Wat Sanghathan

Wat Sanghathan is in Bang Phai, Mueang Nonthaburi. It belongs to the Mahā Nikāya order. The site is old, but nobody knows how old. By the time Luang Por Sanong Katapunyo found it in 1968 it was an abandoned temple in a villager’s orchard, with a large Buddha image called Luang Pho To and an old wooden pavilion. Thai Wikipedia suggests the temple dates from the late Ayutthaya period, and the Nonthaburi provincial tourism page infers an age from the roof tiles and the style of the image. Neither gives a firm date.

Luang Por Sanong returned in 1974 and began rebuilding with a few monks and villagers. In 1993 he began replacing the old pavilion over the Buddha image with a new hall, whose foundation stone was laid in 1994, and the temple holds two relics brought from Sri Lanka. Thai Wikipedia describes the temple as forest-monastery in character, with a glass ordination hall and monks’ huts built in the shape of boats. Its website also carries a journal and the temple’s own radio and television channels.

The practice at Wat Sanghathan is satipaṭṭhāna, kept through four postures: standing, walking, sitting and lying down. The temple offers lay people a stay as a nekkhamma practitioner, a lay precept-keeper, on any day of the week. A stay can last up to seven nights unless the monk or head nun in charge approves longer. The registration page describes a day that begins before dawn with chanting and then practice, asks for registration before the afternoon precepts, asks for a photograph and copies of identity papers, and lets people request a silent stay. The page is in Thai.

If you do not read Thai, contact the temple first. Wat Sanghathan is a working temple, and the sources seen here do not say whether it can host foreign guests.