Luang Por’s Waning Years: Part 1 BODY SICK, MIND WELL

One day, as the illnesses that would go on to render him bedridden for the last years of his life were starting to take their toll, Luang Por Chah spoke to some lay supporters:

It’s like you’ve got a horse – a wild fiery horse that’s difficult to train. When it tries to run off, keep hold of the reins. Don’t lose your grip on them. But if the horse is really galloping away full pelt, let the reins go. If you don’t – then the next thing you know, your hand will be torn off. Let the horse and the reins go their way. Don’t let yourself be hurt by it. Let it go. But if the horse is just straining on the rope a bit, then try to restrain it, master it. This is the way to relate to everything.

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Luang Por’s Waning Years: Part 2 MORE TO IT

In February 1941, the 82-year-old arahant Luang Pu Sao, teacher and companion of Luang Pu Mun, arrived by boat at a small riverside temple in Champasak, southwest Laos. He had fallen ill some time before leaving Thailand. Now on his way back to Thailand from an exhausting trip, he had spent the long journey upstream lying down with his eyes closed, apparently unconscious and clearly close to death. As the boat tied up at the jetty, he opened his eyes and asked, ‘Have we arrived? Take me to the Uposatha Hall.’ His disciples half-led, half-carried him into the building. Once inside, he somehow managed to pull himself into a sitting posture and asked for his outer robe to be folded over his left shoulder. He began to meditate. After a few minutes had passed, he came out of the cross-legged posture in order to bow three times to the large Buddha statue in front of him. After a while his disciples realized that he had not moved for some time. They rushed over, checked for a breath on a small mirror, and found none. Luang Pu Sao had passed away while prostrating before the Buddha.

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Luang Por in the West – 1977 & 1979: Part 1 INNER LAND – OUTER LAND

In 1976, Ajahn Sumedho returned to California in order to visit his parents. On his flight back to Thailand, he stopped over in London for a few days as a guest of the English Sangha Trust (E.S.T.), a body set up to establish a Theravada Sangha in England. For the duration of his visit, Ajahn Sumedho stayed at Hampstead Vihāra, a four-storeyed terraced house belonging to the trust on the busy Haverstock Hill road, a mile or so south of Hampstead Heath. The E.S.T. had suffered years of frustration and disappointment in their efforts to promote a home-grown Sangha. In Ajahn Sumedho, they saw someone who might finally turn their dreams into reality.

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Luang Por in the West – 1977 & 1979: Part 2 DUTIYAMPI: AND FOR A SECOND TIME

Two years later on the thirtieth of April, 1979, accompanied by his American attendant, Ajahn Pabhakaro, Luang Por set off to the West for a second and final time. On this trip, he was to visit America as well as Europe. But his first destination was England where the E.S.T had invited him to give encouragement to Ajahn Sumedho’s community, and to see for himself the latest developments in their efforts to establish a forest monastery.

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Luang Por in the West – 1977 & 1979: Part 3 THE LAST NIGHT

On the evening of the twenty-seventh of June, his last night at Chithurst before returning to Thailand, Luang Por met with the Sangha for an evening of conversation and exhortation. The tape recording made that night captures wonderfully the warmth and informality of the occasion. ‘Monks’ and ‘zestful’ are two words not commonly linked in one sentence, but the conviviality, punctuated by gales of laughter, is tangible. It was the old magic of Luang Por, making people feel by his presence that they’d never in their lives been so happy and contented. He also took the opportunity to show off his only English phrase. Just a few sentences into a more formal Dhamma talk, a layperson entered the room with a new tray of hot drinks.

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Luang Por

by Ajahn Jayasaro

You were a fountain

of cool stream water

in the square of a dusty town,

and you were the source of that stream,

on a high, unseen peak.

You were, Luang Por, that mountain itself,

unmoved,

but variously seen.

Luang Por, you were never one person,

you were always the same.

You were the child laughing

at the Emperor’s new clothes, and ours.

You were a demand to be awake,

the mirror of our faults, ruthlessly kind.

Luang Por, you were the essence of our texts,

the leader of our practice,

the proof of its results.

You were a blazing bonfire

on a windy, bone-chilled night:

How we miss you!

Luang Por, you were the sturdy stone bridge,

we had dreamed of.

You were at ease

in the present

as if it were your own ancestral land.

Luang Por,

you were the bright full moon

that we sometimes obscured with clouds.

You were ironwood, you were banyan, and you were bodhi:

‘Pormae – khroobaajahn’.

Luang Por, you were a freshly dripping lotus

in a world of plastic flowers.

Not once did you lead us astray.

You were a lighthouse for our flimsy rafts

on the heaving sea.

Luang Por,

you are beyond my words of praise and all description.

Humbly, I place my head

beneath your feet.

พระช้อน

June, 1995

Luang Por

by Ajahn Jayasaro

You were a fountain

of cool stream water

in the square of a dusty town,

and you were the source of that stream,

on a high, unseen peak.

You were, Luang Por, that mountain itself,

unmoved,

but variously seen.

Luang Por, you were never one person,

you were always the same.

You were the child laughing

at the Emperor’s new clothes, and ours.

You were a demand to be awake,

the mirror of our faults, ruthlessly kind.

Luang Por, you were the essence of our texts,

the leader of our practice,

the proof of its results.

You were a blazing bonfire

on a windy, bone-chilled night:

How we miss you!

Luang Por, you were the sturdy stone bridge,

we had dreamed of.

You were at ease

in the present

as if it were your own ancestral land.

Luang Por,

you were the bright full moon

that we sometimes obscured with clouds.

You were ironwood, you were banyan, and you were bodhi:

‘Pormae – khroobaajahn’.

Luang Por, you were a freshly dripping lotus

in a world of plastic flowers.

Not once did you lead us astray.

You were a lighthouse for our flimsy rafts

on the heaving sea.

Luang Por,

you are beyond my words of praise and all description.

Humbly, I place my head

beneath your feet.

พระช้อน

June, 1995

Stillness Flowing - The Life and Teachings of Ajahn Chah