Ajahn Chah sits in the centre of the fever

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• Meditating through the fever

  In brief: Three or four weeks into an undiagnosed fever (later found to be scrub typhus) in a basic Ubon hospital ward, with no energy and nothing…

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  But I do remember one of the times. And I wish I had been a bit more mindful, but I can understand why I wasn't cuz I had such such incredibly low energy. Never had so much low energy as that time fever of about 3 or 4 weeks. And anyway that uh one day I got sort of depressed but not a depression which was um negative. I don't know that I thought oh this is really awful. Nothing's working. This is terrible. So why don't I do some meditation actually practice know what my teacher would teach me what the Buddha would say do something useful. And this was like three weeks or four weeks into a a very heavy fever and nothing was working, feeling just so exhausted. So I decided to meditate and obviously not cross-legged but just laying on the bed, laying on my back or half on my back, half on this, half on that and being able just to let go of my body. And it was such a wonderful experience just sitting there or not so not sitting. They're laying there with legs all over the place. We've seen people in hospital with a fever. They're not really caring about just how their body is positioned. You're all over the place. But then just going deep inside away from my body, closing my eyes. It was in a a ward of a hospital. So there's lots of noise there, but I couldn't hear anything. No smell. No taste, just going inside to some nice beautiful mind state. Oh, it's just a wonderful time. And I'm really sure that that would be when the fever stopped simply because that's the nature of the mind. It's incredibly powerful and it's so powerful inside. It just stops all this stuff in your body and very happy afterwards.

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• 'Better to die than disrobe'

  In brief: Ajahn Pasanno, an old friend, suffers constant stomach pain in Thailand; a Bangkok doctor finds an ulcer and says the only cure is to eat…

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  This monk, you won't mind me mentioning Ajahn Passano, is a very good good monk, a good old friend. And he was over in in Thailand. Eventually went over to United States and started a monastery over there. But this one day, the you know, he always had terrible tummy ache. And when he checked it out with the doctor in Bangkok or somewhere, they found out it was a stomach ulcer. And how can you cure it? And the doctor said, "Well, you know, just the only way you can cure it is probably you have to eat in the afternoon." And that's a no-no for monks. We can't eat in the afternoon. Not allowed to. So he said went to see Ajahn Chah. Said, "Look, I have to eat in the afternoon, otherwise it's not going to heal. It's just really painful." You know what Ajahn Chah said, my teacher? I don't think you get away with it these days. He said "It's better to die than disrobe." He's really tough. It's not what Ajahn Passano wanted to hear. But anyways, I wasn't allowed to. But then uh we got to later, short time later, Ajahn Passano developed the scrub typhus, you know, which all of our monks got in that monastery. Had a very high fever. And when the typhus, you know, healed itself so did the stomach ulcer. He was okay.

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• The tangled brain cleared before the second operation

  In brief: A Malaysian man in Penang had a rare disease he described as things in the brain physically tangled; after one painful operation it seemed…

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  this guy in Pinang is a Malaysian gentleman. And he told me, "Oh, he had this terrible disease, a very rare disease where the best way he could describe it is things in the brain were all tangled up, physically tangled." And he said he had one operation for that and it's really painful and very sort of unpleasant. But he went through it and they thought it was cured. It was very very rare. And then when later on he had some aches and pains in his brain, in his skull, then they said again that it's reoccurred. It's very very rare that reoccurs, but it's back again. They showed him the the CT scans and he was really scared because you've been through these terrible operations once. You don't want to go through them again. Ah, what am I going to do? And so I told him about meditating, meditating properly and just relax. Don't be afraid. Don't try and cure it, but care for it. That's s the trick there. When you try and cure things, you get tense with it. When you care for it, you just allow it to be really relaxed and at ease. And so he did that. And I think straight after the what was supposed to be the operation, he came back up to Pinang, I think, just to see me and just to thank me. He said, "What happened?" He said, "They took the CT scan again." You know, just before the second operation and they said the words to him, "Uh, sir, I'm sorry to say this, but there's something wrong with the CT machine. The cat's going. We have to do it again." And they put him through the CT scan again and realized nothing wrong with the machine. It's something they didn't expect. They whatever the disease was scrambling up some of the stuff in his brain had actually unscrambled and he was perfectly healthy again. So what the heck is going on? They never seen that before. That's he did that sort of procedure in Singapore

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• Maha Bua sat in the cool centre of the fever

  In brief: Visiting Ajahn Maha Bua (late king's teacher), Brahm hears his talk about malaria under Ajahn Man: instead of fleeing the fever he went…

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  when I was with this monk mahaboah he was a very famous monk he was the the late king of Thailand's teacher and but he never realizes how well I understood Thai at the time because he decided to give a talk and he'd said this is for that Western Market just come which was me gave me a special talk all the monks were there and afterwards he asked for it to be translated I didn't need that I understood it perfectly and obviously other people like that talk because I've seen it you know published you know in little booklets which they have and the core of that teaching was an experience mahabua had at when he was a student of adjun Charles teacher this guy called ajanman this monk great man and it was when the malaria fever now remember these are Forest monks living in the jungles of Thailand Northeast Thailand North Thailand even Central Thailand at a time when malaria was Rife it was just another Forest monks disease everybody got it and uh you learn how to deal with it yeah there was some herbal medicines but a lot of times you just dealt with it just as an aside I'm just going off and I love tangents but this is how he overcame his malaria fever he said he was still in just the first years of his Monastery upon where he settled down where monks like me went and listened to his teachings right in the middle of a malaria fever but he was meditating at the time meditating with a fever got no choice you know we can't sort of lay down well yeah he's still got the fever it's still really sort of uh aches and all lots of joint pains and no no energy so they decided to meditate and what he did was important it's part of the story instead of running away from it you know what it's like when it's something which is hurting which is life-threatening we always want to escape run away get rid of it find a place where you know we can live without this torturing us but he decided to go in the opposite direction go right into it now face it and go right towards it this is what we do in meditation we don't go away from stuff we always go into it we don't go on to another thing always into where we are now it's always in in never on on in meditation so you may hear me say about stages of meditation yeah that's almost like I call that land landmarks so you can some find some idea of where you are it's always going in this stage into the next stage into the next stage always going in so he went so far in to the malaria fever then he came to like a spot like the eye in the middle of a cyclone where it was really cool that's how we described it and around it was just like fire really intense he could feel the fire but he was cool in the middle he knew it was there but you know he was in a quiet calm peaceful cool spot right in the center and he said it got hotter and hotter and hotter but he always remained in that cool spot in the center and it got so hot it exploded and that was the end of the malaria fever never had it again

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