The Story of Venerable Ajaan Brom

 

We are near the end of this book ‘Paṭipadā: Venerable Ācariya Mun’s Path of Practice’ and it seems appropriate to write about an important Ācariya who was a direct follower of Venerable Ajaan Mun. This will be a memorial and a record to his excellence for those who have not seen his biography.

He was known as Venerable Ajaan Brom (Brahma) and he used to live at Wat Baan Dong Yen, in the district of Nong Haan, Udon Thani province, where he died a short while ago.

I read the short biography that was printed and distributed at the time of his cremation, but since then I have forgotten some of the details of it, for his cremation took place on 6th March 2514 BE (1971 CE). However it is probable that many people have not read that biography, so I shall repeat the story in brief to show what kind of Bhikkhu he was. The following account will not cover the period of his life when he was a lay person, but only those incidents which were important as well as the practices which he did as a Bhikkhu.

Before he was ordained, it seems that he announced to the world at large that he intended to renounce all his possessions and give everything away, both those which were material and those which had life, until there was nothing left. Then he and his wife would leave home and become ordained and follow the way of the Lord Buddha and the Sāvakas so as to reach their state in this life, for they no longer wanted to go on living through endless births and deaths in this world anymore. Those who wanted to help may come and receive these gifts and take them away freely to use as their own property without any recompense being expected in return. But they must come within a specified time limit, which he announced, and it seems that he allowed many days for giving away these things. Many poor and needy people came to him and received gifts, and this went on until all his possessions of all kinds had gone in a few days. He had many possessions, for he had been a wealthy and well established merchant in that region, who dealt in all sorts of goods. But for the whole of his married life he had no children and he just had his wife and various relatives, all of whom felt very happy with his renunciation of his possessions in order to become ordained. When he had given away everything, he and his wife separated and went their own ways. He went and became ordained as a Dhutanga Kammaṭṭhāna Bhikkhu, after which he set out to reach Venerable Ajaan Mun where he entrusted his life as a monk (Brahmacariyā) to him. His wife went in a different direction to be ordained as a Nun with the intention of gaining freedom from saṁsāra in accordance with her resolution, and they both lived the Good Life (Brahmacariyā) for the remainder of their lives without becoming restless and concerned in the material world. Both of them should be a good example to others.

When Venerable Ajaan Brom became ordained he could not at first do as he had intended. For he had to stay with Venerable Ajaan Sāra who trained him for some time until it was appropriate for him to leave. Then he went wandering in the district of Chiang Mai to find Venerable Ajaan Mun who, at that time, was also living there. It is said that Venerable Ajaan Brom wandered through all sorts of places until he crossed over into Burma and stayed in many places there. He was accompanied by Venerable Ajaan Chob who had a very determined and courageous character who stuck by him whatever happened. They were like two flawless diamonds attached to the same ring as friends going the same way. This story was related to me by Venerable Ajaan Brom, but I cannot remember all he said and I can only recall what I have written. I also apologise for any errors which I may make.

Venerable Ajaan Brom had many strange and wonderful experiences associated with the practices which he did, both inwardly and externally, while he was in Thailand and abroad as well; but I’m afraid we must leave them and pass on. Hearing him tell his story made me feel so sorry for his plight in some parts of it, spellbound with excitement in other parts and full of admiration for his ability to fight against hardship, and also for what he experienced in his self-development. In addition, the way in which he walked right through thick jungle in various places, where in those days there were no villages or people was quite remarkable. At such times he had to put up with great hardships and privations, for he was rarely in a place where he had enough to provide sufficient for the body and ease of mind. He said that some days they would come across a village and get enough food on piṇḍapāta to keep them going. But on other days they had to go without and put up with feelings of hunger and weakness and spend the nights in the hills and forests when they had lost their way. He said that it was especially difficult when they were wandering in Burma, because the way they went there was nothing but hills and jungle full of animals and cats (tigers, leopards, etc.) of all sorts. Sometimes they just had to trust their lives to fate when the suffering and hardship was more than they could bear to go on facing for another day. When he got to that point it seemed as if everything within him came to the end of its tether all at once. His breath seemed as if it would no longer go on due to all the many and varied circumstances oppressing and tormenting his body and mind. But afterwards he managed to put up with each event as it happened as each hour and day passed by.

His citta had been developing steadily and he had confidence in himself when he finally reached Venerable Ajaan Mun where he was taught and trained continuously from then on. Some years, Venerable Ajaan Mun kindly helped him by letting him spend the vassa period together with him. At other times he used to come and go frequently — in other words, he would go out wandering to develop himself in various places wherever he felt like going. Then when any problem arose in his heart he would return for further teaching and training from Venerable Ajaan, which took place from time to time. He spent many years training with Venerable Ajaan Mun while he was in Chiang Mai province, and when Venerable Ajaan returned to Sakon Nakhon province, he also went with him.

This Ācariya had a very earnest and serious character and he was also very determined and resolute, as may be seen by the way he disposed of all his wealth and valuables and then became ordained in a really true way. But as to the results of the practice, which he gained in the form of a refuge for his heart, we may say briefly that he gained abundant “wealth” of the most wonderful and priceless kind on a remote hill in the province of Chiang Mai where he was living with the hill tribes. This is what he told me, unless my memory is faulty; but I cannot remember the names of the village, the hill, or the district where he gained freedom and finally got rid of the burden of the round of birth and death from his heart. After Venerable Ajaan Mun had returned to stay in the province of Sakon Nakhon for several years, Venerable Ajaan Brom followed him and spent the vassa at Wat Suddhāvāsa in Sakon Nakhon province. This was about the year 2486 of the Buddhist era (CE 1943). After this he returned and built a Wat in his home village, Ban Dong Keng, in the district of Nong Han in the province of Udon Thani. This was where he came from and this is where he was cremated, as has been already related.

(...)

Gaining Freedom From Dukkha

Venerable Ajaan Brom told me in 2486 BE (1943 CE), that he had gained freedom entirely, from the thick jungle of kilesa and the great mass of discontent and suffering (dukkha), and that he had done this while staying in the province of Chiang Mai, but it is uncertain just when this actually happened. Afterwards he returned to the province of Sakon Nakhon, therefore in short, this means that from 2485 BE, when he went to spend the vassa in Wat Suddhāvāsa in Sakon Nakhon until he died in 2513 BE is 28 — 29 years. This is enough to show that from the day that his citta gained freedom and ruled over the khandhas with a pure heart, until the last day of his life was quite a long time. Therefore it is reasonably to be expected that his bone remains should become relics very quickly — in less than a year.

In the province of Chiang Mai, it is known that three monks became Arahant there in the present age. They are, firstly Venerable Ajaan Mun, secondly Venerable Ajaan Brom and thirdly Venerable Ajaan … who is still alive; 152 the latter two being followers of Venerable Ajaan Mun. As for other provinces in Thailand, those in the Northeast (Isaan), such as Sakon Nakhon, have also had their share of remarkable Bhikkhus who have become “pure in Dhamma”, no less than Chiang Mai. But they are not well known, because they are not people who talk about these things nor do they advertise themselves and they are only known amongst themselves and those who practise the way.

The places referred to in the last paragraph refer to the forests and hills of the respective districts, which is where those who practise the way go to stay, to practise and to attain the path and fruition as they had intended to. But they do so quietly, without anyone knowing about it. So if some of their stories are not written down here as evidence that it can be done now, the Dhamma of Buddhism will appear to be mere talk — whereas its true nature is not visible and apparent. Therefore I decided to jump into the middle of a bag of thorns and write down some of these stories as objectively as possible, although I’m afraid that I shall not be free of some sharp criticism that will come from those who disagree and disbelieve some aspects of these stories, as has already happened to some extent.

What has been written here is based: Firstly on a firm faith in the skill and ability of those who practise the way and who have managed to attain the basic ground of citta and Dhamma which is firm and unshakeable; and who also have a full and unwavering confidence in themselves. Secondly, in the way they speak out, proclaiming the “Rightly Taught (Svākkhāta) Dhamma” with complete confidence and certainty in it. For this is what the Lord Buddha bequeathed to us, saying that it will be this “Rightly Taught Dhamma” that lasts and remains unaltered by any of the popularly accepted conventions which are so artful and deceptive and become part and parcel of the person who takes them up and relies upon them. But they give him no sense of confidence that he will be able to go on breathing freely in the future. Thirdly, in the way they speak about the field of practice (paṭipatti) and the attainments (paṭivedha) that come from it. For this is how they show up the results of their practice whether great or small — showing how this way is not worthless, nor is it a waste of one’s time and effort which gives no results in response to all the weariness and difficulty involved in doing the practice.

All the Ācariyas that have been mentioned up to this point are fully possessed of the Path (Magga) of practice, which has sīla, samādhi and paññā, fully developed, and they are beyond all reasonable criticism. They are the Ācariyas who should attain the fruit of vimutti — freedom — of the kind that accords with the causes and results which come following the undisputed truth of the Dhamma teaching. As for those who still have faith that Dhamma exists as Dhamma, they are the Ācariyas who should reach the Path and the Fruition, with their practice following the policy of Dhamma and they can live in the field of “Puññakkheta” — the field of merit and righteousness — without any suspicions of doubt or uncertainty.

In writing about these Ācariyas, I feel no doubts or reservations — nor is it likely to vex the hearts of those who read about them. On the other hand, we must accept that anybody who thinks in any different way from the above, has the power and the right to do so without consulting or getting permission from anyone else. For it is said in the Dhamma that:

“Beings are the owners of their own kamma, and the results of their kamma belong to them alone.”

Other people therefore should not go and interfere, and try to take on a share of the responsibility, which would be contrary to this aspect of the law of kamma that has been proclaimed and taught with complete certainty since ages past.

