Buddhadasa Bhikkhu

Buddhadasa Bhikkhu (1906 to 1993) was a Thai monk who founded Suan Mokkh, a forest monastery near his home village in Chaiya, Surat Thani, and died there. He took ordination in 1926, at the age of twenty. After a few years of study in Bangkok he concluded that purity was not to be found in the big city, and in 1932 he established Suan Mokkhabalarama, “the grove of the power of liberation”, to study the Buddha’s discourses and test them in practice.

His method of meditation was mindfulness with breathing (ānāpānasati). The book Mindfulness with Breathing: A Manual for Serious Beginners grew out of lectures he gave to foreigners on a meditation course at Suan Mokkh in October 1986. His essays on “me and mine” and on conditioned arising (paṭiccasamuppāda) are collected in Me and Mine, edited by Donald Swearer. Handbook for Mankind, a short outline of the Buddha’s teaching, began as lectures to prospective judges in 1956; its English foreword says more than 100,000 copies had been printed in Thai.

Buddhadasa also studied other religious traditions, and his essays include one titled “No Religion!”. The Suan Mokkh hermitage’s site quotes his books as saying he sought to unite all genuinely religious people in the work of freeing humanity from selfishness.

Late in life he gave regular talks in English during the international retreats. The Dharma Hermitage that grew out of this work still teaches mindfulness with breathing in English, and the Buddhadasa Indapanno Archives in Bangkok keep his talks and books available, mainly free of charge, in Thai and English.

The archive has also published his English talks from the retreats on video. It notes that his English is easier to follow for people who already know something of his teaching, and recommends turning on captions.