The life and times of Luang Phaw Wat Paknam : หน้า 12/163

The text in the image reads: "The tradition of meditation in Thailand is as old as Buddhism in Thailand itself. During the time of Luang Phaw Wat Paknam, there were several ancient texts of meditation written in Thai along with contemporary masters who could explicate them. All of the meditation techniques available at the time had their shortfalls. They were limited in their results — often deviating in search of the miraculous rather than leading to the wisdom known by the Buddha. Elements of the Dhammakāya meditation technique rediscovered by Luang Phaw Wat Paknam were present in some of the contemporary meditation techniques of the time, but none of these allowed samatha¹ to develop naturally into vipassanā² without the need for conceptualization. When Luang Phaw Wat Paknam was born in 1885, having attained the rarity of a human birth, he resolved with exceptional fortitude to dedicate his life to meditation and the renaissance of Buddhism in Thailand. In the verses, Tamo tamaparāyano, Tamo jotiparāyano Joti tamaparāyano, Joti jtoparāyano³ the Lord Buddha identified four different types of life path for people born in our world. Some people were born out of darkness into darkness. The darkness refers to the residue of evil deeds in peoples’ past lives, that they could escape only after many hundreds of thousands of lifetimes in the fires of hell. When born in the human realm, they wasted their opportunity as a human, doing no further good deeds and were eventually reborn back ¹ . for definition see p.147 ². for definition see p.148 ³. Tama Sutta A.ii.85 14"