The Monastic Community

There is a worldwide monastic community associated with Ajahn Chah; Temple Forest Monastery (also known as Jetavana) is a branch monastery of that community. We are most closely related to the branch monasteries in Europe and North America, while being part of the international community based in Thailand. 

The monastic community members at Temple Forest Monastery are:

Ajahn Jayanto – Co-abbot

Born in Boston in 1967, Ajahn Jayanto grew up in Newton, Mass. and attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison, during which time a period of world travel kindled a great interest in the spiritual life. A meditation class at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center led him to live for a while at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, where he made plans to join the monastic community of Ajahn Sumedho as a postulant at Amaravati Monastery in England in 1989. Taking bhikkhu (monk) ordination at the related Cittaviveka Monastery in 1991, he trained there and at Aruna Ratanagiri Monastery until 1997, at which point he embarked on a period of practice in Thailand and other Asian Buddhist countries. He returned to the UK in 2006, where he lived at Amaravati until moving to Temple in 2014. Since 2009 Ajahn Jayanto has helped to lead the efforts to establish a branch monastery in New England, and he now serves as co-abbot of Temple Forest Monastery.

Ajahn Anando – Co-abbot

Ajahn Anando was born in Blackheath, south-east London in 1966. He served as a soldier in the British army for three years, mostly in West Germany. After leaving the military he studied health and fitness at East London University, then established a small fitness company which he ran successfully for several years. His interest in meditation began in 1992 and increased to the stage where ordination as an anagarika (postulant) became an obvious step. After several years in training he took higher ordination as a bhikkhu in 1997, with Ajahn Sumedho as preceptor. He spent his first two years as a monk at Amaravati Monastery, then moved to Thailand, living for a year at Wat Pah Nanachat and then a year at Tan Ajahn Anan’s Monastery near Rayong. This was followed by four years helping to establish Buddha Bodhivana forest monastery near Melbourne, Australia. For the past ten years he had been helping at Amaravati while also caring for his aging parents, and concurrently helping to guide the development of Temple Forest Monastery – both from afar and during visits of several months each year when able to come. He now serves as co-abbot of Temple Forest Monastery.

Ajahn Pasadiko

Ajahn Pasadiko was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1949, and lived in Virginia for many years, where he attended college and did social work. He encountered (Zen) Buddhist meditation at age 28, and was deeply inspired to pursue the spiritual path. In California, he spent four years as a mendicant in the Vedanta tradition of  the Sri Ramakrishna Order, and later spent time in India as a disciple of Master Sant Thakar Singh of the “Sant Mat” tradition (meditation on the inner light and sound), based in the Northwest Punjab. In the mid-1990s, after spending some time with a Korean Zen and Taoist teacher, he pursued practice on his own and with the support of the Buddhist meditation group in Sacramento, CA, where he also practiced and taught T’ai Chi Chuan. On a trip to Thailand in 1999, he was very much drawn to traditional Thai culture and the Theravada monastic tradition. He was accepted at the International Forest Monastery in Ubon Ratchatani and later received bhikkhu ordination in June 2001, with Luang Por Liem as preceptor. He returned to America in April 2018, after 18 years in Thailand.

Ajahn Caganando

Ajahn Caganando (pronounced Cha-ga-nan-do) was born in New York. After receiving a degree in physics he worked in solar and wind energy research. Interest in meditation and the roots of Buddhism led to extended practice in several Buddhist monasteries in India and Thailand. Living on staff at the Insight Meditation Society for five years, he met Western monks from the Ajahn Chah lineage. He went to Wat Pah Nanachat in Thailand in 2002, taking bhikkhu ordination in 2004 with Luang Por Liem as his preceptor. He joined Abhayagiri Monastery from 2007–2010, and helped establish the first branch of Abhayagiri, the Pacific Hermitage, from 2010–2015. He spent the Vassa of 2013 with Ajahn Jayanto at the fledgling Boston Vihara, and he has been part of the Temple Forest Monastery sangha since June 2015, now serving as primary assistant to the abbots.

Tan Katanyu

The following history has been slightly adapted from the Abhayagiri Monastery website.

