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her rudely awoke each time. She hardly got a good night's sleep. Most people who slept fitfully as she seemed destined to do, would be irritable next morning and snap at others for anything untactful said — but that wouldn’t have been Chandra. She found a small spittoon for herself and put it at the head of her bed. She put a white rag at the bottom of it and covered it with a scrap of paper. Each time a bedbug bit into her, she calmly picked it off and put it in the spittoon covering it with a fresh piece of paper. In the morning she released the bedbugs elsewhere. She relocated them one by one, until eventually, there were no more bedbugs left infesting her mattress. She was left with a clean and hygienic bed. When it came to mealtimes the long-standing residents of the temple would never join her at the same table, because Chandra looked so thin and emaciated. They were suspicious of her long, straggly hair and sunken eyes. She was so thin that tendons stood out all over her body. They assumed that she was suffering from tuberculosis. They didn’t want to catch it so kept their distance. Even those serving up the food at the canteen, slung it abruptly into her chipped, enamel plate as if they were reluctant to give her food at all. Most people would be upset by such treatment — they might feel resentment, want to go home or run sobbing to the abbot — however Chandra was able to be a teacher to herself in this respect. She recalled that the reason she was there was to practise meditation, not to be cosseted. The only reason she had left home was to study the ‘knowledge of DhammadKāya’. She considered each 1. Which was still deadly in those days and hard to cure.