page_title: Ajahn Thate
section_title: Basic Teachings
hierarchical_section_title: Ajahn Thate / Basic Teachings
caption_attribution_description: English: Ajahn Thate at Wat Hin Maak Peng c1991
context_page_description: Phra Ajahn Thate Desaransi, also known as Ajahn Tate, Luangpu Thet Thetrangsi, Phra Desarangsee, or by his monastic title Phra Rajanirodharangsee, was a famous meditation master and Buddhist monk from northern Thailand. He was a disciple of Ajahn Mun and thus a first generation student of the Thai Forest Tradition and one of the founding teachers of the lineage. Following the death of Ajahn Mun in 1949, he was considered to be the Ajahn Yai, or the head of the Thai Forest Tradition lineage until his death in 1994.
context_section_description: Thate's basic teaching was that evolution of the human mind required a commitment to the Noble Eightfold Path and the three teachings at the heart of Buddhism — the avoidance of all evil, the perfection of skillfulness, and a purification of the heart. These virtues have to be established first by constant application of the principles of morality in the face of obstacles. This is an approach resembling virtue ethics, but with the endpoint being not just the development of virtues per se, but virtues in order to provide the foundation for stillness and then concentration of the mind. As Thate puts it in his classic small text of meditation Steps Along the Path:
  "This is why, for the Buddha's teachings, morality forms the beginning of the religious life. The next step is to train the mind to develop concentration (samadhi) and absorption (jhana) through the practice of tranquillity meditation. Once the mind is adept at maintaining a steady focus, we can then develop clear insight (vipassana)."
  "While you are training the mind, one thing — strange and striking — may occur without you intending it. That is, the mind will withdraw from its external objects and gather into a single whole, letting go of all labels and attachments dealing with past or future. There will be just bare awareness paired with its preoccupation in the present. This is something with no sense of "inside" or "outside" — a condition whose features are peculiar to the mind itself. It is as if everything has undergone a revolution."
  "The visions and signs that arise from the practice of meditation are a strange and uncanny affair. They may delude a gullible person of weak judgment into being so convinced of their truth as to lose touch with reality. For this reason, those who practice meditation should be cautious, examining and reflecting on them carefully."
  "Fixed penetration is a superior human attainment. By and large, people who reach fixed penetration tend to focus on the in-and-out breath (anapana) as their object of meditation. As they focus on the breath and come to pay attention to its arising and falling away, or just to its falling away, the mind gradually becomes more and more refined until, step by step, it lets go of all its preoccupations and gathers together."
  In his text Buddho Ajahn Thate describes what it is like when the mind has finally rid itself of preoccupation with sensual distractions and is able to focus on the breath, mantra, or a part of the body, in meditation: "When you first enter concentration, this is what it's like:   You'll have no idea at all of what concentration or one-pointedness of mind is going to feel like. You are simply intent on keeping mindfulness firmly focused on one object – and the power of a mind focused firmly on one object is what will bring you to a state of concentration. You won't be thinking at all that concentration will be like this or like that, or that you want it to be like this or like that. It will simply take its own way, automatically. No one can force it. At that moment you will feel as if you are in another world (the world of the mind), with a sense of ease and solitude to which nothing else in the world can compare. When the mind withdraws from concentration, you will regret that that mood has passed, and you will remember it clearly. All that we say about concentration comes from the mind which has withdrawn from that state. As long as it is still gathered in that state, we aren't interested in what anyone else says or does. You have to train the mind to enter this sort of concentration often, so as to become skilled and adept, but don't try to remember your past states of concentration, and don't let yourself want your concentration to be like it was before – because it won't be that way, and you will just be making more trouble for yourself."
caption: Ajahn Thate at Wat Hin Maak Peng c1991
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