“These days, Thai people are ordaining less and less. I don’t know why.
Whether it’s because of their work or because the world is developing, I don’t know. In the past, people would ordain for at least four years, five years. But now there are people ordaining for seven days, fifteen days. There are even people who ordain in the morning and disrobe in the evening. It’s because of this sort of thing that Buddhism will disappear.
Some people say that if people ordained the way I say—three or five years
—the country wouldn’t develop. We’d run out of people staying at home; there wouldn’t be anyone making a living; we wouldn’t be able to keep up with the world. So I tell them that this kind of thinking is the thinking of earthworms.
Earthworms live in the dirt. They’ve been eating dirt from the very beginning. But even though they keep on eating, they’re afraid that they’ll run out of dirt. So when they excrete dirt, they put it up next to their heads to eat, for they’re afraid they’ll run out of dirt. This is the thinking of earthworms.
People who think that the world won’t develop, that it’ll come to an end: That’s the thinking of earthworms.”