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
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