Wat Muang Mang

Wat Muang Mang is a Mahanikaya temple in Haiya subdistrict, in the city of Chiang Mai. It matters to the teaching lineage of Ajahn Tong Sirimangalo, who spent years of his early career here.

His published biography says that after a month with Mahasi Sayadaw in Myanmar he returned to Wat Muang Mang and in 1954 started a centre teaching vipassana on the four foundations of mindfulness, which it calls the first in Chiang Mai. He had meditation huts (kuṭi) built in the temple grounds. In 1957 he started a library there, and in 1964 an Abhidhamma institute, again described as the first in Chiang Mai. By 1969 he had also set up a Dhamma, Pali and Abhidhamma study centre at the temple.

As more meditators came, there was no room for more huts. From 1973 he began restoring the abandoned Wat Ram Poeng in Chiang Mai, where he set up a centre for vipassana practice. Wat Muang Mang therefore sits at the start of the story, before the larger centres.

Thai Wikipedia records that it was granted its formal boundary (sima) on 21 June 1991. No programme for foreigners is published in the sources used here, so this page treats it as a place of lineage history. Anyone wanting instruction in the same tradition should look at Wat Ram Poeng.