Ajahn Fuang Jotiko

Ajahn Fuang Jotiko was a Thai forest monk, born in 1915 in Chanthaburi province in south-eastern Thailand. His student Thanissaro Bhikkhu writes that he was orphaned at eleven, raised in a series of monasteries and ordained at twenty. In his second year as a monk he met Ajahn Lee Dhammadharo, who was setting up a meditation monastery in an old cemetery outside Chanthaburi, and he joined him. Apart from a few exceptions, he spent every Rains Retreat under Ajahn Lee until Lee’s death in 1961. Mettā Forest Monastery describes him as one of Lee’s most devoted students.

When Ajahn Lee founded Wat Asokaram near Bangkok, Ajahn Fuang joined him there. He did not want to take over the large community after Lee died. From 1965 he spent three rains retreats teaching meditation at Wat Makut Kasatriyaram in Bangkok, then in 1968 volunteered to help at a new monastery, Wat Dhammasathit, on land donated in Rayong province. No abbot could be found for the poor, remote site, and shortly before the Supreme Patriarch’s death in 1971 he accepted the position himself. From 1976 he split his time between Rayong and Bangkok.

By Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s account, Ajahn Fuang preferred to teach individually. His usual way of starting people was to meditate together with them, guide them through the first rough spots, and then leave them to practise more on their own. He generally refused to let his instruction be recorded, saying it was meant for the people in front of him at that stage of their practice. Most of his lay students came from the professional classes of Bangkok. He died of a heart attack on 14 May 1986 in Hong Kong, while visiting a student who had set up a meditation centre there.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu, an American, met him in April 1974, was ordained in 1976 and trained under him for the last decade of his life. Because Ajahn Fuang left so little recorded teaching, Awareness Itself, which Thanissaro compiled from memory and from interviews with other students, is the main English source for his teaching. It is free to read online and in print from Mettā Forest Monastery.