Venerable Ajaan Brom once told me about how timid and incomplete he was, soon after he had been ordained, and also about a time when he went to stay in the hills of Chiang Mai province. Not long after his ordination and before he had even been one vassa period in the robe (i.e., less than a year), he went out wandering in quiet and peaceful places in the hills in the district of Na Kae of Nakhon Phanom Province. On his return trip, he followed the track which went straight from Na Kae District to Sakon Nakhon Province. In those days there was no road, and even the cart track or footpath was heavily overgrown and was hardly visible in places. Because along this track, about four kilometres from the provincial town of Na Kae there was a large expanse of thick jungle, its length running along by a range of mountains, full of all sorts of animals like tigers and other cats. The type of place that timid people would call very frightening and would never want to go to.

By chance, it happened that Venerable Ajaan Brom reached this forest in the evening, just as it was getting dark. He had no candles left to use in his lantern and if he had decided to go on regardless, he was afraid he would lose his way. For nobody lived there and there were no houses or villages anywhere near, and even the path was overgrown and blocked by trees and forest in places. It was quite different from the same place nowadays where there are villages and people everywhere — and even the thick forest has gone without a trace, to be replaced by fields, houses and plantations.

So Ajaan Brom decided that he would have to spend the night there. He went off a little way to one side of the path and hung his umbrella tent (klod) from the branch of a tree. Then groping about in the twilight, he gathered up some dry leaves from around the place, enough to act as bedding on the bare ground so that he could lie down. From then on he rested and did his meditation practice. About 9 pm, which was during the time he was sitting in samādhi practice with a degree of apprehension and mistrust of his surroundings in various ways, it happened that a deer came softly and quietly into the area where he was staying, quite unaware of his presence. As soon as the deer which is a timid and cautious animal, emerged from the surrounding forest and came face to face with the Ajaan’s umbrella tent and mosquito net which hung from it, forming a complete enclosure around him, it let out a single loud cry, “Kek!” just once, while it jumped back into the forest, hitting its head against trees and branches, and crashing through the undergrowth with a lot of noise. The Venerable Ācariya also was so startled and frightened so that without thinking he shouted out “Euk-aak,” and the deer, hearing the sound of a person, was even more frightened and ran as hard as it could go deep into the forest.

As soon as the Ajaan regained his composure and mindfulness, he thought with shame how incompetent he had been, and he could not help laughing at himself. For as he said:

“There I was, a true Bhikkhu, having been ordained after renouncing and disposing of all my possessions and I was prepared to accept death wherever it may come to me with a ready heart absorbed in Dhamma, so how was it that a deer, a most mild and ordinary forest animal should frighten me so much? It was not like a tiger, a boar, a ghost or a demon which may reasonably instil fear into people; and in fact it ran away in blind panic, crying out in genuine fear of me, having been startled and lost all self-control. But I am a man and a full Kammaṭṭhāna Bhikkhu, yet I was so startled and afraid of it that I could hardly breathe. This is really a worthless state, having no mindfulness to restrain the heart so that it gave in to a low and inferior state of the kind that makes an unseemly display of self and our religion for that deer to hear quite clearly so that it ran crashing into the forest without thought of any other dangers. If that deer had been clever enough to realise that Bhikkhus who truly believe in kamma and who have renounced everything are not timid and easily frightened like this Kammaṭṭhāna Bhikkhu who is displaying such fear that he has lost all self-control, it would probably see the funny side of it and go away roaring with laughter at me for sure, and I would be so embarrassed, having no face left in my standing as a Bhikkhu at all. But fortunately, it was just an animal concerned for its life, which was passing by, and such a consideration never arose, for it has no interest in whether this person was a madman or a good normal person.”

Venerable Ajaan Brom said that once when he was living in the hills of Chiang Mai province an event took place of a more normal kind which did not make a special impression on him. It was about 5 o’clock in the afternoon and he had gone to bathe in a deep stream at the foot of the hill. He never expected anything unusual to happen then, because he had been going to this stream every afternoon. But this day, he was walking along the stream which is in a narrow gorge with steep banks, and when he had about reached the place he was making for after going along a part of the stream where it was narrow and winding, he turned a corner and suddenly reached that place at the very same time as a large bear coming in the opposite direction. They both saw each other at the same time and there was no easy escape route. The large bear was very startled and frightened and leapt up the steep bank and slipped down. Again it leapt up and slipped down and went on doing this four or five times without success before it realised that it could not escape that way, so it turned round and ran back the way it came.

As for the Venerable Ajaan, one could not say that he was afraid, nor that he was not afraid, because both of them were so startled and bewildered by their encounter that neither had any mindfulness left to give them any self-control. This gave a clear indication in this incident of how both of them at that moment were overwhelmed by a fear of death. For the bear jumped up and tried to climb the bank in a frenzy of fear, while the Venerable Ajaan just stood there stamping his feet, so the ground round there became all disturbed and muddy, as if the clay had been mixed up for making bricks or pottery. Meanwhile he had been making noises, saying “Ow! Ow...,” continuously without being aware of what he was doing. After this big and amicable bear which arouses one’s sympathy, had gone away, Venerable Ajaan said that he walked straight back to where he was staying, while seeing the funny side of this incident and feeling compassion for this bear which was so knowing and so good. What he had not realised was that he was dripping with sweat as though he was about to die during this incident. In fact he was soaked and more wet than if he had bathed normally.

Venerable Ajaan said that he had not continued with his original purpose of having a bath and had left the place straight away because he thought it was likely that after this bear had jumped about and ran away, it would be exhausted and may return to lie down on a submerged rock and soak in the water to relax. For, he was afraid that to meet up with it once again might bring a response quite different from the first time. The next day he again went to bathe in the same place, and when he got to the point where he first saw the bear face to face, he took the opportunity to examine the characteristics of the fear of death, which is common to all beings in the world. Having looked at it well, he said that he couldn’t help laughing out loud, because the marks made by the bear in trying to climb that bank and his own footprints where he had been stamping up and down looked more like the work of ten bears and ten Kammaṭṭhāna Bhikkhus playing at sports. The area was so messed about and muddy and hardly any of the original ground was visible. Looking at it made him feel horrified as well as compassion for the bear and this happened every day, for the place acted as a reminder, when he went there to have his daily bathe. He would see his own footprints as well as those of the bear displaying the fear of death every day until he left that district.

Normally when a bear comes across a person unexpectedly, it will jump on him and claw and bite him and injure him to put him out of action first, then it will run away. It is preferable to meet a tiger rather than a bear, for the bear will attack first before escaping, whereas the tiger will only attack if it has been shot and injured, and then it is more fierce and dangerous than a bear. Therefore, the Venerable Ajaan could not help being appalled by this incident even though it turned out to be harmless.

I feel that making the effort to write about the practice of Kammaṭṭhāna following the way of Venerable Ajaan Mun is a heavy responsibility. Although the burden is not so heavy as it was in writing Venerable Ajaan Mun’s biography, and I have some room to breathe here. But even though the burden of writing is heavy I have constantly tried to put whatever ability I have into it. As to whether all of you who have read and understood it up to this point will agree with it and see it as right or wrong and good or bad in any way is uncertain. But I must accept whatever criticism is made without recourse to making any correction, because in both cases (the biography and this book), I have already put everything I can into them with whatever ability I have and I cannot do any more.

The number of Bhikkhus who followed, and still follow the lineage of Venerable Ajaan Mun are many. They come from the early period, the middle, and the final years of his Teaching. As well as those who followed his disciples and who received the same teaching and practice which was handed down to them, right down to the present day. But in writing this book, their names have been withheld — as was said previously — in those cases where their ways of practice have been described. This is because it would make difficulties for myself and for those whose stories have been disclosed. This has already happened in the case of those whose names were disclosed in the biography of Venerable Ajaan Mun, for there seemed to be some objections relating to those whose names were mentioned in connection with the events that happened to them. Some of them also said that the writer should do the same with himself! So I must accept their viewpoint and I have not gone against their wishes in writing this book. Their names have been withheld and only their story told — which involves the way they did the practice.

The way of practice of each Bhikkhu will be hard and acetic or easy in the various aspects of Dhamma accordingly, such as the hardship involved in not lying down, or taking little food. Those who work with urgency and consistently at such practices until they see the results of them quite clearly apparent, arising steadily, will not feebly give up and slide backwards. In fact, the results that are attained from all such methods are similar and consist of a state of calm and happiness in the heart — the citta — as well as the arousing of mindfulness and wisdom in successive stages, for these are the Dhammas which help and support the citta to reach the final goal in all cases. Therefore it is important in the practising of Dhamma that the aspect of Dhamma, which means the preliminary repetition (parikamma word) that is used in meditation practice to control and guide the citta, should be one which suits the individual’s tendencies of character at each stage and level.

But it is not really correct for the Ācariya who trains and teaches his followers, to decide and determine this on his own, and then to reveal this one aspect of Dhamma to all his many followers for them to practise in their meditation, without having taken into account the characters of his followers and their different temperaments. For this one method will arouse obstacles in those whose characteristics are not suited to this aspect of Dhamma, and they will not get the results which they should get.

The Ācariya just needs to be there to point out the way to go, after having explained many aspects and paths of Dhamma, so that those who have come to learn and train themselves may choose one of them and then go and practise it until they get results, after which they should go and tell the Ācariya about it. Then if in what they tell the Ācariya there is anything that he sees which needs correcting or developing in any way, he will point it out as it may be in each individual.

But it is not for the Ācariya to determine on his own what methods of Dhamma training his followers should do. The only exceptions to this are those rare Ācariyas who have the greatest skill in the practice of Dhamma and the faculty of knowing “Paracittavijjā” — which is the ability to know the characteristic tendencies (upanissaya) and the present state of the citta of other people, as well as being skilled in methods of teaching them with quick wit and clever ways. This makes them able to decide what is the right parikamma for others to use, by virtue of what they have found in their own experience to be right. But nowadays, where can one find anybody who is so able and skilled in Dhamma as this? It is far more difficult to find such a person than to find a perfect flawless diamond. It is even difficult enough to find someone who has practised the way until he has come to know the causes and results of each of the different kinds of kilesas which arise in his heart. Until he has been able to remove them in a way that is clearly evident to him, and then put what he has attained into teaching others in the right way with assured certainty.

