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

A man's self­ love is too blatant when he wants to blind other men so that his own blindness may be hidden

On this topic I say too that it is the sign of a sick heart if a man becomes glad or sorry over the transitory things of this world. We should feel shame for this in our hearts in the sight of God and his an­ gels, and in the sight of men, that we should detect this in ourselves.

We are ashamed soon enough of some facial disfigurement which is there for people to see. What more do I need to say? The books of the Old Testament and the New, and those of the saints and even the pa­ gans are full of this, how pious men for God's sake and also for the sake of natural virtue have given their lives and have willingly sacrificed themselves.

A pagan philosopher, Socrates, says that virtue makes impossible things possible, and even easy and delightfui. And I must not forget that the blessed woman of whom the Book of the Machabees tells that in a single day she saw enacted before her own eyes the horrifying and horrible torments, intolerable even to hear about, that were inflicted and imposed upon her seven sons, and she watched this cheerfully and encouraged and particularly admonished them not to be afraid, and to surrender willingly their bodies and their spirits for the sake of God's justice. This could be the end of the book, but there are two more things that I want to say.

The first thing is that truly a good and pious man ought to be bit­terly and greatly ashamed that suffering ever moved him, when we see how a merchant, for the sake of earning a little money, of which, too, he cannot be sure, will travel so far overland on arduous tracks, up hill and down dale, across wildernesses and oceans, risking robbery and as­sault on his person and his goods, going in great want of food and drink and sleep and suffering other hardships, and yet he is glad and willing to forget all this for the sake of his small and uncertain profit.

A knight in a battle risks possessions and body and life for the sake of a transient and very fleeting honor; and yet we think it such a great matter that we should suffer a little for God's sake, who is everlasting blessedness.

The second thing is that I expect that many stupid people will say that much that I have written in this book and elsewhere is not true. To that I reply with what Saint Augustine says in the first book of his Confessions. He says that God has already made every single thing, ev­erything that is still to come for thousands and thousands of years, if this world should last so long, and everything that is past during many thousands of years he will make again today. Is it my fault if people do not understand this? And he says in another place that a man's self­ love is too blatant when he wants to blind other men so that his own blindness may be hidden. It is enough for me that what I say and write be true in me and in God. If anyone sees a stick pushed down into the water, it seems to him that the stick is bent, although it is quite straight; and the reason for this is that water is cruder than air. But yet the stick is straight and not bent, both in itself and also in the eyes of anyone who looks at it only through the pure air.

Saint Augustine says: "Whoever without thought of any kind, or without any kind of bodily likeness and image, perceives within him­ self what no external vision has presented to him, he knows that this is true."53 But the man who knows nothing of this will laugh at me and mock me, and I can only pity him. But people like this want to contemplate and taste eternal things and the works of God, and to stand in the light of eternity, and yet their hearts are still fluttering around in yesterday and tomorrow.

A pagan philosopher, Seneca, says: "We must speak about great and exalted matters with great and exalted understanding and with sublime souls." And we shall be told that one ought not to talk about or write such teachings to the untaught. But to this I say that if we are not to teach people who have not been taught, no one will ever be taught, and no one will ever be able to teach or write. For that is why we teach the untaught, so that they may be changed from uninstructed into instructed. If there were nothing new, nothing would ever grow old. Our Lord says: "Those who are healthy do not need medicine" (Lk. 5:3 1). That is what the physician is there for, to make the sick healthy. But if there is someone who misunderstands what I say, what is that to the man who says truly that which is true? Saint John nar­rates his holy gospel for all believers and also for all unbelievers, so that they might believe, and yet he begins that gospel with the most exalted thoughts any man could utter here about God; and both what he says and what our Lord says are constantly misunderstood.

May our loving and merciful God, who is Truth, grant to me and to all those who will read this book that we may find the truth within ourselves and come to know it. Amen.

