The Snobbish Monk
(Written in 2013, re-edited in 2026) At the feedback session of a course I conducted in 2011, a participant commented that I had “changed a lot”. He told the audience that when he first met me in 2007, he found me quite snobbish. In my mind, that was one of the best compliments I had ever received, and it still is. There were other nice things that he said about me, but that first comment had already made my day. No doubt, I had been rather snobbish, although it didn’t seem so to me then. Whenever I think of this, I feel grateful for the change that has happened. I sometimes also feel a bit strange; the person that I was seems so remote now. “Snobbish” was what that man thought of me back then. I think he was being kind. “Arrogant” would have been more accurate. That’s the word my teacher, Bhante Aggacitta, used. He said it many times, yet I couldn’t see how I was. Perhaps it was impossible for me to see it, because I had ‘become’ it. Just as the eye can’t see itself, neither can ...