Ghosts in the Night
Luang Por’s fear of ghosts had not been completely displaced by his growing courage and every now and again, it would flare up alarmingly. He usually kept it smothered, out of sight and mind, through a nightly recitation of protective spells and incantations before he slept. One night, however, after a long period of meditation high up on the ridge of Khao Wongkot, Luang Por felt such a surge of confidence in the power of his virtue that he omitted the recitations. Before long he would regret his decision.
The idea of virtue as protection is a hallowed one in the Buddhist world. It is a concept that became a cornerstone in Luang Por’s teachings, especially to the laity, and helps to explain the great emphasis he was to place on keeping precepts. It was his firm belief that, in addition to its vital role in the development of peace and wisdom, virtuous conduct long-sustained has an enormous intrinsic power. Luang Por had experienced a growing sense of integrity and self-respect through his efforts to keep the vast number of monastic observances scrupulously. But, as yet, he had never quite dared to put his convictions in the protective power of his virtue to the test. He believed the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha to be supreme refuges but could not deny his barely suppressed fear of malevolent spirits. Yet on this cool and silent night he felt invincible, ready to take the risk.
The moment Luang Por lay down to sleep he became aware of a chilling and thickening of the air around his glot. A malign presence began to bear down upon him. It was as if it had been lurking, waiting for the young monk to forget his chants; and through his hubris, he had made himself its prey. Suddenly, Luang Por was pinned down on his back, paralyzed. Whatever was crushing him seemed to exude a crude and elemental evil: he realized it was the kind of ghost called ‘pee am’. As the pressure intensified on his chest, he struggled desperately for breath. Somehow, he managed to maintain his presence of mind. He quelled the feelings of panic. Mentally he recited the word ‘Buddho’ over and over again with great determination. No other thoughts could enter his mind, and Luang Por found refuge in the recitation. The strength of the evil force was immense. Although checked, it put up a bitter struggle. Eventually, the pressure weakened. Luang Por gradually began to recover movement in his body. It was over. After the shock wore off, there came a wave of exultation. He had survived an ordeal, as bad as his worst dreams, purely through the power of his virtue and meditation on the Buddha. He could ditch his spells.
This incident gave Luang Por’s intellectual conviction in the power of virtue a strong emotional boost. Following it, he increased his care and attention to the precepts in the Monks’ Discipline, restraining himself from even the most minor infringements. It was at this time that he finally plucked up the courage to dispose of his small emergency stash of money. In the Thai Sangha of the time, only the forest monks heeded the Buddha’s prohibition against the receiving and use of money. Luang Por himself, so strict in other areas of the Discipline, had baulked at abandoning the safety net that money provided. But here in Wat Khao Wongkot, he determined that, from now on, there was to be no transgression of his precepts under any circumstances.
His problems with sexual desire were more intractable. Shortly before his father died, it had nearly led him out of the monkhood.
At one time I considered disrobing. I’d been a monk about five or six years at the time and I thought of the Buddha: six years and he was enlightened. But my mind was still concerned with the world, I wanted to return to it. ‘Perhaps I should go out and make a contribution to the world for a short while and then I’ll know what it’s all about. Even the Buddha had a son. Maybe entering the monkhood without any worldly experience at all is too extreme.’ I kept reflecting on it until some understanding arose. ‘Yes, it’s quite a good idea but the worrying thing is that this ‘Buddha’ is not the same as the last one.’ Something in me resisted. ‘I’m only afraid this ‘Buddha’ will sink down into the world and the mud.’
At Wat Khao Wongkot, Luang Por was searching for ways of overcoming lust. He believed that sense-restraint and non-indulgence in sexual thoughts would cause sexual desire to weaken.
I didn’t look at a woman’s face for the whole of the Rains Retreat. I allowed myself to speak to women but not to look at their faces. My eyes would strain upwards – they wanted to look so much I almost died! At the end of the retreat I went on alms-round in Lopburi town. Three months had passed since I last looked at a woman’s face, and I wanted to know what it would be like. ‘The defilements must be withering away by now’, I thought. As soon as I’d made the decision, I looked at an approaching woman – Ohhh! Dressed in bright red. Just a single glance and my legs turned to jelly. I was totally discouraged. When was I ever going to be free from defilement?
