Thai Forest

About Thai Forest

The Thai Forest tradition is the branch of Theravāda that went into the wilderness rather than into the study hall, and it produced a way of practising almost opposite in temperament to the Burmese methods better known in the West. It begins around the turn of the twentieth century with Ajahn Sao Kantasīlo and his student Ajahn Mun Bhūridatta, who left the monasteries of northeast Thailand to wander in forests that still had tigers in them, taking the Buddha's own instruction on seclusion literally. What they rebuilt is a practice founded on virtue and concentration rather than technique: the parikamma word buddho repeated on the breath, the monastic discipline treated as inseparable from meditation, contemplation of the body and of death, and however many years it takes. Ajahn Mun's students — Ajahn Maha Boowa, Ajahn Lee, Ajahn Thate — and the parallel lineage of Ajahn Chah at Wat Nong Pah Pong carried it worldwide. Its most characteristic feature is what it withholds. Asked for a method, Ajahn Chah usually declined.