| Ajahn Sumedho |
Q: What is your point of view about Luang Por Chah’s way of teaching?
A: It was about getting to know yourself, to keep looking at your mind, at your citta, so you’re aware all the time of what you’re feeling. Know your emotion, do not get caught by your own emotion. Keep observing what you’re feeling emotionally. I had a lot of emotions coming up about being the only Farang (foreigner) there, feeling insecure and not understanding everything very well. Sometimes I’d feel lonely and other times arrogant. I felt that a lot of what they were doing was stupid and I didn’t agree with it. But there was this emphasis on knowing yourself, knowing your emotion, to be the one who knows or ‘poo-roo’ in Thai. The ‘poo-roo’ style, being the knowing, I found really helpful. I began to see how I was creating my own suffering by holding on to views or by projecting things onto other monks. When I actually reflected on the existing conditions, I saw they were very good. I had food and requisites, a good teacher, and the monks were basically all very good people. So when I really contemplated the actual situation, I saw it was a very good place. Then I could see emotionally I would bring up jealousy or fear, resentment or arrogance and because of the ‘poo-roo’ style of Luang Por Chah I could see how I created these things. Once I could see that, I could let go of them. I didn’t have to do that. Once I saw that I was the one who created these ‘arom’ (moods), I could take the position of being the one who knows, the one who is aware. I worked through a lot of emotional habits that way. You know how it can be when you’re the only foreigner, you don’t know what’s happening or what they’re thinking. I experienced a lot of fear or paranoia, thinking “What are they really thinking? Why do they do that?” And yet because of the teaching, the ‘poo-roo’, I could see that this was what I made up myself, that my fear or my projection of that monk was what I made. It wasn’t that monk. It was what I was making up myself.
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