Meister Eckhart
From The Book of Divine Consolation
Meister Eckhart
The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defence 

The cremation forest was Luang Por’s Room 101 and that he entered it of his own accord

 In the Cremation Forest

For thousands of years, the Thais have perceived themselves living in a universe inhabited by unseen forces, malevolent and benign. It is unusual to discover a blind belief in the non-existence of ghosts, even amongst the most materialist of modern urban dwellers. Fascination with ghost stories is almost universal. Although secular values have spread relentlessly throughout Thai society, there is no sign of them displacing the deep belief in spirits.

Many different kinds of ghost are spoken of in Thailand. The three kinds that can possess people are particularly feared: pee tai hong (victims of a violent death), pee tai tong klom (women who died during childbirth) and pee pob who, greedy for raw meat and offal, enter people’s bodies and chew away voraciously at their intestines. Pee pret (Pali: peta), meanwhile, are the hungry ghosts met with in Buddhist texts. They are horrifyingly ugly: gaunt and emaciated, with dishevelled hair, long necks, sunken cheeks, deep-set eyes. They feed on pus and blood and have huge bellies as well as tiny mouths no bigger than the eye of a needle: their appetite is never satisfied. They dwell in cremation forests and desolate areas and emit long, shrill and plaintive cries as they approach human beings. In the time and place in which Luang Por grew up – Isan of the 1920s and 1930s – fear of ghosts was normal and rational: they were all around.

While the modern Western mind is not so terrified of ghosts, it has its own profound fears. In George Orwell’s novel 1984, prisoners under interrogation are confronted with the deepest and most visceral of these in the dreaded Room 101. The following passage might be best appreciated if it is considered that the cremation forest was Luang Por’s Room 101 and that he entered it of his own accord.

It was late afternoon, and I was really afraid; I didn’t want to go. I was paralyzed. I told myself to go, but I couldn’t. I invited Postulant Gaew to accompany me. ‘Go and die there,’ I told myself. ‘If it’s time to die, go and get it over and done with. If it’s all such a burden, if you’re so stupid, just die!’ That’s the kind of thing I was saying to myself, even though, at the same time, I still really didn’t want to go. But I forced myself, ‘If you’re going to wait until you’re completely ready, you’ll never go’, I reasoned, ‘and you won’t ever tame your mind.’ In the end, I had to drag myself there.

As I got to the edge of the forest, I faltered. I had never stayed in a cremation forest before in my life. Postulant Gaew was going to stick close, but I wouldn’t have it. I sent him off a good distance away. Actually, I wanted him to stay really close, but I was worried that I’d become dependent on him. I thought if I had a friend close by, then I wouldn’t be afraid, and so I resisted the temptation and sent him away. ‘If I’m so frightened, then tonight let me die. Let’s see what happens.’ I was afraid; but I did it. It’s not that I wasn’t afraid – but I dared. ‘At the worst’, I told myself, ‘all that can happen is that you’ll die.’

Well, as the dusk started to thicken a little – just my luck! – they carried a corpse, swaying from side to side, into the cremation forest. Why should this happen on this very day? As I practised walking meditation, pacing backwards and forwards, I could hardly feel my feet touch the ground. ‘Get out of here!’ my mind screamed. The villagers invited me to go and chant the funeral verses. I wouldn’t have anything to do with it. ‘Get out of here!’ I was still thinking. But after I’d gone a short distance I returned. They came and buried[25] the corpse right by my glot and then made a sitting platform for me from the bamboo they’d used to carry the body.

What should I do now? The village was two or three kilometres away. ‘This is it for sure. What shall I do? … Just get ready to die.’ Postulant Gaew moved closer. I sent him away, and told myself: ‘Just go ahead and die! Why are you so terrified? Now we’re going to have some fun with this. If you don’t dare do it, you won’t know what it’s like.’ Oh! It was such an intense feeling. It hardly seemed as if my feet were touching the ground. And it was getting darker and darker. ‘Where are you going to go now? Go right into the middle of the cremation forest. Die! You’re born and then you die, isn’t that the way it goes?’ I battled with myself like that.

After the sun had gone down, I felt I should get into my glot. My legs were refusing to move. My feelings urged me into the glot. I’d been practising walking meditation in front of it, opposite the grave. As I walked towards the glot it wasn’t so bad, but as soon as I turned towards the grave – I don’t know what it was – it was as if there was something pulling at my back. Cold shivers went down my spine.

