Ajahn Amaro

Ajahn Amaro

Q : * What single thing most impressed you about Luang Por Chah?

      • Please give us some examples from your experiences with him.

A :  One of the most impressive things about Luang Por Chah was the way that he could display authority without being authoritarian. He was a very good leader but not someone who had to dominate people. I didn’t live with him for a long time, and maybe the very first time I had an exchange with him was in about April or May 1978, when I was an anāgārika (postulant) and Luang Por was staying with us at Wat Pah Nanachat. As an anāgārika I was the attendant to Ajahn Pabhākaro, who was the abbot of the monastery. So it was my job to get his robes and bowl ready for piṇḍapat in the morning. I never found it easy to get up early in the morning; I still don’t. Morning is not my best time – I can do it as an act of will, but I have to make the effort.

On this particular morning I woke up and saw light com- ing through the gaps between the planks of the walls. I thought, ‘Wow, the moon is really bright tonight.’ Then I looked at the clock and saw that it must have stopped, and I realized, ‘That’s not the moon; that’s the sun.’ So I leapt up, threw my clothes on and raced down the path. When I got to the back of the sāla (main hall), all the other people had already gone out for piṇḍapat, but Ajahn Pabhākaro and Luang Por, who were going out on a nearby piṇḍapat, still hadn’t left. I thought, ‘OK, I’ve still got time. Maybe they didn’t notice.’ I then realized it was twenty-five past and they were going to leave at half-past. So I got their robes, hoping they hadn’t noticed I’d arrived late and had missed the morning chanting and sitting. While I was down by Ajahn Chah’s feet tying up the bottom end of his robes, he said something in Thai which I couldn’t understand. I looked up slightly anxiously at Ajahn Pabhākaro for translation. Ajahn Chah had a big grin on his face, an incredibly friendly, loving smile. Then Ajahn Pabhākaro translated, ‘Sleep is delicious.’ That was the first time in my life when I did something wrong, but instead of being criticized or punished was met by an extraordinarily loving attitude. It was at that point that something in my heart knew Buddhism was really very different from anything I had encountered previously.

Luang Por was also very flexible. He had no respect for time. And he didn’t have any respect for logical consistency. He could change his mind or his approach in a finger-snap. A couple of years later, when Ajahn Sumedho was starting up Chithurst monastery, I was thinking of going back to England to visit my family. I got a telegram saying my father was very ill with a heart attack, so I came down from Roi-Et and then to Wat Pah Pong to pay respects to Luang Por and ask his advice. I felt I should leave for England soon, but my question was how I should go about this. My Thai was pretty poor, and on that occasion Ajahn Jāgaro was translating. I explained to Luang Por that I only had one Rains Retreat as a monk and that I was from England; my family lived quite near Chithurst and my father had just had a heart attack and was very sick, and what did Luang Por think I should do?

He spoke for about twenty minutes – it was a long speech and I didn’t really catch much of it. At the end, Ajahn Jāgaro said, ‘Well, he said four things.

‘ “Go to England and when your visit to your family is finished, go and pay your respects to Ajahn Sumedho and then come straight back to Thailand.

‘ “Go to England and stay with your family and when your business with your family is finished, go to stay with Ajahn Sumedho for a year and then after that year you should come back to Thailand.

‘ “Go to England, stay with your family, when your busi- ness with your family is finished, go stay with Ajahn Sumedho and help him out. If it gets too difficult, you can come back to Thailand if you really want to.

‘ “Go to England, when the business with the family is finished, go and stay with Ajahn Sumedho and don’t come back.”’

The whole talk was delivered with exactly the same expression. It wasn’t as if any one option was preferable. As he was speaking, each single option was an absolutely sincere piece of advice, a directive: ‘Do this. These are your instructions. Follow them to the letter!’ And he wasn’t trying to be clever. It was obvious that he was being absolutely straightforward.

Related to that was his quality of being transparent as a person. Someone once asked me to take a message to him, saying that some people had just arrived at the sāla and could he come to meet them. So I went to his kuṭī, where he was sitting on his rattan bench with his eyes closed. There was no one else around. I went up and knelt in front of him and he didn’t open his eyes. So I waited a few minutes, wondering what to do, but he still didn’t open his eyes. So I said (in Thai), ‘Excuse me, Luang Por’ and he opened his eyes. 

But it was as if there was absolutely nobody there. He wasn’t asleep; his eyes opened, but there was no expression on his face. It was completely empty. He looked at me, and I looked at him and said, ‘Luang Por, Ajahn Chu asked me to bring a message that some people have come to the sāla and would it be possible for you to come and receive them?’

Again for a moment there was no expression, just this completely spacious, empty quality on his face. 

Then out of nowhere, the personality appeared. He made some remark that I didn’t quite catch and it was as if suddenly the ‘person’ appeared; it was like watching a being coming into existence.

There was an extraordinary quality in that moment, see- ing a being putting on a mask or a costume, as if to say, ‘OK, I’ll be Ajahn Chah. I can play at being Ajahn Chah for these people.’ 

You could see that assumption of the personality, the body, all the characteristics of personhood just being taken up as if he was putting on his robe or taking up a role for the sake of emerging and contacting other people. It was very powerful, seeing that ‘something’ coming out of nothing; seeing a being appearing before your eyes.