Stillness Flowing (audiobook)

Luang Por and the Lay Community: Part 1 INTRODUCTION Appreciating the kindness and assistance that one has received in one’s life and making efforts to express that appreciation in appropriate ways (Pali: kataññū-katavedi) are, together with generosity, probably the Buddhist virtues most deeply embedded in Thai society. They are clearly apparent in relationships between sons and daughters with their parents and guardians, and in the respect paid to teachers and benefactors of any description. In Thailand, ‘boonkhun’ – the ties and obligations perceived to have been created between people by beneficial actions – underlies most meaningful social intercourse, including that between members of the Sangha and the laity. …

Luang Por and the Lay Community: Part 2 TO THE MONASTERY A monastery is to be found at the heart of almost every Thai village. Its entrance is usually through an open archway rather than a lockable gate. Lay Buddhists go in and out of the monastery every day: offering food in the morning, visiting the abbot, making merit, or perhaps just taking a short cut to the other side of the village. During Luang Por’s lifetime, the village headman, the head teacher at the local school and the abbot of the monastery were the acknowledged leaders of the community, with the abbot as the senior member of the triumvirate. …

Luang Por and the Lay Community: Part 3 SAMMĀDIṬṬHI ‘Sammādiṭṭhi’ is usually translated into English as ‘Right View’. The prefix ‘right’ means ‘in harmony with the way things are’; ‘view’ includes opinions, beliefs, values, theories and philosophies. A right view is thus one that corresponds to reality; the conviction, for example, that acts of generosity lead to happiness – would be considered a ‘right view’. Right View is the first constituent of the Noble Eightfold Path and is indispensable for the development of the other seven factors. At its most basic level, Right View consists of the adoption of a certain number of principles – most importantly, the law of kamma – as basic premises or working hypotheses to be relied upon in walking the Buddhist path. On this level, it is referred to as ‘Mundane Right View’. The culmination of the path – an understanding of the Four Noble Truths as a direct experience – is known as ‘Transcendental Right View’. …

Luang Por and the Lay Community: Part 4 FIRST MEETINGS One way of understanding Buddhist practice is to conceive of it as a long series of awakenings: some mundane, easily overlooked and only appreciated in retrospect, others more dramatic and memorable. Meeting Luang Por for the first time was the occasion for many awakenings of both kinds. Some people found the experience electric; for others, it signalled the beginning of gradual but inexorable changes in their values and way of life. Listening to Luang Por teach for the first time, a common perception was that his words seemed to articulate truths – far better than they could themselves – that on one level their hearts already sensed, but which they had never been able to make conscious. …

Luang Por and the Lay Community: Part 5 THE MANYFOLK The majority of Luang Por’s lay disciples and daily visitors were peasant farmers. Speaking to a group of local people, he turned to a favourite theme: ‘knowing what’s what’, not living blindly from day to day, but bearing in mind the guiding principles laid down by the Buddha: So many Buddhists are still deluded and superstitious. From my reflections, I’d say that it’s through not having grasped the main principles of Dhamma that they’ve gained no real ease in their lives. Just like people farming the soil without understanding about strains of rice or crop rotation, they don’t know how to pick out what’s of use to them and what’s not. …

Luang Por and the Lay Community: Part 6 FAMILY LIFE The first time householders listened to Luang Por give a Dhamma talk or went to ask him for advice, they were usually surprised at the accuracy and penetration of his insights into family life. It seemed common sense to most people that the causes and conditions underlying family conflicts were specific to householders, and impenetrable to a monk who had never married or had the experience of raising a family himself. But leading a large community over a period of many years allowed Luang Por to accumulate a great deal of understanding of the problems that can arise in human relationships. The kind of conflicts that arose in a monastery were not as far removed from those in a family as might be expected. Moreover, the wisdom that arises from cultivation of the Eightfold Path had given Luang Por a comprehensive knowledge of causality in its many modes, including an understanding of the relationships between mental states and behaviour – both destructive and constructive. On one occasion, a visitor was bemoaning her lot and told Luang Por how lucky he was not to have a family, with all of the tangled problems that it entailed. He replied: I do have a family here in the monastery, and it’s a big one. …

