About This Teaching
One rains retreat at Luang Por Kinnaree's monastery tested Ajahn Chah deeply. Ajahn Chah walked meditation until his path wore into a furrow, while his teacher seemed to potter about mending things. He privately judged that Luang Por Kinnaree was getting nowhere, and later admitted he was wrong. The lesson he drew was that a teacher's vision far exceeds our own, and that the essence of practice is the effort to uproot defilements, not the hours spent sitting and walking.
During that retreat a fierce storm of sexual desire arose, with vivid sexual hallucinations that lasted ten days. The text explains the strict monastic rules on celibacy that left him only patient endurance. He even had a layman cut a walking path deep in the forest so he could walk at night. In later years he spoke of this to his disciples so they would see such feelings are natural and can be overcome, and he insisted the episode be included in his first biography.
The retreat also brought a vision of Ajahn Mun offering him a radiant jewel, which fired his enthusiasm for the rest of the retreat. On leaving, Luang Por Kinnaree praised his effort but warned him to be wary of giving talks.