Ajahn Juan Kulajettho

Ajahn Juan Kulajettho (Phra Achan Chuan Kunlachettho) was born on 10 July 1920 at Ban Lao Man Kaeo in Amnat Charoen district, then part of Ubon Ratchathani province. The memorial book his disciples published after his death says he worked for the highways department before ordaining in the Mahanikaya at twenty-one. Wanting to follow the wandering forest monks, he disrobed and was ordained again in the Dhammayut order on 24 March 1943.

He reached Ajahn Mun at Wat Pa Ban Nong Phue at the end of his third rains retreat and stayed with him through his fourth; My Sakon Nakhon dates this to 1946. The memorial book records Ajahn Mun’s advice to keep the discipline strictly, to contemplate the body, and to use buddho when the mind was restless. He also spent rains retreats at Wat Chedi Luang in Chiang Mai. After Ajahn Mun’s funeral in 1949, Luang Pu Khao Analayo told him that Ajahn Mun had entrusted him to his care, and he went to stay with Luang Pu Khao.

In the late 1960s he came to Phu Tok, a pair of sandstone mountains in what is now Bueng Kan Province, and made a meditation place in the caves of Phu Tok Noi. With local villagers he built a dam, huts, and the wooden stairs and cliffside walkways that now reach six levels below the summit. He chose traditional methods and no machinery, and by 1980 the monastery, Wat Chetiyakhiri Vihara, was fully established.

He died on 27 April 1980 in a plane crash on a flight to Bangkok, aged 59. A memorial chedi with a museum stands at Wat Phu Tok, and statues of him stand on the mountain. No translated teachings of his are known to be in print in English.