Luang Por and the Lay Community: Part 7 DHAMMA PRACTICE We’re like a chicken, that’s all. The chicken’s born, has chicks and spends its day scratching around in the dirt. And then in the evening, it goes to sleep. In the morning, it jumps down to the ground and starts scratching around again, ‘guk, guk, guk’. And then in the evening, it goes to sleep again. Is there any point to it? No. …

Luang Por’s Waning Years: Part 1 BODY SICK, MIND WELL One day, as the illnesses that would go on to render him bedridden for the last years of his life were starting to take their toll, Luang Por Chah spoke to some lay supporters: It’s like you’ve got a horse – a wild fiery horse that’s difficult to train. When it tries to run off, keep hold of the reins. Don’t lose your grip on them. But if the horse is really galloping away full pelt, let the reins go. If you don’t – then the next thing you know, your hand will be torn off. Let the horse and the reins go their way. Don’t let yourself be hurt by it. Let it go. But if the horse is just straining on the rope a bit, then try to restrain it, master it. This is the way to relate to everything. …

Luang Por’s Waning Years: Part 2 MORE TO IT In February 1941, the 82-year-old arahant Luang Pu Sao, teacher and companion of Luang Pu Mun, arrived by boat at a small riverside temple in Champasak, southwest Laos. He had fallen ill some time before leaving Thailand. Now on his way back to Thailand from an exhausting trip, he had spent the long journey upstream lying down with his eyes closed, apparently unconscious and clearly close to death. As the boat tied up at the jetty, he opened his eyes and asked, ‘Have we arrived? Take me to the Uposatha Hall.’ His disciples half-led, half-carried him into the building. Once inside, he somehow managed to pull himself into a sitting posture and asked for his outer robe to be folded over his left shoulder. He began to meditate. After a few minutes had passed, he came out of the cross-legged posture in order to bow three times to the large Buddha statue in front of him. After a while his disciples realized that he had not moved for some time. They rushed over, checked for a breath on a small mirror, and found none. Luang Pu Sao had passed away while prostrating before the Buddha. …

Luang Por in the West – 1977 & 1979: Part 1 INNER LAND – OUTER LAND In 1976, Ajahn Sumedho returned to California in order to visit his parents. On his flight back to Thailand, he stopped over in London for a few days as a guest of the English Sangha Trust (E.S.T.), a body set up to establish a Theravada Sangha in England. For the duration of his visit, Ajahn Sumedho stayed at Hampstead Vihāra, a four-storeyed terraced house belonging to the trust on the busy Haverstock Hill road, a mile or so south of Hampstead Heath. The E.S.T. had suffered years of frustration and disappointment in their efforts to promote a home-grown Sangha. In Ajahn Sumedho, they saw someone who might finally turn their dreams into reality. …

Luang Por in the West – 1977 & 1979: Part 2 DUTIYAMPI: AND FOR A SECOND TIME Two years later on the thirtieth of April, 1979, accompanied by his American attendant, Ajahn Pabhakaro, Luang Por set off to the West for a second and final time. On this trip, he was to visit America as well as Europe. But his first destination was England where the E.S.T had invited him to give encouragement to Ajahn Sumedho’s community, and to see for himself the latest developments in their efforts to establish a forest monastery. …

Luang Por in the West – 1977 & 1979: Part 3 THE LAST NIGHT On the evening of the twenty-seventh of June, his last night at Chithurst before returning to Thailand, Luang Por met with the Sangha for an evening of conversation and exhortation. The tape recording made that night captures wonderfully the warmth and informality of the occasion. ‘Monks’ and ‘zestful’ are two words not commonly linked in one sentence, but the conviviality, punctuated by gales of laughter, is tangible. It was the old magic of Luang Por, making people feel by his presence that they’d never in their lives been so happy and contented. He also took the opportunity to show off his only English phrase. Just a few sentences into a more formal Dhamma talk, a layperson entered the room with a new tray of hot drinks. …

