Thunder in an Open Sky – The Life & Teaching of Luang Por Chah

NIGHT IS FALLING SWIFTLY.

The forest reverberates with the undulating buzz of countless crickets and the eerie rising wail of tropical cicadas. A few stars poke dimly through the treetops. Amid the gathering darkness there is a pool of warm light, thrown from a pair of kerosene lanterns, illuminating the open area below a hut raised up on stilts. Beneath it, in the glow, a couple of dozen people are gathered around a small, solidly-built monk who is seated cross-legged on a wicker bench. The air is filled with a vibrant peace. Venerable Ajahn Chah is teaching.

In some ways the group that is gathered here is a motley crew: close beside Ajahn Chah (or Luang Por, Venerable Father, as he is affectionately known to his students) are a cluster of bhikkhus (monks) and novices; most of them are Thai or Lao but there are a few pale-skinned figures among them ? a Canadian, two Americans, a young Australian, and an Englishman. In front of the Ajahn sits a well-groomed, middle-aged couple ? he in a stiff suit and she coiffed and gold-bedecked ? he?s a member of parliament from a distant province, they?re taking the opportunity while he?s in the area on official business to come and pay their respects and make some offerings to the monastery.

A little behind them and to both sides are scattered a sizeable group of local villagers. Their shirts and blouses are worn thin and the skin of their lean limbs is sun-darkened, wrinkled ? baked like the poor earth of the region. A few of those here Luang Por played with as a child ? catching frogs and climbing trees ? others he helped and was helped by, in the years before he was a bhikkhu, as they planted out their annual round of rice seedlings and then harvested the fields together at the end of the monsoon. To one side, near the back, is a professor from Freiburg who has come to Thailand with a friend from her local Dharma group to study Buddhism; an American nun has come over with her from the women?s section of the monastery, to guide her through the forest paths and to translate.

Excerpt From: ?Thunder in an Open Sky ? The Life & Teaching of Luang Por Chah.?