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. People who met him at that time recall a warmth and wisdom emanating from him that seemed timeless – so much so that it was hard for anyone to imagine that he could ever have been any other way. But, of course, he had. Looking back twenty years, a somewhat different Luang Por Chah emerges. At that time in his life, although he appears a powerful and impressive figure, he is also, perhaps, a less engaging one. If, in his later years, he might have been compared to an absolute monarch at ease in a peaceful kingdom, then in the 1950s, the comparison that would have come to mind was that of the warrior king of a troubled land.

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