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Only One Breath
by Ajahn Sumedho
in 01 Apr 2007
 (...previous)  And my mind actually went flying into outer space, or it seemed like it, and I thought, 'Maybe that's the secret. If I can just get somebody to buy me tinned milk.'
When I went to Wat Pah Pong the following year I kept thinking, 'Oh, I had all those wonderful experiences in Nong Khai. I had all those wonderful kind of beautiful visions, and all those fantastic kind of floating experiences and blazing insights, and it seemed like I understood everything. And you even thought you were an arahant.' At Wat Pah Pong, that first year there, I didn't have much of anything. I just kept trying to do all the things I'd done in Nong Khai to get these things. But after a while, even using strong cups of coffee didn't work any more. I didn't seem to get those exhilarations, those fantastic highs and blazing insights, that I had the first year. So after the first Vassa [3] at Wat Pah Pong, I thought, 'This place is not for me. I think I'll go and try to do repeat what happened in Nong Khai.' And I left Ajahn Chah and went to live on Pupek mountain in Sakorn Nakorn province.
There, at last, I was in an idyllic spot. However, for the alms-round there you had to leave before dawn and go down this mountain, which was quite a climb, and wait for the villagers to come. They'd bring you food, and then you had to climb all the way back up, and eat this food before twelve noon. That was quite a problem.
I was with one other monk, a Thai monk, and I thought, 'He's really very good,' and I was quite impressed with him. But when we were on this mountain, he wanted me to teach him English - so I was really angry with him and wanted to murder him.
It was in an area where there was a lot of terrorists and communists, in North-East Thailand. There were helicopters flying overhead sometimes checking us out. Once they came and took me down to the provincial town, wondering whether I was a communist spy.
Then I got violently ill, so ill that they had to carry me down the mountain. I was stuck in a wretched place by a reservoir under a tin roof in the hot season with insects buzzing in and out of my ears and orifices. With horrible food. I nearly died, come to think of it. I almost didn't make it.
But it was during that time in that tin-roof lean-to that a real change took place. I was really
despairing and sick and weak and totally depressed, and my mind would fall into these hellish realms, with the terrible heat and discomfort. I felt like I was being cooked; it was like torture.
Then a change came. Suddenly, I just stopped my mind; I refused to get caught in that negativity and I started to practise anapanasati. I used the breath to concentrate my mind and things changed very quickly. After that, I recovered my health and it was time to enter the next Vassa, so I went back - I'd promised Ajahn Chah I'd go back to Wat Pah Pong for the Vassa - and my robes were all tattered and torn and patched. I looked terrible. When Ajahn Chah saw me, he just burst out laughing. And I was so glad to get back after all that!
I had been trying to practise and what I had wanted were the memories of these insights. I'd forgotten what the insights really were. I was so attached to the idea of working in some kind of ascetic way, like I did the first year, when asceticism really worked. At that time being malnourished and being alone had seemed to provide me with insight, so that for the following several years I kept trying to create the conditions where I would be able to have these fantastic insights.
But the following two or three years seemed to be years of just getting by. Nothing much seemed to happen. I was six months on this mountain before I returned to Wat Pah Pong, just deciding to stay on and follow the insights I had. One of the insights the first year was that I should find a teacher, and that I should learn how to live under a discipline imposed on me by that teacher. So I did that. I realised Ajahn Chah was a good teacher and had a good standard of monastic discipline, so I stayed with him.
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