Thai forest tradition (kammaṭṭhāna) · Dhammayut order
Ajahn Mun
Phra Ajahn Mun Bhūridatta Thera
หลวงปู่มั่น ภูริทตฺโต
1870–1949 Wat Pa Suddhavasa, Sakon Nakhon
With his teacher Ajahn Sao, the founder of the Thai forest tradition. After decades of wandering practice in the forests and mountains, he trained nearly every great forest master of the next generation.
Ajahn Mun was born on 20 January 1870 in Ban Kham Bong, a farming village on the Mekong in Ubon Ratchathani province. After ordaining, he met Ajahn Sao, and the two became the founding pair of the forest tradition: monks who left the town monasteries for the forest to practise meditation with everything they had.
For decades he wandered through the forests and mountains of the northeast and the north, practising alone for long periods and, as word of him spread, gathering students wherever he stayed. His teaching was direct and demanding: strict adherence to the monastic discipline, the ascetic practices, and meditation carried through to the end.
In his last years he settled deep in the forest near Sakon Nakhon, at the head of the Phu Phan mountains, where monks came from all over the country to train under him. He died in 1949 at Wat Suddhavasa in Sakon Nakhon. Ajahn Maha Boowa’s biography of him, translated into English as A Spiritual Biography, is the founding story of the tradition.