..续本文上一页oth do them together

　　" And all the while we”re just sitting there ... Whereas if you take the task and look at it in a different way, look at it positively: "What an honour to be able to do the dishes! they are honouring me by asking me to do the dishes!" Putting your hands in soapy water with bone china - all those are pleasant physical sensations, actually, aren”t they. So if you start looking at the positive side, then you”re not going into depression about washing the dishes or spending a lifetime of the same old boring reaction, because maybe your mother made you wash the dishes. These things hang on, just little things like this. You can see it with men sometimes, the way they react to women, "No woman is ever going to tell me what to do. No woman can boss me around." And these are the kind of male reactions that you develop when you are rebelling against your mother. And then women about men, it”s the same thing isn”t it

　　 Rebelling against the father, "male chauvinism, trying to dominate and pull Us down and tyrannize women. grrr." Because sometimes women never outgrow their rebellion against their fathers. Sometimes We carry that on through a whole lifetime, without really knowing that we are doing it. In our reflections on Dhamma, we begin to free the mind from these very inadequate and immature reactions to life. We find in this "rising up" to life a sense of maturity and willingness to participate in it, and to respect people who are in positions Of authority, rather than rebelling or resisting out of immature habits. When we are mature, when we understand Dhamma, we can work in the world in ways that are of benefit, harmonising, of Use to the society that we live in.

　　I remember in my first year at Wat Pah Pong, in Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand, with Ajahn Chah, I liked the monastery at first, but then I became very critical too. I wasn”t going to give in too easily. I was going to keep my eyes open to see if it really was a good place or not. So when people tried to convince me about what a wonderful monastery it was, I”d be very sceptical. Many people would ask: "Don”t you love Luong Por

　　" I thought: "No, I don”t feel anything really." The idea of loving Luong Por at that time had never even occurred to me. Then they carried on about how it was such a good monastery - and my reaction when people tried to tell me how good something was tended to be to resist and look for what was wrong with it. That”s an immature reaction, isn”t it

　　 I could see then that when somebody tried to convince me or convert me there was this kind of stubborn attitude: "I”m not going to do it, I don”t care if it is the best, I”m not going to believe it because I don”t want you to be right!"

　　I didn”t know really very much about Buddhist monasticism, but I still had strong views about what monks should be. And so I would very much be aware of that which I didn”t approve of but then living there, I began to see what an opinionated, conceited attitude that was. So I began to let go of these things, I found that I fell in love with Luong Por Chah! This falling in love was coming from feeling a tremendous respect and trust. So you see the human heart itself is a heart of warmth and love, and it can bring joy and beauty into a situation. And when the heart is full of love and joy then that affects, not only our own happy states of mind but affects the people around us, and, the society we”re in. When I first went to Ubon, I thought I wouldn”t stay very long, but I spent nearly 10 years there, and to this day, I still look at Ubon as to a place I”d really love to go to. Not because it”s beautiful because it”s not particularly beautiful, but because I really began to appreciate it and what I received there: the support, the teaching, and the ability to…

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