Epilogue
Mrs. Pow-panga Vathanakul died on September 11th, 1976. She had asked her husband, Mr. Vai Vathanakul, to keep her funeral rites simple and to cremate the body within a few days. (This is the ideal for those who practice Dhamma.) But when the time came her own family insisted on the customary Thai funeral.
Khun Vai, for his part, put together a book to give to family and friends at the funeral. Memorial books are customary on such occasions but Khun Pow had rather preempted this by already distributing, when she ill, some Dhamma books that she had had printed. Khun Vai, however, produced his book with the idea of it being a 'case study'. Four of the Dhamma talks translated above came from this book, and it seems worthwhile here to mention some of the other points that Khun Vai brought together. In many ways they are also highly relevant to Buddhists outside Thailand, living under modern conditions.
Relatives and friends contributed a section about Khun Pow's life and career:
She was born in 1925 in Bangkok and studied there, entering the Accountancy Department of Chulalongkorn University. However, poor health (resulting from a thyroid condition) forced her to cut short her course after only two years. She went out to work for an insurance company in 1946, and was one of the first staff of the newly established firm. Business conditions were difficult in those early days but Khun Pow worked her way up so that in 1948 she was made Secretary to the Board.
The company sent her (and Khun Vai) on study tours abroad to other insurance companies, in India and Europe, and for six months in the U.S.A. The American insurance managers were highly impressed with her "excellent judgment... in underwriting problems..." and considered her "... an unusually capable woman and apt scholar..." (There is even a photograph of her in the men-only executive dining-room of a very large German insurance company, being the second woman to have broken that barrier.)
In 1958 she was made General Manager of the company. Nine years later she stepped down from that post — although staying on as Secretary to the Board — so that she would have more time for Dhamma practice. At that time the company had more than 400 employees with another 400 insurance agents. When, in 1975, she fully retired she had been with the company for almost thirty years, having overseen a large part of the company's growth. She now turned more to concentrate on Dhamma.
In the company she had been renown for her hard work and discipline, and had expected the same from her workers. She was also known for her care and helpfulness. This is perhaps made evident by the gathering of over a thousand former colleagues and co-workers who came to pay their final respects at her funeral rites. (It had been formally announced in the newspaper as per custom, although no invitations had been sent out to all those individuals.)
Another section concerns Khun Pow's Dhamma practice:
In 1957 Khun Pow started to visit Bangkok monasteries to listen to sermons and join in the meditation. When, for health reasons, she retired from being General Manager she had more time for her Dhamma studies, and a scholar monk at a major Bangkok monastery was designated by the abbot to teach her the third, and then second grade General Dhamma studies. (And she was the only person who managed to pass the second grade examination, at the monastery that year.)
In 1970 a friend gave Khun Pow a Dhamma book about the meditation masters in the North east of Thailand. She was deeply impressed and when one of them, the Ven. Acharn Maha Boowa, visited Bangkok she went to pay her respects and asked permission to go and stay at Wat Pa Bahn Tahd. On first going to a jungle monastery she found herself too frightened to come out of her room at night, but after listening to the Dhamma teaching she became determined to return every few months to practice. She also decided not to go for her grade one General Dhamma (book) studies, but to concentrate on putting those studies into practice.
Khun Pow, with Khun Vai's agreement, started to keep the Eight Precepts on the Observance Days. When business pressures — guests from abroad for instance — made this difficult, she would simply keep them on another day. To help make such days more suitable for meditation practice at home, one upstairs room was set aside and dubbed 'Ekasatarn'. (Meaning 'a place to be alone', and also sounding as if it is the name of a monastery.) Any disturbing telephone calls could then be deflected with the news that, 'Khun Pow had gone to 'Ekasatarn'. Khun Pow's friends would then assume that she had gone to the monastery, and there would be no need to lie about Khun Pow 'not being at home'.
In 1971, Khun Pow thought back upon the help given to her by her teacher in Dhamma studies, the scholar monk in the central Bangkok monastery, and offered to sponsor his further (M.A.) studies at the Banares University in India. (Since that time, this monk has become one of the most well known scholars in Thailand.)
By 1974 Khun Pow was spending much more time away in the north eastern meditation monasteries, and decided that the following year she would spent the whole of the three month Rains Retreat period up there. Back home, a small hut had been made in the garden, beneath a tree and with a view of the nearby pond. That was where she retired to, for she was now regularly keeping the Eight Precepts. She and Khun Vai decided that it was also time for her to fully retire from the company, which she did in 1975, and she was then ready to go on the three month's retreat that year.
