The Death of Luangpor Chah: Part 1 A Death The twentieth of January, 1983. At the small provincial airport of Ubon Ratchathani in Northeast Thailand, a group of Buddhist monks and lay supporters look up to the sky. Nearby, a white ambulance is parked on the runway. A loud droning sound can be heard, its source soon traced to a Thai Air Force plane lumbering in to land. After the plane taxies and comes to a halt, its door opens and reveals an unusual and moving sight. An imposingly large Western ...
Jan 15, 2021•6 min
The Death of Luangpor Chah: Part 2 A CREMATION A winter afternoon in Ubon Province, Northeast Thailand, Saturday the sixteenth of January, 1993. A forest monastery, like a dark green patch upon a pale fabric of rice fields that stretch out fallow and dry. Tonight, it will be cold and windy, but in mid-afternoon the temperature in the shade of the gently swaying trees is 33 degrees. The calm and order of the scene belies a barely credible fact. Today, in an area usually inhabited by a hundred mon...
Jan 15, 2021•27 min
1918-1954: Part 1 A SUITABLE LOCALITY The Buddha declared that all avoidable human suffering is caused by mental defilements, and that these defilements can be completely eliminated by a systematic education of body, speech and mind. Supreme among the virtuous qualities that ‘burn up’ the defilements, he revealed, is forbearance. It is perhaps no coincidence then that the unwelcoming environment of Northeast Thailand – known to its inhabitants as Isan – nurtured a great flowering of Buddhist mon...
Jan 15, 2021•12 min
1918-1954: Part 2 GROWING UP Luang Por Chah was born on the seventh waning day of the seventh moon of the Year of the Horse, 1918. He was the fifth of eleven children born to Mah and Pim Chuangchot, who, like the vast majority of their generation, were subsistence rice farmers. The name ‘Chah’ means ‘clever, capable, resourceful’. …
Jan 15, 2021•1 hr 4 min
1918-1954: Part 3 THE PATH OF PRACTICE ‘Tudong’ is a Thai word derived from the Pali ‘dhutaṅga’, which means ‘to wear away’ and is the name given to the thirteen ascetic practices the Buddha permitted monks to undertake in order to intensify their efforts to wear away their defilements. In Thailand, the word has expanded in meaning. Monks who have left their monastery and are wandering through the countryside sleeping rough (usually practising a number of the dhutaṅga observances), are called ‘t...
Jan 15, 2021•3 hr 8 min
1918-1954: Part 4 NEW DIRECTIONS In the hot season of 1952, Luang Por made his way to Ubon once more. He had been away for two years and his arrival in Bahn Kor caused a stir in the small village. In the evenings, he gave Dhamma talks of a power and persuasion that had never been heard before. This was a fresh, vital Buddhism, relevant to the villagers’ daily lives, expressed in language they could all understand. And yet it would be going too far to suggest his visit provoked revolutionary chan...
Jan 15, 2021•13 min
Wat Nong Pah Pong: Part 1 SETTLERS It was on the eighth of March, 1954 that Luang Por Chah and his disciples made their way along the cart track running westwards from Bahn Kor on the last leg of their journey to Pong Forest. Afternoon temperatures at that time of year regularly exceed 35 degrees, but the oppressive heat would have cooled slightly as they approached the dense forest and the path become increasingly stippled and striped by the shade. In the late afternoon, as the gorged red sun w...
Jan 15, 2021•38 min
Wat Nong Pah Pong: Part 2 GOLDEN DAYS The Luang Por Chah that left such an indelible impression on those who met him during his trips to the West in the mid-1970s is for many, the Luang Por Chah. Most of the surviving recorded talks, the well-known photographs, and the priceless seconds of footage in the BBC documentaries, were all from that period of his life. It is a wise, chuckling grandfather figure with a potbelly and walking stick that has embedded itself in the Western Buddhist pantheon. ...
Jan 15, 2021•55 min
Luang Por the Good Friend: Part 1 INTRODUCTION From 1954 onwards, Luang Por Chah’s life was focused on his monastery, training the steadily growing number of monks, novices and nuns who were resident there, and teaching its lay supporters. By the late 1970s, he had become one of the most revered monks in Thailand. After travelling to England in 1977, however, Luang Por’s health started to decline. In early 1983, paralyzed and unable to express himself coherently, he stopped speaking. And in Janu...
Jan 15, 2021•6 min
Luang Por the Good Friend: Part 2 IMPONDERABLES ANYWAY What exactly is meant by the ‘unshakeable deliverance of mind’? The Buddha taught that four stages of inner liberation may be discerned. Once attained, they cannot be weakened or lost, and hence they may all be deemed ‘unshakeable’. In fact, the word ‘attainment’ here has to be used with some caution. The Buddha defined each stage of liberation in terms of the irrevocable abandonment of specific mental defilements: a ‘deliverance’ from them....