Maechee Training: Part 3 VENERABLE FATHER Maechee Boonyu recalled how Luang Por could be especially gruff when maechees asked permission to visit their family: “He would say, ‘What for? Are you homesick? How long have you been here now? The Buddha never visited his home the whole time he was searching for enlightenment; you’ve only just ordained and you want to go there already.’ If he gave permission, he’d say, 'Go empty-handed, come back empty-handed. Don’t carry a basket-full there and a basket-full back.’ On the nun’s return he would ask her, ‘How was it? The same way you left it? Did you bring a basket-full back with you?’ He was talking Dhamma language. He meant memories and attachments. If the nun didn’t understand, she’d say, ‘Just a few onions and some garlic, Luang Por.' …

Maechee Training: Part 2 FOREST NUNS Not long after the founding of Wat Pah Pong, Luang Por Chah gave permission for the establishment of a maechee community. By doing so, he sought to provide a training within existing norms for women with a monastic vocation which would provide them as much support as possible for their progress along the path to liberation. …

Maechee Training: Part 1 INTRODUCTION Some five years after his enlightenment, the Buddha established an order of female monastics known as bhikkhunīs. The Theravada branch of this order flourished in India and Sri Lanka before falling into a period of decline and finally becoming extinct around 1000 CE, after an illustrious 1,500-year history. In light of the Buddha’s stipulation that Ordination required induction into a pre-existing community of bhikkhunīs, revival of the defunct order was deemed impossible. …

Luang Por and the Western Sangha: Part 6 THE TWAIN SHALL MEET By 1975, there were almost twenty Western monks at Wat Pah Pong – about a quarter of the resident Sangha. This rapid and significant influx brought with it inevitable tensions. Although the organization of the monastery and a common faith and confidence in Luang Por kept the situation workable, minor but niggling conflicts between the Thais and the ‘farangs’ became increasingly common. The first generation of Western monks was predominantly North American. These were young men used to an informal, unregimented life, to expressing their feelings about things freely, using their initiative. Many of them had robust personalities. In an era when travel to Southeast Asia was a lot more daunting than it is today, the path to a forest in Northeast Thailand was not an easy or straightforward one to take. Having to conform to the Vinaya, to many rules and regulations that they could not always see the reason for, could easily provoke the rebellious side of their nature. …

Luang Por and the Western Sangha: Part 5 KNOWER OF THE WORLDS Although the overwhelming majority of Westerners who entered the monastic life at Wat Pah Pong were male, there were also a small number of Western women who came to train as maechees. Chief amongst these, was an American known by her adopted name Khamfah, who arrived with her husband Paul, after fleeing their home in Laos ahead of the Communist takeover in late 1975. The couple decided to try to stay for five years, with the proviso that, if at any time, both of them wanted to leave, then they would do so; however, in the case that one wanted to go and the other wanted to stay, then they would both carry on and endure through their difficulties. It was challenging for both of them, but they survived the five years. …

Luang Por and the Western Sangha: Part 4 ON THE NOSE Luang Por showed much compassion for the difficulties of his Western disciples, but he could also tease them when they became self-indulgent. On one occasion, he mimed wiping imaginary tears from his eyes and saying tragically, ‘He’s my father, I’m his son …’, before chuckling and shaking his head. The performance left a deep impression on Ven. Varapanyo, for whom it was ‘an example of the way Luang Por saw through the self-important attitude that Westerners are especially prone to, how it needlessly glorifies, and increases, suffering’. …

Luang Por and the Western Sangha: Part 3 THROUGH WESTERN EYES The question which every Western monk would get asked sooner or later (and usually sooner), was why he chose to become a monk. It was often a more difficult question to answer than might be expected. It wasn’t so easy to distinguish causes from triggers, or to be sure that an uplifting narrative was not being patched together with hindsight. Monks usually settled on recounting the events leading up to their decision and their departure to Thailand. There was, for instance, Pabhakaro, an American helicopter pilot, who first came to the country on ‘R&R’ during the Vietnam War. There were the Peace Corps volunteers, and the young travellers backpacking through Asia like the Canadians, Tiradhammo and Viradhammo. There were also those like the British Brahmavamso and the Australian Nyanadhammo who came with the express intention of becoming monks. …

Luang Por and the Western Sangha: Part 2 THE FIRST DISCIPLE In 1967, a Wat Pah Pong monk named Ven. Sommai returned from a tudong trip to northern Isan with a monk who literally stood head and shoulders above him. Even the most restrained monks in Wat Pah Pong were unable to resist at least a surreptitious glance. The new monk was six foot two inches tall, had a fair complexion, an angular nose and bright blue eyes. His name was Sumedho. …

