived, the fact that I”d been a Westerner had meant that I could expect to have the best of everything. I could also get out of the work and other mundane things that the other monks were expected to do by saying something like: ”I”m busy meditating now. I don”t have time to sweep the floor. Let someone else sweep it. I”m a serious meditator.” But when I arrived at Wat Pah Pong and people said, ”He”s an American; he can”t eat the kind of food we eat,” Ajahn Chah said, ”He”ll have to learn.” And when I didn”t like the meditation hut I was given and asked for another that I liked better, Ajahn Chah said, ”No.”
I had to get up at three o”clock in the morning and attend morning chanting and meditation. There were readings from the Vinaya too. They were read in Thai, which at first I didn”t understand; and even when I could understand the language, they were excruciatingly boring to listen to. You”d hear about how a monk who has a rent in his robe so many inches above the hem must have it sewn up before dawn . . . and I kept thinking, ”This isn”t what I was ordained for!” I was caught up in these meticulous rules, trying to figure out whether the hole in my robe was four inches above the hem or not and whether I should have to sew it up before dawn or they”d read about making a sitting cloth, and the monks would have to know that the border had to be so many inches wide; and there”d be a monk who”d say, ”Well, I”ve seen a sitting cloth with a border different from that.” And the monks would even become argumentative about the border of that sitting cloth. ”Let”s talk about serious things,” I”d think; ”things of importance like the Dhamma.”
When it came to the pettiness of everyday life and of living with people of many different temperaments, problems and characters, whose minds were not necessarily as inspired as mine seemed to be at the time, I felt a great depression. Then I was faced with the Five Hindrances as a practical reality. There was no escape. I had to learn a lesson that they were there to teach.
As fo…
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