How Bhante Huat Landed in Hui Manam

HOW BHANTE HUAT LANDED IN HUI MANAM Bhante Huat was looking for a suitable place to practise meditation in north Thailand. At first he went to a hill near Chiangrai to practise but found the place to be too cold so he went to Mae Hong Son province. He went to a village called Mae Heg and set up his umbrella tent there to meditate. Shortly after that some villagers, who are Karens, invited him to stay at another village, Hui Manam. It was a tiring walk from Mae Heg to Hui Manam and when Bhante reached Hui Manam, many villagers came out to welcome him warmly; they were excited at the arrival of a Buddhist monk. The Hui Manam villagers immediately took Bhante to view a few sites, inviting Bhante to set up a temple there. Bhante’s intention of going to the village was just to practise meditation and not to set up a temple. Nevertheless, Bhante tag along to look at a few sites but did not approve any particular site. All this site viewing made Bhante exhausted and Bhante stopped to rest under a tree while the villagers went on to look at other sites on their own. When they returned and saw Bhante resting under the tree, they told Bhante that the place he was sitting could also be a site for a temple. Bhante surveyed the place; it was near an old cemetery and on a hill overlooking the village. There and then Bhante made an aspiration to build a temple at that spot rationalising that it was his parami to do so. So Bhante asked the villages how much would it cost to build a temple and they said it was about RM15,000. Bhante thought he would be able to build the temple as he had RM15,000 in his savings, an amount he had saved when he was a layman and was keeping it with the intention of using it for his trip to England to work as a cook after he disrobed; Bhante had only wanted to become a monk for a year. So Bhante started the construction of the temple in Hui Manam in November 2009 but soon realised that the amount of RM15,000 quoted to him was not enough to complete the temple. Bhante only needed money to buy building materials as labour was provided free of charge by the villagers. Bhante could not complete the construction of the temple as his money was running out so he re turned to Ajahn Suk’s temple in Kampong Pong and placing his faith in his parami that in one way or another the fund for the completion of the temple would materialise. Soon he met two devotees whom he had known at Kampong Pong, one from Selama and the other from Butterworth. They were very pleased to see Bhante again as they thought Bhante had disrobed because they had not seen Bhante for more than half a year. They donated RM10,000 and RM8,000 respectively after hearing about Bhante’s work at Hui Manam. This contribution helped Bhante to complete the temple at Hui Manam. Later supporters from Kangar, Butterworth, Bukit Mertajam and Sungai Petani made donations to Bhante and Bhante was able to build temples, chedis and installed Buddha statues as well as built a school for the Karen children in Hui Manam, Mae Heg and Mae Hug in about two and a half years. Bhante also helped in the repair and renovation of three other nearby temples.