Tales from Varapañño - Reflections on Luang Por Sumedho, Part 2

Paul Breiter (who, thirty years ago, was Varapañño Bhikkhu) recollects his experiences with Ajahn Sumedho in the early 1970s. Part 2

After the Magha Pūjā observances, I finally got sent to stay with Ajahn Jun. While I was there, Ajahn Tieng came and told me that Ajahn Sumedho and some farang1 monks were establishing a new monastery near the railroad line not far from Wat Pah Pong. Projecting my own world view, I imagined them living in a treeless expanse near the tracks, roasting in the hot season sun and enduring all sorts of unspeakable privations. Little did I know that, as one of the monks was to tell me when I was back at Wat Pah Pong, “Every time you sit down someone hands you a cup of coffee.” The area was also an established forest preserve, having been a crematorium and burial ground, fear of spirits naturally kept hunters and loggers away.

When lay people came to Wat Pah Pong, Luang Por would ask them if they’d been to “Sumedho’s monastery” yet, with the result that the food offerings became sumptuous. Of course, Ajahn Chah kept abreast of goings-on. Tan2 Pabhākaro came to Wat Pah Pong a little while later and told me that one junior monk, Gary (his Pāli name never caught on), “put his foot in it” when visiting Luang Por one day. Luang Por innocently asked, “Gary! Do you have coffee and sugar at Wat Bung Wai?” Gary respectfully replied that they did. “Do you have it every day?” “Yes, sir, every day.” Luang Por soon got hold of the Bung Wai villagers, asked what was going on and told them to cool it. Still, there was little hardship in that department when I went to stay there for the pansah3.

Unless one has spent a few months in a monastery, it’s hard to appreciate how much importance things like coffee and tea can take on, especially in the austere monasteries of northeast Thailand, where a warm, sweet drink might be available once a week. When I was with Ajahn Sinuan, one afternoon he took a few monks to a nearby village to chant blessings for a couple that had gotten married. The next month he took a group to do funeral chanting in the village one evening. The following morning, he asked if I recalled that they had gone to bless a married couple the month before; the funeral was for the bride, who had committed suicide. My very first thought upon hearing this, fully sincere and totally free of sarcasm, was someone who is a lay person has the freedom to drink coffee whenever she wants—why would she want to kill herself?

It wasn’t all high living, though. Several of the monks got typhoid fever. One afternoon Ajahn Sumedho came to visit Luang Por, and he was telling him about Tan Pasanno, who had developed stomach ulcers, lost weight, and was feeling run down, and shortly after became ill with typhoid. “He endures very well,” he told Luang Por. “He never complains.” Luang Por got the gleam in his eyes, having been handed an opportunity. “Not like Varapañño. He complains about this, he complains about that, he complains all the time…” The kutis, sālā, and bote4 at the newly opened monastery for foreigners, Wat Bung Wai, were extremely basic. There wasn’t really much there, but there was an energy and spirit of common purpose that I hadn’t experienced in any of the other monasteries. As Ajahn Sumedho put it, “We’re not here because our mothers sent us.” I remember the first evening I attended the chanting. After Ajahn Sumedho recited the lead-in verse and the rest of the Sangha joined in, I was almost blown out of my seat. He set up a rigorous practice schedule for the pansah while always reminding us that the point of the practice was self-awareness, seeing the three characteristics of anicca, dukkha, anattā, not becoming meditation athletes or trying to attain something. His presentation of Vinaya5 was similar. He had no patience for nitpicking and hairsplitting over rules, but he obviously had a great reverence for Vinaya as a tool for mindfulness and harmonious living, and there certainly wasn’t any sloppiness. One time when he read the Vinaya to us, he explained that the rules weren’t absolute principles that incurred punishment if violated. “It’s not like God is watching over your shoulder, and if you pee standing up, He calls out, ‘Abat dukkot! (dukkhata apatti, a minor infraction),’” and he had a good laugh at his own joke. As was to also happen later on when the Sangha had gone to England, occasionally some grumbling from the fanatical would reach Luang Por Chah’s ears, so he would come to check things out and talk with Ajahn Sumedho and then decide that everything was fine.

