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.