Mr. Thanu Manachaiyaruk, the Great Donator who used to donate gold for casting Luang Pu Statue, the amount of his donated gold vertically arranged was higher than his height.

Mr. Thanu Manachaiyaruk, the Great Donator who used to donate gold for casting Luang Pu Statue, the amount of his donated gold vertically arranged was higher than his height. https://dmc.tv/a4138

Dhamma Articles > The Most Ven. Sodh Candasaro
[ Sep 19^th, 2008 ] - [ read : 18268 ]

Mr. Thanu Manachaiyaruk

The Great Donator who used to donate gold for casting Luang Pu Statue, the amount of his donated gold vertically arranged was higher than his height.

According to being threatened by the economic crisis, Mr. Thanu Manachaiyaruk used to be in enormous debt with the bank ten years ago. Nevertheless, he overcame the crisis and became wealthy in the midst of IMF. He has been the CEO of the Chaiyapruek Foundation Pile and Crane Limited Company. And he has also been the president of the Petthanee Concrete Limited Company. Positions which he continuous to hold to this day

"I previously ran a small business which manufactured wooden foundation piles. But after the government announced a blockade on the lumbering of forested timber, I switched to manufacturing reinforced concrete foundation piles. I began the manufacture of these concrete products without out any previous knowledge of the process, but adopted a process of continual learning until was able to increase production RCFP's (reinforced concrete foundation piles) and ready made flooring. I also acquired a pile driving crane and was then able to offer the entire pile driving service.

During this period we could not manufacture enough products to meet demand. We therefore had to open another two factories which are Bangkok Concrete Production Limited and Petthanee Concrete.

Due to the demand for pc wire ( a competent required in the manufacture of reinforced concrete piles) which was further increased by our new factory/ices

I decided to set up a pc wire manufacturing plant: Steel wire Bangkok Limited, as there were few manufacturers producing PC wire at this time.

This was a very prosperous time for the businesses as the construction and real estate sectors were booming under the government of General Chatchai Chunhawan."

There were many reasons which made him decide to become involved in the wire PC business, despite no previous knowledge of it:

"When I set up the company I borrowed around 395 millions baht. The existing PC Wire companies then formed a monopoly investing over 400 millions baht each and in an attempt to control the market they then dumped the price of PC Wire from 29 to 13 baht per kg. hoping that this would squeeze men out and cause my business to fail as they were afraid I would take market share away from them.

This was a very tough time for me with limited experience, no customers and being in overwhelming debt. In fact the monopoly were selling product at a loss and figured that this was a strategy they could afford to adopt over a short period of time to ensure that they maintained their majority stake of the market."

" This was an incredibly stressful time and I was in a terrible situation. I could not quit as all the investment was borrowed equally I did not know how to find money to return to the bank. I had to borrow money from my relatives 3m from one, 5m and 10m from two others. Even though I had been able to borrow lots of money from everyone around me it seemed pointless as I was unable to reduce my debt.

However I endured and worked hard without rest, but things became worse and worse. I suffered sleepless nights, significant weight loss and nearly became neurotic with all the pressure these problems provided me with each day. My wife cried a lot every day and my life seemed so terrible that we planned to run away, but where could we go? We had no money and could not go abroad, so we decided to go live a quiet life up country, where no one new us as we were unable to pay of the debt we had accumulated."

During that period someone persuaded me to go to the mediation retreat, as they had witnessed my stressed condition. I declined at first as I thought who could possibly meditate while being so worried. More over I had no money and could not figure out how I could get money if I went for the meditation. I was invited many times and declined, but finally I relented and thought that it may actually help to relieve my stress.

During my time at the 7 day meditation retreat at Sun Bua Chaing Mai, Luang pee Suthummo asked why I looked so serious. I confided in him that I was in a terrible situation, with creditors around me, it looked as though I would lose my house, Land, factories and all my companies.

I was ready to run away. Luang Pee told me that there was nothing that could help me except merit in myself. Hence, the merit can help and it must be a big merit which has enough power. He suggested that I become the President of the first golden casting ceremony of Luang Pu Wat Pak Num (1994), but this would require a significant donation in total of around 1,200,000 million baht.

To be honest, I had no money and if I wanted to do this big merit, then I would have to borrow more money. I had too many old debts already and my thoughts were that it was not right to borrow even more money to do the merit. More importantly, what would happen if I did this big merit and even then my business still could not recover ?

I spent all night thinking of this and my final thought was if the business could not recover it would not make any significant difference to be another 10 million baht in debt to do the big merit with Luang Pu. So I made the decision to be President of the casting ceremony and decided to find the money to buy all the gold necessary.

I made a wish to Luang Pu to help me get over the business crisis.

I would like to clarify at this point that Luang Por Dhammachayo used to forbid anyone to borrow money to perform merit as this does not follow the main transcendent as it will cause worry, but my case was an exceptional individual circumstance and I did it secretly as I believed that if you wish for the big merit , then you'd better do (with all ones might) the best you can and you induce others to do so (with all ones strength).

Following my decision to perform this act of merit, I preceded to have lots of income from the foundation pile company. My debtors outstanding bills were paid and we entered a period of high sales generating significant profits and healthy cash flow.

I could breath comfortably again. It had been like this for 1 month until the miracle day came. The biggest PC wire company called to make an appointment with me. They wanted to make agreement of the PC wire's price in the new market. They couldn't keep selling them on the dumped low price anymore since this had made them lose almost all of what they had. They would like to make PC wire's price in a normal state as before and accept my company to be a newcomer in to this business. Effectively this made my company be able to be reborn again.

I was so delighted that I was be able to make the big merit with Luang Pu by "After being in debt over my head and after that debt was gone, everything had become much better since then. My companies had generated lots of income and I was able to clear all outstanding debts within 2 years.

I really appreciate and I am thankful for Luang Pu. The big merit I did with him helped me to gain what I have today. Like he said when he was alive that "who made the merit with him even after he passed away, it would be the same result as while he was still alive. From this big merit, I can do more big merit as a vice president with the temple continuously till now.”