Thai Forest Tradition

The Thai Forest Tradition started around 1900 with Ajahn Mun Bhuridatto, who wanted to practice Buddhist monasticism and its meditative practices according to the normative standards of early Buddhism. After studying with Ajahn Sao Kantasīlo and wandering through the northeast of Thailand, Ajahn Mun reportedly became a Anāgāmi and started to teach in Northeast Thailand. He strove for a revival of the Early Buddhism, insisting on a strict observance of the Buddhist monastic code known as the Vinaya and teaching the practice of jhāna and the realization of nibbāna.

Initially, Ajahn Mun's teachings were met with fierce opposition, but in the 1930s his group was acknowledged as a formal faction of Thai Buddhism, and in the 1950s the relationship with the royal and religious establishment improved. In the 1960s, Western students started to be attracted to the movement, and in the 1970s branch monasteries of the tradition began to be established in the West.

Underlying attitudes of the Thai Forest Tradition include an interest in the empirical effectiveness of practice, the individual's development, and the use of skill in their practice and living.

History

The Dhammayut movement (19th century)

Before authority was centralized in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the region known today as Thailand was a kingdom of semi-autonomous city-states (Thai: mueang). These kingdoms were all ruled by a hereditary local governor, and while independent, paid tribute to Bangkok, the most powerful central city-state in the region. Each region had its own religious customs according to local tradition, and substantially different forms of Buddhism existed between mueangs. Though all of these local flavors of regional Thai Buddhism evolved their own customary elements relating to local spirit lore, all were shaped by the infusion of Mahayana Buddhism and Indian Tantric traditions, which arrived in the area prior to the fourteenth century. Additionally, many of the monastics in the villages engaged in behavior inconsistent with the Buddhist monastic code (Pali: vinaya), including playing board games, and participating in boat races and water fights.

In the 1820s young Prince Mongkut (1804–1866), the future fourth king of the Rattanakosin Kingdom (Siam), was ordained as a Buddhist monk before rising to the throne later in his life. He traveled around the Siamese region and quickly became dissatisfied with the caliber of Buddhist practice he saw around him. He was also concerned about the authenticity of the ordination lineages, and the capacity of the monastic body to act as an agent that generates positive kamma (Pali: puññakkhettam, meaning "merit-field").

Mongkut started to introduce innovations and reforms to a small number of monks, replacing magical practices with rational, scriptural-based doctrine. He and other Siamese elites shared disapproval of the superstitious nature of Buddhism at the time, prompting Mongkut's reforms which took inspiration from his contacts with Western intellectuals. He rejected the local customs and traditions, and instead turned to the Pali Canon, studying the texts and developing his own ideas on them. Doubting the validity of the existing lineages, Mongkut searched for a lineage of monks with an authentic practice, which he found among the Burmese Mon people in the region. He reordained among this group, which formed the basis for the Dhammayut movement. He then went to Sri Lanka to collect a valid record of the Vinaya and began a study group to promote understanding of Classical Buddhist principles. The term "Dhammayut" in Pali ("Thammayut" in Thai) means "Adherents of the Dharma."

Mongkut's reforms were radical, imposing a scriptural orthodoxy on the varied forms of Thai Buddhism of the time, "trying to establish a national identity through religious reform." A controversial point was Mongkut's belief that nibbana can't be reached in our degenerated times and that the aim of the Buddhist order is to promote a moral way of life and preserve the Buddhist traditions.

Mongkut's brother Nangklao, King Rama III, the third king of the Rattanakosin Kingdom, considered Mongkut's involvement with the Mons, an ethnic minority, to be improper, and built a monastery on the outskirts of Bangkok. In 1836, Mongkut became the first abbot of Wat Bowonniwet Vihara, which would become the administrative center of the Thammayut order until the present day.

The early participants of the movement continued to devote themselves to a combination of textual study and meditations they had discovered from the texts they had received. However, Thanissaro notes that none of the monks could make any claims of proving that the doctrine definitively led to awakening.

The Dhammayut reform movement maintained a strong footing as Mongkut later rose to the throne. Over the next several decades the Dhammayut monks would continue with their study and practice.

Formative period (around 1900)

The Kammaṭṭhāna Forest Tradition started around 1900 with Ajahn Mun Bhuridatto, who studied with Ajahn Sao Kantasīlo, and wanted to practice Buddhist monasticism, and its meditative practices, according to the normative standards of pre-sectarian Buddhism, which Ajahn Mun termed "the customs of the noble ones".

