SLAMET PRAYITNO

Former Buddhist monk turned geography teacher and guide to Borobudur's quietest corners

Pak Slamet spent eleven years in saffron robes and the rest of his life explaining, with great patience, that he had not been a better person then, only a quieter one. Born in Muntilan in 1948, he grew up in a rice-farming family a few kilometres from the great stupa of Borobudur, which he first climbed barefoot at the age of six, delighted to find that the carved stone faces seemed to be smiling at him.

At twenty he entered Mendut Monastery as a novice and later took full ordination, spending years in meditation, in study of the sutras and in the early-morning chanting that still drifts across the Progo valley. In 1979 he left the robes, not out of doubt but out of a feeling that he could serve better in a classroom than a cloister, and he married Sri Wahyuni, a seamstress from Mungkid. He became a geography and civics teacher at SMA Negeri 1 Magelang, where for twenty-eight years he taught the rivers of Java and the discipline of paying attention. Students remembered his habit of beginning each term by asking the class to sit in silence for one minute and then asking what they had heard. At Vesak he guided pilgrims at Borobudur, always at dawn, always to the quietest corner of the upper terrace, away from the cameras.

He kept orchids and a dented bicycle, grew chilli in old paint tins, made a wonderful tempe bacem and lent money without keeping a record. He died peacefully at home in Magelang on 2 November 2021, aged seventy-three, after a long illness, with a candle burning and a sutra being chanted nearby. He leaves his wife Sri, his daughters Wahyu and Dewi, his son Bagus and four grandchildren.

“Sit for one minute. Then tell me what you heard.”