That’s what the training is all about. You feel so frightened your legs refuse to walk, and so you stop; then, when the fear has gone, you start again.

So, as it got dark, I entered my glot and a wave of relief swept over me. I felt as happy and secure as if the mosquito net was a seven-tiered wall. My alms-bowl seemed like an old friend. That’s what can happen when you’re on your own: you can even see a bowl as your friend! I had no one to rely on, and so I felt happy and took comfort in its presence. It’s on occasions like this that you really see your mind.

I sat in my glot and watched for malevolent spirits right throughout the night. I never slept a wink. I was afraid – afraid but daring to train myself, daring to do it. I sat staring into the darkness the whole night. I wasn’t sleepy once; drowsiness was afraid to show its face as well. I just sat there like that the whole night … In practice, if you’re that scared and you just follow your mind, you’d never do it. It’s the same with everything: if you don’t do it, if you don’t practise, you don’t get any benefit. I practised.

As the dawn broke, I was overjoyed: I was still alive. I felt so happy. From now on, I just wanted there to be only the day. In my heart, I wanted to kill the night forever. I felt good; I hadn’t died after all.

Even the dogs were out to test me. I went on alms-round alone and some dogs chased along behind me and tried to bite my legs. I didn’t chase them away. Let them bite! It seemed that something was out to get me. They kept snapping away at my ankles. Some bites got home, some didn’t. I felt shooting pains and every now and again it seemed as if a wound had been opened up. The village women didn’t try to get hold of their dogs. They thought spirits had followed me into the village and that’s why the dogs were barking. They were chasing after spirits and biting them, not me – so they just left them to it. I didn’t drive the dogs off, just let them bite me. ‘Last night I was almost frightened to death, and now I’m being attacked by dogs. Let them bite me if I’ve ever hurt them in past lives.’ But they just snapped away ineffectually. This is what’s called training yourself.

After alms-round, I ate my meal and started to feel better. The sun came out and I felt warm and at ease. During the day, I had a rest and by then my mind was getting back to normal. I thought everything was alright; it was only fear. ‘Tonight, I should be able to get down to some meditation practice. I’ve been through the fear. Tonight, it should be fine.’

Late afternoon and here we go again. They carried in another corpse, an adult. It was even worse than the previous night. They were going to cremate it right in front of my glot. This was much worse. At least the villagers burned the body, but when they invited me to go and contemplate the corpse I stayed where I was. Only when all the villagers had left did I go. ‘They’ve all gone home and left me alone with the corpse. What shall I do?’ I don’t know what similes I could use to describe to you this fear – and in the night-time too.

The fire had burned right down. The embers were red, green, blue. They spluttered and every now and again broke into flame. I couldn’t bring myself to practise walking meditation in front of the fire. As soon as it was completely dark I got into my glot as I’d done the night before. I sat in that thick forest with the smell of the corpse-burning smoke in my nostrils the whole night. It was worse than the night before. I sat with my back to the fire with no idea of sleeping. How could I sleep? I didn’t have the slightest desire to; I was nervous and wide awake the entire night. I was afraid, and I didn’t know who I could depend on. ‘You’re here by yourself and you’ll have to rely on yourself. There’s nowhere to go; its pitch black out there. Just sit down and die! Where do you want to go anyway?’

If you were just to follow what your mind told you, you’d never go to a place like that. Who would willingly put themselves through such torment? Only someone with a firm conviction in the Buddha’s teachings of the fruits of practice.

It was about ten o’clock, and I was sitting with my back to the fire. Suddenly I heard a sound from behind me, ‘toeng-tang! toeng-tang!’ I thought that maybe the corpse had rolled off the fire and perhaps some jackals had come to fight over it. Or something. But no, it wasn’t that. I sat listening. Then came the sound, ‘khreut-khrat! khreut-khrat!’, like someone moving ponderously through the forest. I tried to dismiss it from my mind. Shortly afterwards, it began to walk towards me. I could hear the sound of somebody approaching me from behind. The footfalls were heavy, almost like a water buffalo’s. But it wasn’t a water buffalo. Fallen leaves thickly covered the forest floor – it was February – and I heard the sound of someone treading on the big brittle leaves, ‘khop! khop!’

