Forest Sangha newsletter-76index

July 2006 2549 Number 76
The Forest Sangha is a world-wide Buddhist community
in the Thai Forest tradition of Ajahn Chah

Gratitude for Luang Por Chah

Excerpt from a talk given at Amaravati on 17 June 2003 by Luang Por Sumedho

This evening we have an opportunity to reflect on the great teacher Ajahn Chah. Today is his birthday, and each year at this time a Sangha meeting is held at his monastery Wat Pah Pong in Thailand where disciples and lay people gather. They usually hang their glots (mosquito nets supported by a large umbrella) under the trees, camping out in this way for the week. In the evenings monks give talks on Dhamma.
The great teacher Ajahn Mun, who died many years before I arrived in Thailand in 1966, was one of the great meditation masters of modern times, and many of his disciples were, by then, becoming increasingly well known. Ajahn Chah said his association with Ajahn Mun was very brief...

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The Founding of Wat Pah Pong

By Ajahn Jayasaro

On the 8th March 1954 the gorged red sun was already dropping below the forest ahead of them. As Ajahn Chah and his disciples walked westwards from Bahn Gor village, the cracked earth of the paddy fields on either side of them soon gave way to trees - at first scattered, spindly and forlorn in the heat, and then increasingly luxuriant - patterning the cart track with welcome pools of shade. Pong Forest, their destination, loomed ahead of them, dense and cool. Despite the deafening shrill of cicadas as they put up their glots at the edge of the forest, the bhikkhus found Pah Pong’s presence calm and benign....

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The Chapter of Octads

The Atthaka Vagga,(‘chapter containing suttas with eight verses’ - although some suttas have more than eight verses) is the fourth chapter of the Sutta Nipata. Its last three suttas are translated here by Tahn Varado.

Introduction
Venerable Mahakaccana was one of the eminent disciples of the Buddha, considered chief amongst monks who could explain in full the brief sayings of the Buddha. He was born in Ujjeni town (modern-day Ujjain) in an area called Avanti. This area, now part of modern-day Madhya Pradesh, lay 400 kilometres south-west of Savatthi, one of the centres of early Buddhism. Having travelled to visit the Buddha and having attained arahantship, he returned to Avanti.
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