Ajahn Dtun Thiracitto

Ajahn Dtun Thiracitto was born in 1955 in Ayutthaya province and grew up in Bangkok. In March 1978 he graduated in economics and was accepted onto a master’s course in town planning at the University of Colorado. Amaravati’s profile says that while preparing to leave he read the Buddha’s last words, “Decline and disappearance is the nature of all conditions. Therefore strive on ceaselessly”, and decided to ordain for life within two months.

In June 1978 he travelled to Ubon Ratchathani and was ordained by Ajahn Chah at Wat Nong Pah Pong. He practised both with Ajahn Chah and at Wat Nong Pah Pong’s branch monasteries. In 1981 he returned to central Thailand for the Rains Retreat at Wat Fah Krahm near Bangkok with Ajahn Piak and Ajahn Anan. In late 1984 he and Ajahn Anan moved to Rayong, where Ajahn Dtun chose the forested mountain that became Wat Marp Jan. He spent five years helping Ajahn Anan establish it.

He then looked for solitude, and lived for about two years on eighty acres of forest in Chonburi province. In 1992 he accepted an offering of land there and founded Wat Boonyawad. Monks began to live with him in 1993. Amaravati puts the community at forty to fifty monks; the monastery’s own podcast description says sixty to seventy monks usually spend the Rains Retreat there.

Several English books carry his talks. This is the Path was first compiled and printed by Wat Buddha Dhamma to mark his first visit. The Sacred Equation sets out the whole path of meditation practice, and The Way to True Happiness collects talks given mostly to lay people. His autobiography, which ends in 2003, was written in about three weeks in 2017 for a museum of monks’ biographies, and he calls it only about seventy per cent complete. Most of his teaching is given in Thai. The Wat Boonyawad podcast posts his Thai talks.