There was a termite mound at the side of my glot. I heard the steps skirting it as they approached. I thought, ‘Whatever it’s going to do, let it, because you’re ready to die. Where do you think you’d run to anyway?’ But in the end, it didn’t come towards me. The sounds thudded off ahead in the direction of the postulant. After it moved away there was silence. I don’t know what it was, all I was aware of was the fear and that made me imagine all kinds of things.

It must have been about half an hour later that I heard the sound of someone walking back from the direction of Postulant Gaew. It was exactly like the sound of a human being! It came straight towards the glot as if it was determined to trample whoever was inside. I just sat there with my eyes closed. I wasn’t going to open them for anything. If I was going to die, then let me die right there. When it reached me, it stopped and stood silent and motionless in front of the glot. I felt as if burnt hands were clutching at the air in front of me. I was sure the end had come. My whole body was petrified with terror. I forgot ‘Buddho’, ‘Dhammo’, ‘Sangho’ – everything. All that existed was the fear; I was as stretched and tight as a monastery drum. ‘Alright. You’re there – but I’m staying here.’ My mind was numb. I didn’t know if I was sitting on a seat or floating in the air. I tried to concentrate on the sense of knowing.

It’s probably like tipping water into a jar. If you just keep adding more and more, then eventually it overflows. I was so frightened, and the fear kept increasing until finally it overflowed. There was a release. I asked myself, ‘What are you afraid of? Why are you so terrified?’ I didn’t actually say that, the question arose spontaneously in my mind, and the answer arose in response, ‘I’m afraid of death.’ That’s what it said. So I asked further, ‘Where is death? Why are you so much more afraid than an ordinary householder?’ I kept asking where death was until finally I got the answer: ‘death lies within us.’ ‘If that’s the case, then where can you run to escape from it? If you run away, it will run with you. If you sit down, it will sit with you. If you get up and walk off, it will walk with you because death lies within us. There’s nowhere to go. Whether you’re afraid or not makes no difference, you still have to die. There’s no escape.’ These reflections cut off my thoughts.

When this dialogue had come to an end, familiar perceptions returned to the surface of my mind and the fear subsided. The change was as simple and total as when you flip your hand over from its back to the palm. I felt a great amazement that such fearlessness could arise right in the very same place that there had been such a strong fear just a few moments before. My heart soared to the heavens.

With the overcoming of my fear, it started to pour with rain – maybe it was the rain that falls on lotus leaves in the legend, the one that only makes you wet if you let it – I don’t know. There was the sound of thunder, of wind and of rain, deafeningly loud. It rained so heavily all my fears of death were forgotten. Trees crashed down and I was impervious. My robes, every piece of cloth I had was soaked. I just sat there, quite still.

Then, after a while, I started to weep. It just happened by itself. Tears started to roll down my face. Before that I’d been thinking how like an orphan I was, sitting there shivering in the middle of the pouring rain. I thought that probably none of the people happily asleep in their houses would imagine that there was a monk sitting out here in the rain all night; they were probably snuggling up in their warm blankets. ‘And here I am, sitting here, soaked to the skin – what’s it all about?’ As I started dwelling on those thoughts a sense of the sorrowfulness of my life arose, and I began to cry. The tears were streaming down: ‘That’s alright, it’s bad stuff. Let it all run out until there’s none left.’ That’s what practice is.

I don’t know how to explain what happened after that. Following my victory, I just sat there and all these things took place in my mind. It would be impossible to describe them all; I came to know and see so many things – too many to relate. It reminded me of the Buddha’s words: ‘Paccattaṃ veditabbo viññūhī’ – ‘to be seen by each wise person by themselves’. That was really true. I was suffering out in the middle of the rain and who could know how I felt? Nobody – only me. I was so deeply afraid, and then the fear disappeared. The people in their warm, dry houses couldn’t know what that was like. Only I could know that because it’s paccattaṃ. Who could I tell? Who could I relate it to? The more I reflected on it, the more certain I became and the more my heart was filled with energy and faith in the teachings. I contemplated the Dhamma until dawn.