Ajaan Mahā Boowa Ñāṇasampanno

Patipada

A wasp is so stupid that if cut in two, she goes on living. It takes her two days to realize that she’s dead

 A Hymenopteran of agile flight, feline – tiger-striped in appearance, actually – with body mass far exceeding that of the mosquito, yet with wings relatively smaller but vibrant and undoubtedly geared way down, the wasp vibrates non-stop at a velocity required of a fly under hypercritical circumstances (to come unstuck from honey or fly-paper, for instance).

She seems to exist in a perpetual state of crisis, which renders her dangerous. A sort of frenzy or folly – that makes for a brilliance as resonant and musical as a very taut cord, fiercely vibrating and therefore burning or stinging, rendering any contact dangerous.

She pumps away with fervor and thrusting hips. Deep into the purple or green plums, it’s quite a sight: truly a small extirpating apparatus particularly, pointedly, well-done. Therefore it’s not the generating point of the golden ray that is ripening, but rather the generating point of the ray (tinged gold and umber) that carries off results of the ripening.

Honeyed, sun-soaked; transporter of honey, sugar, syrup; hypocrite and hydromelic. The wasp on the rim of a plate or half-rinsed cup (or jam jar): an irresistible attraction. Such tenacity in this desire! How they are made for one another! A veritable magnetic attraction to sugar.

Analogy between a wasp and an electric streetcar. Something mute in repose and vocal in action. Also something of a short train, with first and second classes, or rather the engine and the observation car. And of a sizzling trolley. Sizzling like a deep fry, like an (effervescent) chemical reaction.

And if she touches down, she stings! Nothing like a mechanical blow: it’s an electrical jolt, a venomous vibration.

But her body is more yielding – that’s to say more delicately articulated, all in all – her flight more capricious, unforeseen, more dangerous than the rectilinear motion of streetcars determined by the tracks.

A little itinerant siphon, a little distillery on wheels and wings, like the ones that go about from farm to farm through the countryside in certain seasons; a little airborne kitchen, a little public sanitation truck: all in all, the wasp resembles vehicles that are self-fueling and churn out a product along the way, which contributes to  the fact that the mere sight of them assures an element of wonder, for their essential purpose is not simply to move about or to provide transport, but also to carry out an intimate activity that’s generally quite mysterious. Quite astute. What we call having an inner life.

. . . An airborne cauldron for making jam, hermetically sealed but yielding, the ponderous rear axle careening along in flight.

In order to classify the various species, it had obviously been necessary to take hold somewhere, at some part or member and, what’s more, at a place attached solidly enough to the whole so it wouldn’t come away when grasped, or else in the event that it did come off, would suffice in itself for recognition. Thus, for insects the wing was chosen. Perhaps with good reason: I have no idea, I certainly wouldn’t swear by it.

Hymenoptera, in any event, for wasps, isn’t half bad. Not because a young girl’s hymen, to tell the truth, bears much resemblance to the wing of a wasp, but apparently for other reasons. Here we have an abstract word that derives its concrete qualities from a dead language. Well then, to the extent that abstraction is a concrete thing, naturalized and diaphanized, both delicate and taut, pretentious, grandiloquent – this rather suits a wasp wing . . .. . . But I won’t go on much further in this particular direction.

What is it they say? That the wasp leaves her stinger in the victim, and dies in the process? That would be a pretty good emblem for fruitless warfare.

So she had generally better avoid all contact. And yet, when contact does occur, inherent justice is satisfied: by the punishment of both parties. Still, the punishment seems most severe for the wasp, who inevitably dies. Why? Because she made the mistake of considering the contact hostile and instantly flared up in defensive anger, because she struck. Betraying an exaggerated sensibility (out of fear, of excessive sensitivity, most likely . . . but due to extenuating circumstances, alas! – it’s already too late.) So it’s quite evident, let us repeat, that the wasp has nothing to gain by engaging an adversary, that she should rather avoid all contact, make any detours and zig-zags necessary to that end.

“I know my own self,” she muses. “If I simply let go, the slightest argument will turn tragic: I’ll no longer know myself. I’ll break into a frenzy: you disgust me, I don’t recognize you anymore.”

“Pointed arguments are the only kind I know, insults, blows – the fatal thrust of the sword.”

“I’d rather not argue at all.”

“We’re poles apart.”

“If I were ever to accept the slightest contact with people, if one  day I were constrained by sincerity, if I had to say what I think! . . . I’d take leave of my life along with my response – my sting.”

“So just leave me alone; I implore you: let’s not argue. Leave me to my daily grind, and you to yours. To my sleepwalker’s business, my inner life. Let’s put off as long as possible any discussion . . .”

Whereupon she gets one slight tap – and falls instantly: nothing left to do but squash her.

Susceptible as well perhaps because of the very precious, all too precious, character of the cargo she bears: which merits her frenzy.

. . . Her awareness of its value.

But this stupor that can be her undoing (one tap of the hand and she falls to the ground) is also capable, if not of saving, then at least of curiously prolonging her life.

A wasp is so stupid – I mean no offense – that if cut in two, she goes on living. It takes her two days to realize that she’s dead. She keeps on flailing about. Even more than before.

There you have the height of preventive stupefaction. Also the height of defiance.

Essaim. Swarm: exagmen, from ex agire – to expel.Frenetic perhaps because of the exiguity of her diaphragm.

(It is a known fact that for the Greeks thought resided in the diaphragm . . . and that the same word stood for both: ϕρην, to be precise.)

Why, of all insects, is the most active the sun-hued one?

Why, as well, are yellow-striped animals the most vicious?

The Wasp and FruitTransport of bruised pulp, ravaged, contaminated, mortified by the excessively brilliant golden-black, gypsy, Doña Juana.

Integrity lost through contact with an overly brilliant visitor. And not integrity alone – but the very quality of what remains.

Between birds and fruit there is none of this love-hatred, this passion. The flesh of fruit retains a lovely indifference when broached by a bird. There’s indifference between them. The bird is but a physical agent.

Yet between insects and fruit, what profound effects, what chemistry, what reactions! The wasp is a physio-chemical agent. She precipitates the post-maturation and decomposition of the vegetal flesh, which had imprisoned the seed.

The plum says, “If the sun jabs me with its rays, they gild my skin. If the wasp jabs me with its sting, it wounds my flesh.”

Forever burrowing into the nectarotheca – head pulsating, pumping away with fervor and thrusting hips.

A sort of syringe for ingurgitating nectar.

First the BlazeThat the wasp rises out of the earth – and so tremulous, so dangerous – is of no small significance to man, because he recognizes in this the perfection of what he attempts elsewhere, with his vast hangars, his airfields.

In those there’s something like a blaze whose sparks spurt far with unforeseen trajectories.

They take off from their subterranean airports . . . Offensive, offending . . .

The word dynamo.

They spring up at times as though unable to control their motor.

. . . First the crackling blaze, sputtering, then the flights are carried out, long distance flights, with precipitate attacks from time to time, silent plunges into the fruit, whereby the wasp accomplishes her mission – that’s to say her crime.

The Swarm of Exact Words, or Wasp NestWhoa! . . . This bothersome spurt out of the furrow, isn’t this a seditious sect of the seed roused against the sower? Yes, their outrage first lands them back in his overalls.

No! Stand back! There’s something here very like a blaze, whose sparks spray far and wide, with unforeseen trajectories . . . I see in this the perfection of what’s attempted elsewhere by these vast hangars, these airfields. But let’s take a closer look.

Ouch! Oh natural winged fervor! It’s the assembly of your people sputtering about there, in preparation for a rebellious attack. Go ahead, jab me . . . But already we can see their animosity dissipates in furious excursions . . .A barbarous swarm is sweeping the countryside. The garden is overrun.

Stray BulletIt’s also like a stray bullet, but loose, languid, dreamy. Seemingly nonchalant, at moments she regains her virtue, her sense of purpose – and pounces on her target from close range.

It is as though on leaving the gun barrel projectiles experience a sudden rapture that induces them to forget their original intention, their motivation, their rancor.

Like some army that had been ordered to rapidly occupy the strategic points of a city, yet immediately on entering the gates became engrossed in the shop windows, visited the museums, sipped from the straws of customers enjoying drinks at all the sidewalk cafés.

Like buckshot too, with pensive little taps she riddles the vertical panels of worm-eaten wood.

The Musical Form of HoneyThe wasp can be called the musical form of honey. That’s to say a major note, sharped, insistent, beginning faintly but not easy to release, clinging, bright, with alternating force and frailty, etc.

Et cetera . . .And finally, for the rest of it, for a certain number of fine attributes that I might have neglected to draw out, well, dear reader, be patient! Some fine day a critic will surely happen along, perceptive enough to REPROACH ME for this eruption into literature by my wasp in a manner that’s importunate, annoying, impetuous, and trifling all at once, to DENOUNCE the halting pace of these notes, their disorderly, zigzag presentation, to FRET over the taste for brilliant discontinuity, for a sting without depth though not without danger, not without the venomous tail which they disclose – in short, with great arrogance, to CALL DOWN UPON my work ALL THE EPITHETS it merits.

Paris, August 1939 – Fronville, August 1943

Francis Ponge

Mutte Objects of Expression 

Disrobing

 

Attached to Bhikkhu or homo monasticus

Do not think that I regard suicide as praiseworthy—that there can easily be an element of weakness in it, I am the first to admit (though the Stoics regarded it as a courageous act)—, but I certainly regard it as preferable to a number of other possibilities. (I would a hundred times rather have it said of the Notes that the author killed himself as a bhikkhu than that he disrobed; for bhikkhus have become arahats in the act of suicide, but it is not recorded that anyone became arahat in the act of disrobing.)

 Nanavira Thera

***

The majority of those who entered the monkhood at Wat Pah Pong did so without any intention of disrobing at some point in the future, but without completely discounting the possibility; they made a determination to give themselves to the training, and to find out whether they did, indeed, have what it took to stay long-term. Even amongst those who felt no interest in pursuing a life of family and career, few were willing to offer a hostage to fortune by declaring a lifetime commitment. To most it seemed arrogant and unwise; who knew what the future held?