Wat Liap monastery and Fifth Reign reforms

While ordained in the Dhammayut movement, Ajahn Sao (1861–1941) questioned the impossibility to attain nibbana. He rejected the textual orientation of the Dhammayut movement and set out to bring the dhamma into actual practice. In the late nineteenth century he was posted as abbot of Wat Liap, in Ubon. According to Phra Ajahn Phut Thaniyo, one of Ajahn Sao's students, Ajahn Sao was "not a preacher or a speaker, but a doer," who said very little when teaching his students. He taught his students to "Meditate on the word 'Buddho,'" which would aid in developing concentration and mindfulness of meditation objects.

Ajahn Mun (1870–1949) went to Wat Liap monastery immediately after being ordained in 1893, where he started to practice kasina-meditation, in which awareness is directed away from the body. While it leads to a state of calm-abiding, it also leads to visions and out-of-body experiences. He then turned to his keeping awareness of his body at all times, taking full sweeps of the body through a walking meditation practice, which leads to a more satisfactory state of calm-abiding.

During this time, Chulalongkorn (1853–1910), the fifth monarch of the Rattanakosin Kingdom, and his brother Prince Wachirayan, initiated a cultural modernization of the entire region. This modernization included an ongoing campaign to homogenize Buddhism among the villages. Chulalongkorn and Wachiraayan were taught by Western tutors and held distaste for the more mystical aspects of Buddhism. They abandoned Mongkut's search for the noble attainments, indirectly stating that the noble attainments were no longer possible. In an introduction to the Buddhist monastic code written by Wachirayan, he stated that the rule forbidding monks to make claims to superior attainments was no longer relevant.

During this time, the Thai government enacted legislation to group these factions into official monastic fraternities. The monks ordained as part of the Dhammayut reform movement were now part of the Dhammayut order, and all remaining regional monks were grouped together as the Mahanikai order.

Wandering non-returner

After his stay at Wat Liap, Ajaan Mun wandered through the Northeast. Ajahn Mun still had visions, when his concentration and mindfulness were lost, but through trial and error he eventually found a method for taming his mind.

As his mind gained more inner stability, he gradually headed towards Bangkok, consulting his childhood friend Chao Khun Upali on practices pertaining to the development of insight (Pali: paññā, also meaning "wisdom" or "discernment"). He then left for an unspecified period, staying in caves in Lopburi, before returning to Bangkok one final time to consult with Chao Khun Upali, again pertaining to the practice of paññā.

Feeling confident in his paññā practice he left for Sarika Cave. During his stay there, Ajahn Mun was critically ill for several days. After medicines failed to remedy his illness, Ajahn Mun ceased to take medication and resolved to rely on the power of his Buddhist practice. Ajahn Mun investigated the nature of the mind and this pain, until his illness disappeared, and successfully coped with visions featuring a club-wielding demon apparition who claimed he was the owner of the cave. According to forest tradition accounts, Ajahn Mun attained the noble level of non-returner (Pali: "anagami") after subduing this apparition and working through subsequent visions he encountered in the cave.

Establishment and resistance (1900s–1930s)

Establishment

Ajahn Mun returned to the Northeast to start teaching, which marked the effective beginning of the Kammatthana tradition. He insisted on a scrupulous observance of the Vinaya, the Buddhist monastic code, and of the protocols, the instructions for the daily activities of the monk. He taught that virtue was a matter of the mind, not of rituals, and that intention forms the essence of virtue, not the proper conduct of rituals. He asserted that meditative concentration was necessary on the Buddhist path and that the practice of jhana and the experience of Nirvana was still possible even in modern times.

Resistance

Ajahn Mun's approach met with resistance from the religious establishment. He challenged the text-based approach of the city-monks, opposing their claims about the non-attainability of jhāna and nibbāna with his own experience-based teachings.

His report of having reached a noble attainment was met with mixed reactions among the Thai clergy. The ecclesiastical official Ven. Chao Khun Upali held Ajahn Mun in high esteem, which would be a significant factor in the subsequent leeway that state authorities gave him and his students. Tisso Uan (1867–1956), who later rose to Thailand's highest ecclesiastical rank of somdet, thoroughly rejected the authenticity of Ajahn Mun's attainment.

