1. childhood
Ajahn Chah was born in Ubon province in North-East Thailand. And the important thing for people to know about North-east Thailand is ethnically different, separate from Central Thailand. And in fact it was separated from the central Thailand by teak Malayan[0:20] forest for most of a history of the country. And so the people there are ethnically Lao rather than Thai speakers. Lao dialect. And there is always symptom of separation. And Thai people looked down on Isan people in the past. [0:49].....and you could almost look on.. say that they looked on north-east Thailand as Siberia and nobody would ever think of going there. And people were a kind of unsophisticated and unintelligent. Those kinds of prejudices. But NE Thailand is also the place where most of great teachers when we look back to enlightened being came from, including Ajahn Chah. If you look on reproduction of Arahants, enlightened beings as significant, you could say that it is a great will power. I certainly look at it that way. Isan has more hill areas to the North, hounded years ago quite thickly forested, but in the south of the Isan, south of the... that’s the word by which NE Thailand is referred is being cultivated for quite a long time formally part of the Angrok... Empire way back, hundreds houndeds years ago. And the part Ajahn Chah grew up in is called Ubon. Ubon is a Thai derivation of a pali word upala meaning lotus. The area where he was brought up is flat area, and it’s characterized by the river Mun which is tributary of the Mekong flows through Ubon province to the Eeast, where it flows into Mekong flowing southwards and the Mekong provides the border between Thai and Lao. That’s about hounded kilometres away from the city of Ubon. Where the houndred kilometres to the south reaches the line of hills which provides border between Thailand and Cambodia. So it’s a kind of little corner of southern part of NE Thailand. Soil’s very very poor. Growing rice is difficult. Sticky rice that grows can only be harvested once a year. A very little irrigation possible. So life is being tough for people in that area. Ajah chah was born in a small village called ??? it’s a few kilometres to south of Ubon and on the other side of the river. And he was born on 17 June 1918 in a quite wealthy family by the rural standards of those standards meaning quite a large portion of land cultivated – well I say quite a few acres, not hundreds of acres – and some cattle and tobacco plantation. And he was the 5th of eleven children [4:10] and again in most cultures of that times families tend to be large because of quite high mortality rate and no social security networks so parents would be hoping their children would look after them in their old age. And also I think significantly Thai-Lao people (I said that separate but they come from the modern have unitised then separated. They seem to came from the same group of people Southern China originally. They love children and so he’d been brought up in a very warm supportive environment.
You mentioned that so many of the people rumour to be arahants came from this area – Isan or even Ubon province. What are some of the other names that rumour to have that kind of attainment?
What that names we know about are disciples of Ajahn Mun because previous to Ajahn Mun and his was living in 2nd half of XIX first half XX century. We just don’t have any records so some people believe that there was something new arouse with Ajahn Mun and there wasn’t really any practise going on and people realizing state of attainment before that. And it’s hard to qualified where that’s kind of true
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