Luang Por and the Western Sangha: Part 1 INTRODUCTION From the mid-fourteenth century until its sack by the Burmese in 1767, Ayutthaya was the capital of the Thai nation. Established on an island in the Chao Phraya River, it was ideally situated to act as an entrepôt port at a time when land routes were safer than sea, and merchants in the Orient sought to avoid sending their goods through the Straits of Malacca. Within two hundred years, Ayutthaya had become one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Asia. Its population of approximately a million people exceeded that of London. Some five hundred temples, many with pagodas covered in gold leaf, lent the city a magical, heaven-like aura that dazzled visitors from other lands. By the mid-seventeenth century, with communities of traders from France, Holland, Portugal and England housed outside the city wall, the inhabitants of Ayutthaya had become accustomed to Westerners or ‘farangs’. The kings of Ayutthaya often employed foreign mercenaries as bodyguards. To the Thais, these strange white beings seemed to resemble a species of ogre: hairy, ill-smelling, quarrelsome and coarse, lovers of meat and strong spirits, but possessors of admirable technical skills, particularly in the arts of war. …

Monk’s Training: Part 4 A WELL-ROUNDED TRAINING One of the foundations of Buddhist practice is the conviction that purposeful effort has meaning. The Buddha rejected the beliefs that human life is determined by a divine will or fate or randomness. He proclaimed that human beings created their own life and environment by the quality of their actions of body, speech and mind. Luang Por’s teachings expressed this ‘Right View’ again and again. Monks were to take responsibility for their lives through their own consistent efforts. They all had the potential for liberation within them. The question was whether they had the determination and the patient endurance to realize that potential. …

Monk’s Training: Part 3 THE MARVEL OF INSTRUCTION The body of Luang Por Chah’s teachings is generally considered to consist of the material recorded on reel-to-reel tapes and audio cassettes and then transcribed and printed in books, originally in Thai and subsequently translated into many other languages. But for his monastic disciples, the formal discourses captured by those audio recordings and reproduced in books were only one part, and perhaps not the most important part, of what they received from him. …

Monk’s Training: Part 2 PARTS OF A WHOLE The community at Wat Pah Pong consisted of monks, novices, postulants and maechees (white-robed nuns). The majority of the novices were teenage boys, ineligible from taking full monks’ Ordination until the age of twenty. As for the monks, they could be divided into three groups: monks of regular standing, visiting monks and temporary monks. …

Monk’s Training: Part 1 INTRODUCTION Luang Por Chah chose to live his life as a Buddhist monk. He received permission from his parents to enter a monastery at the age of nine, and apart from a brief period in his teens, he lived in monastic communities until his death at the age of seventy-four. The Sangha was his family, and, as a teacher, its welfare was his main pre-occupation. While he gave considerable importance to propagating the Dhamma in society at large, he did so only to the extent that it did not compromise his training of the monks and nuns in his monastery. …

Luang Por and the Vinaya: Part 1 INTRODUCTION Whereas ‘Dhamma’ (Sanskrit: ‘Dharma’) is a word familiar to Buddhists of all traditions, ‘Vinaya’ is much less so. That this should be the case is worthy of remark given the central importance attached to Vinaya by the Buddha himself, as clearly demonstrated by his frequent references to the body of his teachings by the compound term ‘Dhamma-Vinaya’. At the end of his life, refusing requests to appoint a successor, the Buddha instructed his disciples: After my passing, the Dhamma-Vinaya which I have taught and explained to you shall be your teacher. – DN 16 …

Luang Por and the Vinaya: Part 2 PĀṬIMOKKHA: THE CORE OF THE VINAYA The significance given by the Buddha to this formalization of Vinaya may be judged by the vital link he revealed between the Pāṭimokkha and the longevity of the teachings. Speaking as the latest of a lineage of Buddhas stretching back into the incalculable past, he said that a pattern could be discerned in the relative length of time the teachings of previous Buddhas had survived. While those of Vipassī, Sikhī and Vessabhū were relatively short-lived, he said, those of Kakusandha, Konāgamana and Kassapa lasted for a long time. The reasons for the disparity were not only that those of the second group were ‘untiring in giving abundant Dhamma teaching to disciples’ but also because ‘the training rules for disciples were indicated and the Pāṭimokkha was appointed.’ The Buddha summarized this observation with a simile: the teachings were preserved by these measures in the same way that flower petals threaded onto a length of cotton twine could be prevented from blowing away in the wind. …

