..续本文上一页ned as a monk in the provincial capital in 1892. At the time of his ordination, there were two broad types of Buddhism available in Thailand. The first can be called Customary Buddhism -- the mores and rites handed down over the centuries from teacher to teacher with little, if any, reference to the Pali Canon. For the most part, these customs taught monks to live a sedentary life in the village monastery, serving the local villagers as doctors or fortune tellers. Monastic discipline tended to be loose. Occasionally, monks would go on a pilgrimage they called "dhutanga" which bore little resemblance to the classic dhutanga practices. Instead, it was more an undisciplined escape valve for the pressures of sedentary life. Moreover, monks and lay people practiced forms of meditation that deviated from the path of tranquillity and insight outlined in the Pali canon. Their practices, called vichaa aakhom, or incantation knowledge, involved initiations and invocations used for shamanistic purposes, such as protective charms and magical powers. They rarely mentioned nirvana except as an entity to be invoked for shamanic rites.

　　The second type of Buddhism available at the time was Reform Buddhism, based on the Pali canon and begun in the 1820”s by Prince Mongkut, who later became King Rama IV (and still later was portrayed in the musical The King and I). Prince Mongkut was ordained as a monk for twenty-seven years before ascending the throne. After studying the canon during his early years as a monk, he grew discouraged by the level of practice he saw around him in Thai monasteries. So he reordained among the Mons -- an ethnic group that straddled the Thai-Burmese border and occupied a few villages across the river from Bangkok -- and studied Vinaya and the classic dhutanga practices under the guidance of a Mon teacher. Later, his brother, King Rama III, complained that it was disgraceful for member of the royal family to join an ethnic minority, and so built a monastery for the Prince-Monk on the Bangkok side of the river. There, Mongkut attracted a small but strong following of like-minded monks and lay supporters, and in this way the Dhammayut (lit., In Accordance with the Dhamma) movement was born.

　　In its early years, the Dhammayut movement was an informal grouping devoted to Pali studies, focusing on Vinaya, the classic dhutanga practices, a rationalist interpretation of the Dhamma, and the revival of meditation techniques taught in the Pali canon, such as recollection of the Buddha and mindfulness of the body. None of the movement”s members, however, could prove that the teachings of the Pali canon actually led to enlightenment. Mongkut himself was convinced that the path to nirvana was no longer open, but he felt that a great deal of merit could be made by reviving at least the outward forms of the earliest Buddhist traditions. Formally taking a bodhisattva vow, he dedicated the merit of his efforts to future Buddhahood. Many of his students also took vows, hoping to become disciples of that future Buddha.

　　Upon disrobing and ascending the throne after his brother”s death in 1851, Rama IV was in a position to impose his reforms on the rest of the Thai Sangha, but chose not to. Instead, he quietly sponsored the building of new Dhammayut centers in the capital and the provinces, which was how -- by the time of Ajaan Mun -- there came to be a handful of Dhammayut monasteries in Ubon.

　　Ajaan Mun felt that Customary Buddhism had little to offer and so he joined the Dhammayut order, taking a student of Prince Mongkut as his preceptor. Unlike many who joined the order at the time, he wasn”t interested in the social advancement that would come with academic study and ecclesiastical appointments. Instead, his life on the farm had impr…

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