Ajahn Sumedho had resisted the role of mentor and teacher for some time, but at that point he was ready and willing to surrender to Ajahn Chah’s directives, realizing that the way to freedom lay in giving up everything to do with self-grasping, including wishes about how and where one preferred to live. His example in this regard was impeccable and provided an ever-present standard and inspiration for us. He also took up the challenge of being a teacher with his usual creative approach, for example reading poetry out loud in order to improve his diction and re-familiarize himself with the English language. His reading occasionally yielded nuggets he could add to his teaching; one poem he was fond of ended with the lines “…consume my heart away, sick with desire and fastened to a dying animal / It knows not what it is, and gather me into the artifice of eternity…”

One night during sitting meditation, he started talking about burning bridges. “You have it in the back of your mind that if things don’t work out, you can ask dad for help. Then you can go lead a good life; you dream about living in a nice house, doing yoga by the fireplace…” He wasn’t promising a land of bliss in exchange for giving everything up, but instead wanted us to face the irrational fears that the idea of giving up brought on. He often reminded us that there was no excitement in our way of life. “Nobody is ever going to make a movie about sewing a set of robes and dyeing them in gaen kanun6,” he once said. Still, his example, and that of Ajahn Chah, told us that it was probably a good deal to stay the course and let it all go.

We presented him with various challenges, but all in all it was a time of harmony. One of the senior monks, whom I was sure had been his spouse in a past life, had a way of getting under his skin (and seemed to do so intentionally at times). When he read and explained the sikkhāpada7 section of the Pātimokkha rules to the Sangha, whatever type of behavior was proscribed, that monk would act it out the next morning: walking on toes while going pindapat, smacking his lips while eating, and so on. After the pansah, the two of them went to Ayuttheya, to Ajahn Tawee’s monastery, at Luang Por’s directive, in order to learn how to conduct parivāsa8, an important monastic function. Ajahn Sumedho came back alone. When we gathered for tea, with eyes wide and nostrils flaring, he said, “I’ve really had it with that one!” and then did an imitation of the monk telling him off, bobbing and weaving and bending forward as he spoke: “Now Ajahn Sumedho, I want you to listen to me, because I’m going to tell you exactly what’s wrong with you…. The trouble with you is, you’re lacking in sacca9.” He drew himself up and with a great display of wrath said, “So I let him have it with both barrels!”

A couple of years later, after I had disrobed and was living in California, I asked another fellow who had been a novice at Wat Nanachat if he had ever met that monk. “No, I didn’t,” he said, “but I often heard Ajahn Sumedho speak about him with great feeling.”

Still, the two were joined at the hip and did actually seem to have a lot of fondness for each other. For several years, I’d always heard Ajahn Sumedho say, “This has been my best pansah ever” after the rains retreat concluded. But, after his second pansah as an abbot (which I spent at Wat Pah Pong), someone told me that one day at the bathing place he said, “This has been the worst pansah ever!”

Needless to say, Luang Por Chah was aware of Ajahn Sumedho’s weak points, which meant among other things that he liked to tweak him from time to time. “Everyone can tell when Sumedho is angry,” he once said, laughing. “His ears turn red.” One time Luang Por came to stay overnight at Bung Wai and left at dawn. As we helped Ajahn Sumedho on with his robes, we noticed that his sanghati, the outer robe, was a foot too short. We realized that Luang Por must have taken Ajahn Sumedho’s sanghati and left his.

“I can imagine the scene at Wat Pah Pong now,” one monk said. I added my two cents’ worth. “Luang Por is probably making his jokes about how farangs smell bad from drinking milk.”

Ajahn Sumedho’s face immediately darkened, and he said, “Sometimes I wish Luang Por would keep his jokes to himself!” (Having been the first farang, he was no doubt the butt of that one for several years.)

During the first year at Bung Wai, I think we all started to get the idea that sooner or later some of us would be going to the West to establish a monastery. “When we go to the West” would often get inserted into conversations about bhikkhu life. Then in May of 1976, Ajahn Sumedho and I, accompanied by the layman Pansak as our steward, traveled to the United States to visit his family and mine, at the invitation of my grandmother. In Bangkok he was asked to give a talk at Wat Boworn, where a number of farang monks stayed and farang laypeople came to study. In California, an old friend of mine invited him to speak at the Zen Center of Santa Cruz. There were numerous chats with monks and laypeople during the trip. It was inter- esting to watch him at work outside of the familiar environment of Wat Bung Wai and Wat Pah Pong. It usually took him a few minutes to warm up and get a feel for his audience, but once he got rolling the people were always thoroughly engaged. It was pretty clear to me that he was ready to teach in the West, or anywhere else.

