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

Don’t go and follow the thoughts of wanting to have it easy
and be comfortable. You need to keep in mind that the source of
peace and the attainment of perfection is to be found exactly
where dukkha is. It comes from dukkha. That we can experience
comfort stems from nothing else than dukkha. So, actually,
dukkha is part of what enables human beings to experience the
sense of perfection – by having mindfulness and wisdom.
External dukkha is something that all of us are able to
observe with one another. However, in order to recognize internal
dukkha, the dukkha that concerns one’s state of mind, one needs
to know for oneself. Ordaining is not a matter of external things. I
myself have passed through some of these experiences and know
them well, having ordained when I was still in my youth, in the
period of life in which one likes to lose oneself in fun and
pleasure, easily forgetting oneself. But I upheld that being a
young man, one has to study and learn from these experiences,
even though they may be painful, hard and difficult. One needs to
understand them as a part of life.
Problems are part of life and are meant to be learned from,
so I undertook this, resisting and going against the stream, not
taking much pleasure in things that are pleasurable and
comfortable.
Also, in our livelihood, one should live like somebody who
doesn’t possess much. Even with robes, we only have a single set,
just that. When I’m in Thailand I have just this set of robes.
Coming here to Malaysia, I have just this set of robes. We don’t
have many possessions like householders or worldly people do.
We have just this, and one can say that just this is enough to
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