Thank you for sharing the story.JamesTheGiant wrote: ↑Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:38 amTrue! On that topic I have an interesting story:
Bhante Sujato was going to speak at some conference in Indonesia. He flew into the country, changed planes, and flew to some small regional city. He got off the plane, and waited for his pre-arranged ride outside the terminal.
And waited. And waited...
...and he finally went back inside, found a wifi hotspot, and checked his email to see if he could contact the layperson who was coming to pick him up.
As he read his email he realized he was in the wrong city, 400 miles from where he should be! He knew nobody in the city, there was no Buddhist centre or temple in the area, and the population was mostly Muslim and a few Christians.
At that moment, in this small regional Indonesian city, a woman walked past and said "Oh hello Bhante Sujato, what are you doing here? I haven't seen you since I was last in Australia".
He was amazed, and he explained, and she and her husband gave him a place to sleep for the night, and drove him all he way to the conference the next day.
Kamma or coincidence, who knows!
If I remember correctly he said he knows less than perhaps 50 Indonesian people, and so that makes the odds of meeting someone he knew there at less than 1 in Five Million.
The biggest problem is many lay Buddhist do not understand the monk's rules.