The Journey of Chaiyaboon in Meditation : หน้า 27/200

One day, he came upon a book titled Dhammakaya written in the format of a sermon by the Great Abbot of Wat Paknam, who said: “Reading books alone is not enough to gain the perfect knowledge of Dhamma. One has to put Dhamma into practice until the Truth is revealed to him.” He later found an article in Vipassana Bantern-sarn, a publication on meditation which was about a nun named Khun Yai Chand, a disciple of Luang Por Wat Paknam, who possessed extraordinary meditative power. Fascinated by her story, Chaiyaboon determined to seek her out and learn meditation from her. Chaiyaboon finally met Khun Yai at Wat Paknam in 1963. He was then a freshman at Kasetsart University. Khun Yai agreed to accept him as her student. Through Khun Yai, Chaiyaboon finally found the answers to the questions that had lingered in his mind for a long time. “Yes, heaven and hell do exist,” Khun Yai told him. She explained, “Reaching high level meditative attainment allows one to possess special abilities to do wondrous things such as reading another person’s thought, seeing into the past or the future, recalling one’s past lives, or traversing to afterlife realms.” Chaiyaboon also learned that the true purpose of one’s life was to pursue Perfections (parami) and to attain Nibbana (Nirvana). This was a turning point in Chaiyaboon’s life. He began to practice meditation dili- _______________________ 1 Wat: Thai word for Buddhist temple. Wat Paknam is the name of a famous Buddhist temple in Thonburi, a sister city of Bangkok. 2 Vipassana: insight meditation 3 Khun Yai: a Thai word for grandmother