The Autobiography of Phra Ajaan Lee, translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu

The Autobiography of Phra Ajaan Lee, translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu

I returned to Bangkok and stayed at Wat Boromnivasa. At the time, the Somdet was very ill and gave me an order: ‘You’ll have to stay with me until I die. As long as I’m still alive, I don’t want you to leave. I don’t care whether or not you come to look after me. I just want to know that you’re around.’ So I promised to stay. Sometimes I’d wonder about what karma I had done that had me cooped up like this, but then I’d remember the caged dove* I had dreamed about in Chanthaburi. That being the case, I’d have to stay.

Once I had made up my mind to stay, the Somdet asked me to come and teach him meditation every day. I had him practice anapanasati—keeping the breath in mind. We talked about a number of things while he sat in meditation.

One day he said, ‘I never dreamed that sitting in samadhi would be so beneficial, but there’s one thing that has me bothered. To make the mind still and bring it down to its basic resting level (bhavanga): Isn’t this the essence of becoming and birth?’

‘That’s what samadhi is,’ I told him, ‘becoming and birth.’

‘But the Dhamma we’re taught to practice is for the sake of doing away with becoming and birth. So what are we doing giving rise to more becoming and birth?’

‘If you don’t make the mind take on becoming, it won’t give rise to knowledge, because knowledge has to come from becoming if it’s going to do away with becoming. This is becoming on a small scale—uppatika bhava—which lasts for a single mental moment. The same holds true with birth. To make the mind still so that samadhi arises for a long mental moment is birth. Say we sit in concentration for a long time until the mind gives rise to the five factors of jhana: That’s birth. If you don’t do this with your mind, it won’t give rise to any knowledge of its own. And when knowledge can’t arise, how will you be able to let go of ignorance? It’d be very hard.

‘As I see it,’ I went on, ‘most students of the Dhamma really misconstrue things. Whatever comes springing up, they try to cut it down and wipe it out. To me, this seems wrong. It’s like people who eat eggs. Some people don’t know what a chicken is like: This is ignorance. As soon as they get hold of an egg, they crack it open and eat it. But say they know how to incubate eggs. They get ten eggs, eat five of them, and incubate the rest. While the eggs are incubating, that’s “becoming.” When the baby chicks come out of their shells, that’s “birth.” If all five chicks survive, then as the years pass it seems to me that the person who once had to buy eggs will start benefiting from his chickens. He’ll have eggs to eat without having to pay for them. And if he has more than he can eat, he can set himself up in business, selling them. In the end he’ll be able to release himself from poverty.

‘So it is with practicing samadhi: If you’re going to release yourself from becoming, you first have to go live in becoming. If you’re going to release yourself from birth, you’ll have to know all about your own birth.’

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*NB: "During the Rains that year (referring to an earlier period at Khlawng Kung Forest Monastery in Chanthaburi) I fell ill. I came down with fierce stomach pains, and no matter what I took for them, they wouldn’t go away. One night I sat up in meditation almost till dawn. At about 4 a.m. I fell half-asleep and dreamed, ‘My disease is a karma disease. There’s no need to take any medicine.’ That is, while I was sitting in meditation, I felt absolutely still, almost as if I had fallen asleep, and a vision appeared: a birdcage containing a thin, famished dove.

The meaning was this: I had once kept a pet dove and had forgotten to feed it for several days running. 

This karma was now bearing fruit, causing me to have gastritis. Therefore, there was only one way to cure it—to do good by way of the mind. I decided it was time to go off alone."

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From The Autobiography of Phra Ajaan Lee, translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu

https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/AutobioAjaanLee/Section0001.html

Photo: Somdet Mahawirawong (Somdet Uan)