Jan 15, 2021•33 min
Luang Por the Good Friend: Part 3 SKETCHES A number of the qualities that came to define Luang Por in the eyes of his disciples were virtues held in universal regard. Perhaps the most prominent of these was that of patience. Although some accomplishments are necessarily private, the extent of a forest monk’s capacity to endure through physical discomfort and the rigours of monastic life can never be so. As the leader of a monastic community, Luang Por’s patience was visible to all. He earned the...
Jan 15, 2021•46 min
Luang Por the Good Friend: Part 4 FROM HEART TO HEART Today, Luang Por’s wider reputation rests, above all, on his ability to communicate the Dhamma. His Dhamma talks circle the world in print, on screens, and as audible files on a variety of modern devices. Throughout his life of teaching, he modelled two qualities of the kalyāṇamitta specifically concerned with communication skills: firstly, the ability to speak effectively, to get through to people, to counsel and admonish; and secondly, the ...
Jan 15, 2021•35 min
Luang Por and the Vinaya: Part 1 INTRODUCTION Whereas ‘Dhamma’ (Sanskrit: ‘Dharma’) is a word familiar to Buddhists of all traditions, ‘Vinaya’ is much less so. That this should be the case is worthy of remark given the central importance attached to Vinaya by the Buddha himself, as clearly demonstrated by his frequent references to the body of his teachings by the compound term ‘Dhamma-Vinaya’. At the end of his life, refusing requests to appoint a successor, the Buddha instructed his disciples...
Jan 15, 2021•8 min
Luang Por and the Vinaya: Part 2 PĀṬIMOKKHA: THE CORE OF THE VINAYA The significance given by the Buddha to this formalization of Vinaya may be judged by the vital link he revealed between the Pāṭimokkha and the longevity of the teachings. Speaking as the latest of a lineage of Buddhas stretching back into the incalculable past, he said that a pattern could be discerned in the relative length of time the teachings of previous Buddhas had survived. While those of Vipassī, Sikhī and Vessabhū were ...
Jan 15, 2021•1 hr 18 min
Luang Por and the Vinaya: Part 3 OBSERVANCES: ADDING LAYERS It is perhaps surprising that the majority of the conventions that inform a monk’s daily life are found in the protocols, allowances and injunctions of the Khandhakas rather than in the rules of the Pāṭimokkha proper. For example, the highly detailed procedures for formal meetings of the Sangha – including the Ordination and Uposatha ceremonies – appear in the Khandhakas, as do the steps to be taken in dealing with disputes. The Khandha...
Jan 15, 2021•2 hr 21 min
Luang Por and the Vinaya: Part 4 THE ASCETIC PRACTICES: ADDING INTENSITY Mention has been made above of the thirteen dhutaṅga practices. These are the ascetic practices which the Buddha allowed his monks to adopt, if they wished, in order to intensify their practice. The dhutaṅgas were practices aimed at ‘abrading’ or ‘wearing away’ the defilements by creating situations in which they were provoked and directly opposed. By the standards of the day, they were mild in nature. Certainly, they paled...
Jan 15, 2021•35 min
Meditation Teachings: Part 1 NUTS AND BOLTS The Buddha declared that all of his teachings could be resolved into two categories: those revealing the nature of human suffering and those that deal with the cessation of that suffering. He taught that true liberation can only be brought about by cultivation of the Noble Eightfold Path, a comprehensive and integrated training or education of body, speech and mind. The ultimate freedom from suffering, realized through a clear vision of the true nature...
Jan 15, 2021•1 hr 1 min
Meditation Teachings: Part 2 THORNS AND PRICKLES The immediate obstacles to the development of samādhi and wisdom are a group of defilements that the Buddha called the nīvaraṇa or hindrances. He described them as ‘overgrowths of the mind that stultify insight’. They are five in number: 1. Kāmacchanda – sensual thoughts. 2. Vyāpāda – ill-will. 3. Thīnamiddha – sloth and torpor. 4. Uddhaccakukkucca – agitation, guilt, remorse. 5. Vicikicchā – Doubt and indecision. The Buddha made clear the vital i...
Jan 15, 2021•30 min
Meditation Teachings: Part 3 WAYS AND MEANS The hindrances do not appear in the mind as the result of meditation; rather, it is that meditation reveals hindrances that are already latent within the mind but which are difficult to isolate and deal with effectively in daily life. Meditation might be compared to putting the mind under a microscope in order to see the harmful viruses, invisible to the naked eye, that are threatening its health. Luang Por reminded his disciples that encountering the ...
Jan 15, 2021•34 min
Meditation Teachings: Part 4 CALM AND INSIGHT In his expositions of the practice of samādhi, Luang Por usually preferred to avoid speaking in terms of jhānas. Instead he would refer to the various mental states – known as jhāna factors – that constitute these jhānas. His reasoning was that the jhāna factors such as bliss (sukha) or equanimity were directly experienceable by the meditator, whereas ‘jhānas’ were simply names for different constellations of these factors. They were, in other words,...