Luang Por and the Vinaya: Part 3 OBSERVANCES: ADDING LAYERS It is perhaps surprising that the majority of the conventions that inform a monk’s daily life are found in the protocols, allowances and injunctions of the Khandhakas rather than in the rules of the Pāṭimokkha proper. For example, the highly detailed procedures for formal meetings of the Sangha – including the Ordination and Uposatha ceremonies – appear in the Khandhakas, as do the steps to be taken in dealing with disputes. The Khandhakas contain most of the instructions regarding a monk’s relationship to the four requisites: robes, alms-food, dwelling place and medicines. Most of the fine points of monastic etiquette are also to be found here. …

Luang Por and the Vinaya: Part 4 THE ASCETIC PRACTICES: ADDING INTENSITY Mention has been made above of the thirteen dhutaṅga practices. These are the ascetic practices which the Buddha allowed his monks to adopt, if they wished, in order to intensify their practice. The dhutaṅgas were practices aimed at ‘abrading’ or ‘wearing away’ the defilements by creating situations in which they were provoked and directly opposed. By the standards of the day, they were mild in nature. Certainly, they paled beside the physical challenges that the Buddha undertook prior to finding the right way of practice that led to his enlightenment. Wearing only tree bark or owl wings, for example, he had practised standing continuously in the open for long periods, using a mattress of spikes, making his bed in charnel grounds with the bones of the dead for a pillow. In one of the most vivid passages in the Suttas, the Buddha described the extent to which he took the practice of fasting: Because of eating so little, my limbs became like the jointed segments of vine stems or bamboo stems. Because of eating so little, my backside became like a camel’s hoof. Because of eating so little, the projections on my spine stood forth like corded beads. Because of eating so little, my ribs jutted out as gaunt as the crazy rafters of an old roofless barn. Because of eating so little, the gleam of my eyes sank far down into their sockets, looking like a gleam of water that has sunk far down in a deep well. Because of eating so little, my scalp shrivelled and withered as a green bitter gourd shrivels and withers in the wind and sun. – MN 36 …

Meditation Teachings: Part 1 NUTS AND BOLTS The Buddha declared that all of his teachings could be resolved into two categories: those revealing the nature of human suffering and those that deal with the cessation of that suffering. He taught that true liberation can only be brought about by cultivation of the Noble Eightfold Path, a comprehensive and integrated training or education of body, speech and mind. The ultimate freedom from suffering, realized through a clear vision of the true nature of things, occurs when all eight factors of that path are brought in unison to maturity. …

Meditation Teachings: Part 2 THORNS AND PRICKLES The immediate obstacles to the development of samādhi and wisdom are a group of defilements that the Buddha called the nīvaraṇa or hindrances. He described them as ‘overgrowths of the mind that stultify insight’. They are five in number: 1. Kāmacchanda – sensual thoughts. 2. Vyāpāda – ill-will. 3. Thīnamiddha – sloth and torpor. 4. Uddhaccakukkucca – agitation, guilt, remorse. 5. Vicikicchā – Doubt and indecision. The Buddha made clear the vital importance of dealing with the hindrances as follows: Without having overcome these five, it is impossible for a monk whose insight thus lacks strength and power, to know his own true weal, the weal of others, and the weal of both; or that he will be capable of realizing that superior human state of distinctive achievement, a truly noble distinction in knowledge and vision. – AN 5.51 …

Meditation Teachings: Part 3 WAYS AND MEANS The hindrances do not appear in the mind as the result of meditation; rather, it is that meditation reveals hindrances that are already latent within the mind but which are difficult to isolate and deal with effectively in daily life. Meditation might be compared to putting the mind under a microscope in order to see the harmful viruses, invisible to the naked eye, that are threatening its health. Luang Por reminded his disciples that encountering the hindrances in meditation should not be a source of discouragement. In dealing with hindrances, meditators were getting to know how the mind worked and how to deal with it most effectively. …

