Venerable Ācariya Mahã Boowa Ñãṇasampanno is himself an outstanding and distinguished figure in contemporary Thai Buddhism. He is well-known and respected by people from all walks of life for his impeccable wisdom and his brilliant expository skills. By aptitude and temperament, he is the ideal person to record for posterity Ācariya Mun’s life and teachings. Spiritually, he is one of Ācariya Mun’s exceptionally gifted disciples; didactically, he is one of the dhutanga tradition’s truly masterful spokesmen. His no-nonsense, resolute character, his extraordinary charisma, and his rhetorical skills have established him as Ācariya Mun’s natural successor.
Born in 1913 in the northeastern province of Udon Thani, Ācariya Mahã Boowa was ordained as a Buddhist monk in 1934. Having spent the first 7 years of his monastic career studying the Buddhist canonical texts, for which he earned a degree in Pãli studies and the title “Mahã”, he adopted the wandering lifestyle of a dhutanga monk and set out to search for Ācariya Mun. Finally meeting up with him in 1942, he was accepted as a disciple and remained living under his tutelage until his death in 1949.
In the period following Ācariya Mun’s death, Ācariya Mahã Boowa, by then fully accomplished himself, soon became a central figure in efforts to maintain continuity within the dhutanga kammaṭṭhãna fraternity and so preserve Ācariya Mun’s unique mode of practice for future generations. He helped to spearhead a concerted attempt to present Ācariya Mun’s life and teachings to an increasingly wider audience of Buddhist faithful. Eventually, in 1971, he authored this biography to showcase the principles and ideals that underpin dhutanga kammaṭṭhãna training methods and inform their proper practice.
By 1960, the world outside the forest came to exert a significant impact on the dhutanga tradition. The rapid deforestation of that period caused dhutanga monks to modify, and eventually curtail, their wandering lifestyle. As the geographic environment changed, teachers like Ācariya Mahã Boowa began establishing permanent monastic communities where dhutanga monks could conveniently carry on Ācariya Mun’s lineage, striving to maintain the virtues of renunciation, strict discipline, and intensive meditation. Practicing monks gravitated to these forest monasteries in large numbers and transformed them into great centers of Buddhist practice. At Wat Pa Baan Taad, Ācariya Mahã Boowa’s forest monastery in Udon Thani, a religious center arose spontaneously, created by the students themselves, who came for purely spiritual motives in hopes of receiving instruction from a genuine master. In the years that followed, the many Western monks who came to Ācariya Mahã Boowa were able to share wholeheartedly in this unique religious experience. Some have lived there practicing under his tutelage ever since, helping to spawn an international following which today spans the globe.
Highly revered at home and abroad, Ācariya Mahã Boowa remains to this day actively engaged in teaching both monks and laity, elucidating for them the fundamental principles of Buddhism and encouraging them to practice those bold and incisive techniques that Ācariya Mun used so effectively. Like Ācariya Mun, he stresses a mode of practice in which wisdom remains a priority at all times. Although ultimately pointing to the ineffable mysteries of the mind’s pure essence, the teaching he presents for us is a system of instruction that is full of down-to-earth, practical methods suitable for everyone desiring to succeed at meditation. Studied carefully, it may well offer direction to persons who otherwise have no idea where their practice is taking them.
Ajaan Dick Sīlaratano was born Richard E. Byrd, Jr. in Winchester, Virginia in 1948. After graduating from the University of Texas in 1970, he became disillusioned with academia. Abandoning plans for graduate school, he began traveling the world in search of spiritual fulfillment. After several detours, his wanderings eventually took him to India and Sri Lanka in 1975. Along the way he had chanced upon a copy of The Heart of Buddhist Meditation by Ven. Nyanaponika Thera, which so inspired his nascent interest in Buddhist practice that he went to stay with Ven. Nyanaponika at the Forest Hermitage outside of Kandy, Sri Lanka. Eventually returning to India, he asked Ven. Buddharakkhita Thera for permission to stay at the Mahā Bodhi Society in Bangalore. Following several months of intensive meditation, he requested the “going forth” under the tutelage of Ven. Buddharakkhita Thera on Visākha Pūja Day, 1975 and thus became Sāmaṇera Sangharatana.
While still ordained as a novice, he relocated to Sri Lanka in late 1975. He first stayed with Ven. Nārada Thera at Vajirarāma on the outskirts of Colombo. There he met Ven. Nyanavimala Thera, a German monk known for his ascetic practices and wandering lifestyle, who insisted that the young sāmaṇera first ground his practice in a study of the discourses recorded in the Pāli Canon and the rules of monastic discipline. Following Ven. Nyanavimala’s recommendation, Sangharatana moved to Sri Vajirañāṇa Dharmāyatanaya Monastery at Maharagama. While there, he received full bhikkhu ordination in the Amarapura Nikāya on June 26, 1976, with Madihe Paññāsiha Mahā Nāyaka as his preceptor. After completing his first rains, Bhikkhu Sangharatana paid a second visit to Ven. Nyanaponika Thera in Kandy. While there he met Bhikkhu Bodhi, who gave him a copy of the book Forest Dhamma, a compilation of Dhamma talks given by Ven. Ajaan Mahā Boowa Ñāṇasampanno and translated from Thai into English by Ven. Ajaan Paññāvaḍḍho.
Inspired by his first encounter with the “forest” Dhamma of the Thai Forest Tradition, Bhikkhu Sangharatana took leave of his upajjhāya and traveled to Thailand in early 1977. He took up residence at Wat Bovornives Vihāra in Bangkok, where he was re-ordained as Bhikkhu Sīlaratano in the Dhammayut Nikāya on April 21, 1977, with Somdet Phra Ñāṇasaṁvara as his upajjhāya. He soon moved to Baan Taad Forest Monastery in the northeastern province of Udon Thani and was accepted as a student by Ajaan Mahā Boowa. He remained there for seventeen years, serving as Ajaan Mahā Boowa’s attendant monk. He then spent a decade practicing dhutaṅga in mountainous forest reserves, staying in remote caves and secluded monasteries, and seeking out renowned meditation monks for spiritual advice. During that period, he lived a simple, ascetic lifestyle devoted to experiencing the extraordinary power of wilderness practice firsthand.
Shortly after Ajaan Mahā Boowa passed away in January 2011, Ajaan Dick decided the time was right to set up a branch monastery in the lineage of Ajaan Mahā Boowa in America. With the help of supporters in the United States and around the world, Ajaan Dick and a dedicated group of monks and lay volunteers began building Forest Dhamma Monastery in the mountains of southwestern Virginia. Today the monastery is at the heart of a thriving community of lay and monastic practitioners upholding the core principles of the Thai Forest Tradition under the guidance of Ajaan Dick.
Ajaan Dick Sīlaratano has been writing English translations of biographies of Thai Forest meditation masters and books on Buddhist meditation as taught in the Thai Forest Tradition for many years. His books include: Uncommon Wisdom: The Life and Teachings of Ajaan Paññāvaḍḍho, Samaṇa: Luangta Maha Boowa, Mae Chee Kaew: Her Journey to Spiritual Awakening and Enlightenment, Arahattamagga Arahattaphala: The Path to Arahantship, and Ācariya Mun Bhūridatta Thera: A Spiritual Biography. All Ajaan Dick’s works are available for free download on the monastery’s website www.forestdhamma.org.
