Beggars are not choosers

Question:  Can a monk refuse food he receives?

Than Ajahn:  When monks go on pindapatt (alms round), he should not refuse the food given. It is a courtesy that you accept things out of gratitude of people’s generosity, but you don’t have to eat everything that people give you. You can choose (what to eat) once the food is in your bowl, which food you want to eat, which food you don’t want to eat. But you cannot tell people what you want to eat such as that you cannot tell people that “I am a vegetarian, please don’t give me any meat”. If people want to give vegetables and meat together, and if you just want to eat vegetables, you just take the meat out. You don’t have to eat the meat, but you don’t have to tell people what to give. Beggars are not choosers. 

Question:  When two persons offer food, one buys pork in the market and cook it and the other kills a pig to prepare the same dish, so can a monk refuse the food?

Than Ajahn:  No, if they don’t tell you how the food was obtained then we (monks) cannot tell them. If they tell you that the pig was intentionally killed then the monk has to advise them not to do it again because they are doing more harm than benefit. You might get the benefit of giving the food, but you are also creating a harmful action to yourself because you killed the pig. So the duty of the teacher is to tell them not to do it. But if they go to the market and buy meat (or something that had already died), then it doesn’t matter. 

Question:  For a new full time practitioner must I stay in a forest monastery or must I stay in a monastery in the city where there are more structured training? Is the place to practice important?

Than Ajahn:  The intensity of practice is different. If you have higher intensity of practice then you have a better chance of achieving the result. If you have lower intensity of the practice then you have a lower chance to get the result. So it is up to you, what do you want? If you want to have the result then you need to practise intensely. The more intense you practice the better will be your result. So it depends on how much input you want to put in.

The place will provide you with what kind of practice there is. If you stay in the monastery in town, the practice may not be so intense, it is easy going and not practising full time because you will have other activities such as you have to study scriptures, go chanting, accept invitation of Sangha-dāna, to people’s home. So if you engage in this kind of activities then you won’t have much time to put into your practice. But with forest monks, they disregard all other activities except meditation, so they get the result faster. So it is up to you what you want.

By Ajaan Suchart Abhijāto