As it became light I opened my eyes, and whichever way I looked the whole world was yellow. The danger had gone. During the night, I’d felt the need to urinate, but I’d been too afraid to get up. I’d held it back, and after some time the urge passed. In the morning when I got up, the whole world looked as yellow as the early morning sunlight. I went to urinate, and all that came out was blood. I wondered whether something inside me had torn or broken. I became afraid that something must have ruptured, and then I was confronted by an immediate retort, ‘If it’s ruptured, then it’s nobody’s fault; it’s just the way things are.’ It was an immediate and spontaneous answer to the worry, ‘If it’s ruptured, it’s ruptured. If you’re going to die, you’re going to die. You’ve just been sitting there minding your own business; if it wants to rupture, let it.’ The mind carried on this dialogue. It was like two people struggling for possession of something, one pulling it one way and the other pulling it back again.

One part of my mind elbowed its way in saying there was a serious problem. Another part fought with it immediately. As I urinated, the blood came out in gobs. I started to wonder where I could find some medicine. ‘Don’t bother. Where would you go anyway? You’re a monk, you can’t dig up medicinal roots. If it’s time to die, then just die! What can you do about it? Dying while practising the teachings is noble. You should be satisfied to die. If you were going to die for the sake of something evil, that wouldn’t be worth it; but if you die like this, it’s fitting.’ Alright, I said to myself, so be it.

That morning, Luang Por went on alms-round shaking with a fever that he bore patiently for a week before deciding to ask permission to convalesce at a nearby monastery. Ten days later, he had recovered sufficiently to continue his wandering.

By this time of the year, the nights would not have been so cold and the day’s heat stronger. Soon the hot season would glue the world together into a dense, smothering blanket, penetrated only by an occasional sweet and cooling breeze. As he made his way eastwards, the streams in which Luang Por bathed and from which he took his drinking water would have been diminishing rapidly, the paddy fields surrounding the occasional hamlets would be becoming hard as rock, cracking beneath a heat haze, while water buffaloes soaking in muddy pools of water would be making the most of them before they disappeared. At the edges of hamlets, he would have seen women searching in the woods for edible roots and leaves to supplement their meagre hot season diet.

In the thickly forested valleys of Nakhon Phanom, the huge hardwood trees – yang, pradu and daeng – stood like grave but kindly sentinels on the path. As he walked, he would have heard the sound of hornbills swooping above his head, or perhaps seen flocks of bright green parrots sweeping and weaving through the forest in perfect formation. Eventually, he arrived at his goal: Wat Pah Bahn Nong Hee[26] the monastery of Luang Pu Kinaree, one of the few tudong monks in the Mahānikāya Order. It was to be the beginning of a long and fruitful association.

Stillness Flowing 

The Life and Teaching of Ajhan Chah

Cannibalism in sex—Females who devour the male...

Cannibalism in sex—Females who devour the male, those who devour the spermatophore—Probable use of these practices—Fecundation by the whole male—Loves of the white foreheaded dectic—The green grasshopper—The Alpine analote—The ephippigere—Further reflections on the cannibalism of sex—Loves of the praying mantis.

The spider eats her male; the mantis eats her male; in locustians, the female is fecundated by a spermatophore, an enormous genital bunch-of-grapes which she gnaws through to the last shred. These two facts should be brought together. Whether the female swallow the male entire, or only the product of his genital glands, it is probably in both cases a complementary act of fecundation. There are possibly in the male assimilable elements necessary for the development of the eggs, almost as the albumen of seeds, little aborted plants, is necessary for nourishing the vegetable embryo, the surviving plantlet. Plants, according to recent study, are born twins: in order to live one must devour the other. Shifted to animal life, and slightly modified, this mechanism explains what one terms, from sentimentalism, the sexual ferocity of the she-mantis and the she-spider. Life is made out of life. Nothing lives save at the expense of life. The male insect nearly always dies immediately after the mating; in locustians he is literally emptied by the genital effort: whether the female respect, or devour him, his life would hardly be longer, or shorter thereby. He is sacrificed;
why, if this is for the good of the species, should he not be
eaten? Anyhow, he is eaten; it is his destiny, and he feels it coming, at least the male spider does, and the male mantis allows himself to be gnawed with perfect Stoicism. The spider revolts, the other submits. It is really a matter of ritual, not of accident or crime. One might try experiments. One might prevent the female dectic from pecking the mistletoe berry which the male has discharged on her; one might watch the coupling of mantes and isolate them immediately:
and then follow all the phases from laying to hatching. If the spermatophagy of the dectic is useless, if the murder of the male mantis is useless, it will annul the foregoing reflections, and others will rise.

