Paisahn Sanchai

Loy Kra­tong

In Novem­ber of 1971 a very strange thing began to hap­pen to Mr. Paisahn San­chai of Lam­phun province, Thai­land. After feel­ing excep­tion­al­ly tired and going to sleep he had the first of many recur­ring ‘visions’ (nimit­ta). In these visions he is greet­ed by two indi­vid­u­als, a noble­man named Pin­garā­ja and a monk named Ven­er­a­ble Gaṇd­hā Gaṇd­hā­lo, who take him to var­i­ous planes of exis­tence where he is able to con­verse with the beings resid­ing there. Many of these beings pass on mes­sages to indi­vid­u­als who used to be their rel­a­tives in pre­vi­ous lives, by using Mr. Paisahn as a medi­um or channel.

Here is an excerpt from one account by Mr. Paisahn enti­tled ‘The Won­drous Event of the Cre­ation of the Emer­ald Buddha’:

This vision occurred dur­ing the night of Sun­day 24th Novem­ber 1996, which hap­pened to be the night of the Loy Kratong—the full moon. Since 9am of that pre­vi­ous day I had been receiv­ing vis­i­tors, who had already been wait­ing at my house since 7:30am. There were many suf­fer­ing and unhap­py peo­ple wish­ing to see me that day, but there was one large group of peo­ple who had come from Bang Bahn dis­trict in the province of Ayutthaya.

The group was com­prised of about ten people—all relatives—who had come in a minibus. They had heard about my rep­u­ta­tion from oth­ers and came because they want­ed to speak with me in order to find a way to extri­cate them­selves from their suf­fer­ing. Their suf­fer­ing had to do with their chil­dren, who, both girls and boys, were all promis­cu­ous. They slept around with­out dis­crim­i­na­tion. The par­ents, who had hoped to rely on their chil­dren, end­ed up hav­ing no-one to rely on. I sug­gest­ed to them that they bring their chil­dren to me so that I could meet them, assess their sit­u­a­tion, and offer some advice.

‘This would be impossible.’

‘Why?’

‘Because all thir­teen of our chil­dren are dead.’

‘How did they die?’

‘Of AIDS.’ (When this occurred AIDS was still rel­a­tive­ly new in Thai­land and peo­ple did not take great care.)

‘We have come to ask you to have a vision of our chil­dren. We have heard that your visions are extreme­ly accurate.’

‘Okay, I’ll give it some consideration.’

‘We have come a long dis­tance. We want you to have a vision right now. We will wait. Khun Paisahn, please go and sleep right now.’

‘Hey, I can’t do that.’

‘Okay, if Khun Paisahn isn’t able to sleep dur­ing the day, we can help you. We have brought some sleep­ing pills along!’

They even gave me pho­tographs of all thir­teen chil­dren so that when I were to have a vision I would know who is who. To respond to their mis­un­der­stand­ings I had to give a lengthy expla­na­tion of how my visions occur. When they under­stood cor­rect­ly they left. This is one sam­ple of the human suf­fer­ing I encoun­tered on that day.

We are all born with suf­fer­ing. I have been receiv­ing peo­ple since 1981 and I still haven’t met any­one who is hap­py. This life is tru­ly per­vad­ed by suffering—I don’t know where true hap­pi­ness exists in this human world of ours. Wealthy peo­ple suf­fer, poor peo­ple suf­fer, mid­dle-class peo­ple suf­fer. Every­one has a unique form of suf­fer­ing. It is not pos­si­ble to find ulti­mate sat­is­fac­tion in this world. And peo­ple tend to be self­ish, cov­etous and self-indul­gent. They don’t gen­er­al­ly con­sid­er the suf­fer­ing of the chan­nel (of Khun Paisahn).