The Vinaya does not stipulate that candidates for Ordination take lifetime vows. If monks become unhappy and wish to return to lay life, then they are free to do so at any time, without stigma and without the psychological bar of a long, forbidding disrobing ceremony.

Leaving the Sangha could not be more straightforward. Disrobing is accomplished when a monk informs any person who understands the meaning of his words that he is abandoning his monkhood. From that moment onwards, even while still wearing the robes, he is, technically speaking, a layman.

In practice, a short ceremony is performed. The monk formally requests forgiveness from his teacher, for any offence or difficulty he might have caused him, before informing him, using a short Pali phrase, of his decision to leave the Sangha. With these few words, he becomes a layman. Having changed into lay clothes, he requests the Five Precepts and some words of advice for his return to the world.

A key reason why disrobing is made so easy, both practically and psychologically, is the recognition that few people have the vocation to stay in robes for their whole life, and that it is better for someone who wishes to leave to do so, rather than live on in the monastery in a half-hearted and discontented way. Miserable monks tend to make those around them miserable, and their lack of commitment to the training easily leads to disharmony and decline in standards of the Vinaya.

Few monks avoid periods of doubt entirely. Consequently, understanding the nature of doubt and learning how to deal with it wisely is one of the most important skills that a monk can master. Until that skill is developed – and it may take many years – the teacher is there to offer reflections and encouragement. If he sees a monk’s discontent as a superficial wobble rather than a genuine inability or unwillingness to live the monks’ life any longer, he will try to help the monk find a renewed sense of purpose. The teacher will be aware of many monks who left the Sangha in haste only to repent at leisure.

In the early years at Wat Pah Pong, Luang Por put considerable effort into dissuading restless monks from disrobing. As he got older, he was less inclined to do so – a pattern common, almost to cliché, amongst leaders of monastic communities. Helping monks to emerge from a period of dissatisfaction with monastic life was hard work, and more often than not, resulted in a postponement rather than a complete ending of their desire to disrobe. As teachers matured, they tended to become more stoic about the loss of promising young monks and saw the need to be more discriminating as to how they spent their time and energy.

Some monks disrobed in order to take care of an ageing parent; some left due to chronic illness. But probably the most common cause for disrobing was the strong pull of the sensual world. Many monks found that celibacy could be managed without any great stress, and more than a few found it easy; but when lust did take hold in a monk’s mind, it could be of an ogreish intensity. To those who were struggling with lustful feelings, Ajahn Jun remembered how direct Luang Por’s words could be:

“Luang Por would say, ‘Really think about it … [women] have got nine holes in their body just like you do, and every one of them is filled with a different kind of waste. There’s nothing beautiful or good or clean in any one of those holes. You sit there and you walk about daydreaming, imagining all kinds of pleasant things, but they’re not true. You’ll lose your freedom. You’ll be under a woman’s thumb. You’ll lead a life of frustrations and strife. You’re being seduced by sexual desire. Don’t believe it. Don’t disrobe just because lust tells you to. You won’t die if you don’t follow it. Believe me: lust has been deceiving you for countless lifetimes.’ ”

He also recalled how on alms-round, Luang Por would point out the sufferings of lay life to monks assailed by lust. The sound of a husband and wife shouting at each other, the sight of a tired-looking woman trying desperately to console a screaming child, or of a woman – prematurely aged by a hard life – trudging off to the fields: any such figure might be indicated with the words, ‘Is that really what you want?’

When monks first ordained, they could be so inspired that the very idea of someday disrobing seemed unthinkable. But, as time went on, their initial faith-driven perceptions, so apparently rock solid, could waver. If monks lacked the resources of patience and endurance needed to bear with the difficult periods when their inspiration ran dry, it was staying in robes that might suddenly come to seem unthinkable.

When a monk started to doubt his capacity to realize the Dhamma in his present lifetime, he could come to feel caught between two stools: the pleasures of the lay life being behind him and yet no clear path to the profound happiness of inner liberation visible before him. The thought of reaching the end of his life in that unresolved state could come to seem intolerable. It was the classic monastic version of the male midlife crisis. Some monks faced no particular moment of truth, but it was as if their sense of vocation just gradually faded like a flashlight battery, until there was no light left to see their way by, at which point they left.

Disrobing was seen by almost all as an admission of defeat.[8] To some, return to the world after putting their best effort into the monk’s life, seemed like accepting an honourable discharge from the army after an ultimately unsuccessful campaign. Most were humble. They would say that they had not amassed enough good kamma to enable them to stay in the Sangha any longer; their store of merit had allowed them only this much time in the robes. Now they wanted to return to a less intense level of commitment to the Buddha Sāsana: to lead a good life as a householder, support the Sangha and work to accumulate more good kamma.

‘Like Rain About to Fall …’

Ordinations and disrobings of junior monks are such a normal part of monastic life in Thailand, even in forest monasteries, that they occasion little remark; however, when a senior monk decides to leave the Sangha, considerable shock waves pass through the monastery, particularly amongst monks who are themselves caught in a web of doubt. So it was when the abbot of one of the branch monasteries (and one of Luang Por’s senior disciples to boot) arrived one day – strained, pale-faced – with the unenviable task of announcing that he had fallen in love with a lay supporter and wanted to disrobe and get married.

To Luang Por, a monk intending to abandon monastic training because of romantic infatuation was about to take a foolish step backwards and downwards. He considered lust as merely the immature expression of a noble emotion, something that should be ‘flipped over’ into mettā, loving-kindness.

You’ve got to flip this personal love of yours over into a general love, a love for all sentient beings, like the love of a mother or father for their child … You have to wash the sensuality out of your affection, like someone wanting to eat wild yams has to soak their heads first to wash out the poison. Worldly love is the same: you have to reflect on it, look at it until you see the suffering bound up in it and then gradually wash away the germ of intoxication. That leaves you with a pure love, like that of a teacher for his disciples … If you can’t wash the sensuality out of love, then it will still be there – still bossing you around – when you’re an old man.

Sexual desire was to be clearly understood – not repressed, but investigated. Luang Por suggested, as teachers have generally done in this situation, a temporary change of surroundings. He made an appeal to the monk’s pride:

Reflect on the suffering of sexual desire until you can let it go. If you can’t solve the problem with wisdom, or at least reduce its strength, then leave your monastery for a while. After you’ve re-established your practice, then return. When you fall down, you have to know how to pick yourself up again. You have to know how to struggle and crawl. When you’ve been knocked over, don’t just lie there helplessly and give up.

But once the idea of disrobing has become real to a monk, it gains an almost irresistible momentum. A sense of inevitability – which, following an excruciating period of indecision, often feels like a blessed relief – undermines the monk’s willingness to question his decision. It was this sense, that there was no longer a way back, that Luang Por sought to counter:

According to the old saying, there are five unstoppable things: rain about to fall, excrement about to leave the body, a person about to die, a child about to be born, and a monk about to disrobe. The first four are true, I’m sure, but not the last one. I’m confident that a monk can be stopped from disrobing. I myself once considered disrobing, and I changed my mind.

In trying to puncture the unrealistic visions of the future that the monk had created, Luang Por could paint a vivid picture. Whereas the monk’s life was untrammelled, he said, with the opportunity to go walking carefree through the forests and mountains on tudong, the householder’s life was cramped and constricted:

Having a family imprisons you … You end up with the baby crying, your wife grumbling, your father-in-law scolding you, your mother-in-law hating you, hemmed in by pots and pans. Think about it.

He reminded the monk of the difficulties of making a way in the world, of how so many years of living by a high moral standard made surviving in a duplicitous world awkward and painful. He called to mind monks who had left and, once the novelty had worn off, bitterly regretted their decision to disrobe. He described the pleasures of sensuality as superficial and fleeting – like the taste of good food on the tongue – in no way comparable to the profound and lasting well-being that could be realized through Dhamma practice:

If you keep meditating until your mind becomes calm and lucid, and you see the Dhamma, then you will truly be at ease. Sometimes you can be so full of bliss that you don’t need to eat at all. And it’s a profound ease, not just a pleasant sensation on the surface of your tongue.

The fundamental message Luang Por sought to convey was that lust and longing were not things outside the monastic training pulling the monk inexorably away from it. On the contrary, dealing with such emotional crises was an integral part of the training. Looking at the suffering, letting go of the desires that fed it, freeing oneself from the suffering through the practice of the Eightfold Path – this was the very heart of monastic life.

Whatever kind of suffering arises, then contemplate it. Look at it until you see it clearly. Sometimes, when it’s not clear, you have to fast and go without sleep and fight with it, be willing to die. Ven. Ajahn Tongrat once considered disrobing. He wouldn’t listen to anybody who tried to dissuade him, his mind was made up. But then one day he asked for an axe from the villagers and started chopping logs. He chopped for three days and three nights until he was exhausted and his hands were covered in blisters. Then he shouted out loud, ‘Now do you know who’s master?’ He was talking to his defilements.

Great masters have been through this. One of Luang Pu Mun’s disciples fell in love with a woman who regularly put food in his bowl on alms-round. His friends took him off to meditate and shut him up in the Uposatha Hall. He fasted for five or six days, and then his mind flipped upright. He saw the unattractiveness of the body, his mind became calm and lucid, he saw the Dhamma – and he survived.

Sexual desire is your weak point, and you have to remedy it with meditation on the unattractive parts of the body. Keep testing your strength until you know how much you can take. Don’t let the defilements keep punching you on your weak spot until they knock you out. Develop more skill in meditation. If the defilements come high, then duck underneath them. If you’re not strong enough to take them on, then when they come at you low, jump over them and run away for a while.

The decision to disrobe may not be completely irrevocable. Nevertheless, once a monk has made up his mind to disrobe, even the rhetorical skills and charisma of a master like Luang Por Chah rarely succeed in changing his mind. He feels a momentum. It’s as if he’s travelling downhill without brakes and is being encouraged to turn around and climb back up the mountain. In this particular case, after a short period of reflection undertaken out of deference to his teacher, the monk disrobed. Little was heard of him after that. Perhaps he lived happily ever after; perhaps he did not.

