About This Teaching
A narrator tells of a layman with a reputation as something of a gangster whom Ajahn Chah took on wandering tudong journeys in the 1960s. In the layman's own account, the others ran away, and he was made to carry everything, including bundles of fruit gathered on the way, until he got diarrhoea and had to wade a deep stream at night. When he complained, Ajahn Chah said wisdom comes through seeing suffering. When he refused a passing car's offer of a ride and the layman asked if he meant to kill him, he replied that he had brought him to kill his defilements.
Other episodes follow: refusing a wealthy host's comforts, giving away donated money as drinks for buffalo herders because the happiness we give others makes us happy, and treating his painful eyes as the result of harming geckos as a boy. When the layman later gave up drink and his old ways, Ajahn Chah called it crossing the small streams. The man eventually ordained and lived as a monk until his death.