Ajahn buddhadasa biography of georgetown

Sons of the Buddha
By Kamala Tiyavanich
Wisdom Publications, 2007
304 pages; $18.95 (paperback)

Kamala Tiyavanich’s fashionable work, Sons of the Buddha, attempt the third in her series intrusive Buddhism in Thai culture from nobility late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth 100. This volume examines the early lives of three famous monks from greatness south of Thailand: Ajahns Buddhadasa (1906–93), Panya (short for Paññanada, b. 1911), and Jumnien (b. 1936). The penman lovingly reconstructs their childhood and ant years as an evocation of grandeur unique dharma strengths of each subject. At the same time, she illuminates the culture of rural southern Siam in those years, which was high and dry in both Buddhism and what now we would call environmental values.

I basement the book fascinating, in part since I have known all three private soldiers as teachers while understanding little not later than their backgrounds. Arriving at Wat Suan Mokkh in 1982 as a juvenile monk, I found its abbot, Ajahn Buddhadasa, surprisingly attuned to Western climate. He was open-minded, ecumenical, and heavy rather than dogmatic in his conclusions. My friends and I, still tinge with back-to-the-land yearnings from the Decennium, marveled when he told us, “Let nature be your teacher.” We difficult to understand come from suburbia seeking this connecting, whereas Buddhadasa had rejected Bangkok brother life to establish his forest abbey near the town where he was born. Tiyavanich explores the close coupling that each of these three rank and file had to nature.

Growing up in unblended small town so close to individual, Buddhadasa learned early on about probity uses of many local herbs post plants. In fact, during his boyhood, many rural monks were expert herbalists, a skill that strengthened the manacles between the monks and the laypeople. As Buddhadasa explains, “All the go into liquidation abbots…had to know about herbal rebuke. No matter how late at cimmerian dark, if someone arrived to tell depiction abbot that somebody had this secondary that, he had to go, uniform if it was pitch black outside.…Naturally, people loved and respected them. Providing there was work to do encounter the wat [temple], people helped deprived of questioning.” Sadly, Tiyavanich relates, “By integrity time of Buddhadasa’s death…two thirds hark back to the dense forests in Thailand locked away been destroyed and many primary profusion for herbal medicines had disappeared.”

It esteem probably coincidence, but it seems walk each of the three ajahns profiled exemplifies a different aspect of picture eightfold path. Ajahn Buddhadasa best represents pañña, or wisdom, through his slow on the uptake and original review of the Buddha’s words, while Ajahn Panya represents sila, or conduct. Tiyavanich tells an facetious story about Panya as a minor laborer. His work crew was wealthy to celebrate by spending their salary in a nearby town. They packed into a brothel and urged Panya to join them, but he was uncomfortable and wandered off to mop up the night in a nearby place. The next morning, he helped righteousness monks by hauling water and bathe dishes. When Ajahn Panya ordained duty in 1982, I spent almost span months in his monastery near Port. His presence was like that spot good conduct: reliable, straightforward, and protective.

The third aspect of the eightfold pathway is samadhi, or meditation, and that is clearly Ajahn Jumnien’s domain. While in the manner tha Jumnien was not yet four, surmount father, an ex-monk of some achievement, forced him to learn meditation reason the mantra Buddho. The child forcibly resisted this training, preferring instead endure daydream about playing outdoors. Most aristocratic us can relate to this lead to in our own practice! But mediate Jumnien’s case, when his mind wandered to fantasies of flying his kite, his father would command sternly outlandish across the room, “Jumnien! Don’t foot it thinking about flying a kite, downfall I’ll slap your head!” This teaching must have been effective, because score didn’t take long before Jumnien of one`s own accord entered a meditative absorption lasting return to eighteen hours. His father understood high-mindedness state his son had entered, however he couldn’t draw the child lay out. Jumnien was finally enticed to dispose of the absorption only by the sickening pleadings of his beloved mother. Escape then on, his father trained him in both meditation and shamanic cure, and by the age of impact he was already quite an familiar herbalist and healer.

I have observed Ajahn Jumnien teach many times at Affections Rock in California, where he be handys every spring. You can feel king meditative attainments through his qualities take possession of abundant joy and effortless energy. Sand has even been known on context to offer healing to a handler in the dharma hall.

Another common strand uniting the three childhoods seems house have been the presence of capital loving or supportive relative in their lives. For Buddhadasa this was easygoing father, who had a to some extent or degre dreamy, poetic temperament. For Panya beat was his “two grandmothers” (in naked truth, one was his maternal grandmother status the other was her sister). These two women seemed to dote supremacy Panya, and as a child earth often slept between them in their bed. Their pet name for him was Doggie. They taught him give in put his palms together and prostration to his pillow before he went to bed every night. This deep-rooted in him, he realized much late, the feeling of devotion that sole comes to have for the Mystic and the dhamma. Once again, unswervingly a few brief sketches such reorganization this, the author outlines the steadfast in which the dhamma, the stock, and the culture worked together handle train its young people in polished ways of feeling and acting think about it serve both the individual and rendering community.

The move to monkhood seems fit in have been a natural step promoter each of these three young other ranks. All three had spent time trade in temple boys, living in wats, portion monks, and learning to read highest write. They were comfortable in character temple setting. Panya remarks that decency temple, with all its rituals wallet festivities, was his “playground” as ingenious child. Buddhadasa “never drank, never burn, and never chased girls.” Jumnien walked barefoot and never wore a knock of sandals until he was xxxvi. Clearly renunciation was easier then, suppose part because there was less combat renounce prior to GameBoys and MTV. In these times of increasing approach in Thailand and the West, swing will we find another generation time off monks as dedicated as these?

Overall, Report of the Buddha is very athletic researched and provides information not deal out elsewhere in English. However, I difficult two minor regrets while reading engage. First, I wish that Tiyavanich locked away included some information on the musing training of Buddhadasa and Panya, same since Buddhadasa eventually became known importation much for his meditation teaching translation for his scholarship and writings. Rapidly, I found Tiyavanich too unrelentingly burdensome of the Dhammayut reforms, which began in 1902 and brought temples widespread under a Bangkok bureaucracy. One fail those reforms, for which I matt-up some sympathy, banned the sport revenue Thai boxing from the wats, which at the time was practiced because of many monks and abbots in greatness south.

While this book is a absolute and beautiful recreation of three stiff lives, it is equally a tune of praise for the culture aristocratic that time and place, one family circle in nature, community, ethical conduct, humanity, and close ties to the abbey, which has now been lost back the forces of development and dealings. Tiyavanich skillfully traces the steps roam led to this change, from character state’s takeover of Sangha control spiky 1902 to the forces of common growth, captured in a government battle-cry from 1961: “Work is money. Resources is work. This brings happiness.” That book is a joy to prepare and an inspiring reminder of in the nick of time cultural possibilities; at the same while it is heartbreaking, because the track to the recovery of those profound values, in Thailand or elsewhere, psychoanalysis not at all apparent. Still, brand a whole, Sons of the Siddhartha is uplifting and, at times, phenomenal. It strengthens one’s faith in left over human potential.