Living with Than Ajahn Mahā Boowa

Monk: Can you share something like living with Than Ajahn Mahā Boowa. What would you say about one or several things that you felt was most important or most valuable?

Than Ajahn: He provided us with a place to practise. He provided the environment for practice. He tried to keep the external curricular to the minimum, like building kutis or anything like that. If there was any building works he tended to use the lay people and not the monks. He wanted to give the monks all the time to practise. That’s what I like about his temple. When I was going to ordain, I was looking for that kind of monastery. Just practice and no other activities like being invited to go out for meals or chanting, or all sorts of ritual stuff. I just wanted to practise.

That was exactly what Wat Pa Ban Taat was then. It was very quiet, with no electricity and no running water. We had to get water from the well. There were very few people at that time because Than Ajahn was very strict to the lay people. Laypeople were afraid of him, so they would rather go to some other teacher then to go see him. I think he wanted to concentrate on teaching the monks. When you have a lot of laypeople coming to the temple, it can create a lot of work for the monks, to look after and to take care of things. So he tried to get the laypeople to stay away by being very strict and not accommodating. It was very good. He was very strict with the monks and the number of monks too.

When I was there, there were about 18 monks but he then started to increase the number. By the time when I left there were about 26 monks. He was saying that quantity can destroy quality. So he wanted to have a small number of monks so he can concentrate on every individual person.

Monk: Did he give individual instructions, or did he give general instructions and he would know what to say at certain times?

Than Ajahn: Normally he will call a meeting. When I first went there, he will call a meeting every four or five days, but as his health deteriorated and as he aged, the interval between meetings became 7 days or sometimes 2 weeks. He thought that giving instruction to the monks was the most important thing for the monks, so he tried to call for a meeting to give Dhamma talks.

His Dhamma talks was always divided into 2 sections. The first section will be the general principles, like the duthanga practices, sīla and so forth. When he finished that he will take a break, have some water to drink, chewed his betel-nut and then he will start talking about his personal practice. Hardly any monks dared to ask him any questions because he seemed to have covered all the grounds so you don’t really have to ask. All you have to do is just do what he told you to do. If you wanted personal instructions then you need to go and work for him, take care of his bowl, clean his kuti, something like that, then you will get a more personal treatment because he will watch every step of your actions.

If you do something that is not right, it meant that you are not mindful and he will correct you right away. He was very kind to the western monks and he tended to take the western monks to go and work for him, because he thought maybe the Thai monks we could understand the teachings but for the western monks they might need hands-on teaching from the teacher.

By Ajaan Suchart Abhijāto