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　　 They asked irrelevant questions, like “why do you eat out of your almsbowl

　　” I could see that they were far from Dharma. They”ve had modern education, so I can”t tell them much. But I let the American monk talk to them. They might be willing to listen to him. Thai people these days don”t have much interest in Dharma and don”t understand it. Why do I say that

　　 If someone hasn”t studied something, they are ignorant of it. They”ve studied other things, but they are ignorant of Dharma. I”ll admit that I”m ignorant of the things they have learned. The Western monk has studied Dharma, so he can tell them something about it.

　　Among Thai people in the present time, there is less and less interest in ordaining, studying, and practicing. I don”t know why this is, if it”s because they are busy with work, because the country is developing materially, or what the reason might be. I don”t know. In the past, when someone ordained they would stay for at least a few years, four or five rains. Now it”s a week or two. Some ordain in the morning and disrobe in the evening. That”s the direction it”s going in now. People say things like that fellow who told me, “If everyone were to ordain the way you prefer, for a few rains at least, there would be no progress in the world. Families wouldn”t grow. Nobody would be building things.”

　　I said to him, “Your thinking is the thinking of an earthworm. An earthworm lives in the ground. It eats earth for its food. Eating and eating, it starts to worry that it will run out of dirt to eat. It is surrounded by dirt, the whole earth is covering its head, but it worries it will run out of dirt.”

　　That”s the thinking of an earthworm. People worry that the world won”t progress, that it will come to an end. That”s an earthworm”s view. They aren”t earthworms, but they think like them. That”s the wrong understanding of the animal realm. They are really ignorant.

　　There”s a story I”ve often told, about a tortoise and a snake. The forest was on fire, and they were trying to flee. The tortoise was lumbering along, and then it saw the snake slither by. It felt pity for that snake. Why

　　 The snake had no legs, so the tortoise figured it wouldn”t be able to escape the fire. It wanted to help the snake. But as the fire kept spreading, the snake fled easily, while the tortoise couldn”t make it, even with its four legs, and it died there.

　　That was the tortoise”s ignorance. It thought, If you have legs, you can move. If you don”t have legs, you can”t go anywhere. So it was worried about the snake. It thought the snake would die because it didn”t have legs. But the snake wasn”t worried (“the snake was cool about it”); it knew it could easily escape the danger.

　　This is one way to talk to people with their confused ideas. They will feel pity for you if you aren”t like them and don”t have their views and their knowledge. So who is ignorant

　　 I”m ignorant in my own way; there are things I don”t know about, so I”m ignorant on that account.

　　Meeting different situations can be a cause for tranquility. But I didn”t understand how foolish and mistaken I was. Whenever something disturbed my mind, I tried to get away from it, to escape. What I was doing was escaping from peace. I was continually running away from peace. I didn”t want to see this or know about that; I didn”t want to think about or experience various things. I didn”t realize that this was defilement. I only thought that I needed to remove myself and get far away from people and situations, so that I wouldn”t meet anything disturbing or hear speech that was displeasing. The farther away I could get, the better.

　　After many years had passed, I was forced by the natural progression of events to change my ways. Having been ordained for some time, I ended up with more an…

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