Ajahn Amaro

Question: What single thing most impressed you about Luang Por Chah? Please give us some examples from your experiences with him.

Answer: Well, a few things. One of the most impressive things was the way that Luang Por Chah could wield authority without being authoritarian. He was a very good leader but not someone who had to dominate people. I never lived with him that much so I had few contacts with him. Maybe the very first time I had any exchange with him was when I was an anagarika and he was staying at Wat Pah Nanachat for a few days. As an anagarika, I was the upatthak (attendant) for Ajahn Pabhakaro, who was the abbot of the monastery. So my job was to get his robes and bowl ready for bindabat (alms round) in the morning. I never found it easy to get up early in the morning. I still don’t. Morning is not my natural time. I can do it as an act of will but I have to make the effort.

One day, about April or May 1978, when Luang Por was staying with us, I woke up and saw light coming through the gaps between the planks in the walls. I thought, ‘Wow, the moon is really bright tonight.’ Then I looked at the clock and saw that it was one o’clock. I thought, ‘My clock must have stopped.’ Then I realised, ‘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 sala, all the other people had already gone out for bindabat, but Ajahn Pabhakaro and Luang Por, who were going out on a closer bindabat, still hadn’t gone. So I thought, ‘O.K., I’ve still got time. Maybe they didn’t notice.’ So I started fussing around and realised that it was twenty-five past and they were going to leave at half past. So I got their robes, hoping they didn’t notice that I 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, toward Ajahn Pabhakaro for translation. Ajahn Chah had a big grin on his face, an incredibly friendly loving smile. Then Ajahn Pabhakaro translated, ‘Sleep is delicious.’ That was the first time in my life that I did something wrong and instead of being criticised or punished there was an incredibly loving attitude. It was at that point that something in my heart knew that Buddhism was really something different. 

He 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 change 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 zoomed down from Roi-Et and came to Wat Pa Pong to pay respects to Luang Por and to ask his advice. I felt I should go to England soon, but my question was, how should I go about this? My Thai was pretty poor. On that occasion, Ajahn Jagaro was there translating. So I went to Luang Por and explained that I only had one Rains Retreat as a monk and that I was from England and that my family lived quite near Chithurst and that my father just had a heart attack and was very sick, and what did he think I should do? He went into this long speech, about twenty minutes, and I didn’t really catch much of it. At the end, Ajahn Jagaro 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. And the second thing he said was, Go to England. Go 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 can come back to Thailand. And the third thing he said was, Go to England, stay with your family, when your business 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. And the fourth thing he said was, 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 like any one option was preferential. As he was speaking it, each one 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. This characteristic came forth in many different situations.

Connected to that was his quality of being transparent as a person. Someone once asked me to take a message to him, telling him that some people had just arrived at the sala and could he come. So I went to his kuti and he was just on his ratan bench underneath his kuti. He was just sitting there with his eyes closed and there was no one else around. I went up and kneeled in front of him and he didn’t open his eyes, so I thought, ‘Hmm, I wonder what I should do?’ I waited a few minutes and still he didn’t open his eyes. Some important Ajahn was waiting, so I said (in Thai), ‘Excuse me.’ Then he opened his eyes and it was like there was absolutely nobody there. It wasn’t like he was asleep; the eyes came open 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 sala and would it be possible for you to come and receive them.’

Again for a moment there was no expression, just this complete spacious, empty quality in his expression. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, the personality appeared. He made some remark that I didn�t quite catch the details of. 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, seeing a being that was putting on a mask or putting on a costume, as if to say: ‘O.K., I’ll be Ajahn Chah. I can go play at being Ajahn Chah for these people.’ You could see that kind of assuming of the personality, the body, all the characteristics of person-hood, just being taken up like he was putting on his robe or he was putting on a role for the sake of emerging and contacting other people. It was very powerful seeing that ‘something’ coming out of nothing. Like seeing a being appearing before your eyes.

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