Phramongkolthepmuni
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Phramongkolthepmuni (Sodh Candasaro)(1884-1959), the late abbot of Wat Paknam Bhasicharoen, was the founder of the Thai Dhammakaya meditation school in 1914.
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[edit] Birth to ordination
Phramongkolthepmuni was born Sodh Mikaewnoi on 10 October 1884 to the family of a rice merchant in Songpinong district, Suphanburi, a province 100 km to the west of Bangkok. He was popular amongst all who knew him for his perseverance, honesty and generosity. At the beginning of July 1906, aged twenty-two, he was ordained at Wat Songpinong in his hometown and was given the Pāli name Candasaro.
[edit] Dhamma studies
As a student, Phramongkolthepmuni was a disciple of two traditions, unlike most of his contemporaries, and studied under masters of the oral meditation tradition as well as experts in scriptural analysis. He started to study meditation on the day following his ordination, and after his first rainy season, travelled far and wide in Thailand in order to study with all the renowned masters of the time.
[edit] Dhamma practice
He later moved to Bangkok to study the Scriptures. He completed the highest level of meditation practice in each school within a short period of time. Nevertheless, he was still not satisfied with his own competence in meditation, convinced that there must be something further that could help a man attain Nibbana in the same way that was possible in the time of the Buddha. In the twelfth year of his ordination, he stayed at Wat Bangkuvieng, Nonthaburi Province, during the rainy season. There, he began to practise meditation as his own master using the Visuddhimagga.
He reflected to himself that he had been practising meditation for eleven long years and had still not understood the core of knowledge which the Lord Buddha had taught. Thus, on the full-moon day of September 1914, he sat himself down in the main shrine hall of Wat Bangkuvieng, resolving not to waver in his practice of sitting meditation, whatever might seek to disturb his single-mindedness. He realised that holding such a vow might cost him his life, but acknowledged that he could not continue to be considered worthy of a monk's status unless he could fulfil this act of utmost dedication. He meditated using the mantra 'sammā-arahaṃ' and was surprised to discover that, before long, he experienced unprecedented degrees of pain, as severe as if the bones of his body were being torn apart. With great perseverance, he managed to let go of the contingent agitation of mind and found that his mind entered a new level of peace, coming to a standstill at a nucleus of concentration at the centre of his body, where there was a bright, spherical structure of about the size of an egg yolk. Accompanying this experience, inexplicable bliss filled his body, rinsing away all the agony. His mind remained in unshakable concentration upon the bright, spherical structure throughout the day, whatever he was doing. Meditating again far into the night, he allowed his mind to go deeper and deeper through the pathway at centre of the sphere, until he discovered the dhammakāya (dharmakaya), the most refined of the inner bodies, which is eternal and free from defilement.
[edit] Teaching
Phramongkolthepmuni devoted the rest of his life to teaching and furthering the depth of knowledge of this meditation technique. It is this technique which has come to be known as 'Dhammakaya meditation' (i.e., meditation for attaining the dhammakāya). In 1916, Phramongkolthepmuni was appointed abbot of Wat Paknam Bhasicharoen, and there he devoted his time to researching the insights of Dhammakāya meditation and refined the technique, to make it more systematic, through experimenting with the ways the meditation could best be applied for the common good. During an exceptionally long ministry of over half-a-century, Phramongkolthepmuni was unflagging in teaching all comers the way to attain to dhammakaya, with activities nearly every day of the week. He recognised the need to open up and redevelop the oral tradition of meditation teaching, which was becoming disorganised and rare in Thai Buddhism.
He provided the opportunity, with the technique, for meditators to verify for themselves, in their firsthand experience, the success of the technique. Indeed, Phramongkolthepmuni would challenge others to meditate in order that they might verify for themselves the claims which he made about the technique. It was the response to this need which led to the innovative building at Wat Paknam of the 'meditation workshop'. Phramongkolthepmuni declared that this workshop should be kept in use by meditators for twenty-four hours a day, day and night, and selected from amongst his followers the most gifted of the meditators. Their 'brief' was to devote their lives to meditation research for the common good of society.
[edit] Decease
Phramongkolthepmuni was taken ill in 1956. Phramongkolthepmuni brought the work of the meditation workshop to an end by dismissing all of the meditators except four or five of the most devoted nuns. It was these nuns who were heirs to the oral tradition of Dhammakāya when Phramongkolthepmuni died in 1959, aged seventy-five.
