About This Teaching
This biographical episode follows Ajahn Chah as he returned toward Ubon after a period of wandering practice. Stopping in villages where people remembered him, he was invited to teach Dhamma in the evenings. His vivid similes and stories drew villagers who came not only for news of his travels but also for the force and clarity of his teaching. During one stay, a devoted lay couple asked whether he would accept their teenage son as an attendant and prepare him for ordination. The boy, Tongdee, later joined another youth, Tiang, and the two trained for novice ordination. They can be regarded as Ajahn Chah’s first two disciples. The episode marks an important transition. Ajahn Chah was still a wandering practitioner developing his own training, yet responsibility for others was beginning to arise naturally around him. Teaching, discipline, and example were becoming part of his life. His return home also revealed changes in his relationship with family and old friends. The outgoing young man they had known had become more reserved and inward. Ajahn Chah was particularly concerned that his mother keep the five precepts strictly. His growing confidence in Dhamma expressed itself not only in solitary meditation but in a wish to help those closest to him develop wholesome qualities. This section from Stillness Flowing shows the beginnings of Ajahn Chah’s role as a teacher: a few villagers, two young novices, and the conviction that Dhamma should be shared through both words and example.