Ajaan Fuang’s Stories
May 14, 2022

Sometimes in the evening, after Ajaan Fuang had had his bath and I’d washed his robes, I’d go up to his porch and have a cup of tea before heading up to the top of the hill. Especially in the beginning, in the months when I was first there with him, he would give a Dhamma talk. Sometimes the talk would be quite long. I didn’t appreciate at the time how rare that was, because in later years he tended to be a man of few words. But those first couple of months, I guess, he decided he wanted to give me an education. Sometimes he’d tell stories. Sometimes they’d be about his times with Ajaan Lee, sometimes about his own experiences going off to thudong. Other times it was stories about other people, sometimes from the Jātakas, sometimes incidents that he’d heard about.

There was a certain flavor to the stories he liked. One had to do with Somdet Toh. You may have noticed that statue of him that we have over there in the shrines. He was a famous monk in the 19th century. He had been the teacher of Rama IV when Rama IV was a young monk. Then he’d gone off into the woods. Years later, when the young monk became King Rama IV, he sent out search parties to find Somdet Toh. He made him a Somdet and put him in charge of a monastery across the river from the palace.

You can imagine: When it got out that this was the teacher of the king, a lot of high-ranking people would come to see him. In the mornings, he would eat his meal in a little pavilion in front of his hut, and he would throw some food to the dogs—which meant that every time he sat down to his meal, a lot of dogs would come thronging around. And that meant that all the high-ranking people in Bangkok who wanted to see Somdet Toh at that hour of the day and came to bow down to him, had to bow down to the dogs as well. That was his test. If people weren’t willing to bow down to the dogs, he didn’t want to talk to them. Ajaan Fuang liked that story.

Another one he liked was one that’s in the Jātakas about an arahant who was a very quiet man, staying in a monastery near the capital. Word got to the king that this monk was an arahant. The king wasn’t all that sure about it, but people said that he was a monk worthy of respect, so he announced that he was going to go visit him. The monks in the monastery told the arahant, “The king is going to come. Try to make a good impression. He’ll support the monastery.” The arahant said, “Okay, you can put your minds at rest.” So the king came to see him, but the monk didn’t pay any attention to the king at all. He just sat there with a stick in his hand, drawing little designs in the dust. The king got offended, left. The monks were upset. And again, the arahant said, “Put your mind at rest. This is between me and the king.” Not too long after that, the arahant died, and his corpse displayed all kinds of miracles. Rainbows were coming out of it, shoots of water, lights: That kind of stuff. This time, the king was really impressed. He came and gave a lot of support to the monastery.

Again, this was another story that a Ajaan Fuang really liked. You get the picture. He tended to stay away from high-ranking people. He was something of a maverick.

But he was extremely loyal to Ajaan Lee. He had one teacher. I mean, he had been with Ajaan Mun as well, and respected Ajaan Mun greatly. But as he said, he never felt really comfortable around Ajaan Mun. Either he’d act too confident or he’d be too afraid. One conversation he recounted concerned Ajaan Mun. In the evening after Ajaan Mun had had his bath, the monks would go up to the porch of his hut and he would give them a little Dhamma talk before sending them off to meditate on their own. It so happened that one evening after the bath, Ajaan Fuang went up to the porch and he was the only monk there aside from Ajaan Mun. The other monks had other things that they had to do.

Ajaan Mun gave a long talk on Buddha relics, describing their different colors, different shapes, which part of the body they came from, depending on the shape or the color. All Ajaan Fuang could think about was, “How does he know I have relics in my shoulder bag?”

Then years later, when he was involved in the chedi of Wat Asokaram and then again the chedi of Wat Dhamasathit, he had to deal with lots of relics. And he suddenly realized: Oh, this is what Ajaan Mun foresaw, that he’d be the gatherer of the relics for those monuments.

But with Ajaan Lee, there was a strong sense of trust, a strong sense of rapport. He was afraid of Ajaan Lee, but also felt a lot of confidence around him. He told the story of them going on thudong one time with a group of other monks. He learned pretty quickly with Ajaan Lee that if you’re going through the forest with Ajaan Lee, Ajaan Lee is going to walk really fast and you’ve got to keep up with him. So he did. Evening came and it turned out that he and Ajaan Lee were on a hilltop and there was nobody else. Nobody else had been able to keep up with the pace. Somebody else had Ajaan Lee’s bowl and somebody else had Ajaan Lee’s umbrella tent, so the two of them had to share the umbrella tent that night, Ajaan Fuang’s umbrella tent. He gave Ajaan Lee a little massage on his legs and then sat and meditated for a while. He said he thought of that line in the Canon that talks about the monk who is content with his belongings. “Just as a bird, wherever it goes, has only its wings as its burden, in the same way the monk has his robes and bowl as his only burden.”

