You know at the end of the retreat we're going to put up some photos of Wat Kow Tahm, and we actually have a whole new series this time from what we put up before. One of the pictures is of a very large building we have. It's called a boht, the Thai word for a meditation ordination hall, where they ordain monks and nuns. And this building is about seven stories tall, that's how high it reaches, but it's only one floor, six stories of roof. But the roof is a triangle front face, and there's this whole blank concrete wall that went on the roof. But it's not blank any more, it was blank when they built it. It was painted, a beautiful picture of the Buddha sitting in meditation pose underneath a Bodhi tree with rivers next to him and deer in the background, which signifies his original enlightenment day.
A monk did this in three months. He built his own scaffolding with trees cut from the woods and so on. And when it was up there, rickety as can be, but he would climb up, he'd paint a little, he'd get down, he'd walk away, he'd look and he'd climb up, and for three months he did it, all during this short period of time. He goes for months to different Wats, doing this type of generosity work, to paint Buddha pictures like this, and that's how he feels he's helping with the Dhamma. So his keen interest in arts is for the benefit of other people.
Whatever you're keenly interested in, whether it's arts, politics or whatever: why are you interested in it, is it just for curiosity, to just frivolously waste a bit of your life? Or are you interested in it because something beneficial may come out of it? That's something to ask yourself. Sometimes I'll read a biography, recently I read Christopher Reeve, his second book. I've also read his first book. What's happening with him interests me on a mental level. And I've some interest now in what's happening with his physical body and what the doctors are doing these days and so on. So there's an interest there and I tie it into the Dhamma whenever I can, I bring his story into many interviews. I use some things that I learn from other people's lives and some things from technology, and I'll tie it into my speech, in other words, to try to use it to help other people. This is in many of the talks Rosemary and I give. Last night I gave the cute story about the tree growing and so on. I grew trees before, I know about fertilizer and water killing if you put too much on. So from that background, in a sense, technical background of being a gardener, I'm able to present a story in a way that people can understand and get the Dhamma through. So that can be a consideration to think about when you get interested in any sort of other thing, whether it really is important to you in your Buddhist practice and your growing as a human being.