Luang Por Liem: The Ways of the Peaceful - Wat Pah Nanachat

So, if we experience both sukha and dukkha in our practice,
this is not a problem. We just need to try and not be negligent.
There will always be a bit of sukha here and a bit of dukkha there.
This is what I experienced. Thinking about myself, when I was
new to the principles of the life in the yellow robes, I didn’t know
anything. I didn’t come with the expectation to take on this
lifestyle for all my life, either. I thought I would ordain merely to
follow the tradition of young men in Thailand to ordain
temporarily at least once in their life. I came to have a look,
because people say that it’s good to try becoming a monk. But
even after I had tested the monk’s life and decided to stay, I kept
drifting back towards my old ways of living in many situations.
Actually I was still a layperson, although now I was part of the
class of monastics. Living under the shade of the yellow robe, I
had become an object of reverence for ordinary people, but I still
had the thoughts of a layperson, and everything kept being
influenced by this. I still had dirty thoughts – but at least they
were only thoughts.
There are these thoughts and feelings, and one can’t just say,
“stop” and erase them all at once. It takes four or five years until
one acquires new habits. Until then, one needs to live with dust in
one’s eyes, always craving under the power of sensual desires.
The eyes seeing a form is sensual desire, the ear hearing a sound,
the nose smelling an odour, the tongue tasting a flavour – all these
are sensual desires. It feels like one is clouded by the
impingements of sensuality, and there is nothing that could clear
up or lighten the situation. But, I thought, one has to try anyway.
When others bowed to me or paid respects, I didn’t pretend that
there was anything especially good about me. Rather, I felt that I
lacked the merit to be able to pay people back for all their
134