On that trip I also got to see more personal aspects of him. He hadn’t seen his parents for twelve years and I think he felt some trepidation, unsure what it would be like. When we arrived in Los Angeles, we were met by the parents of Jotiko Bhikkhu, the Hamiltons, who hosted us for a couple of days. They then drove us to San Diego, to the home of Ajahn Sumedho’s sister. We stayed in a tent in their yard, and the next morning they took us to see his parents. I felt some tension building as we arrived. We stood outside for a few moments and then his father came out, shuffled towards us, and said, “Hi Bob,” as if he dropped by every week and this was just another visit.

I was introduced and we shook hands, though he took my name to be “Warner Panyo.” When he later introduced me to one of the neighbors, without batting an eyelash at the sight of two men in saffron robes, the elderly gent said, “Hi Warner” and shook my hand.

His parents seemed pretty robust for their age, especially his mother. They offered us a meal and then left us to eat in silence. As we were finishing, Ajahn Sumedho turned to me and said, “My mother looks so old and shriveled up, it makes me want to cry.”

I was having old friends call on me, so Ajahn Sumedho started to get a little nostalgic too and started thinking about looking up some people. Then one day as we sat in the tent, he tore up his list and said, “Robert Jackman is dead.” But he also told me later on that when he took leave of his parents, he told his father (with whom he didn’t have as much of a rapport as with his mother) that he loved him and appreciated him for being such a wonderful dad.

Most monks have their food obsessions and Ajahn Sumedho was no exception, though in this as in most things, he tended to simplicity. He was always game for a cup of coffee. Once after morning chanting at Wat Pah Pong I asked him if he’d like some instant coffee with cold water and a dash of salt, and full of enthusiasm, he said, “Sure!” as if the question itself needn’t be asked. He often drank coffee at night, and I asked him if it kept him awake. “It helps me sleep mindfully,” he said. His other great love was potatoes, especially potato salad. He once blurted out, “My mother makes the best potato salad!” when we were chatting after the meal, and then became a little red- faced, as he had laid down a rule that we wouldn’t talk about food during the pansah. So he was looking forward to potato salad on our trip, but of course would never request it, even from his own parents. When I met up with him in San Francisco, I asked if he got any potato salad, and almost pouting, he said he hadn’t. So when we were in New York and I was laid up in hospital after knee surgery, I suggested to my mother that Ajahn Sumedho would really appreciate some potato salad. The next day when she came to visit I asked if she had offered him some; she said she had, and added, “My God, he ate a whole pound of it!”

My friend had driven down from Santa Cruz with a Zen buddy and I went back with them, driving up the coast, camping out in Big Sur and meditating on a cliff overlooking the ocean, and enjoying coffee with refills the next morning. I spent a few days at my friend’s cabin in the hills and Ajahn Sumedho flew up to San Francisco later on.

Unfortunately I tore the cartilage in my knee while I was there and the joint swelled up badly, so after picking up Ajahn Sumedho at the airport we went to see a Chinese acupuncturist in San Francisco. He had an import shop, which was basically a front as he wasn’t licensed to practice medicine; when a patient showed up he would put the “Closed” sign in the window, lock the door, and pull down the shade.

He greeted my friend sternly, seemingly taking no note of the two monks. “How you living these days? Your mind like chop suey—too many things.” Then he looked at us. My friend told him a little about us and about my problem. He started talking about the times of persecution under Mao Zedong, how while the Buddhist monasteries got wiped out, the Taoists were more clever and went into hiding or melted into the lay population. He seemed to be weighing us up, perhaps showing his disapproval, but finally asked Ajahn Sumedho to hold out his wrist so he could take his pulses. He remarked that Ajahn Sumedho was quite a healthy specimen, asked him how much he slept (five hours a night), and put some needles in his chronically swollen foot. Ajahn also managed to speak a few words of Chinese to him, as he had studied it in University years before. He examined and treated me next (mercifully not asking how much I slept). When we were done, my friend asked what the fee was, but he just waved him off.

