Forest Path - Amaravati Buddhist Monastery

twain shall meet 7
recently been ordained. They exchanged their stories. Sumedho told
Sommai how he had returned to college after the Korean War and
gained a Masters degree in Asian Studies from Berkeley. After graduation
he had joined the Peace Corps and taught English in Borneo
before moving on to a spell at Thammasat University in Bangkok;
that it was after receiving meditation instruction at the nearby Wat
Mahadhatu that his interest in Buddhism, born in Korea, had ripened
into the decision to become a bhikkhu. Now, though, after
some months of solitary meditation in a small hut, Sumedho was
beginning to feel some frustration about the form of his monastic
life, and was feeling the need for a more rounded way of practice.
Tan Sommai’s descriptions of Wat Pa Phong were opportune and inspired
him. His preceptor kindly gave permission for him to leave
and the two bhikkhus set off to walk down to Ubon, Sumedho feeling
‘as if I was being pulled by a magnet’.
The attractive force held. Eventually Sumedho would stay for ten
years, form the nucleus around which the Western community of
bhikkhus would coalesce, establish Wat Pa Nanachat, before moving
to England to begin at Chithurst in Southern England, the first of
nine overseas branch monasteries.
Someone once asked Luang Por whether he had any special connection
with Westerners that led to so many becoming his disciples. He
replied that his acquaintance was restricted to cowboy movies he
had watched before he ordained.
“It was deja vu — when I was a small child I went to see a
cowboy movie with my friends and one of the characters was
this big man smoking cigarettes. He was so tall it fascinated
me. What kind of human being could have such a huge body?
The image has stuck in my mind until now. And so a lot of
Westerners have come. If you’re talking about causes, there
was that.
“When Sumedho arrived, he was just like the cowboy in the
movie. What a long nose! As soon as I saw him, I thought to myself,
“This bhikkhu is a Westerner”, and I told him that I’d seen
him before in a movie. So there were supporting causes and
conditions. That’s why I’ve come to have a lot of Western kith
and kin. They come even though I can’t speak English. I’ve