Anandagiri Forest Monastery

Anandagiri Forest Monastery is in the mountains of Phetchabun province. It is part of the Ajahn Chah community, and its abbot, Ajahn Achalo, is an Australian-born monk whose English-language talks and guided meditations are free online.

According to the monastery’s own page, Ajahn Achalo planned it as a small to medium community of long-term monastics, a place where monks can stay in something close to semi-retreat most of the year, instead of a large training monastery. Senior monks from other Ajahn Chah monasteries have come to spend periods of retreat there, and several eight-precept nuns practise there as well.

The monastery has no kitchen. The monks keep a strict almsround in the nearby village, and the community supports scholarships for local children. A large meditation hall was finished in 2015, and about 27,000 trees have been planted on the roughly 70 acres around it.

For visitors, the page says day guests can talk with the monks or nuns after the meal offering each day, and that spaces have been developed where local people and day guests can meditate quietly. It does not publish a retreat programme for foreigners. Ajahn Achalo teaches an intensive retreat overseas about once a year and leads a pilgrimage to India every two years, so he is not always in residence.

The practical way to meet this community is through its talks and guided meditations on the Peace Beyond Suffering site, and then to use the site’s enquiry page.