Stillness Flowing The Life and Teaching of Ajhan Chah

Eccentric American Solitaires

The November 21, 1938 issue of LIFE Magazine titled “Cuckooland” (“Screwy California” in the table of contents) profiled eccentrics of Holly-wood, California in the 1930s, among them several hermits: Peter Howard, called “Peter the Hermit,” a Dr. Newman, and Harry Hermann, called “Herman the Hermit.” Peter Howard played bit parts in silent films, usu-ally as a “biblical” character given his eccentric appearance: long beard, robe, and staff. He often posed for photos with tourists. Howard lived in a wooden shack on the outskirt hills of Hollywood, with a burro, a goat, and a dozen greyhounds.

Nothing else is known of the other hermits except what the magazine captions tell us: “Dr. Newman” is the sole member of his own religious cult and lives in a tree. Not unlike Peter Howard in appearance, Harry Hermann (“Herman the Hermit”) frequently walked the streets of Hollywood dressed in robe and long beard.

Noah John Rondeau (1883–1967) was born and grew up in the High Peaks region of the Adirondack Mountains of New York State. He worked as a handyman, hunter, trapper, and wilderness guide, moving to the Cold River forest wilderness out of disgust for modern society. He lived between two cabins from 1913 to 1950. Rondeau accepted visitors as early as the 1920s, who came to name his residence Cold River City (he was dubbed “mayor” of the town, “Population: 1”). In 1950, at the age of sixty–seven, Rondeau was forced from his Cold River forest residence when the state’s conservation department closed the forest after a major windstorm. Rondeau subsequently lived in several Adirondack locales, but no longer self–suffi-ciently. In old age he moved to a retirement home. Much of what is known of Rondeau’s daily life as a hermit comes from his extensive journals, which he wrote encrypted.

Ray Phillips (1892–1975), born in New York City, was a World War I veteran, achieving the rank of captain. He worked as a food inspector during the 1920s before moving to Maine to live first on Monhegan Island, then on Manana Island, where he built a twelve by fifteen–foot home of local driftwood, without electricity, using battery–run television and radio. Philips sailed and fished, entertained visitors, and made regular visits to the mainland for supplies and library books. He became known as “The Hermit of Manana Island.”

Robert E. Harrill (1893–1972), born and raised in North Carolina, was committed to a psychiatric hospital at the age of sixty–two, after unsuccessful employment and failed marriage. He escaped, making his way to Fort Fisher State Recreation Area. Harrill discovered an abandoned war bunker near Cape Fear River, in which he lived thereafter, gathering seafood, growing vegetables, and subsisting as a hermit. Revealed to nearby residents, a steady stream of curious visitors come from afar, some leaving donations, others posing for photos with him for a small fee. Harrill was dubbed “The Fort Fisher Hermit” and became a popular tourist attraction in the state.

In the 1950s, hermits and misfits descended on the Everglades, Florida’s southwest coast. Among them were Arthur Darwin, Martha Frock, Robert Ozmer, Leon Whilden, Foster Atkinson, and Al Seely.

Arthur Leslie Darwin (1879–1977) lived on the island of Possum Key from 1945 until his death, allowed to stay on the island after designated part of the National Park System in the early 1950s. He constructed a one–room concrete block house fourteen by sixteen–feet, without electricity, catching rainwater in a cistern. He grew fruit and vegetables to sell in Everglades City, until encroaching mangroves and their tannic acid altered the island soil and forced him to abandon growing. Darwin kept a radio, had no books, and avoided visitors.

Martha Frock (b. 1919?) lived on swampland in the Everglades six miles from the nearest road, in a house made of wood resting on concrete blocks. She lacked electricity, using a hand pump for water, and because she had no vehicle, relied on neighbors for supplies.

The most literate Everglades hermit was Robert Roy Ozmer (1899–1969), former newspaperman, actor, sailor, and artisan. Photos show him in a jaunty beret. Ozmer was well read and traveled extensively. He came to Pelican Key Island to live alone, hoping to cure his alcoholism.

Danish–born Leon Whilden moved to the Everglades in 1949 to live in what became Big Cypress National Preserve. He lived alone on Orchid Isles, at his multi–acre nursery, selling orchids and tropical plants.

Al Seely was a machinist, musician, surveyor, and military veteran. One day in 1969, diagnosed with six months to live, he moved to Ten Thousand Islands, living first in a fishing hut on Panther Key, then on Dismal Key in the two–room house of former resident and hermit Foster Atkinson (about which below). Seely painted, sold his art, read widely with a full bookshelf, and worked his sixty–five acres growing food. He left copious notes published posthumously in 2010 as a book titled The Phony Hermit.

Foster Atkinson resided on Dismal Key during the time Seely lived on Panther Key. Seely moved to Atkinson’s house after the latter’s death at seventy-two. According to Seely, the alcoholic Atkinson failed at everything he pursued. Atkinson had traveled the rails as a hobo and quarreled with every employer. He was selling sea shells while living in a tent on a main-land beach when he became caretaker of the Dismal Key house, where he lived the rest of his life.

Willard Kitchener MacDonald (1916–2004), a World War II military deserter who fled to Canada to avoid conscription, lived in isolation near Gully Lake, Nova Scotia. He became known as “The Hermit of Gully Lake.” In 2003, when he lost his hut in a forest fire, local authorities moved him to a new cabin. Facing health problems and fearing institutionalization, Willard fled to the forest, later found dead.

Bernard Wheatley (1919–1991) was an African American physician who quit his career and moved to Hawaii to become a hermit. He graduated from medical school in 1945, becoming a surgeon in New York and Sweden. One day Wheatley walked away from his profession, family, and friends, wandering Europe and America, and settling into a cave in the Kalalau Valley on Hawaii’s Kauai Island, accessible only by boat or over rigorous mountain terrain.

A 1959 issue of Ebony Magazine describes Dr. Wheatley as persuasive and articulate, able to quote Freud, Jung, Schopenhauer, Kant, and Tolstoy, deeply read in the New Testament, Eastern religions, and esoteric thought. Wheatley cited Jesus and Buddha as his heroes. He quit the world, he explained to his interviewer, because he viewed all institutions as corrupt and spiritually void. On his island, Wheatley inevitably attracted visitors, but had little patience for entertaining insincerity. He lived uninterruptedly as a hermit, and Ebony noted that he would have gone unnoticed had he lived in India.

Richard Proenneke (1916–2003) lived thirty years of solitude in the remote Twin Peaks region of Alaska. Mechanically adept and an amateur naturalist, Proenneke was eminently qualified for the survivalist undertaking. He was eventually employed by the National Park Service for his knowledge and wilderness experience. Proenneke built a log cabin from hand tools, explored mountains and rivers on foot and by canoe, and meticulously observed animal behavior and habitat, recording thoughts with sympathetic attachment to wilderness.

Proenneke maintained a diary, regularly corresponded with family and friends, and enjoyed increased personal contacts during visits away from the cabin. From the beginning, an old pilot–friend flew in food and supplies on a regular basis over the years, permitting Proenneke to perfect his wilderness situation and stay in his beloved cabin year–round. Eventually his stay extended to thirty years. After films about his isolated wilderness life popularized his fame in the 1980s, Proenneke lamented losing his earlier years of solitude, which better revealed the degree of self–sufficiency that he had attained. He began his pursuit of wilderness life late at age fifty–one; at eighty–one he entrusted his cabin to the National Park Service, maintained for visitors ever since.

***

Jack Kerouac

American writer Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) was an unlikely candidate for an experiment in solitude, but he undertook a sixty–three day stint as a fire look–out on Desolation Peak, in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State. For years his life had been a zigzag from aloneness to social frenzy. At the time of his solitude experiment, the famous books that were to confirm his place in American literature epitomizing the Beat Generation of the 1950s were not yet written. The winding trail of drugs, alcohol, sex, homelessness, vagabonding, in–group, and incessant reading and writing was beginning to unravel into despair.

In 1954, Kerouac took up the study of Buddhism as a possible solace. On the advice of poet–scholar–translator–roughneck Gary Snyder, who had worked as a fire look–out himself, Kerouac applied for the lookout job and was accepted to work during the summer of 1956. He spent sixty–three days on Desolation Peak with, as he put it, “no characters, alone, isolated.” The record of this period is the first part of his novel Desolation Angels (1965), entitled “Desolation in Solitude,” plus a little of the second part. Since all of Kerouac’s fiction is literal autobiography, these passages testify to his frantic search for solace, highlighted by Kerouac’s jocular, cynical, compulsive, subjective persona.

Kerouac passed most of his fire tower days conjuring memories, fantasizing, and counting the days until he could return to San Francisco, return to normalcy, return to dissipating avoidance of self. Occasionally he evokes without insight the famous Chinese mountain hermit Hanshan, icon of the Beat circle.

“Desolation Adventure finds me finding at the bottom of myself abysmal nothingness worse than that no illusion even—–my mind’s in rags.” Back in San Francisco, Kerouac noted: “The vision of the freedom of eternity which I saw and which all wilderness hermitage saints have seen, is of little use in cities and warring societies such as we have.” The following year (1957) Kerouac finally publishes On the Road, and Dharma Bums the year after that—and so the legendary chronicler of the Beat Generation is established in history. But though he published regularly thereafter, Kerouac’s self–destruction spun unchecked and in growing solitude until his death in 1969 at the age of forty–seven.

Buddhism scholar Robert Thurman remarks in his introduction to Jack Kerouac’s posthumously published book Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha that Kerouac’s Catholicism was a decisive factor in whether Kerouac sided with the Beat Generation’s Zen or with the orientation of Tibetan Mahayana and its closer analogies to Christianity. As Kerouac himself acknowledged, Mahayana Buddhism was for him “the word and the way I was looking for,” a clear allusion to his original Catholicism. In the contrast of Mahayana Buddhism’s angels, saints, and demons to Zen’s dry, hard disciple and emphasis on meditation, Kerouac leaned toward the former, so superficially as to further underscore Kerouac’s inability to control the direction of his life. He called Gautama “the blessed hermit.”

