Student / Teacher

Student / Teacher

§ “Whatever you do, always think of your teacher. If you forget your teacher, you’re cutting yourself off at the root.”

§ “A person who goes from teacher to teacher doesn’t really have any teachers at all.”

§ On occasion people would present Ajaan Fuang with amulets, and he would hand them out among his students — but only rarely among those who were especially close to him. One day a monk who had lived several years with him couldn’t help but complain, “Why is it that when you get good amulets, you never give any to me, and always to everybody else?”

Ajaan Fuang replied, “I’ve already given you lots of things better than that. Why don’t you accept them?”

§ “Meditators who live close to their teacher, but who don’t understand him, are like a spoon in a pot of curry: It’ll never know how sweet, sour, salty, rich or hot the curry is.”

§ Ajaan Fuang’s analogy for students who always have to ask their teachers for advice on how to handle even minor problems in everyday life: “They’re just like baby puppies. As soon as they defecate they have to run to their mother to have her lick them off. They’ll never grow up on their own.”

§ “Students who get stuck on their teachers are like gnats. No matter how much you chase them away, they keep coming back and won’t leave you alone.”

§ “If a teacher praises a student to his face, it’s a sign that that’s as far as the student will go — he probably won’t be able to practice to any greater heights in this lifetime. The reason the teacher praises him is so that he’ll be able to take pride in the fact that at least he’s made it this far. His heart will have something good to hold on to when he needs it at death.”

§ Many of Ajaan Fuang’s students were convinced that he was able to read their minds, because time after time he would broach topics that happened to be going through their heads or weighing down their hearts at the moment. I myself had many experiences like this, and many were reported to me while I was compiling this book. In most cases of this sort, though, what he had to say had special meaning only for those directly involved, and so I’ll ask to pass over them here. But there are two cases I’d like to mention, since they strike me as being useful for all who practice the Dhamma.

Once, one of his students — a young man — took the bus from Bangkok to Rayong to help work on the chedi. He got off at the mouth of the road leading to the wat, but didn’t feel like walking the six kilometers it would take to get there, so he sat at the noodle stand by the intersection and said to himself — as a challenge to Ajaan Fuang — “If Than Phaw is really something special, may a car come by and give me a lift to the wat.” One hour passed, two, three, and not a single car or truck turned into the road, so he finally had to walk the distance on foot.

When he arrived at the wat, he went to Ajaan Fuang’s hut to pay his respects, but as soon as Ajaan Fuang saw him approach, he got up, entered his room and closed the door. This shook the student a little, but still he bowed down in front of the closed door. The moment he finished, Ajaan Fuang opened the door a crack and said, “Look. I didn’t ask for you to come here. You came of your own free will.”

Another time, after the chedi was finished, the same young man was sitting in meditation at the chedi, in hopes that a voice would whisper the winning number of the next lottery in his ear. What he heard, though, was the sound of Ajaan Fuang actually walking past and saying, as if to no one in particular, “Exactly what are you taking as your refuge?”