..续本文上一页suggested to Ajahn Chah that he send me there.

　　He didn”t; but he did encourage me to go to Bahn Bung Wai, which was a village about 6 kilometres from the main monastery. So then in 1975 we established Wat Pah Nanachat, ”The International Forest Monastery” near this village. Before we went there, the place had been a charnel ground, a cremation area for the village, and it was believed that the forest was filled with ghosts. So the villagers would come and ask, ”Is it all right

　　” At first we didn”t realise what the place meant to the villagers. Then I became aware that I was staying at the spot where the most fiendish ghost in the forest was supposed to live, so the village headman used to come and ask, ”You sleep all right

　　 Seen anything interesting

　　” I didn”t see anything at all, the ghosts didn”t bother me. But that experience actually helped me to prove my life as a monk, and that was due to kataññu.

　　So, too, was coming here to England in 1977. When Luang Por Chah asked me to come here I was determined to stick it out, not just to follow my own particular feelings and moods - because that first year I felt pretty awful, and I was ready to go back to Thailand. But because of this sense of gratitude, I wasn”t going to follow a personal whim, it gave me a tremendous sense of duty, of service, but not in a heavy way. kataññu meant that I did not stay here out of a sense of duty - which makes life unpleasant - but out of a willingness to sacrifice and to serve. This is a joyful thing to do. So we can feel kataññu ”for our teachers like Luang Por Chah.

　　This reminds me of an interesting story. The monk who took me to see Luang Por Chah was the same age as I was; he had been in the Thai Navy, and I had been in the American Navy during the Korean War. He could speak Pidgin English, and had been on tudong - wandering from Ubon province, where Ajahn Chah lived, to Nong Khai where I was. It was my first year as a novice monk and he was the first Thai monk I had met who could speak English, so I was delighted to have somebody to talk to. He was also a very strict monk, adhering to every rule in the Vinaya. He would eat from his alms bowl and wore dark brown forest robes, whereas in the monastery where I lived, the monks wore orange-coloured robes; he really impressed me as an exemplary monk. He told me that I should go and stay with Ajahn Chah. So after I received bhikkhu ordination, my preceptor agreed that I could go with this monk to stay with Luang Por Chah. But on the way I began to get fed up with this monk - who turned out to be a pain in the neck. He was forever fussing about things and condemning the other monks, saying that we were the very best. I could not take this incredible arrogance and conceit, and I hoped that Ajahn Chah would not be like him. I wondered what I was getting myself into.

　　When we arrived at Wat Pah Pong, I was relieved to find that Ajahn Chah was not like that. The following year the monk, whose name was Sommai, disrobed and he became an alcoholic. The only thing that had kept him off alcohol had been the monastic life, so then he fell into alcoholism and became a really degenerate man with a terrible reputation in the province of Ubon. He became a tramp, a really pathetic case, and I felt a sense of disgust and aversion towards him. Talking to Ajahn Chah one evening about it, he told me: ”You must always have kataññu towards Sommai, because he brought you here. No matter how badly he behaves or degenerate he becomes, you must always treat him like a wise teacher and express your gratitude. You are probably one of the really good things that has happened to him in his life, something he can be proud of; if you keep reminding him of this - in a good w…

《Gratitude to Parents》全文未完，请进入下页继续阅读…