The tension between the forest tradition and the Thammayut administrative hierarchy escalated in 1926 when Tisso Uan attempted to drive a senior Forest Tradition monk named Ajahn Sing—along with his following of 50 monks and 100 nuns and laypeople—out of Ubon, which was under Tisso Uan's jurisdiction. Ajahn Sing refused, saying he and many of his supporters were born there, and they weren't doing anything to harm anyone. After arguments with district officials, the directive was eventually dropped.

Institutionalisation and growth (1930s–1990s)

Acceptance in Bangkok

In the late 1930s, Tisso Uan formally recognized the Kammaṭṭhāna monks as a faction. However, even after Ajahn Mun died in 1949, Tisso Uan continued to insist that Ajahn Mun had never been qualified to teach because he hadn't graduated from the government's formal Pali studies courses.

With the passing of Ajahn Mun in 1949, Ajahn Thate Desaransi was designated the de facto head of the Forest Tradition until his death in 1994. The relationship between the Thammayut ecclesia and the Kammaṭṭhāna monks changed in the 1950s when Tisso Uan become ill and Ajahn Lee went to teach meditation to him to help cope with his illness.

Tisso Uan eventually recovered, and a friendship between Tisso Uan and Ajahn Lee began, that would cause Tisso Uan to reverse his opinion of the Kammaṭṭhāna tradition, inviting Ajahn Lee to teach in the city. This event marked a turning point in relations between the Dhammayut administration and the Forest Tradition, and interest continued to grow as a friend of Ajahn Maha Bua's named Nyanasamvara rose to the level of somdet and later the Sangharaja of Thailand. Additionally, the clergy who had been drafted as teachers from the Fifth Reign onwards were now being displaced by civilian teaching staff, which left the Dhammayut monks with a crisis of identity.

Recording of forest doctrine

In the tradition's beginning the founders famously neglected to record their teachings, instead wandering the Thai countryside offering individual instruction to dedicated pupils. However, detailed meditation manuals and treatises on Buddhist doctrine emerged in the late 20th century from Ajahn Mun and Ajahn Sao's first-generation students as the Forest tradition's teachings began to propagate among the urbanities in Bangkok and subsequently take root in the West.

Ajahn Lee, one of Ajahn Mun's students, was instrumental in disseminating Mun's teachings to a wider Thai lay audience. Ajahn Lee wrote several books which recorded the doctrinal positions of the forest tradition and explained broader Buddhist concepts in the Forest Tradition's terms. Ajahn Lee and his students are considered a distinguishable sub-lineage that is sometimes referred to as the "Chanthaburi Line". An influential Western student in the line of Ajahn Lee is Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

Forest monasteries in the South

Ajahn Buddhadasa Bhikkhu (May 27, 1906 - May 25, 1993) became a Buddhist monk at Wat Ubon, Chaiya, Surat Thani in Thailand on July 29, 1926, when he was twenty years old, in part to follow the tradition of the day and to fulfill his mother’s wishes. His preceptor gave him the Buddhist name “Inthapanyo” which means “The wise one”. He was a Mahanikaya monk and graduated at the third level of Dharma studies in his hometown and in Pali language studies at the third level in Bangkok. After he finished learning the Pali language, he realized that living in Bangkok was not suitable for him because monks and people there did not practice to achieve the heart and core of Buddhism. So he decided to go back to Surat Thani and practice rigorously and taught people to practice well according to the core teachings of the Buddha. Then he established Suanmokkhabālārama (The Grove of the Power of Liberation) in 1932 which is the mountain and forest for 118.61 acres at Pum Riang, Chaiya district, Surat Thani Thailand. It is a forest Dhamma and Vipassana meditation center. In 1989, he founded The Suan Mokkh International Dharma Hermitage for international Vipassana meditation practitioners around the world. There is a 10-day silent meditation retreat that starts on the 1st of each month for the whole year which is free, of no charge for international practitioners who are interested in practicing meditation. He was a central monk in the popularization of the Thai Forest Tradition in the South of Thailand. He was a great Dhamma author who wrote many well-known Dhamma books: Handbook for Mankind, Heart-wood from the Bo Tree, Keys to Natural Truth, Me and Mine, Mindfulness of Breathing and The A, B, Cs of Buddhism etc. On October 20, 2005, The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) announced praise to “Buddhadasa Bhikkhu”, an important person in the world and celebrated the 100th anniversary on May 27, 2006. They held an academic activity to disseminate the Buddhist principles that Ajahn Buddhadasa had taught people around the world. So, he was the practitioner of a great Thai Forest Tradition who practiced well and spread Dhammas for people around the world to realize the core and heart of Buddhism.

