Nowadays, people want everything fast, fast, fast. Even wisdom. We try to run along the Buddhist path instead of taking it one step at a time. Ahba makes it clear again and again that this is not how it works. Our desire for results is itself one of the greatest obstacles on the path.
Ahba speaks very little about his own past. What we know is that sometime in the 1950s he came walking out of the forests of Myanmar as a monk. At the sixth Buddhist council, where the monks of the Theravāda tradition gathered to preserve the teachings of the Buddha, he took the floor on buddhānussati: meditation on the qualities of the Buddha. What he said went unrecorded; what has come down to us is the silence that fell, because there was no one else who could speak about this with the same authority.
He became abbot of a monastery in Yangon and taught samatha meditation. One night in 1981, he suddenly disappeared. The next morning, the junta's jeeps drove onto the monastery grounds to arrest him - a day too late.
Two years later, Herman Schreuder found him in the mountains of northern Thailand. Ahba said afterwards that he had called him: it was time to teach again. That is how his method reached the West, and how Wouter Doorn came upon it in 2005.
In Thailand he is known as Luang Por Opart. His students call him Ahba, which can be translated as 'father'. Every day a queue waits outside his kuṭi (hut), from all over Thailand and from much further afield, and it grows longer every year.
What Ahba teaches is very simple: "Repeat buddho out loud and just listen to the sound. Have no other intentions. Try this slowly, slowly, again and again, and you get a clean and clear mind, you get concentration. Concentration is the foundation, and only when it is deep and solid is there room for wisdom to arise."
"If a window is very dirty, you can't see through it. Clean it a bit, and you can see somewhat better, but still not clearly. Clean it completely, and you can see everything clearly without any doubt. The same applies to a mind full of desire; just clean it slowly."
Buddho is the account of twenty years with that method: retreat after retreat with Ahba, including four periods ordained as a monk, and the teaching he received there. And in between, at home, sitting down every day. Alongside his studies, a career as a medical specialist, and a family with two children.
No shortcuts, and no quick results. Only the steady development of the mind, buddho after buddho, day after day. Slowly. So slowly that you barely see it yourself. But it happens.
"When the dhamma slowly reveals itself to you, slowly lets its light shine, then it is at its most beautiful."
With a foreword by Ajahn Sumedho.
May your mind be clean and clear.