I stayed in New York to have knee surgery and Ajahn Sumedho returned to Thailand with Pansak via London. They stayed at the English Sangha Trust house in Hampstead. The Trust, which had been set up years before, expressly for the purpose of establishing a monastic presence in England, had been agonizing over how to find bhikkhus to fulfill their mission, and then all of a sudden Ajahn Sumedho was there. He fit the bill perfectly. I stopped there too a month later and everything I said to them about Ajahn Chah’s version of monastic life made good sense to them; it seemed to be exactly what they were hoping for. George Sharp, the chairman, came to Wat Pah Pong a few months later to invite Ajahn Chah England.

I spent the pansah at Wat Pah Pong and saw Ajahn Sumedho only occasionally. I visited on Christmas Day, when Luang Por gave his “Christ-Buddhamas” talk. There was a new sālā, mostly completed, and some new kutis, but the most striking thing about the monastery was the energy and creative spirit. One of the innovations at that time was early morning yoga. Ajahn Sumedho had tired of seeing monks fall asleep during morning sittings, so he asked Ven. Kittisāro to give yoga instruction before the morning meeting (which would have placed it around two am). So, when I made a plan to go tudong (wandering), I asked Ajahn Sumedho if I could stop at Bung Wai for a couple of days to upgrade my yoga techniques (Iyengar’s Light on Yoga had made the rounds a few years before and we were all fairly proficient) and get a train ticket to Bangkok, where I was planning to get acupuncture to revive my knees.

I left in March; Ajahn Sumedho went to England with Luang Por in May, and on the spur of the moment Luang Por decided to leave him there, together with Vens. Ānando and Viradhammo. Lucky for me: I decided to disrobe in the interim, and dreaded more than anything having to face Ajahn Sumedho with the news.

After disrobing, I had time to reflect on a lot of things, and one of them was that Ajahn Sumedho had been my teacher, right after Ajahn Chah in importance. I next saw him at Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts in December, 1979, about a half-year after Ajahn Chah’s visit. We discussed old times and new.

“I guess you heard about Gary,” I solemnly said. The monk nodded their heads. “And Mason,” I added, they nodded gravely once more. “What happened?” the IMS manager asked, sounding alarmed.

“They both got married,” Ven. Ānando replied.

The Sangha in England were meeting teachers and groups in other Buddhist traditions. Ajahn Sumedho had his favorites, though I was to find later on that he was always open to changing his mind. During the first year at Bung Wai, when he was away for a few days, we had been reading from one of Chogyam Trungpa’s books at the evening practice. When he returned, he voiced some disapproval, saying that Trungpa was of questionable morality from what he’d heard of him. But the following year he read “Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism” and was thoroughly taken with it. According to one monk who was visiting at the time, Ajahn Sumedho said “I don’t care what anybody says about him, this is the clearest thing about Dhamma that I’ve ever read!”

One of the staff later told me that Ajahn Sumedho said he felt my disrobing was misguided. Indeed, I’m sure I didn’t present a very impressive figure, and I did still feel a lot of kinship with the monks, but I was still certain I had done what I needed to do. I continued to correspond and keep abreast of what was going on in England and Thailand, but I wasn’t about to let Ajahn Sumedho get a hold of me and cloister me away.

After that I occasionally saw him in Thailand at Bung Wai or in Bangkok. He put on some weight and had the glow reminiscent of Ajahn Chah or Ajahn Fun. He had a great relaxed, uncontrived manner, often smiling and laughing gently at things, like an infant, I thought. But there was no fuzziness involved, as was evident when he gave talks or answered questions.

1. Farang: A Thai word referring to Westerners.

2. Tan: An honourific used in the Thai language which means “venerable.”

3. Pansah: The Thai word for vassa, the three month rains retreat observed by Buddhist monastics.

4. Bote: Comes from the Pāli word uposathā. The bote is where the monastics recite their rules of training every fortnight.

5. Vinaya: The Buddhist monastic code of discipline.

6. Gaen kanun: Jackfruit wood, chips of which were boiled down to make the reddish-ochre dye used by many Thai Forest Tradition monks.

7. Sikkhāpada: The section of the Vinaya dealing with rules of etiquitte and deportment.

8. Parivāsa: A period of probation a monk will undergo for transgressing certain training rules.

9. Sacca: Honesty, truthfulness.