Jan 15, 2021•52 min
Monk’s Training: Part 1 INTRODUCTION Luang Por Chah chose to live his life as a Buddhist monk. He received permission from his parents to enter a monastery at the age of nine, and apart from a brief period in his teens, he lived in monastic communities until his death at the age of seventy-four. The Sangha was his family, and, as a teacher, its welfare was his main pre-occupation. While he gave considerable importance to propagating the Dhamma in society at large, he did so only to the extent th...
Jan 15, 2021•23 min
Monk’s Training: Part 2 PARTS OF A WHOLE The community at Wat Pah Pong consisted of monks, novices, postulants and maechees (white-robed nuns). The majority of the novices were teenage boys, ineligible from taking full monks’ Ordination until the age of twenty. As for the monks, they could be divided into three groups: monks of regular standing, visiting monks and temporary monks. …
Jan 15, 2021•1 hr 1 min
Monk’s Training: Part 3 THE MARVEL OF INSTRUCTION The body of Luang Por Chah’s teachings is generally considered to consist of the material recorded on reel-to-reel tapes and audio cassettes and then transcribed and printed in books, originally in Thai and subsequently translated into many other languages. But for his monastic disciples, the formal discourses captured by those audio recordings and reproduced in books were only one part, and perhaps not the most important part, of what they recei...
Jan 15, 2021•1 hr 38 min
Monk’s Training: Part 4 A WELL-ROUNDED TRAINING One of the foundations of Buddhist practice is the conviction that purposeful effort has meaning. The Buddha rejected the beliefs that human life is determined by a divine will or fate or randomness. He proclaimed that human beings created their own life and environment by the quality of their actions of body, speech and mind. Luang Por’s teachings expressed this ‘Right View’ again and again. Monks were to take responsibility for their lives throug...
Jan 15, 2021•1 hr 18 min
Luang Por and the Western Sangha: Part 1 INTRODUCTION From the mid-fourteenth century until its sack by the Burmese in 1767, Ayutthaya was the capital of the Thai nation. Established on an island in the Chao Phraya River, it was ideally situated to act as an entrepôt port at a time when land routes were safer than sea, and merchants in the Orient sought to avoid sending their goods through the Straits of Malacca. Within two hundred years, Ayutthaya had become one of the most cosmopolitan cities ...
Jan 15, 2021•16 min
Luang Por and the Western Sangha: Part 2 THE FIRST DISCIPLE In 1967, a Wat Pah Pong monk named Ven. Sommai returned from a tudong trip to northern Isan with a monk who literally stood head and shoulders above him. Even the most restrained monks in Wat Pah Pong were unable to resist at least a surreptitious glance. The new monk was six foot two inches tall, had a fair complexion, an angular nose and bright blue eyes. His name was Sumedho. …
Jan 15, 2021•34 min
Luang Por and the Western Sangha: Part 3 THROUGH WESTERN EYES The question which every Western monk would get asked sooner or later (and usually sooner), was why he chose to become a monk. It was often a more difficult question to answer than might be expected. It wasn’t so easy to distinguish causes from triggers, or to be sure that an uplifting narrative was not being patched together with hindsight. Monks usually settled on recounting the events leading up to their decision and their departur...
Jan 15, 2021•48 min
Luang Por and the Western Sangha: Part 4 ON THE NOSE Luang Por showed much compassion for the difficulties of his Western disciples, but he could also tease them when they became self-indulgent. On one occasion, he mimed wiping imaginary tears from his eyes and saying tragically, ‘He’s my father, I’m his son …’, before chuckling and shaking his head. The performance left a deep impression on Ven. Varapanyo, for whom it was ‘an example of the way Luang Por saw through the self-important attitude ...
Jan 15, 2021•16 min
Luang Por and the Western Sangha: Part 5 KNOWER OF THE WORLDS Although the overwhelming majority of Westerners who entered the monastic life at Wat Pah Pong were male, there were also a small number of Western women who came to train as maechees. Chief amongst these, was an American known by her adopted name Khamfah, who arrived with her husband Paul, after fleeing their home in Laos ahead of the Communist takeover in late 1975. The couple decided to try to stay for five years, with the proviso ...
Jan 15, 2021•30 min
Luang Por and the Western Sangha: Part 6 THE TWAIN SHALL MEET By 1975, there were almost twenty Western monks at Wat Pah Pong – about a quarter of the resident Sangha. This rapid and significant influx brought with it inevitable tensions. Although the organization of the monastery and a common faith and confidence in Luang Por kept the situation workable, minor but niggling conflicts between the Thais and the ‘farangs’ became increasingly common. The first generation of Western monks was predomi...
Jan 15, 2021•27 min
