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The Early Years of Venerable Ajahn Chah

The Life and Teachings of Venerable Ajahn Chah Adapted from Uppalamani

It was in Bahn Gor, a small village a few hours walk to the south of Ubon town in the Isahn region of Thailand, that one of the greatest monks of the modern era was born, and close to which he would later establish a forest monastery that was to attain a world-wide reputation. His full monastic title came to be Tan Chao Khun Phra Bodhinyana Thera, but he is known familiarly as Luang Por (Venerable Father) Chah and to his disciples as simply ‘Luang Por’.Luang Por Chah was born on the seventh waning day of the seventh moon of the Year of the Horse, 1918. He was the fifth child of eleven born to Mah and Pim Chooangchote, who, like the vast majority of their generation, were subsistence rice farmers. The name Chah means clever, capable and resourceful. In accordance with custom, Luang Por’s mother gave birth to him kneeling, her arms above her head grasping a rope suspended from the rafters of the house. Afterwards she endured fifteen days of confinement, lying with her stomach as close as possible to a charcoal brazier to ‘dry out’ her womb – an ancient custom that still survived in the countryside despite, some seventy years previously, King Mongkut railing against it as ‘this senseless and monstrous crime of having women smoked and roasted’. In the first months after his weaning, Luang Por's mother would have fed him by chewing and masticating sticky rice in her own mouth first and then gently spooning it into his.