The white-fronted dectic is, like all the locustians (grass- hoppers), a very ancient insect; it existed in the coal era, and it is perhaps this antiquity which explains its peculiar fecundative method. Like the cephalopoda, his contemporaries, he has recourse to the spermatophore; yet there is mating, there is embracing; there are even play and caresses. Here are the couple face to face, they caress each other with long antenne ‘fine as hair,”’ as Fabre says; after a moment they separate. The next day, new encounter, new blandishments. Another day, and Fabre finds the male knocked down by the female, who overwhelms him with her embrace; he gnaws her belly. The male disentangles himself and escapes, but a new assault masters him, he lies flat on his back. This time the female, lifted on her high legs, holds him belly to belly ; she bends back the extremity of her abdomen; the victim does likewise ; there is junction, and soon one sees something enormous issue from the convulsive flanks of the male, as if the animal were pushing out its entrails. ‘ It is,’’ continues the best observer, Fabre, in his Souvenirs VI, ‘‘ an opaline leather bottle about the size and colour of a mistletoe berry,” a bottle with four pockets at least, held together by feeble sutures. The female receives this leather bottle, or spermatophore, and carries it off glued to her belly. Having got over the thunder-clap, the male gets up, makes his toilet ; the female browses as she walks. ‘‘ From time to time she rises on her stilts, bends into a ring, seizes her opaline bundle in her mandibles, and chews it gently.” She breaks off little pieces, chews them carefully, and swallows them. Thus while the fecundative particles are extravasated toward the eggs which they are to animate, the female devours the spermatic pouch. After having tasted it piece by piece she suddenly pulls it off, kneads it, swallows it whole. Not a scrap is lost; the place is clear, and the oviscapte is cleaned, washed, polished.

The male has begun to sing again, during this meal, but it is not a love-song, he is about to die; he dies. Passing near him at this moment, the female looks at him, smells him, and takes a bite of his thigh.

Fabre was unable to see the mating of the green grasshopper, which takes place at night, but he observed the long preludes; he has seen the slow play of soft antennez. The result of the coupling is the same as with all locustians ; the female chews and swallows the genital ampulla. She is a terrible beast of prey who eats alive a huge cicada, who fearlessly sucks the entrails of a wriggling cockchafer. One cannot say whether she eats her male, dead or alive ; it is very probable for he is quite timid. Another dectic, the Aipine analote, has given Fabre the alarming spectacle of a male lying on his back, a female on his belly, the genital organs joining end to end in this single contact, and while she was receiving the fecundative caress, the enigmatic female, with the fore part of her body raised, was gnawing with little mouthfuls, another male held in her claws impassive, his belly chewed open. The male analote is much smaller and weaker than the female; like his confrére the spider, he flees with greatest possible speed after the end of coition; he is very often nipped. In the case observed by Fabre, the meal was doubtless the end of a preceding amour: these locustians have the habit, rare among insects, of receiving several suitors. Truly this cannibal Marguerite de Bourgogne is a fine type of beast, and gives a fine spectacle, not of immorality, an empty term, but of the serenity of nature, which permits all things, wills all things, and for whom there are neither vices nor virtues, but only movements and chemical reactions. [Or vices imprinted in mind as habits?]