Khun Pow had always been bedeviled with health problems that resulted in many stays in hospital. These included operations on the womb, the gall bladder and the breast. This last treatment concluded with radiation therapy that seemed to clear things up in 1975. However, that July, when she was already settled in the monastery for the Rains Retreat, she met a fellow devotee who was also a doctor. The doctor noticed that Khun Pow's eyes were yellow (with jaundice?) and so advised her quickly to go to Bangkok for treatment.
Eventually, after many tests and a final bone biopsy, it was confirmed that this time the cancer had penetrated to the bone marrow, and that no further treatment was possible. When Khun Pow knew that the cancer was terminal, she asked permission to go and practice Dhamma at Wat Pa Bahn Tahd. She arrived there in October and Ven. Acharn Maha Boowa gave her a Dhamma talk virtually every evening, for over 130 days. Other devotees were also staying there with her, one being a lady doctor, and when her condition made it necessary to be nearer the hospital she returned to Bangkok.
When Khun Pow was home again, she and Khun Vai decided that they would be fellow Dhamma farers, rather than husband and wife. She asked him to help remind her about Dhamma, to awaken her mindfulness, in the coming days. Khun Vai therefore prepared some appropriate Dhamma verses and set himself the task of giving as much spiritual support as he could. He was able to sit with her and prayed and meditated. When Khun Pow could not read anymore, he would read aloud and tape some of the important Dhamma teachings for her to listen and meditate on.
Khun Pow went into a semi-coma, but when she became more conscious, Khun Vai was there to repeat some words of Dhamma. He then thought a better way would be to use the original voices, by using a tape machine. So he arranged tapes of the morning and evening chanting (that Khun Pow had always recited and found so inspiring); and a tape of the final Dhamma talk — the farewell night — that Khun Pow had listened to at Wat Pa Bahn Tahd. There were also tapes of Dhamma chants and verses that Khun Pow particularly liked: such as The First Sermon of the Lord Buddha, the Turning of the Dhamma Wheel, with its explanation about the Four Noble Truths. And the Discourse on the Highest Blessing.
By the time that Khun Vai had arranged the tapes, Khun Pow's condition was obviously deteriorating. The oxygen tubes that she had resolutely refused and pushed away, wanting to be left unencumbered in her final moments, had now been reinserted by the nurses. This showed for certain that she had to be unconscious. Khun Vai started a cycle of tapes and within a few moments Khun Pow's hands were lifted together in anyjali, the traditional gesture of respect and veneration. The hands fell back... and were then raised again, palms together, over the heart. Khun Vai was delighted with this sign that the Dhamma was penetrating, even though Khun Pow was in a coma. He therefore arranged for the tapes to be continually interchanged using two machines. The Turning of the Dhamma Wheel sounded, with words about the heart of one who practices, how knowledge and light arise, and how by going beyond all attachment there is the Undying Dhamma.
Khun Pow appeared calm but her breathing became irregular. Khun Vai sat close by and quietly meditated; and as her breathing faltered he asked everyone in the room to stay still and not to cry, and for nobody else to come in. As they meditated, the sound of the breathing gradually diminished. And was still.
Khun Vai collected all the above to be a 'case study' about an ordinary person taking up the practice of Dhamma. (And it should not be too difficult for westerners to relate to someone like Khun Pow.) Khun Vai himself is something of a 'case study' too. He was Khun Pow's business colleague throughout, successfully overcame a major cancer operation and, more to the point, is a devout Christian.
It's said that Khun Vai would accompany Khun Pow to the Buddhist monastery and everyone who didn't know would think he was a Buddhist too. It was much the same when Khun Pow (occasionally) went with Khun Vai to church. Religion for him is not just Christianity, for he sees much value in Dhamma and fully supported his wife in her practice. With his wife's death he was keenly aware that both faiths are concerned with suffering — death and separation from the person one loves — and how to deal with that truth.
Khun Vai has been a leading member of the YMCA — he's now President Emeritus of the YMCA in Bangkok — and has addressed various international meetings, often concerning his understanding of religion. He has spoken about how he sees a similarity between Christianity and Buddhism. On the basic level, he compares the Buddhist generosity and moral precepts, with the Christian Commandments and love. Or "Love in action for all faiths and beliefs." Then he says, "Whereas for spiritual higher attainment, we have to leave to each person depending on his or her belief to pursue."
It is now fifteen years since Khun Pow's death, yet the Dhamma Teachings she received and practiced are still available to those who want to develop their own 'case study'.