Kerouac found model secular hermits in hobos. In 1960 he published an article titled “The Vanishing American Hobo,” in Holiday Magazine. Kerouac laments the demise of the true hobos, the vagabonding pack rats who founded California, brought down by ubiquitous police from their “idealist lope to freedom” in “hills of holy silence and holy privacy” and out of their cardboard jerrybuilt huts and flying boxcars.

The “footwalking freedom” of mountain man Jim Bridger or of Johnny Appleseed is peculiarly American, notes Kerouac, comparing their lives to Japan’s mountain hermits, “waiting for Supreme Enlightenment which is only obtainable through occasional complete solitude.” In the United States, camping is healthy but a crime for those who make it a vocation. Poverty is a virtue among monks but vagrancy is a crime. The hobo in Brueghel is an innocuous figure, but today a potential criminal, especially the Black hobo, “the last of the Brueghel bums.” “John Muir was a hobo who went off into the mountains …”

Kerouac enumerates other “hobos” fulfilling his notion of nonconformist, iconoclast, perhaps solitary: Jean Valjean, Beethoven, Li Po, Jesus, Buddha, Chief Rain–In–The–Face. Like a sadhu, the hobo walks the back-roads for a meal, not needing to beg. The contemporary hobo ends up in the city, populating the poorer districts, such as New York’s Bowery. Paris is friendly to hobos. Most European countries do not understand them, but “America is the motherland of bumdom.”

Kerouac relates that he was a hobo himself once, until around 1956, when bad publicity about hobos scared the public. Kerouac was once in Tucson walking to the desert with his backpack at 2 a.m., intending to find a place to sleep, when police stopped him. They wanted to know where he was going. Kerouac explained that he’d spent the summer in the Forest Service. Asked if he had money why he didn’t stay in a hotel, he replied that he likes the open air and, besides, it is free. Why? he is asked. Kerouac replies that he is studying hobo. “There’s something strange going on, you can’t even be alone any more in the primitive wilderness …”

THE BOOK OF HERMITS

A History of Hermits from Antiquity to the Present

Robert Rodriguez

Monks who lost the battle

 

Although all the thudong monks we have been discussing won their battles with sexual desire, a number of Man’s disciples did not. The story of one of them was told by another disciple of  Man’s staying in the hills outside Chiang Mai. It occurred during the 1930s, when Man was wandering in northern Siam. The events resemble Waen’s and Fan’s experiences, except that this particular thudong monk was unable to resist his desires.

One day Monk X (no name was given) went with other thudong monks to bathe at a water hole near a path leading to the village farms. The path was quite some distance from the village and was deserted most of the time. While the monks were prepar-ing for their bath, a number of young Lahu hill-tribe women happened to pass by. Monk X caught sight of one of them and immediately fell in love with her. From that moment on he could not sleep. He was overcome by worry and fear of this strange feeling, the strength of which he never imagined existed. He was also frightened that Ajan Man would find out. Meditating all night, he tried to control his desire, hoping that it would drop away during meditation. But Man learned of this monk’s struggle, supposedly through his mind-reading ability, and tried to help him. He allowed Monk X to skip going on almsround so he could intensify his efforts in meditation alone in his hut. This did not help, however. Frustrated and embarrassed, Monk X decided to seek another location for solitude. Having received permission from the ajan, he went to stay near a hamlet farther away. But as fate would have it, he ran into the young Lahu woman again. Eventually he disrobed and married her. His fellow thudong monks saw him as a “poor victim of circumstances,” unable to get away from his kamma (M2, 168).

Even thudong monks with a strong meditation practice were not immune to temptation. In 1937 Thet spent the rains retreat at a forest hermitage near Pong Village in Mae Taeng District, Chiang Mai. He was heading a group that consisted of Bunt-ham, Kheuang, Chaup, and an unnamed monk from Loei. Of these four others, Thet recalls, Chaup and Kheuang were the most experienced.

In this group it was Ajan Chaup who was the most strict in his thudong practices. . . . Venerable Kheuang was particularly gifted in the faculty of knowing another person’s mind. If something was preoccupying anyone’s mind or if someone had committed any breach of the monastic rule, it would be detected by one of these two monks. . . .Kheuang was adept at training his mind to enter tranquillity, and he could remain in a state of calm all day and night.

While walking around in seemingly quite an ordinary way, in his mind he would feel as if he was walking on air. While at other times he might feel as if he had penetrated into the interior of earth. Shortly after the rains retreat Thet and Kheuang went off in search of solitude, following the Mae Taeng River upstream. They stayed in a secluded place in a mountainous area where tea shrubs were growing. One day, Thet left his thudong gear with Kheuang in an abandoned wat while he climbed a ridge to find a suitable place to stay. When Thet returned he noticed that Kheuang was moody. The following morning Kheuang lost his temper with Thet over some small matter, but at the end of the day he admit-ted he was at fault. Then he explained what happened the previ-ous day while Thet was away. A young woman had strolled by in the company of some local young men. Kheuang had watched her flirting with them, and this had excited him. As a result, his medi-tation was now going badly. He wanted to take leave of Thet and go off wandering alone. Thet tried to counsel him and recommended various ways of stilling the emotions—but without success.

So Thet let him go. Three months later they met again. It appears that Kheuang had stopped meditating. Thet encouraged him to make a fresh start with his meditation, but again he had no success: “Afterwards I learnt with great regret that he had disrobed.

He was a strong-willed individual and did nothing in half measures, but he was also very opinionated and even Ajan Man’s dhamma talks didn’t always convince him. He had once been a ‘tough guy’ [nakleng] back in his home village before being ordained as a monk. He left the village wat without any real goal in mind.” Like his fellow thudong monks, Thet believed that a nimit could portend the future. Before ever meeting Thet, Kheuang had a vision about him that foretold his later act of disrobing. “A road appeared leading straight from [Kheuang] to where I was. He made a trouble-free journey along the road that ended right at the foot of the stairs leading to my hut. He then seemed to catch hold of the stairs and started climbing—they seemed extremely long and steep—up to me. He bowed to me three times; I offered him a complete set of robes but he refused to accept them” (T1, 179;T2, 77). Thet concluded that Kheuang was one of those monks in whom samâdhi did not develop into pañña (wisdom): “Even though Ven. Kheuang’s mind didn’t withdraw from concentration, he lacked the wisdom to investigate tilakkhana [the three character-istics—impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and nonself]” (T1, 180).

Young monks were not the only ones whose minds were trou-bled by sexual thoughts; older ones were, too. One such monk was Samret, a revered teacher. Samret was ordained as a novice in early youth, became a meditation monk, and eventually started teaching. He was known as a strict, serious meditator and was much respected. When he was nearly sixty years old, he fell in love with a lay supporter’s daughter. His decision to quit the monastic life shocked his disciples and lay followers, who had expected that he would remain in the robes for the rest of his life.

To the senior monks, the disrobing of a teacher was a disgrace to all practicing monks. They tried in vain to stop Samret from leaving the monkhood. Dun in particular reminded him to exert himself harder in meditation, so as to understand his mind better. But practicing meditation did not help. “I can’t remain in the monkhood. Every time I meditate, all I see is her face,” Samret told Dun. Dun, realizing that Samret’s case was hopeless, responded loudly, “[This is] because when you meditate, instead of looking at your mind, you focus on her ass. No wonder only her buttocks appeared. Go, go follow your desires. Go away.” Samret’s case indicated that older monks may have had harder battles with sexual desire. As one teacher warned his pupil, “The real trouble begins well after 45—between then and 60 you will have a hard time. For then your body revolts, your mind panics— they want to enter into their rights ere the gates close.” Decades of meditation practice did not necessarily mean that the monk was beyond temptation.

Clearly, thudong monks were not immune to sexual desire.
What about Isan administrative monks? A thudong monk’s account tells of one such monk, Ariyakhunathan (Seng).24 Maha Seng was a sangha provincial head who took up meditation and practiced it seriously for decades. It was believed that Seng had attained the higher jhânas. Yet later on, in the 1950s, he left the Lui, who spent the 1952 rains retreat with him at Deer Garden Hill in Khon Kaen, recalls: “Ven. Ariyakhunathan had a pleasant disposition. He could discuss many mystical matters. It’s a pity that he did not go directly to the Four Noble Truths. Since his practice was not supported by the three characteristics, all the supernormal knowledge he attained in his meditation practice, such as different levels of jhâna, eventually deterio-rated. So he had to disrobe.” Lui implies that Seng disrobed because he could not resist sexual desire. So in two cases, Seng and Kheuang, monks highly skilled in mental concentration lacked clear insight into this aspect of reality.

Thet and Cha are better representatives of their fellow thudong monks’ wisdom. Thet learned from experience that when clear insight occurs together with strong concentration, the mind will become disenchanted and dispassionate with regard to all conditioned things. The mind will dwell entirely in a state of mature and chastened dispassion, no matter what it sees or hears, and no matter where. Once knowledge and insight into impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and emptiness arise, Cha confirms, it is “the beginning of true wisdom, the heart of meditation, which leads to liberation.”

