46 Stillness Flowing: Luang Por

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