It was 1981 and my wife and I were living at a monastery in the remote jungles of Northeast Thailand practicing as a Buddhist monk and nun . . . and Janet was having problems stomaching the coarse food.
With only one meal in the morning and no further food permitted the rest of the day, she couldn't get enough to eat. I stayed away from the grasshoppers, raw fish, and insect eggs myself, but loved the rice and bananas -- I could easily have survived on sticky rice and bananas! But Janet couldn't, or at least she didn't think that she could, and her situation only worsened.
It became critical when she hadn't had a bowel movement for three months -- hard to believe but true -- and she actually wondered why she wasn't dead, or where the little bit that she did eat was going!
Becoming desperate, she finally scrunched up enough courage to speak with the abbot, who was known to be harsh with whomever he considered to be a crybaby! The abbot patronizingly summoned another monk (two monks must be present when speaking to a woman), and impatiently listened to Janet's sad story.
"Three months without shitting!" He exclaimed. "Please, I have gone six months without shitting. Go drink your urine. End of discussion."
Janet was not a happy camper. Not only was she starving and beginning to look like a skeleton, but she might have to drink her pee too!
As one could imagine, she tried everything -- all kinds of remedies first, but to no avail. Then, reluctantly, out of desperation, she finally did as he suggested; she closed her nose and eyes and . . . down the hatch!
Surprise! It wasn't as bad as she imagined . . . a little salty perhaps, and within a few days, lo and behold . . . success. And she soon learned not only that eating only bananas and sticky rice will bind you up tighter than a drum, but that the bitter leafy vegetables had better be eaten as well to make you go, like them or not. But this episode was only a prelude of what was to come for my training partner.
While my best-friend-ever was having constipation problems, my tribulations were, as usual, on the opposite end of the scale. Late one night, in the middle of the jungle in my little hut, I awoke from a dream -- that I was sled riding -- only to find myself sliding around on my little bamboo mat that served as my bed on the hardwood floor!
"This is strange," I thought, "what could I be sliding in?" I felt around, and it was as if my mat was covered with mayonnaise! I lit my lantern to see what the heck was so slippery, and immediately wished I hadn't. The green, slimy, horrible mess covered the entire floor of my little hut, my mat, and me! I was covered in poop. The dysentery came on like a thief in the night and didn't even wake me up.
The jungle was pitch-black that time of night when all kinds of things crawl around, and with no convenient change of clothes (a monk is only allowed a waistcloth antaravasaka, an upper robe uttarsanga, and outer robe sanghati), and no bathroom to clean up in, I made my way to an outhouse a quarter mile away, where I spent another hour or so squatting away in the blackness.
When I was finally cleaned out for the moment, I took some detergent, that was always available in the outhouses to clean up with, and made my way another quarter mile to the well, where I cleaned my robes as best I could.
I smelled to high heaven the next morning, wearing the wet robes on alms round, but the Thai villagers understood these things, and I even received more than usual in my bowl that day!
But the diarrhea didn't go away. Two weeks later, I was still afraid to fall asleep and this nightly nightmare began taking its toll. I became weaker and weaker, and frankly tired of living in the outhouse, so I finally broke down and reluctantly went to my intolerant-to-those-who-are-sick abbot for help -- and he surprised me! He asked a villager to fetch some honey and bananas, and then instructed me to eat only honey and bananas exclusively for a week.
It was great the first day, but boy can you get sick of honey and bananas quickly, and who in their right mind would believe that honey and bananas could cure dysentery? I certainly didn't.
But within a week, the honey and bananas, or something, did of course cure the dysentery, and I wouldn't have been disappointed to never see a banana or honey again, or an outhouse!
(The above is an excerpt from "The Vow, Secrets of a Buddhist Monk and Nun -- In Search of the Seven Freedoms" a memoir that Janet and I are presently working on.)
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