Thai forest tradition · Mahānikāya order
Ajahn Chah
Luang Por Chah Subhaddo
หลวงพ่อชา สุภทฺโท
1918–1992 Wat Nong Pah Pong, Ubon Ratchathani
The forest master whose simple, direct teaching reached the whole world: founder of Wat Nong Pah Pong, of more than two hundred branch monasteries, and of the first forest monastery for Westerners.
Ajahn Chah was born on 17 June 1918 near Ubon Ratchathani. After years of study and wandering practice — including a brief but decisive stay with Ajahn Mun — he settled in 1954 in a forest near his home village, then wild and little visited, where Wat Nong Pah Pong grew up around him.
His teaching was plain, humorous, and unsparing, drawn from daily life rather than from scripture: let go of what you hold, watch the mind, and see for yourself that everything is uncertain. He trained monks through the ordinary work of monastic life as much as through formal meditation.
Westerners began to come to him in the 1960s, and in 1975 he founded Wat Pah Nanachat, the International Forest Monastery, with his American disciple Ajahn Sumedho as its first abbot. Today Wat Nong Pah Pong has more than 250 branches in Thailand and associated monasteries around the world. He died on 16 January 1992.