Namo tassa bhagavato arahato sammā-sambuddhassa
Homage to the Blessed One, the Worthy One, the Rightly Self-awakened One.
Ajahn Chah is one of the great meditation masters of the twentieth century and
was responsible for propagating the spread of the Thai Forest Tradition to the
West. Respected and loved by all those who were fortunate enough to meet him,
he left a vast legacy of monasteries, students, books and talks. His
seventy-three year life was one of complete dedication to the practice and
teaching of Dhammavinaya, the doctrine and discipline set out by the Buddha.
Born in 1918 to a poor family of
subsistence farmers, Ajahn Chah lived in a small village near Ubon Ratchanthani
in the North-Eastern area of Thailand known as Isan. At nine years of age, Ajahn
Chah joined the local monastery as a novice to complete a three year education,
a common practice in rural villages in Thailand. After his brief and basic
period of education he returned to the family home to assist his parents manage
their land.
When the young Ajahn Chah was
twenty years old he decided to follow his calling to the monastic life and
returned to the local monastery, he took Higher Ordination (Pali: Upasampadā) as a Buddhist monk on 26th
April 1939.
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| Ajahn Chah in meditation |
In the years that followed, Ajahn
Chah studied the scriptures, the Pāli language
and meditation, a traditional course of training for monks in Thailand at that
time. But when his father passed away, Ajahn Chah became despondant about his
path and about his apparent lack of progress. In 1946 Ajahn Chah made the
decision to set out on walking pilgrimage as a wandering ascetic monk (Pali: dhutanga
bhikkhu). The first leg of his journey took him some four-hundred kilometres to
Central Thailand, frequenting monasteries and receiving teaching along the way.
It just so happened that when in Central Thailand he met fellow Forest Monks
who spoke highly of one teacher in particular, the highly revered Ajahn Mun
Bhuridatta Thera, credited with first establishing the Thai Forest Tradition. So,
again Ajahn Chah set off on foot to North East Thailand to meet this great
ascetic monk.
Although
Ajahn Chah only spent a short while with Ajahn Mun, a matter of weeks rather
than months, the time they spent together had a profound effect on Ajahn Chah’s
approach to practice and his interpretation of Dhammavinaya.
Between
1947 and 1954 Ajahn Chah practiced in the style of the austere Forest Tradition,
much as Ajahn Mun had done for the best part of his life. Ajahn Chah travelled
in search of remote and secluded places to practice and lived in caves, in
tiger and snake infested jungles, and in corpse ridden cremation grounds.
During this time, Ajahn Chah practiced the thirteen dhutaṅga practices, austerities designed to deepen
meditation and support detachment . The dhutaṅga practices
include; living under a tree (without shelter from a roof), wearing robes only
made from soiled and discarded cloth, and living in the three positions of
walking, standing or sitting (never lying down).
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| Ajahn Chah meditates in a secluded spot |
In
1954 Ajahn Chah settled in a forest called Pah Pong near his home. Despite the
harsh and remote conditions the forest offered, monks began to be drawn to him
to hear his simple yet profound teaching. And so it was that Wat Nah Pah Pong,
Ajahn Chah’s first monastery, was established. Conditions were bare; food was
scarce, shelter was limited, there was
no running water, and malaria was rife. And yet, they continued to come to
study as Ajahn Chah’s disciples. In 1967 Sumedho Bhikkhu arrived, an American
born monk who had received Higher Ordination the year previous, and the first
of many Western disciples. Some eight years later in 1975, and with Ajahn
Chah’s blessing, Ajahn Sumedho established, and became the abbott of,
Thailand’s first international forest monastery, Wat Pah Nanachat, run by and
for English-speaking monks.
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| Ajahn Chah with Ajahn Sumedho (back row, centre) |
In
1977, Ajahn Chah, accompanied by Ajahn Sumedho and Ajahn Khemadhammo (now Ajahn
Khemadhammo OBE, and abbott of The Forest Hermitage in Warwickshire). Ajahn
Chah was invited to the UK by the English Sangha Trust, a charitable
organisation founded in 1956 by an English monk, Bhikkhu Kapilavaddho. Gauging
the apparent interest in the Buddha’s teaching in the UK at this time, Ajahn
Chah chose to leave Ajahns Sumedho and Khemadhammo to take up residency at the
Hampstead Vihara. Ajahn Chah returned to the UK in 1979, by which time the
English Sangha Trust had received a donation of a parcel of forest land in West
Sussex and had gone on to purchase a derelict mansion and estate. The forest,
mansion house and estate were to become Cittaviveka, Chithurst Buddhist
Monastery, with Ajahn Sumedho honoured with its abbotship.
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| Ajahn Chah with Cittavavika in the background |
As
Theravada Buddhism began to spread in the UK, Ajahn Chah travelled in America
and Canada to teach. Unfortunately, Ajahn Chah’s health began to deteriorate,
he had suffered with memory loss and dizziness due to complications he suffered
as a result of diabetes. In 1980 Ajahn Chah went to Bangkok, Thailand’s
capital, to have remedial surgery. The surgery was not as successful as had been
hoped and in the months that followed his operation his condition worsened and
before long he lost the use of his limbs, became totally bed-ridden, and lost his
speech. Ajahn Chah would teach no more.
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| Ajahn Chah in his wheelchair in his latter years |
For
more than ten years Ajahn Chah was lovingly cared for by nursing monks and
novices in the small wooden kuti that was built for him in the hospital near
his monastery. They attended to his every need, and groups of disciples came
from near and far to sit with him and chant. On the 16th January
1992 Ajahn Chah passed away. More than one million people attended his funeral,
including the Thai Royal Family, indicating the love and devotion the lay community
and the Sangha had for their teacher.
Ajahn
Chah left a huge legacy. In the UK; Amaravati in Hertfordshire (the main
monastery), Cittaviveka in West Sussex, Hartridge Monastery in Devon, Aruna
Ratanagiri in Northumberland, and the Forest Hermitage in Warwickshire. Monasteries
are thriving in Switzeland, Italy, America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. In
Thailand, Ajahn Chah’s mode of practice continues to be taught at Wat Nong Pah
Pong, at Wat Pah Nanachat (International Forest Monastery), and at the
two-hundred plus branch monasteries throughout the country. Ajahn Chah's monastic community practice adherence to strict
discipline and live simply, devoting themselves to ardent
meditation practice over scholastic study, learning directly from experience as
Ajahn Chah recommended.
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| Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, Hertfordshire, UK. Image by giantsfootsteps |
Sources
‘Ajahn Chah’. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajahn_Chah
.Retrieved on 9th March 2013.
‘Vinaya’. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinaya
.Retrieved on 9th March 2013.
‘Dhutanga’. Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhutanga
.Retrieved on 9th March 2013.
‘Mun Bhuridatta’.
Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajahn_Mun
.Retrieved on 9th March 2013.
‘Biography of Ajahn
Chah’. Forest Sangha. http://forestsangha.org/biography-of-ajahn-chah .Retrieved on 9th March 2013.
‘Biography of Ajahn
Chah’. Venerable Ajahn Chah.
http://www.ajahnchah.org/book/About_Ajahn_Chah.php . Retrieved on 9th
March 2013.
‘The Thirteen
Ascetic Practices. Dhammadana. http://en.dhammadana.org/sangha/dhutanga.htm#ch-----2 . Retrieved on 9th March 2013.
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