The spermatophore of the ephippiger is enormous, nearly half the size of the animal. The nuptial feast is finished according to the same rite, and the fernale, having consumed the leather-bottle spermatophore, adds thereto the poor emptied male. She does not even wait until he is dead; she chops him up as he is dying, limb by limb: having fecundated her with all his blood, he must feed her with all his flesh.
This male flesh is doubtless remarkably comforting to the mother to be. Female mammifers, after delivery, devour the placenta. Different interpretations have been given to this habitual act. Some see a precaution against enemies: it is necessary to obliterate traces of a condition which clearly shows that one is feeble, defenceless, surrounded by young, a tasty prey at the mercy of any tooth; others say it is a recuperation of energy. This latter opinion seems more likely, especially if one consider the habits of locustians. The spermatophore is indeed the preceding analogy to the placenta. On the other hand, fecundation, before being a specific act, belongs to the general phenomena of nutrition: it is the integration of one force in another force, and nothing more. The devouring of the male, partial or complete, represents, then, only the most primitive form of the union of cellules, this junction of two unities in one, which precedes the segmentation, feeds it, makes it possible during a limited time, after which a new conjunction is necessary. If the actual acts are only a survival, if they have lasted after their utility has disappeared, it is another question, and one which I leave again to experimenters. It will be enough for me if I have gained acceptance of the general principie that the acts of animals, whatever they may be, cannot be understood unless one strip them of the sentimental qualifications beneath which ignorant humanity has covered them, corrupting them with providential finalism.

While fully recognizing the immense social value of prejudices, analysis should be permitted to excoriate them and to grind them. Nothing appears more clear than maternal love, and nothing is more widespread throughout all nature: yet nothing gives a falser interpretation of the acts which these two words pretend to explain. A virtue is made of it, that is to say, in the Christian sense, a voluntary act; one seems to think that it depends on the mother to love or not to love her children, and those who relax or forget their motherly cares are considered culpable. Like generation, motherly love is a commandment; it is the second condition of the perpetuity of life. Mothers sometimes are without it; some mothers also are sterile: the will intervenes neither in one case nor in the other. Like the rest of nature, like ourselves, animals live submitted to necessity, they do what they ought to do, so far as their organs permit them. The mantis who eats her husband is an excellent egg-layer who prepares, passionately, the future of her progeny.

After Fabre’s observations of couples of these insects caged, the female much stronger than the male mantes, come the predatory ones who do combat for love. The combats are deadly, the vanquished male is eaten at once. The male is bashful; at the moment of desire he limits himself to posing, to making sheeps’eyes, which the female seems to consider with indifference or disdain. Tired of parade, he finally decides, and with spread wings, leaps trembling upon the back of the ogress. The mating lasts five or six hours; when the knot is loosed, the suitor is, regularly, eaten.The terrible female is polyandrous. Other insects refuse the male when their ovaries have been fecundated, the mantis accepts two, three, four, up to seven; and eats them regularly after the act is accomplished. Fabre has seen better. The mantis is almost the only insect with a neck; the head does not join the thorax immediately, the neck is long and flexible, bending in all directions. Thus, while the male is enlacing and fecundating her, the female will turn her head back and calmly eat her companion in pleasure. Here is one headless, another is gone up to the corsage, and his remains still clutch the female who is thus devouring him at both ends, getting from her spouse simultaneously the pleasures ac mensa ac thoro, both bed and board from her husband.
The double pleasure only ends when the cannibal reaches the belly: the male then falls in shreds and the female finishes him on the ground. Poiret has witnessed a scene perhaps even more extraordinary. A male leaps on a female and is going to couple. The female turns her head, stares at the intruder, and decapitates him with a blow of her jaw-foot, a marvellous toothed-scythe. Without disconcertion the male, wedges up, spreads himself, makes love as if nothing abnormal had happened. The mating took place, and the female had the patience to wait for the end of the operation before finishing her wedding breakfast.

The headless nuptials are explained by the fact that the insect’s brains do not seem to have unique control of its movements; these animals can live without the cervical ganglion. A headless grasshopper will still lift his bruised foot to his mouth, after three hours, with the movement familiar to him in his complete condition.

THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE
REMY DE GOURMONT TRANSLATED WITH A POSTSCRIPT BY EZRA POUND