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 monasticism in the twentieth century. The vast majority of monastics recognized in Thailand as enlightened masters over the past hundred years have come from this region.

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