When Ajaan Mun and Phra Pannabhisara Thera returned to Bangkok to spend the Rains Retreat at Wat Sra Pathum, they left me under the guidance of Ajaan Singh and Ajaan MahaPin. During this period I followed Ajaan Singh and Ajaan MahaPin on their wanderings through the countryside. They had been asked by Phraya Trang, the Prince of Ubon, to teach morality and meditation to the people of the rural areas. When the time came to enter the Rains Retreat, we stopped at OxHead Village Monastery in Yasothon district. It so happened that Somdet Phra Mahawirawong, the ecclesiastical head of the Northeast, called Ajaan MahaPin back to the city of Ubon, so in the end only six of us spent the rainy season together in that township.
I was very ardent in my efforts to practice meditation that rainy season, but there were times I couldn”t help feeling a little discouraged because all my teachers had left me. Occasionally I”d think of disrobing, but whenever I felt this way there”d always be something to bring me back to my senses.
One day, for instance, at about five in the evening, I was doing walking meditation, but my thoughts had strayed towards worldly matters. A woman happened to walk past the monastery, improvising a song — "I”ve seen the heart of the tyd tyy bird: It”s mouth is singing, tyd tyy, tyd tyy, but its heart is out looking for crabs" — so I memorized her song and repeated it over and over, telling myself, "It”s you she”s singing about. Here you are, a monk, trying to develop some virtue inside yourself, and yet you let your heart go looking for worldly matters." I felt ashamed of myself. I decided that I”d have to bring my heart in line with the fact that I was a monk if I didn”t want the woman”s song to apply to me. The whole incident thus turned into Dhamma.
A number of other events also helped to keep me alert. One night when the moon was bright, I made an agreement with one of the other monks that we”d go without sleep and do sitting and walking meditation. (That rainy season there were six of us altogether, five monks and one novice. I had made a resolution that I”d have to do better than all the rest of them. For instance, if any of them were able to get by on only ten mouthfuls of food a day, I”d have to get by on eight. If any of them could sit in meditation for three hours straight, I”d have to sit for five. If any of them could do walking meditation for an hour, I”d have to walk for two. I felt this way about everything we did, and yet it seemed that I was able to live up to my resolution. This was a secret I kept to myself.)
At any rate, that night I told my friend, "Let”s see who”s better at doing sitting and walking meditation." So we agreed, "When I do walking meditation, you do sitting meditation; and when I do sitting meditation, you do walking meditation. Let”s see who can last longer." When it came my turn to do walking meditation, my friend went to sit in a hut next to the path where I was walking. Not too long afterwards, I heard a loud thud coming from inside the hut, so I stopped to open the window and peek in. Sure enough, there he was, lying on his back with his folded legs sticking up in the air. He had been sitting in full lotus position, gotten sleepy, and had simply fallen backwards and gone to sleep. I was practically dropping off to sleep myself, but had kept going out of the simple desire to win. I felt embarrassed for my friend”s sake — "I”d hate to be in his place," I thought — but at the same time was pleased I had won.
All of these things served to teach me a lesson: "This is what happens to people who aren”t true in what they do."
At the end of the rains, the group split up, each of us going off to wander alone, staying in cemeteries. During this period it seemed that my meditation was go…
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