Meditation Teachings: Part 4 CALM AND INSIGHT In his expositions of the practice of samādhi, Luang Por usually preferred to avoid speaking in terms of jhānas. Instead he would refer to the various mental states – known as jhāna factors – that constitute these jhānas. His reasoning was that the jhāna factors such as bliss (sukha) or equanimity were directly experienceable by the meditator, whereas ‘jhānas’ were simply names for different constellations of these factors. They were, in other words, conventions; and as such, they could lead the mind away from, rather than towards, awareness of the present reality. …

Luang Por the Good Friend: Part 4 FROM HEART TO HEART Today, Luang Por’s wider reputation rests, above all, on his ability to communicate the Dhamma. His Dhamma talks circle the world in print, on screens, and as audible files on a variety of modern devices. Throughout his life of teaching, he modelled two qualities of the kalyāṇamitta specifically concerned with communication skills: firstly, the ability to speak effectively, to get through to people, to counsel and admonish; and secondly, the ability to explain profound matters with clarity and accuracy. …

Luang Por the Good Friend: Part 3 SKETCHES A number of the qualities that came to define Luang Por in the eyes of his disciples were virtues held in universal regard. Perhaps the most prominent of these was that of patience. Although some accomplishments are necessarily private, the extent of a forest monk’s capacity to endure through physical discomfort and the rigours of monastic life can never be so. As the leader of a monastic community, Luang Por’s patience was visible to all. He earned the particular devotion of the monks of Wat Pah Pong by leading them from the front and by never asking them to do anything that he would not do himself. He also became renowned for his forbearance when dealing with the problems attendant on running a large monastery: listening to and advising on the difficulties and doubts of the monks and novices and maechees and lay supporters. When Luang Por spoke about patience – and he spoke about it often – his words carried great weight. …

1918-1954: Part 4 NEW DIRECTIONS In the hot season of 1952, Luang Por made his way to Ubon once more. He had been away for two years and his arrival in Bahn Kor caused a stir in the small village. In the evenings, he gave Dhamma talks of a power and persuasion that had never been heard before. This was a fresh, vital Buddhism, relevant to the villagers’ daily lives, expressed in language they could all understand. And yet it would be going too far to suggest his visit provoked revolutionary changes in the community’s spiritual life. The number of people that did not go to listen to him was probably larger than that of those that did. Indeed, some members of his own family were completely indifferent and remained so for many years afterwards. Everywhere in the world, it seems, old perceptions die hard. A common response, and one against which Luang Por would, in the future, wage a long struggle, was that what he said was true but beyond the capacity of ordinary people to live by. Be that as it may, Luang Por had already sowed a number of seeds in his home village. There was now a group of people, led by his mother, who hoped that, before too long, Luang Por would come back for good and establish a monastery in a forest not too far from Bahn Kor. …

Wat Nong Pah Pong: Part 1 SETTLERS It was on the eighth of March, 1954 that Luang Por Chah and his disciples made their way along the cart track running westwards from Bahn Kor on the last leg of their journey to Pong Forest. Afternoon temperatures at that time of year regularly exceed 35 degrees, but the oppressive heat would have cooled slightly as they approached the dense forest and the path become increasingly stippled and striped by the shade. In the late afternoon, as the gorged red sun was starting its descent ahead of them, the monks strung up their glots at the edge of the forest, amid the hum of mosquitos and the deafening shrill of cicadas. …

Wat Nong Pah Pong: Part 2 GOLDEN DAYS The Luang Por Chah that left such an indelible impression on those who met him during his trips to the West in the mid-1970s is for many, the Luang Por Chah. Most of the surviving recorded talks, the well-known photographs, and the priceless seconds of footage in the BBC documentaries, were all from that period of his life. It is a wise, chuckling grandfather figure with a potbelly and walking stick that has embedded itself in the Western Buddhist pantheon. People who met him at that time recall a warmth and wisdom emanating from him that seemed timeless – so much so that it was hard for anyone to imagine that he could ever have been any other way. But, of course, he had. Looking back twenty years, a somewhat different Luang Por Chah emerges. At that time in his life, although he appears a powerful and impressive figure, he is also, perhaps, a less engaging one. If, in his later years, he might have been compared to an absolute monarch at ease in a peaceful kingdom, then in the 1950s, the comparison that would have come to mind was that of the warrior king of a troubled land. …

