Tales from Varapañño - Ajahn Sumedho and Ven.Varapañño Visit Forest Ajahns

February, 1976. It was that ominous time of year when the hot season could begin at any moment. I was lolling around the kuti, trying to shake off early-afternoon lethargy, when someone came to tell me to pack up my alms bowl (the bhikkhu’s suitcase)—Ajahn Sumedho was inviting me to accompany him on a trip around the Northeast.

Every year Ajahn Sumedho would go to pay respects to his preceptor in Nong Khai province. In the past he always went on foot, but now he was abbot of the newly established Bung Wai International Forest Monastery, and a lay supporter from town had offered to take him by car this time.

We did the afternoon chores as usual. There was a high-spirited send-off, as the junior monks made coffee, then we went to bathe and came back to wait for the car.

The “car” was actually a pickup truck; Ajahn Sumedho sat in front with the driver, Dong, a young Chinese man from Ubon city, and Ven. Jagaro and I sat in back with Dong’s friend. By the time we left the monastery, evening was upon us.

One of our stops was in Beung Gan district, at the monastery of Ajahn Juen, Wat Phu Tok. We were in hill country now, and this monastery was built high up on one large hill, what passes for a mountain in Thailand. Our laymen dropped us off and pointed out the way up to the monastery. It was a killer trek, straight up. We had to stop to catch our breath along the way. When we got near the top, there was a clearing with some small kutis and an open air sala set into a huge cave. We were greeted and taken to meet Ajahn Juen.

The sala was made of a gorgeous hardwood. Ajahn Juen greeted us cordially and asked about the climb.

We told him it was a workout, and he said, “If you’re not used to it, you can’t make it without stopping.” We remarked on the sala, and he told us it was a rare wood—no doubt one of Southeast Asia’s vanishing hard-woods—for which special permits are needed, and that a lay supporter in government had arranged it for the monastery. Ajahn Juen also told us that some foreign engineers had been consulted on building the monastery, and their professional judgment was that it couldn’t be done in that location. He then invited us to go bathe and get set up in some of the nearby kutis. Ven. Jagaro and I shared one, and Ajahn Sumedho was given another.

It was Wan Phra (the lunar observance day). No one had invited us to join the Uposatha ceremony for the recitation of the Patimokkha (monks’ discipline), so we did our own three-monk ritual in the evening. Later on a bell rang and we went to the s€ala€.

After the chanting, similar everywhere in Thailand, Ajahn Juen gave a Dhamma talk. He began by speaking about the snare of the hunter. It was heady, penetrating stuff to hear, sitting there in the dim light and the stillness of the evening. The next morning, Ven. Jagaro and I went to the s€ala to find out where and when to go on pindapat (alms round), and Ajahn Juen was sitting there alone. He seemed deep in the recesses of his own being, chewing betel nut, sitting calmly. We got the required info from him, and as we left, Ven. Jagaro asked me, “Don’t you feel he’s like Luang Por?” There was that same sense one often got from Ajahn Chah that he was presenting a persona, doing an act, while an unfathomable presence shone through from beneath the mask.

We took our leave after the meal and headed off to see Ajahn Fun. There was a nice easy feeling about Ajahn Fun’s monastery. It seemed like it existed mostly to make his wonderful presence available to the faithful, and that his strength and grace waves carried everyone and everything along. He received visitors in the daytime and spoke every night without fail, after chanting service and meditation.

Dong had told us, in the somewhat touching, wide-eyed fashion of non- practicing lay devotees, that in Ajahn Mun’s monastery, Ajahn Tate and Ajahn Fun were the senior disciples. When Ajahn Mun gave a talk, those two would sit by him and examine the minds of the monks and novices as they listened. If anyone wandered off, they would catch them and call them back. As we sat and meditated in the raised wooden s€ala€ (a humble affair considering the exalted status of the abbot), I was uneasy about the glowing, mountainous Ajahn possibly reading my thoughts.

After the meditation, Ajahn Fun took notice of us and engaged Ajahn Sumedho in a brief conversation. He asked him if his meditation had been peaceful. Ajahn Sumedho replied that it was, and then Ajahn Fun went on to ask Ven. Jagaro and me. Peaceful some, not peaceful some, we replied.

“Nae!” exclaimed Ajahn Fun.”Why only partly peaceful?” And then he launched into the evening desana (Dhamma talk), which worked its way into his trade-mark theme, the repetition of “Buddho.”

Buddho, the One Who Knows, is a standard meditation in Thailand, but no one was more renowned for teaching it than Ajahn Fun. I think his one Western disciple, simply known as Tahn Don, had told me that Ajahn Fun taught on Buddho every night, and as I sat there, I could well imagine that he did just that, presenting Buddho in a different way each time. Yet there was nothing contrived about it; his words had the authentic ring of someone who speaks from direct experience and has strong confidence in what he is expounding. Ajahn Fun was certainly one of the most charismatic and widely loved of Ajahn Mun’s disciples.

We were on the road again, off to meet Ajahn Sumedho’s upajjhaya (preceptor), Chao Khun Dhammapariyattimuni, in Nong Khai city. It was evening when we arrived. The Chao Khun was a lovely man, and it was touching to see Ajahn Sumedho’s ongoing devotion to and gratitude for him. We had a relaxed conversation and went to sleep soon afterwards, as we were getting up in a few hours so that we could travel early the next morning.

One other memorable visit we made on a different occasion was at Kilometer 29 on the road from Ubon to Amnatcharoen. Ajahn Sumedho, Ven. Santacitto, and I were on a day trip with some Bung Wai laypeople to visit some of the branch monasteries, and they suggested we visit an Ajahn Pyrote who had a forest monastery not too far from the main road.

He was an outgoing fellow, maybe about forty years old, obviously comfortable speaking to groups of people on the spur of the moment. Pleasantries were exchanged, and then there was a brief interval of silence. Por Yoo, the Bung Wai village headman, turned to the laywomen and said, “Do you women have anything to ask the Ajahn?”

“What’s the matter, you men don’t have mouths?” came the response.

There was some laughter, I suspect as much at the Poo Yai Bahn being shown up as at the humor of the response, and then Ajahn Pyrote began an informal, rambling discourse, much in the way that Luang Por Chah would.

He urged the lay folk to practice correct speech. “The mouth is a weapon,” he said. “Even though it’s only sound, our speech can bring people happiness or pain. It can make us loved or hated.” He covered a few other things. He talked about perception: “A flower for a child is an object of play. An adolescent will want to offer it to his sweetheart. For a grownup, it’s something to sell. And an elderly person thinks of offering it in puja. One flower, different meanings.”

Thirty years later, those simple words still stay with me. It’s a beautiful example of the Forest Lineage way of teaching Dhamma, using the objects and vocabulary of everyday life to transmit the timeless truths that the Buddha taught. Luang Por Chah once told me not to think in terms of profound or shallow, and indeed it would be hard to pigeonhole such a teaching as Ajahn Pyrote gave as simple or profound, deep or common. There’s not much to the words, but they get right to the heart of all our experience.

And that brief stop on the way to somewhere else was yet another reminder of just how many fine practitioners and teachers there were throughout Thailand, a lot of them beyond the spotlight of renown. I suspect that, even in these times of rapid change, there are still many such beings to be found in the Kingdom of Siam.