Ajahn Chah

Ven. Ajahn Chah (Phra Bodhinyana Thera) was born into a large, comfortable family in a rural village of northeast Thailand. In his early youth, he took samanera (novice monk) ordination and on reaching the age of twenty, he became a bhikkhu (a fully-ordained Buddhist monk). In his early monastic life, Ajahn Chah studied Buddhist teachings and scriptures, but yearning for meditation guidance and dissatisfied with the slack standard of discipline at his monastery, he took on the life of a tudong or wandering monk. As a tudong monk, Ajahn Chah lived austerely in forests, caves and cremation grounds, and sought out the guidance of local meditation masters, including Ajahn Mun.

In 1954, after many years of practice without a permanent home, Ajahn Chah was invited to settle in a dense forest near his birth village. Over time, a large monastery called Wat Pah Pong was established there as monks, nuns, and laypeople came to hear Ajahn Chah’s teachings and train with him. His teachings and community contained elements commonly held throughout the forest tradition focusing on a simple, aesthetic, and rigorous lifestyle, discipline and moral conduct, meditation and contemplation, and a transformative inner experience rather than a reliance on scholarly knowledge. Although these forest tradition elements were held in common, every forest monastery and teacher also had their own flavor. Ajahn Chah added to his teachings an emphasis on community living and right view as essential aspects of the path to liberation.

Ajahn Chah was remarkable for his integrity, humor, and humanness; for his sense of surrender to spiritual practice and the present moment; and for his ability to connect with people from many backgrounds in a spontaneous, straightforward, and joyous manner. He taught in a simple, yet profound style and emphasized practice in everyday life. As disciples gathered around Ajahn Chah, branch monasteries in his lineage also began to be established. Many new branch monasteries have continued to be established even after his death in 1992. At present there are more than three hundred forest branch monasteries in Ajahn Chah’s lineage spread throughout Thailand and the world. Environmental conditions may cause the details of life amongst these many monasteries to vary somewhat; but in all of them, simplicity, heedfulness, and the strict adherence to monastic discipline support and encourage residents to live a pure life focused on the continuous cultivation of virtue, meditation, and wisdom.

Ajahn Sumedho & the Western Sangha

Ajahn Chah’s style of teaching and personality had a unique ability to reach people of other nationalities. Many foreigners came to learn from, train under, and take ordination with Ajahn Chah. The first of these was the American-born monk, Ajahn Sumedho, in 1967. In 1975, a group of Ajahn Chah’s foreign disciples were asked by villagers from Bung Wai to start a new branch monastery. Bung Wai was a small rural town not far from Ajahn Chah’s monastery. Ajahn Chah agreed, and established Wat Pa Nanachat (The International Forest Monastery) as a monastic training center for internationals, with Ajahn Sumedho as abbot. Since that time, Wat Pa Nanachat has become a respected forest monastery and opened up additional branches, including some in remote forest and mountain locations. Wat Pa Nanachat currently includes, under its umbrella in Thailand, over fifty monks representing twenty-three nationalities.

In 1976 the English Sangha Trust invited Ajahn Sumedho to establish a Theravada monastery in London. Along with a small group of monks, Ajahn Sumedho heeded the request and established the first branch monastery in Ajahn Chah’s lineage outside of Thailand. Since that time, a number of Ajahn Chah branch monasteries have been created throughout Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand – including England, Switzerland, Italy, France, Germany, Portugal, Canada and the United States.

This development has included the establishment of a community of nuns (siladhara). The first residence specifically for nuns was set up in 1980 close to the Chithurst Monastery and the second in 1984 as part of the Amaravati community.

All of these monasteries, under the guidance of many of Ajahn Chah’s senior Western disciples, are allowing the example of forest monasticism to spread westward. They are permitting the direct and simple practice of the Buddha’s original teachings, as it has been preserved in the forest tradition for 2500 years, to accompany Buddhism as it more generally transfuses throughout and adapts to the Western world.

These monasteries are initiated only at the request of the lay community and are supported entirely by the lay community’s generosity. They provide centers for monastic training, as well as teaching and practice for the lay community. Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery, the first monastery in the United States to be established by followers of Ajahn Chah, was founded in 1996 in the mountainous forests of northern California. Temple Forest Monastery, bordering a National Wildlife Refuge in the small town of Temple, New Hampshire, is the second such branch.

More about the tradition >

More about the project’s history >