Luang Por the Good Friend: Part 1 INTRODUCTION From 1954 onwards, Luang Por Chah’s life was focused on his monastery, training the steadily growing number of monks, novices and nuns who were resident there, and teaching its lay supporters. By the late 1970s, he had become one of the most revered monks in Thailand. After travelling to England in 1977, however, Luang Por’s health started to decline. In early 1983, paralyzed and unable to express himself coherently, he stopped speaking. And in January 1992, after over nine years of stillness and silence, Luang Por’s life came to an end. …

Luang Por the Good Friend: Part 2 IMPONDERABLES ANYWAY What exactly is meant by the ‘unshakeable deliverance of mind’? The Buddha taught that four stages of inner liberation may be discerned. Once attained, they cannot be weakened or lost, and hence they may all be deemed ‘unshakeable’. In fact, the word ‘attainment’ here has to be used with some caution. The Buddha defined each stage of liberation in terms of the irrevocable abandonment of specific mental defilements: a ‘deliverance’ from them. The changes that take place at each stage are thus experienced primarily in terms of endings rather than gains. In the central Buddhist metaphor, embodied in the word ‘Buddha’ itself, the experience is referred to as ‘awakening’. …

1918-1954: Part 2 GROWING UP Luang Por Chah was born on the seventh waning day of the seventh moon of the Year of the Horse, 1918. He was the fifth of eleven children born to Mah and Pim Chuangchot, who, like the vast majority of their generation, were subsistence rice farmers. The name ‘Chah’ means ‘clever, capable, resourceful’. …

1918-1954: Part 3 THE PATH OF PRACTICE ‘Tudong’ is a Thai word derived from the Pali ‘dhutaṅga’, which means ‘to wear away’ and is the name given to the thirteen ascetic practices the Buddha permitted monks to undertake in order to intensify their efforts to wear away their defilements. In Thailand, the word has expanded in meaning. Monks who have left their monastery and are wandering through the countryside sleeping rough (usually practising a number of the dhutaṅga observances), are called ‘tudong monks’ and are said to be ‘on tudong’. …

1918-1954: Part 1 A SUITABLE LOCALITY The Buddha declared that all avoidable human suffering is caused by mental defilements, and that these defilements can be completely eliminated by a systematic education of body, speech and mind. Supreme among the virtuous qualities that ‘burn up’ the defilements, he revealed, is forbearance. It is perhaps no coincidence then that the unwelcoming environment of Northeast Thailand – known to its inhabitants as Isan – nurtured a great flowering of Buddhist monasticism in the twentieth century. The vast majority of monastics recognized in Thailand as enlightened masters over the past hundred years have come from this region. …

The Death of Luangpor Chah: Part 2 A CREMATION A winter afternoon in Ubon Province, Northeast Thailand, Saturday the sixteenth of January, 1993. A forest monastery, like a dark green patch upon a pale fabric of rice fields that stretch out fallow and dry. Tonight, it will be cold and windy, but in mid-afternoon the temperature in the shade of the gently swaying trees is 33 degrees. The calm and order of the scene belies a barely credible fact. Today, in an area usually inhabited by a hundred monastics, some four hundred thousand people are gathering – a number exceeding the population of any Thai city other than Bangkok. A year after the death of Luang Por Chah, it is the day of his cremation. …

The Death of Luangpor Chah: Part 1 A Death The twentieth of January, 1983. At the small provincial airport of Ubon Ratchathani in Northeast Thailand, a group of Buddhist monks and lay supporters look up to the sky. Nearby, a white ambulance is parked on the runway. A loud droning sound can be heard, its source soon traced to a Thai Air Force plane lumbering in to land. After the plane taxies and comes to a halt, its door opens and reveals an unusual and moving sight. An imposingly large Western monk starts to descend from the plane, cradling in his arms a much older and smaller Thai monk. This frail and helpless-looking figure is the revered master, Luang Por Chah. After five long months of tests and consultations in a Bangkok hospital, he has returned to Ubon in order to spend the last days of his life at home in his monastery, Wat Nong Pah Pong, surrounded by his disciples. …