..续本文上一页me out of her room at night, but after listening to the Dhamma teaching she became determined to return every few months to practice. She also decided not to go for her grade one General Dhamma (book) studies, but to concentrate on putting those studies into practice.

　　Khun Pow, with Khun Vai”s agreement, started to keep the Eight Precepts on the Observance Days. When business pressures — guests from abroad for instance — made this difficult, she would simply keep them on another day. To help make such days more suitable for meditation practice at home, one upstairs room was set aside and dubbed ”Ekasatarn”. (Meaning ”a place to be alone”, and also sounding as if it is the name of a monastery.) Any disturbing telephone calls could then be deflected with the news that, ”Khun Pow had gone to ”Ekasatarn”. Khun Pow”s friends would then assume that she had gone to the monastery, and there would be no need to lie about Khun Pow ”not being at home”.

　　In 1971, Khun Pow thought back upon the help given to her by her teacher in Dhamma studies, the scholar monk in the central Bangkok monastery, and offered to sponsor his further (M.A.) studies at the Banares University in India. (Since that time, this monk has become one of the most well known scholars in Thailand.)

　　By 1974 Khun Pow was spending much more time away in the north eastern meditation monasteries, and decided that the following year she would spent the whole of the three month Rains Retreat period up there. Back home, a small hut had been made in the garden, beneath a tree and with a view of the nearby pond. That was where she retired to, for she was now regularly keeping the Eight Precepts. She and Khun Vai decided that it was also time for her to fully retire from the company, which she did in 1975, and she was then ready to go on the three month”s retreat that year.

　　Khun Pow had always been bedeviled with health problems that resulted in many stays in hospital. These included operations on the womb, the gall bladder and the breast. This last treatment concluded with radiation therapy that seemed to clear things up in 1975. However, that July, when she was already settled in the monastery for the Rains Retreat, she met a fellow devotee who was also a doctor. The doctor noticed that Khun Pow”s eyes were yellow (with jaundice

　　) and so advised her quickly to go to Bangkok for treatment.

　　Eventually, after many tests and a final bone biopsy, it was confirmed that this time the cancer had penetrated to the bone marrow, and that no further treatment was possible. When Khun Pow knew that the cancer was terminal, she asked permission to go and practice Dhamma at Wat Pa Bahn Tahd. She arrived there in October and Ven. Acharn Maha Boowa gave her a Dhamma talk virtually every evening, for over 130 days. Other devotees were also staying there with her, one being a lady doctor, and when her condition made it necessary to be nearer the hospital she returned to Bangkok.

　　When Khun Pow was home again, she and Khun Vai decided that they would be fellow Dhamma farers, rather than husband and wife. She asked him to help remind her about Dhamma, to awaken her mindfulness, in the coming days. Khun Vai therefore prepared some appropriate Dhamma verses and set himself the task of giving as much spiritual support as he could. He was able to sit with her and prayed and meditated. When Khun Pow could not read anymore, he would read aloud and tape some of the important Dhamma teachings for her to listen and meditate on.

　　Khun Pow went into a semi-coma, but when she became more conscious, Khun Vai was there to repeat some words of Dhamma. He then thought a better way would be to use the original voices, by using a tape machine. So he arranged tapes of the morning and evening chanting (that Khun Pow had …

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