Tales from Thailand #6


Hello, dear readers. I’m sorry to leave you hanging for so long, especially after suggesting that my health wasn’t robust. (It is now) The photo below is from two weeks ago, at the new S.D.S. organic farm, far south of Bangkok.

The land was donated by Mei Oo, the woman on the right. She is also the leader of the Dhammachat Bambat/Nature Cure program, who will be fearlessly leading our expedition into rural Cambodia next week.

Soon after we arrived at the new farmland, this woman came to pay her respects to Venerable Maichee Sansanee. She told us that she’d attended a single weekend retreat at S.D.S. fourteen years ago, and it changed her life completely. She realized, she said, that happiness comes from the inside, and that good things happen to happy people. This knowledge preserved her sanity after their farm was wiped out by flooding, and she had to beg from neighbors just to stay alive. Now that she’s on her feet again and the S.D.S. farming operation is moving into her neighborhood, she wants to donate a portion of her crops and her labor to S.D.S., out of gratitude. This is the kind of “currency” that fuels our center.

Above, I am teaching Nattui my
signature song in Thailand:
Happy birthday to you/Happy
birthday to me/Every day we are
born/Every day we are free!

Nattui runs a farm-to-table operation nearby, as well as a successful organic
restaurant in Australia. She was on hand to offer suggestions and encouragement. She will be closing up her life in Australia soon and come be the new manager here. We finished our excursion with a vegetarian lunch at Nattui’s very popular nearby restaurant/organic farm.

Before dawn the next day, I headed out to the airport to fly to Sakon Nakhon, a town in the north of Thailand. The staff met me, and we proceeded to Watkampramon, a.k.a. Cancer Village, in the rural Issan countryside. . .

Read the full Tales #6 (pdf)