Everything Arises, Everything Falls Away by Ajahn Chah

Author:Ajahn Chah
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala Publications

20

Cold Comfort

Ajahn Chah’s Monks Face Illness and Death

THE FACT OF OUR mortality displays very obviously the three characteristics—impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and lack of self. But this contemplation is no study in morbidity. Honest awareness of death can lead to the deathless, just as honest awareness of suffering can lead us beyond suffering, and recognizing what binds us to the mundane can lead to freedom.

Generally, death is more accepted in Buddhist cultures such as Thailand than it is in the West, and in the monastic environment in particular there is no tiptoeing around it. Ajahn Chah talked about death in different ways to different people, just as he did with other aspects of the Dharma. When people are a little more high-minded, he said, you can poke them to wake them up. In the early years of Wat Pah Pong, one of the many hardships the monks faced was malaria. There was no treatment available, and most of them became severely ill. He told of how he encouraged the monks to face the situation.

“One night, about nine o’clock, I heard someone walking out of the forest. We were all sick with malaria, but one monk was in a really bad way, with high fever, and was afraid he would die. He didn’t want to die alone in the forest. I said, ‘That’s good. Let’s try to find someone who isn’t ill to watch the one who is; how can one sick person take care of another?’ That was about it. We didn’t have any medicine.

“We had borapet (a horribly bitter medicinal vine). We boiled it to drink. It was all we had, for refreshment or for medicine. Everyone had fever and everyone drank borapet. If any monks got really sick, I told them, ‘Don’t be afraid. Don’t worry. If you die, I’ll cremate you myself. I’ll cremate you right here in the monastery. Your corpse won’t have to go anywhere else.’ This is how I dealt with it. These words gave them strength of mind.”

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