Another time, they were at Wat Asokaram, near Bangkok, and they were going to go on thudong. This time, laypeople were going to go as well. So Ajaan Fuang packed a very small shoulder bag with his bowl. They showed up at the train station. They were going to go up to Lopburi, and then from Lopburi they were going to go into the woods. Everyone showed up at the main train station in Bangkok, and all the laypeople had two or three bags, thinking that when they got to Lopburi they’d be able to hire porters to carry the bags for them into the woods.

Well, Ajaan Lee saw the burdens that everybody had brought, and so instead of getting on the train, he just walked along the railroad track. Now, when the ajaan walks along the railroad track, everybody has to walk along the railroad track. A lot of people were struggling with their luggage and they complained. At first Ajaan Lee didn’t say anything. He just kept on walking. Finally, he said, “Well, if it’s heavy, throw it away. Let go of it.” So everybody had to stop, sort through their luggage, take only what was necessary, pack one bag apiece. As for everything else, it turns out that back in those days they had lotus ponds on the sides of that railroad track, so everything got thrown into the lotus ponds. They continued walking up to Saamsen, which is the next station, a mile or two down the way. When Ajaan Lee saw that everybody’s load was the right size, then they got on the train.

These are some of the stories that Ajaan Funag would tell. They give you a good idea of the forest tradition as a whole, one, not caring that much about the status of people in the world, even though Ajaan Lee had a lot of lay students with very high status. Ajaan Fuang, after Ajaan Lee passed away, was invited into Wat Makut by the Supreme Patriarch at the time. And you can imagine the people who come to see the Supreme Patriarch. The Supreme Patriarch said, “If you’re interested in meditation, go see Ajaan Fuang.” So he had to deal with a lot of high-ranking people who had a lot of pride. I can see why that story about Somdet Toh with the dogs appealed to him.

Also the lessons of thudong: Try to live as spare a life as possible, “spare” not only in the sense of the things you have with you, but also in terms of your entanglement with other people.

He told an interesting story one time. He was staying in the woods with one other monk. One morning, as they went for alms, one of the people who put food in their bowls asked the other monk a question. I don’t know what the question was, but Ajaan Fuang said it was the kind of question that you didn’t really have to answer, but the other monk answered anyhow. They got back to their spot, they had their meal, and later in the day, the other monk had a bad case of dysentery. Ajaan Fuang attributed that to the fact that he had spoken when he didn’t have to. As he said, when you go into the forest, the forest is the big ajaan. It’s very demanding, and it’s watching you all the time.

His first time on his thudong up in the north, after staying with Ajaan Mun, he went to one spot in the forest. And as he said, when you go to a new spot, you meditate late at night, get up early in the morning. You really behave yourself, because you don’t know who’s watching. So for the first couple of days, that’s what he did. Then about the third or fourth day, he thought to himself, “Hmm, there’s probably nobody here.” He decided to go to bed a little bit earlier that night. And as soon as he put his head on the pillow, a voice appeared in his ear and said, “Go. You’re not welcome here.” The forest is that demanding.

Just think about that as a practice. Have the sense that there’s somebody watching you. What are they going to see? You want to behave in a way that’s something you would be proud to have other people see. I know I certainly had that sense at Wat Dhammasathit in the early years, when it was really way out of the way. I was being watched all the time. On top of that, of course, there was the sense that Ajaan Fuang could read my mind.

So you have to behave yourself all the time, each breath, each movement. As I told myself, I came here for a training, and this is it. That’s the kind of training you get when you stay in the woods, especially in a place like Thailand, where the spirits know the monks’ rules. And they watch you.

There’s that famous story in the Ajaan Mun biography where he goes and stays in a cave, and there’s a naga watching him all the time. Finally, the naga appears to Ajaan Mun and says, “I’ve been watching you, and unlike other monks, you’re actually hold by the Vinaya.” That’s why Ajaan Mun was then able to teach him. So have a sense that you’re being watched. Live frugally. Speak frugally. The more careful you are with your mouth, the more value your words will have.

I remember one time early on in my stay there, another young monk and I were talking about Dhamma. I happened to say something like, “I think it’s like this.” Ajaan Fuang happened to be walking past, and he heard me say that. He said, “If you don’t know, why are you saying anything? Every time you open your mouth, ask yourself, ‘Is this necessary?’ If not, why say it? If you can’t control your mouth, how are you going to control your mind?”

Those are some of the lessons you learn when you’re really serious about the practice.

Think about that story in the Canon where a monk goes down into a pond of water to bathe, and there’s a lotus in the pond. He bends over to sniff the scent of the lotus, and then a deva immediately appears and says, “You just stole the scent of that lotus.” The monk says, “Oh, come on. There’s no precept against that.” And deva said, “If you’re really serious about the practice, you should see even the slightest fault as huge as a cloud.” You think back in those days, the biggest thing they could think of would be the sky, right? And what’s even bigger than the sky are clouds that cover the sky. So even the slightest fault is bigger than a cloud. The monk came to his senses, thanked the deva, and then said, “If you see me do anything else like that, please let me know.” The deva said, “Look, what you do is your business. I’m not your servant,” and disappeared.