Khanti - Wat Pah Nanachat

accept the logic that ‘Yes, I should keep the rules out of respect
for my teachers, out of respect for the Vinaya.’
Forest monks have the reputation of being “very strict”
with the Vinaya. But I don’t see the way we live as a matter of
strictness at all. I would compare us to obedient children.
Nobody praises a child who does what his parents tell him to
do, for being a very “strict” child, do they? It’s the norm, it’s
how children are expected to be. Similarly, as bhikkhus, we
look at the Buddha ultimately as a father and out of respect and
devotion to him, we keep his Vinaya. Why wouldn’t we? At
the end of his life, the Buddha said that he wouldn’t establish
any particular monk as his successor, or Dhamma-heir, but that
the Dhamma and the Vinaya teachings would take his place as
the sasada 7 . This gives an indication of just how important the
Vinaya is. The Buddha established it as one of the twin pillars
of the Buddhist religion for future generations.
We have all entered the Sangha voluntarily, and surely
that demonstrates a wish to commit ourselves to living within
the boundaries of the Vinaya. If we wanted to live a more free
and independent kind of Buddhist life, we wouldn’t need to
adopt this form. But having voluntarily entered the Sangha, we
surrender to it. We accept the form with humility. I am
reminded of a lady who used to come to Wat Pah Nanachat
regularly. She was a retired school mistress – the fire-breathing
dragon type – and she could be very fierce. Sometimes you
could see the self-righteousness blazing out of her. This woman
had had a lot of pain and suffering in her life. On one occasion
her son took temporary ordination in a monastery somewhere
in Ubon. He was a very intelligent, well educated young man
and his mother had invested all her worldly hopes in him. At
7 sasada: the leader of a religion
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