About This Teaching
After fleeing Laos ahead of the Communist takeover in late 1975, an American woman and her husband Paul came to Wat Pah Pong, she as a nun called Mae Chee Kamfa and he as Venerable Titapo, agreeing to try to stay five years. Contact between them was limited to occasional visits and notes left in the forest. One afternoon Titapo was brewing forbidden private tea in the forest when he turned to find Ajahn Chah watching; Ajahn Chah knocked over the jars with his stick, spat and walked off without a word. Later, when visitors praised his Western disciples, Ajahn Chah agreed, then pointed at Titapo and called him really stupid; Titapo said one cannot get angry with a mountain, which delighted him.
Near the end of the five years Mae Chee Kamfa converted to Christianity, and after they left Titapo adopted her faith. They wrote that their practice had brought no tangible results. When a photo of them with their first child arrived, Ajahn Chah looked at it and said that at last they had seen the results of their practice.