..续本文上一页es of that time. The life of an alms mendicant worked in India. Of all countries, it should work there, as that”s where the Buddha lived and taught.

　　It was about this time that I began to think of Luang Por Chah. My mind began to recognise the kindness he had extended to me. He had accepted me as his disciple, looked after me, taken an interest, given me the teachings and helped me in almost every way. And there was his own example. If you wanted to be a monk, you wanted to be like him. He was a full human being, a man who inspired me, someone I wanted to emulate - and I must say there weren”t so many men that I had had that feeling towards. In the States, the role models for men were not very attractive to me; John Wayne or President Eisenhower or Richard Nixon were not men I wanted to emulate. Film stars and athletes were given great importance, but none of them inspired me.

　　But then in Thailand, I found this monk. He was very small; I towered above him. When we were together sometimes that surprised me, because he had such an enormous presence. Despite his size he seemed always much bigger than I was. It was interesting, the power, the aura of this little man - I didn”t really think of him as a little man, I thought of him as a huge man, and this was because of the metta (kindness) in his life. He was a man of enormous metta. There was this feeling about him that attracted people to him, he was like a magnet and you wanted to be close to him. So I found myself going over to see him in his kuti in the evenings, or whenever it was possible; I wanted to take every opportunity I had to hang around. And I found that that was the way most people tended to behave towards him. He had an enormous following in Thailand, both Thai and Westerners, because of his metta practice. I asked him once what it was in him that drew people to him and he said, ”I call it my magnet” He was a very charming person; he had an ebullience, a radiant quality, so people flocked around. And he used his magnet to attract people so that he could teach them the Dhamma. This is how he used the charismatic quality he had: not for his ego, but to help people.

　　I felt a great sense of gratitude that he should do this - that he would spend his life taking on lay people and difficult monks like myself, having to put up with all of us endlessly creating problems; we were so obsessed with ourselves, with our desires, our doubts, our opinions, our views. To be surrounded day and night by people who are endlessly irritating takes real metta, and he would do it. He could have just gone off to a nice place and led a quiet life. That”s what I wanted to do at the time. I wanted to get enlightened so that I could just live a nice peaceful life in a happy way in a pleasant peaceful place. I wanted everyone in the monastery to be harmonious, to have the right chemistry, and to harmonise with me so there would be no conflict or friction. But in a Thai monastery there are always a lot of problems and difficulties. The Vinaya Pitaka (the Books of the Discipline that the Lord Buddha established for the bhikkhus) has all the background stories of what the monks used to do that caused the Buddha to establish these disciplinary guidelines. Some of the rules deal with horrible things that the monks would do. Some of those bhikkhus around the Lord Buddha were abominable.

　　The Lord Buddha, after his enlightenment, at first thought that the Dhamma was too subtle, that no one would understand it so there was no point in teaching it. Then, according to the legend, one of the gods came forth and said, ”Please Lord, for the welfare of those who have little dust in their eyes, teach the Dhamma.” The Buddha then contemplated with his powerful mind who might understand the Dhamma teaching. He r…

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