Forest monasteries in the West

Ajahn Chah (1918–1992) was a central person in the popularisation of the Thai Forest Tradition in the west. In contrast to most members of the Forest Tradition he was not a Dhammayut monk, but a Mahanikaya monk. He only spent one weekend with Ajahn Mun, but had teachers within the Mahanikaya who had more exposure to Ajahn Mun. His connection to the Forest Tradition was publicly recognized by Ajahn Maha Bua. The community that he founded is formally referred to as The Forest Tradition of Ajahn Chah.

In 1967, Ajahn Chah founded Wat Pah Pong. That same year, an American monk from another monastery, Venerable Sumedho (Robert Karr Jackman, later Ajahn Sumedho) came to stay with Ajahn Chah at Wat Pah Pong. He found out about the monastery from one of Ajahn Chah's existing monks who happened to speak "a little bit of English". In 1975, Ajahn Chah and Sumedho founded Wat Pah Nanachat, an international forest monastery in Ubon Ratchatani which offers services in English.

In the 1980s the Forest Tradition of Ajahn Chah expanded to the West with the founding of Amaravati Buddhist Monastery in the UK. Ajahn Chah stated that the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia motivated him to establish the Forest Tradition in the West. The Forest Tradition of Ajahn Chah has since expanded to cover Canada, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Brazil, and the United States.

Involvement in politics (1994–2011)

Royal patronage and instruction to the elite

With the passing of Ajahn Thate in 1994, Ajahn Maha Bua was designated the new Ajahn Yai. By this time, the Forest Tradition's authority had been fully routinized, and Ajahn Maha Bua had grown a following of influential conservative-loyalist Bangkok elites. He was introduced to the Queen and King by Somdet Nyanasamvara Suvaddhano (Charoen Khachawat), instructing them how to meditate.

Forest closure

In recent times, the Forest Tradition has undergone a crisis surrounding the destruction of forests in Thailand. Since the Forest Tradition had gained significant pull from the royal and elite support in Bangkok, the Thai Forestry Bureau decided to deed large tracts of forested land to Forest Monasteries, knowing that the forest monks would preserve the land as a habitat for Buddhist practice. The land surrounding these monasteries have been described as "forest islands" surrounded by barren clear-cut area.

Save Thai Nation

In the midst of the Thai Financial crisis in the late 1990s, Ajahn Maha Bua initiated Save Thai Nation—a campaign which aimed to raise capital to underwrite the Thai currency. By the year 2000, 3.097 tonnes of gold was collected. By the time of Ajahn Maha Bua's death in 2011, an estimated 12 tonnes of gold had been collected, valued at approximated US$500 million. 10.2 million dollars of foreign exchange was also donated to the campaign. All proceeds were handed over to the Thai central bank to back the Thai Baht.

The Thai administration under Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai attempted to thwart the Save Thai Nation campaign in the late 1990s. This led to Ajahn Maha Bua's striking back with heavy criticism, which is cited as a contributing factor to the ousting of Chuan Leekpai and the election of Thaksin Shinawatra as prime minister in 2001. The Dhammayut hierarchy, teaming-up with the Mahanikaya hierarchy and seeing the political influence that Ajahn Maha Bua could wield, felt threatened and began to take action.

In the late 2000s bankers at the Thai central bank attempted to consolidate the bank's assets and move the proceeds from the Save Thai Nation campaign into the ordinary accounts which discretionary spending comes out of. The bankers received pressure from Ajahn Maha Bua's supporters which effectively prevented them from doing this. On the subject, Ajahn Maha Bua said that "it is clear that combining the accounts is like tying the necks of all Thais together and throwing them into the sea; the same as turning the land of the nation upside down."

In addition to Ajahn Maha Bua's activism for Thailand's economy, his monastery is estimated to have donated some 600 million Baht (US$19 million) to charitable causes.

Politic interest and death of Ajahn Maha Bua

Throughout the 2000s, Ajahn Maha Bua was accused of political leanings—first from Chuan Leekpai supporters, and then receiving criticism from the other side after his vehement condemnations of Thaksin Shinawatra.

Ajahn Maha Bua was the last of Ajahn Mun's prominent first-generation students. He died in 2011. In his will he requested that all of the donations from his funeral be converted to gold and donated to the Central Bank—an additional 330 million Baht and 78 kilograms of gold.