Wat Suan Kaew

Wat Suan Kaew is in Bang Len subdistrict of Bang Yai, a district of Nonthaburi. It belongs to the Mahā Nikāya order. The temple was formerly Wat Kaew, abandoned for about eighty years, and Luang Por Teean Cittasubho and a few monks stayed there for a time. The land was overgrown with gardens and they lacked the people to restore it.

In the late 1970s Phra Payom Kalyano came from Suan Mokkh with two other monks to ask permission to run a summer novice programme here, and Luang Por Teean later left the temple in their care. Payom restored it and renamed it Wat Suan Kaew. His aim, in the temple’s account, was to bring something like Buddhadasa’s Suan Mokkh into the city. The Suan Kaew Foundation, which runs the temple’s social and educational work, was founded in 1986.

The temple still runs the summer novice ordination programme, for children aged twelve to fifteen, a practice it dates to 1978. It ordains adult monks in batches every two months, with training beforehand and a minimum stay of thirty days, and the temple supplies the requisites. These rules are on a Thai-language page.

The temple’s website lists Dhamma talks by Phra Payom, including Sunday talks throughout the Rains retreat, in Thai. A small number of pages about the foundation are in English.