Sense-restraint was certainly a key element of practice, but was not sufficient in itself. Instructing monks many years later, he said:
In the beginning, you have to keep your distance from women. But the true abandonment of lust comes only from developing the wisdom that sees things as they are.
Luang Pu Mun
It was during the Rains Retreat at Wat Khao Wongkot that Luang Por first heard the name of the monk who was to become a legendary figure in Thailand, the most revered monk of his generation. Today, on the shrines of houses, shops and offices throughout Isan, a photograph of Luang Pu Mun can commonly be seen in a place of honour just below that of the Buddha himself. The most common of these photographs reveals a slight figure dressed in the sombre robes of the forest monk, standing with an almost ghost-like stillness amongst unearthly trees, his hands clasped in front of him, radiating an austere composure. He seems to be looking right through the camera and straight into the viewer’s heart. It is an inspiring but discomfiting picture. It challenges all that the viewer takes for granted.
The stories and anecdotes featuring Luang Pu Mun, related by his students and contemporaries, are startlingly reminiscent of the accounts of great monks found in the Buddhist scriptures. Although a certain amount of hyperbole may be expected from such sources, the comparisons are not fanciful. Luang Pu Mun was an exemplary forest monk who was so devoted to the ascetic, peripatetic way of life that for a period of over fifty years he did not spend two consecutive Rains Retreats in the same monastery. It was only at the very end of his life, when he could no longer walk, that he gave up his daily alms-round. His psychic powers were, by all accounts, stupendous and the sharpness and penetration of his reflective powers, breathtaking. For many Thai Buddhists, Luang Pu Mun represents an utterly convincing proof that enlightenment exists and is attainable in this day and age.
Forest monks have never been absent from Thailand, but before Luang Pu Mun, they were usually scattered in small isolated communities that possessed little sense of being part of a wider tradition. These Sanghas tended to be centred around a charismatic teacher and rarely lasted long after his death. There are no records to tell us how many such groups have assembled and dispersed in the last seven hundred years. We will never know how many enlightened beings have come and gone. In the words of the Buddha himself, ‘Like birds crossing the sky, they leave no tracks.’
Luang Pu Mun, however, lived at the beginning of a more informed and connected age. Accounts of his practice and teachings have been recorded in a large number of books. Many fine training monasteries, which attract visitors and pilgrims from all over the country, have been established by his disciples throughout Isan. He may be an unfathomable figure to many, but he is not obscure in the way that great monks of an earlier generation will always remain. The high standards maintained by the monks of his lineage and the integrity and prowess of his greatest disciples have ensured that today there is a respect for forest monks that has not existed in the country since the Sukhothai period. It would be no exaggeration to say that the Thai Forest Tradition, as we know it, was established almost single-handedly by Luang Pu Mun.
During most of his lifetime, however, Luang Pu Mun was relatively unknown. Throughout his monastic life, he shunned fame and status as a pestilent disease. In 1928, while staying at Wat Chedi Luang, one of the oldest and most prestigious monasteries in Chiang Mai, he received a letter from the powers-that-be in Bangkok, informing him of his appointment as the monastery’s new abbot. Before long, he had gathered his possessions and disappeared into the mountains. It was another eleven years before he was seen in the city again.
Luang Pu Mun could be a fierce and exacting teacher (one of his famous scoldings would, in a senior disciple’s memorable phrase, ‘shrivel your liver’), but he inspired a quiet and intense devotion from those around him. One layman, whose life had been transformed by his contact with Luang Pu Mun, was then living at Khao Wongkot and it was he who first spoke of the great master to Luang Por. Apparently, Luang Pu Mun had finally returned to Isan after so many years of solitary wandering in the north of the country and a large group of monks had gathered around him in the Phu Phan Mountains of northern Isan. Monks of the Mahānikāya lineage were also receiving teachings. Luang Por’s plans for the cold season began to take shape.
At the end of the retreat, Luang Por, together with three other monks, a novice and two laymen, set off on the long walk back to Isan. They broke the journey at Bahn Kor, and after a few days rest, began the 240 kilometre hike northwards. By the tenth day, they had reached the elegant white stupa of That Phanom, a revered pilgrimage spot on the banks of the Mekong, and they paid homage to the Buddha’s relics enshrined within it. They continued their walk in stages, regularly finding forest monasteries along the way in which to spend the night. Even so, it was an arduous trek and the novice and one of the laymen asked to turn back. The group consisted of just three monks and a layman when they finally arrived at Wat Pah Nong Peu, the home of Luang Pu Mun.