Forest Recollections Wandering Monks in Twentieth-Century Thailand Kamala Tiyavanich University

Tigers samādhi

Attached to samādhi - concentration


The tiger occupies a conspicuous place in the monks’ accounts of their life in the forest. The monks regarded this animal with a mixture of fear and respect. Fear of tigers and the vivid imagining of oneself being devoured by tigers often drove the mind to one-pointed samâdhi (concentration).
Samâdhi, a thudong master explains, “is a gathering of the mind’s energies so that they have great strength, able to uproot attachments . . . and to cleanse the mind so that it is, for the moment, bright and clear.” Any of the forty meditation methods that the Buddha taught could, if practiced seriously, bring the mind to samâdhi. The chosen meditation practice varied according to the temperaments of teachers and disciples. The concentration method that Ajan Man taught his disciples was the recitation of the mantra “buddho.”
In the early stage of his training, a monk or novice stayed with his teacher; he participated in daily rituals, received instruction, and learned by observing. During this stage the disciples depended on the teacher for inner guidance. If a monk was afraid of tigers, Ajan Man sometimes put him deep into the forest, at some distance from the other monks. At night, when fear attacked his mind, a monk would force himself to do walking meditation in the open. Each monk slept on a platform built by villagers, high enough off the ground to discourage tigers from leaping on them. Thudong masters believed that this method of learning the dhamma was far more difficult than studying scriptures. In the wilds a student had to be ever cautious of lurking dangers, which forced him to be constantly alert. He was defenseless except for his mind, which could fix itself on a theme of meditation or a reci-tation of “buddho” until, as Ajan Man said, the mind became “absorbed in dhamma.” Man’s theory was that at such a critical moment, strong concentration would develop or deepen, and fur-ther wisdom or insight would occur. In the battle between fear and dhamma, as Man’s biographer observes, “If the fear is defeated the mind will be overwhelmed by courage and enjoy profound inner peace. If fear is the victor, it will multiply itself rapidly and prodigiously. The whole body will be enveloped by both a perspiring heat and a chilling cold, by the desire to pass urine and to defecate. The monk will be suffocated by fear and will look more like a dying than a living man.” In their second stage of training, a monk wandered with other monks or novices and practiced the meditation method learned from the master. Living in the forest, monks developed finely tuned senses and became experts in using their eyes, ears, and nose. Some of Fan’s and Cha’s experiences illustrate how the monks dealt with their fear when they heard, glimpsed, or en-countered tigers, and how each situation served as an exercise in mindfulness and concentration.

During his fourth year of wandering, Fan took his nephew (a novice) along with him. One day, as they were walking along a forest trail parallel to the Mekong River, Fan spotted tiger tracks and droppings, some of them recent. As dusk was falling, they heard the snarling and growling of tigers ahead of and behind them.10 To keep calm Fan and the novice meditated while walking, but they were disturbed and had difficulty concentrating.
They were afraid that the tiger would attack at any moment.
To boost his courage, Fan recited an old saying: “Should a tiger kill cattle, it’s no big news, but should it devour a villager or a thudong monk, the news spreads far and wide” (F, 22). The recitation made him feel brave; he was ready to face any kind of danger. He thought, “A monk who is afraid of wild animals is not an authentic thudong monk.” He reassured his nephew, “When we have mindfulness, the mind is at peace. It’s not afraid of danger. Even if we’re devoured by a tiger, we will not suffer” (F, 24). As it turned out, Fan and the novice saw no tigers on this trip.

Some monks deliberately put themselves into risky situations to learn about the mind. While wandering with a fellow monk and young boys on a forested mountain, Cha remembered an old saying, “When in a forest, do not sleep on a trail” (C3, 39). He thought about this and decided to test it out. That night he set up his klot on a forest track. The other monk set up his klot away from the trail, while the two young disciples agreed to stay half-way between them. They all sat in meditation for a while before they retired to their klots for the night. Cha, concerned that the boys might be scared, raised his mosquito net over the top of his klot so they could see him from where they lay. Then he lay down on the track with the mosquito net suspended above him. Off the path behind him was the wilderness, ahead of him was the village.
Such a dangerous situation provides the monk with an opportunity to contemplate whatever takes place in his own mind. While Cha was concentrating on his breath before falling asleep, he heard leaves rustling.
Slowly the animal stalked closer . . . and closer until I could hear its breathing. In that moment the citta [mind] told me, “A tiger is coming.” It couldn’t possibly be another animal. The way it walked and the breathing gave it away. Knowing that it was indeed a tiger . . . I couldn’t help thinking about death. In that instant the citta told me not to worry: even if the tiger doesn’t kill you, you’re going to die anyway. It’s more meaningful to die for the dhamma. I’m ready . . . to become a tiger’s meal. If we are bound to one another through kamma [khu wen khu kam], let it kill me. But if we aren’t kammically connected, it won’t harm me. With this in mind, I took refuge in the Triple Gem.

Having done so, the mind was free from worrying. As it turned out, the tiger stopped pacing. I heard only its breath . . . about six meters away. While lying there, I listened carefully. Who knows, it might be thinking, “Who is . . . sleeping on my track?” After a while it moved off. Its footfalls became fainter and fainter until the forest fell silent. This account reflects Cha’s firm belief in kamma, which kept him calm and possibly saved his life. From this incident Cha learned that once he let go of attachment to life, he was no longer afraid of death and was able to remain calm. He also learned that it sometimes makes sense to heed old sayings.

If a monk continued to lean on the teacher, on a friend, or on a group, he would never become wise. In his third stage of training, the monk wandered by himself, living alone on a mountain, in a cave, or under a tree in a forest. At times the thudong monk might end up being alone not by his own choice but by force of circum-stance. This is what happened to Fan.

In 1925 Fan traveled to Phrabat Buabok, the “Buddha’s footprint” at Buabok (a hill in Udon Thani), to meet two other thudong monks. But when he reached Phak Bung Village at the foot of the hill, the two had already left, so Fan spent the next five days meditating alone on the mountain. One day, while walking uphill, he was startled by an unusual noise. It sounded like a big animal digging in the ground. As the thought of a tiger entered his mind, he froze. Although the encounter was sudden, Fan’s quick reaction indicates his strong mindfulness:

Within seconds he concentrated his mind so it wouldn’t react to the situation. The animal raised its head out of the thick brush. “It’s a tiger all right,” he thought, “and judging from the size of its head it must be huge.”

Seeing the tiger he felt a chill run up his spine. Sweat broke out on his face. Intuitively he knew that if he turned his back and started running he would be killed. The tiger would certainly attack him. So he focused his mind to face the critical situation calmly, even though his breathing was not as relaxed as usual. The tiger took one glance at him, gave a loud growl, and leaped into the forest. (F, 39) In the early decades of this century, villagers who lived in or near the forests accepted the presence of tigers as natural and inevitable. Accounts left by Thet, Li, and Chaup illustrate the extent to which the tiger once dominated the hearts and minds of thudong monks as well as villagers.

In late 1936 Thet spent a meditation retreat by himself near a Lahu village on a mountain in northern Siam. He was about thirty-four years old then and had been wandering in the wilds for many years. Hearing a tiger’s growl was nothing new, but this time, alone in a hut outside the village, he was stricken with fear.

He could neither sleep nor focus his mind in meditation. He heard villagers fire a shot into the air, and he saw them throw firebrands at the tiger. But the animal was undeterred. It showed no fear of humans. After retreating for a while, it came back at the crack of dawn and sat on the trail used by the villagers. When the villagers spotted the tiger, they all fled. The tiger did not pursue them, however. Thet, who admitted that he had had a nervous disorder since childhood, remembers how frightened he was:

I sat down to meditate, but my mind wouldn’t focus. At the time I did not know that the mind was terrified of the tiger. My body sweated so much that perspiration streamed down. . . . Why all the sweating when it was so cold? Spread the robe and kept cov-ered but the body kept trembling. The mind was too exhausted to meditate. Thought of lying down for a while before trying to meditate again. When I was about to recline, the tiger roared again. I was shaking as if I had a jungle fever. Only then did I realize that the mind refused to focus out of sheer fright. Imme-diately I sat up and cajoled my mind to have courage to face death if it came. Then the mind became calm . . . no longer heard the sound of the tiger. At times when hearing the tiger again my mind simply ignored its roar. Like the wind making contact with an object, it’s just noise. (T2, 72)

Thet’s experience confirmed Ajan Man’s belief that living among tigers and hearing them roar nearby was the best thing that could happen to a thudong monk. Man meant that monks who were frightened of tigers or other wild animals had not yet realized the truth of the dhamma. Fright was the response of the ordinary, untrained mind, while the mind with knowledge and insight into the Four Noble Truths knows the tiger’s growl as simply sound.

As Cha explains, “The sound arises and we simply note it. This is called truly knowing the arising of sense objects. If we develop ‘buddho,’ clearly realising the sound as sound, then it does not [frighten] us. . . . It’s just sound. The mind lets go” (C2, 70). For the thudong monks, the clear and penetrative knowing of buddho indicated an awakened knowledge.

Ajan Man often sent young disciples out alone so they could “realize buddho.” In 1932, at the age of twenty-six, Li was sent to meditate alone on Thumb Mountain (Doi Khau Mau), in Lam-phun Province. Local people believed that a fierce spirit inhabited the summit. Though afraid, Li forced himself to climb the mountain. On his way to the top, he stopped at an abandoned temple and stayed there for two nights. Like Thet, Li recalls how fear could drive the mind into deep samâdhi:

People had told me that whenever the lunar sabbath came around a bright light would often appear there. It was deep in the forest, though—and the forest was full of elephants and tigers. I walked in alone, feeling both brave and scared, but confident in the power of the Dhamma and of my teacher.
. . . The first night, nothing happened. The second night, at about one or two in the morning, a tiger came—which meant that I didn’t get any sleep the whole night. I sat in meditation, scared stiff, while the tiger walked around and around my klot.

My body felt all frozen and numb. I started chanting, and the words came out like running water. All the old chants I had forgotten now came back to me, thanks both to my fear and to my ability to keep my mind under control. I sat like this from 2 until 5 a.m., when the tiger finally left.

In the morning Li went for alms in a settlement consisting of two houses. A man working in his garden told him that a tiger had killed one of his oxen the night before.

Having lived in the wilds for so long, Thet also knew that a tiger could attack massive animals like a gaur or a large deer. In 1937, when he was spending a meditation retreat near a Lahu village, his strong mindfulness enabled him to see how unyielding a tiger could be: “One night a tiger came to attack a buffalo near my kuti. I banged a piece of wood and shouted loudly to chase the tiger away. But the tiger wouldn’t let go, and it managed to drag the buffalo away. This time I wasn’t frightened, but I dared not step out to rescue the buffalo for fear of being eaten too.” Sometimes a wandering monk deliberately put himself in a risky position by traveling at night. One such monk was Chaup, considered by his fellow monks to be most adventurous. Walking alone through a forest forced him to be constantly alert and aware. He often ran into nocturnal tigers on the prowl. Once while wandering in northern Siam, Chaup set out in the direction of Lom Sak in Phetchabun Province. Approaching the Great Forest (Dong Yai) one afternoon, he met some villagers who invited him to spend the night in their village and continue his journey the following morning. Concerned for his safety, they warned him that the forest was large and that ferocious tigers inhabited it. If he entered it that afternoon, night would catch him there. Tigers had killed travelers who had spent the night in the forest, they said. But despite their advice and concern, Chaup insisted on going. Like Cha, Chaup believed that if he became a tiger’s meal, then that was his kamma. And he told the village folk so.

