About This Teaching
This biographical section recounts Ajahn Chah's youth. At eighteen he fell in love with his friend Put's stepsister, and the two planned to marry after his national service and a rains retreat as a monk. Then, on the road home from the fields, Put told him he was taking the girl; Put's parents had arranged the match to avoid paying a bride price. Ajahn Chah later recalled going completely numb.
He stayed friends with Put but avoided the young woman, and admitted that for his first seven years as a monk he could not let go of thoughts of her, until meditation gave him a way to still them. In later years he would joke that he owed Put a debt of gratitude. He also spoke of a long-standing urge, before ordaining, to go off and be alone.
Two further episodes are told: his restraint when a widowed friend's wife lay down beside him, and a brothel visit that ended in disgust, with him suddenly holding a bowl of noodles at a street stall, a comic foreshadowing of his later cravings.