This new Suan Mokkh is two kilometers away on the other side of the Asian Highway. You can go there if you are interested. The idea behind its construction is that we see that the world lacks peace. This is because the religions do not join forces. Instead, they are jealous of one another. Some religions think of undermining other religions so as to gain more adherents. The situation is just like that.

The video tapes are used as an audio-visual aid. As for the slides, I was the first to use them in Dhamma lectures. My first slide projector was made from a car headlamp. I used to make a lot of slides, and others followed my example.

Regarding demonstrative alms offering, this is to show an example of how people in the Buddha’s time offered alms to the monks: the offerers took the alms bowls into the kitchen, put enough food into them, and brought them back to the monks.

To get the view, you have to go up the Nang-E Mountain, about a fifteen-minute walk from here. Look at the scenery around the Ban Don Bay area, which was believed to be the site of the ancient Srivijaya culture. There is a mountain called Khao Srivijaya.

The term bodhisatta-dhamma means ‘the good characteristics of a Buddha-to-be.’ We happen to have a statue of the Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva on the grass lawn next to here. Bodhisatta-dhammas are those dhammas (qualities) of a philanthropist or a selfless person, who, aiming at becoming a Buddha, prepares himself or herself to finish off the ego.

This may seem ridiculous to those who take it literally and do not understand the real meaning. What we mean is that, when we associate with trees or stones in solitude, new ideas or feelings can occur to us as though the trees and stones could talk to us.

A forest monastery has to have characteristics like these here; then people can benefit from the arrangement. As a matter of fact, the terms ‘village monastery’ and ‘forest monastery’ have just appeared recently. In the old days, there were only forest monasteries, and all of them were beyond a village or town boundary.

You have to see this on the top of Golden Buddha Hill before you can understand what it is. I say again that this is ultimately in compliance with the Buddha’s wish, and it is constructed in the best possible way to follow the style of what was built in the Buddha’s time. It is inexpensive, never harming the national economy.

The remains of a brook are on Suan Mokkh’s boundary line beyond the women’s residential area. They start on top of a hill and then disappear below. During the dry season, it’s bone dry. Its remains show that it once had a lot of water because the brook bed was cut into a deep channel. But deforestation has made it dry – not a drop of water remains.