Traveling alone, Chaup was able to take acute notice of his environment. He had not gone far when he came across tiger tracks and saw both fresh and old droppings everywhere. Noticing the spoor, he fixed his mind on his recitation while walking.

At nightfall, when he was still in the middle of the forest, he heard two tigers growl. As they moved nearer their roars became deafening. Suddenly a tiger emerged on the trail walking toward him.

Chaup stopped, turned, and saw another tiger approaching from behind. Each moved to within two meters of him. They were the biggest tigers he had ever seen. Each of them looked as big as a horse, its head about forty centimeters wide. Seeing no way out, Chaup stood motionless, his feet frozen, thinking this was to be the end of him.

At that critical moment, mindfulness came to his rescue. Determined not to abandon sati even though he might be killed by the tigers, his mind withdrew from the tigers, dwelt within, and became one-pointed. Intuitively Chaup knew then that the tigers could never kill him. In an instant he was oblivious to the tigers, to his body, to his standing position, and to everything around him. His mind withdrew completely into a deep concentration and remained there for several hours. When he came out of his concentration, he found himself standing at the same spot, with the klot on one shoulder and the alms-bowl in its sling across another shoulder, the lantern still in one hand but the candle long since out. He lit another candle, but no tigers were to be seen. The forest was quiet. After emerging from his samâdhi, Chaup was surprised that he was still in one piece, untouched by the tigers. His mind was filled with courage and compassion. “He felt that he would be able to face hundreds of tigers, now that he knew the power of the mind.
He felt great love for those two tigers, who were really friends in disguise, for having ‘lifted’ him to the dhamma and for helping him to realize its wonders” (M1, 296). Chaup’s life may have been saved by his ability to concentrate deeply, which allowed him to stand still for several hours. Chaup continued on his journey. Overjoyed by his discovery, he  continued to meditate while walking. At about 9 a.m. he reached the edge of the forest. Approaching a small village, he put on his outer robe, set down his thudong gear, and began his almsround.

The sight of a thudong monk coming out of the forest in the morning surprised the villagers. They knew that he must have spent the night there. Many came outside to offer him food and to inquire how he had managed to come through the Great Forest unharmed. The biographer concludes that it was the power of the dhamma that enabled Chaup not only to survive his encounter with the tigers but also to find his way through the forest.

The following recollection illustrates how thudong monks accepted tigers as a natural and inescapable part of their lives.

Juan, his fellow monks Khaw, Saun, Bunthan, and some lay practitioners stayed in the vicinity of tigers when they were practicing in Golden Pot Forest. They lived in stark simplicity. Juan and Saun built huts on rock outcrops, shelves of stone about five meters wide, over twenty meters long, and fifteen meters high.

Below their platforms, which stood parallel to each other like two stone walls, was a pond where wild animals came to find food and water. From his thatched hut on the rock platform, Juan could see wild boars, elephants, tigers, barking deer, and bears.

One afternoon he saw at least ten wild elephants by the pond and heard the rest of the herd breaking bamboo and yang trees in the grove. It was not unusual to hear tigers howling or see them prowling about the huts.

One night the monks got together in a kuti to recite the patimok. Heard tigers play-fighting with each other by the rock near the hut. Judging from the noise there must have been several of them. From the time the monks began to recite the patimok until they finished, the tigers remained at the same spot and the growling did not let up. Ven. Grandfather Khaw was so annoyed that he told them to shut up, though in an affectionate way: “Hey, you guys, stop being so loud. The monks are listening to the dhamma. This is not a place to play. Listen to me, or you’ll all go to hell.” They quieted down a bit but still growled for a while longer. This incident confirms Man’s teaching that “If you are terrified of tigers, be where the tigers are, and make friends with them. It appears that Khaw had succeeded in putting this advice into practice.

The younger thudong monks, however, were still learning from their experiences. In the forest, no hut was completely safe from animals. The monks had to live according to the laws of nature, and nature is unpredictable. They learned that the rule of survival was to always be mindful and alert for any surprise visit. Juan remembers an occasion when “Bunthan, a fellow monk, was about to step out of his kuti [and] saw a big tiger sitting on the steps. He had to wait for quite a while until the tiger went away before he could get out of his hut.” He also recalls the time when “the monk Saun and a novice had diarrhea. They ran to the latrine, but the novice got there first. The monk couldn’t restrain his urge so he went in the bush. As he was squatting a tiger leaped over his head—which set every nerve in his body tingling. The tiger ran toward the latrine. Hearing the sound, the novice quickly fled. Luckily, the tiger ran off into the forest, and the boy didn’t have to face it.”

Forest Recollections Wandering Monks in Twentieth-Century Thailand Kamala


Next—what is great courage? This means bringing all your energy to one point. It is like a cat hunting a mouse*. The mouse has retreated into its hole, but the cat waits outside the hole for hours on end without the slightest movement. It is totally concentrated on the mouse-hole. This is Zen mind—cutting off all thinking and directing all your energy to one point.

Zen Master Seung Sahn

Objection that hunting cannot be a good example of samadhi fails to understand that while obviously the cat has no right view, living aside his intentions one who is able to concentrate the mind for the sake of Dhamma as a cat for the sake of mouse, is on the right path to the right view. Mind has to understand itself, what cannot be done without withdrawing from sensory experience. 

Engulfed in a realm of vaginas

 During this Rains Retreat, sexual desire – a thrashing, pounding storm of it – returned to assail Luang Por’s body and mind. It blew up at a time when he was putting great efforts into his practice. One interpretation might be that such single-minded introspection brought repressed desires to the surface. The most usual way for the forest teachers to describe this phenomenon however, is to personalize the defilements as tyrants who have held sway over the mind for countless lifetimes and who, now seeing a threat to their hegemony, react violently with the most powerful forces at their disposal. Whatever the explanation, Luang Por suddenly found himself in that hot damp forest, engulfed in a realm of vaginas. Eyes open or closed – tens, hundreds of the hallucinatory images surrounded him, devastatingly real. The power of his lust was almost unbearable – as fierce as the fear he had felt in the cremation forest. There was nothing to do but grimly endure.

Some explanation may be called for to make clear the full extent of Luang Por’s predicament. The Buddha taught that on the path to enlightenment, sexual desire can, and eventually must, be completely transcended. To this end, monks undertake an absolute form of celibacy in order to isolate and reveal the impermanent, unsatisfactory and impersonal nature of sexual desire, and thus uproot identification with it. The weight of the Discipline is thrown behind this practice by making intentional emission of semen one of its most serious offences (saṅghādisesa). If committed, it necessitates a period of penance and rehabilitation that is deeply embarrassing to the transgressor (he has to, for instance, publicly confess his offence to the Sangha on every day of the penance) and inconvenient for the community of monks. Even if he stops short of masturbation, a monk who makes the slightest deliberate attempt to excite himself sexually or physically relieve sexual feelings, commits an offence nonetheless (albeit of a less grave nature). He is given, therefore, absolutely no choice but to face up to the tension of lust. Until insight arises, a monk must be sustained by patient endurance, wise reflection, calmness of mind and confidence in the value of struggling with such feelings.

Luang Por was in constant fear of ejaculation. During this period, he did not dare practise walking meditation: he was afraid that if the friction of his lower robe stimulated his penis too much, he would be unable to control himself. He asked a layman to make him a walking path deep in the forest so that he could walk there at night time with his lower robe hitched up around his waist. It was a full ten days before the alluring visions and the lust they engendered finally faded. Many years later, Luang Por told his oldest friend Por Phut, perhaps in jest (and perhaps not), that the vaginas belonged to all his wives of previous existences. Whatever their origin, this episode was to prove the one last great hurrah of his sexual nature.

Finding skilful means to deal with sexual desire is a major preoccupation for many young monks, and in later years, Luang Por was to speak of this incident to his disciples on a number of occasions. He was keen for them to see that such feelings were natural and that they could be transcended with determination. He himself had survived the onslaught, not through an intimidating amount of concentration or dazzling wisdom, but a good old-fashioned, unromantic, teeth-gritting endurance. In 1968, when a first, short biography of Luang Por was being written, he insisted that his vagina hallucinations be included. The author, his disciple Ajahn Maha Amorn, was rather uneasy about how such frank revelations would go down with the general public. It was not the kind of material usually found in such books. Luang Por said that if he omitted that passage, then he could just forget about the whole project.

The Rains Retreat at Wat Pah Bahn Nong Hee was not all blood-and-thunder grimness. On the contrary. One night as Luang Por lay down to sleep at the end of a long period of meditation, he was greeted by a vision of Luang Pu Mun standing in front of him holding out a glittering jewel. Luang Pu Mun said, ‘Chah, I’m giving this to you. See how bright and radiant it is.’ Luang Por sat up and stretched out his right hand to receive the jewel. At that moment, he woke up and found himself sitting on his mat, hand forming a fist, as if grasping something supremely precious. Luang Por’s spirits received a tremendous spur from that auspicious vision, and for the remainder of the retreat, he was fired by an unquenchable enthusiasm for practice.

Luang Por remained at Nong Hee until the hot season of the following year (1949), when, under a searing sun, he resumed his wandering once more. But first, following the ancient tradition, he offered to Luang Pu Kinaree a tray of candles, incense and toothwoods[30] that he had made himself from the astringent kotah tree, and asked forgiveness for any faults he might have knowingly or unknowingly committed during his stay. Luang Pu Kinaree praised Luang Por’s dedication to practice but in his laconic way, warned him of the distractions that might arise with his gift for expounding the Dhamma:

“Venerable Chah, everything in your practice is fine. But be wary of giving talks.”

Stillness Flowing 

The Life and Teaching of Ajhan  Chah