Ajahn chah quotes
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Ajahn Chah
Thai Buddhist monk (1918–1992)
Ajahn Chah (17 June 1918 – 16 January 1992) was a Thai Buddhist monk. He was an influential teacher of the Buddhadhamma and a founder of two major monasteries in the Thai Forest Tradition.
Respected and loved in his own country as a man of great wisdom, he was also instrumental in establishing Theravada Buddhism in the West. Beginning in 1979 with the founding of Cittaviveka (commonly known as Chithurst Buddhist Monastery)[1] in the United Kingdom, the Forest Tradition of Ajahn Chah has spread throughout Europe, the United States and the British Commonwealth. The dhamma talks of Ajahn Chah have been recorded, transcribed and translated into several languages.
More than one million people, including the Thai royal family, attended Ajahn Chah's funeral in January 1993[2] held a year after his death due to the "hundreds of thousands of people expected to attend".[3] He left behind a legacy of dhamma talks, students, and monasteries.
Name
Ajahn Chah (Thai: อาจารย์ชา) was als
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In 1971 when I was preparing to set off on a pilgrimage to the Buddhist holy places in India on my way to Thailand and ordination, Venerable Ajahn Chah was not yet a well-known name. But a monk who was then staying at the Thai temple in London knew him and suggested I go to him. I had other ideas. However, months later, sitting in a big monastery in Bangkok where I was just about to ordain as a samanera, that monk I’d known in London suddenly arrived and having supervised my ordination insisted on whisking me off to Ubon and a visit to Wat Nong Pah Pong, the principal monastery of Ven. Ajahn Chah. Just before we went I stepped out into a busy Bangkok street and saw coming towards me in the distance an old and close friend whose judgement I valued. He’d taken off a couple of years ahead of me and I hadn’t seen him since. By the time we met again in Bangkok he’d already been in robes some little while and having visited many monasteries was able to confidently tell me that the very best place to ordain and train as a bhikkhu was with Ven. Ajahn Chah. So, on New Ye
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Inspired by this teacher’s example, many monks in early twentieth century Thailand abandoned sedentary lives of study to wander the forest as the Buddha had, practicing strictly in line with the Vinaya — the Buddhist code of monastic discipline — and single-mindedly pursuing meditation as a path to the realization of truth. Desiring to find the real essence of the Buddha’s teachings, Ajahn Chah followed the example of such wandering monks. He spent the following eight years of his life searching out remote wilderness areas and practicing meditation under various teachers of the tradition, including Venerable Ajahn Mun himself.
After many arduous years of travel and practice, Ajahn Chah was invited to settle in a thick forest grove, known as a dwelling place of tigers, cobras, and spirits, near the village of his birth. The monastery that eventually grew up there came to be known as Wat Nong Pah Pong. The conditions were difficult and the basic living requisites scarce. Out of faith and loyalty to their teacher, Ajahn Chah, the monks and nuns willingly endured these myriad har
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