As they walked into the monastery, Luang Por was immediately struck by its tranquil and secluded atmosphere. The central area, in which stood a small raised wooden Dhamma Hall, was immaculately swept, and the few monks they caught sight of were attending to their daily chores silently, with a measured and composed gracefulness. There was something about the monastery that was like no other that he had been in before – the silence was strangely charged and vibrant. Luang Por and his companions were received politely and, after being advised where to put up their glots, took a welcome opportunity to bathe away the grime of the road.
Luang Por was never to speak in any great detail about this first meeting which was to have such a monumental effect on his life. But for monks who have lived in the forest monasteries of Isan, it is a scene easy to imagine. The three young monks may be pictured with their double-layered outer robes folded neatly over their left shoulders, minds fluctuating between keen anticipation and cold fear, making their way through the gathering dusk to the wooden Dhamma Hall to pay respects to Luang Pu Mun. As he approaches the congregation of resident monks, Luang Por starts to crawl on his knees towards the great master. He approaches a slight and aged figure with an indomitable diamond-like presence. Luang Pu Mun’s deeply penetrating gaze bears into Luang Por as he bows three times and sits down at an appropriate distance.
Most of the resident monks are sitting with eyes closed in meditation, one slightly behind the teacher slowly fanning away the evening’s mosquitoes. As Luang Por glances up, he notices how prominently Luang Pu Mun’s collarbone juts through the pale skin above his robe and how his thin mouth, stained red from chewing betel nut, forms such an arresting contrast to the strange luminosity of his presence. As is the time-honoured custom amongst Buddhist monks, Luang Pu Mun first asks the visitors how long they have been in the robes, the monasteries they have practised in and the details of their journey. Did they have any doubts about the practice? Luang Por replies that he does.
It is at this point that he was later to take up the story himself. He said he had been studying the Vinaya texts with great enthusiasm but had become discouraged. The Discipline seemed too detailed to be practical; it didn’t seem possible to keep every single rule. What should one’s standard be? Luang Pu Mun listened in silence. Then he gave simple but practical advice. He advised Luang Por to take the ‘two guardians of the world’ – wise shame (hiri) and wise fear of consequences (ottappa) – as his basic principles. In the presence of those two virtues, he said, everything else would follow.
He then began to discourse on the threefold training of sīla, samādhi and paññā, the four roads to success and the five spiritual powers.[21] Eyes half closed, his voice became progressively stronger and faster as he proceeded, as if he was moving into a higher and higher gear. With an absolute authority, he described the ‘way things truly are’ and the path to liberation. Luang Por and his companions sat completely enrapt. Luang Por said that, although he had spent an exhausting day on the road, listening to Luang Pu Mun’s Dhamma talk made all of his weariness disappear. His mind became lucidly calm[22] and clear, and he felt as if he was floating in the air above his seat. It was late at night before Luang Pu Mun called the meeting to an end, and Luang Por returned to his glot, aglow.
On the second night, Luang Pu Mun gave more teachings, and Luang Por felt that he had come to the end of his doubts about the practice that lay ahead. He felt a joy and rapture in the Dhamma that he had never known before. Now what remained was for him to put his knowledge into practice. Indeed, one of the teachings that had inspired him the most on those two evenings was this injunction to make himself ‘a witness to the truth’. But the most clarifying explanation, one that gave him the necessary context or basis for practice that he had hitherto been lacking, was of a distinction between the mind itself and transient states of mind which arose and passed away within it.
Luang Pu Mun said they’re merely states. Through not understanding that point, we take them to be real, to be the mind itself. In fact, they’re all just transient states. As soon as he said that, things suddenly became clear. Suppose there’s happiness present in the mind: it’s a different kind of thing, it’s on a different level, to the mind itself. If you see that, then you can stop, you can put things down. When conventional realities are seen for what they are, then it’s ultimate truth. Most people lump everything together as the mind itself, but actually there are states of mind together with the knowing of them. If you understand that point, then there’s not a lot to do.
On the third day, Luang Por paid his respects to Luang Pu Mun and led his small group off into the lonely forests of Phu Phan once more. He left Nong Peu never to return again, but with his heart full of an inspiration that would stay with him for the rest of his life.
Stillness Flowing
The Life and Teaching of Ajahn Chah
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