62. More on eating
About three or four months later, the same group of monks came to pay their respects to Luang Pu after the Rains Retreat and told him, “We ate vegetarian food throughout the rains, but it was very difficult. The lay people where we were staying in Khoke Klaang village, Praasaat district, knew nothing about vegetarian food. We had trouble finding any, and it was troublesome for the people who were supporting us. Some of the monks ended up in poor health, and some of us almost didn’t make it all the way through the Rains Retreat. We weren’t able to put as much effort into our meditation as we should have.”
Luang Pu said,
“When a monk partakes of the four requisites, he should contemplate them first. If, on contemplating, he sees that the food in front of him—whether it’s vegetables, meat, fish, or rice—is pure in three ways in that he hasn’t seen or heard or suspected that an animal was killed to provide the food specifically for him, and also that he himself obtained the food in an ethical way, that the lay people donated it out of faith, then he should go ahead and eat that food. This is how our teachers have practiced as well.”
