Luang Por Sanong Katapunyo

Sanong Phosuwan was born on 5 April 1944 in Sam Chuk district, Suphan Buri province. He was ordained as a novice at about fifteen and as a monk on 29 April 1964, and given the name Katapunyo. He then trained under Luang Pu Sangwal Kemako. His temple’s biography has him spend his second to fourth Rains retreats (1965 to 1967) in the charnel ground of Wat Nong Phai in Suphan Buri, where Luang Pu Sangwal came to check on his meditation every month or two, and lists seven ascetic practices (dhutaṅga) that he kept. Afterwards he travelled as a wandering monk, and over six years he practised the water, wind, earth and fire kasiṇas.

In 1968, on his travels, he came across Wat Sanghathan, an abandoned temple in an orchard in Nonthaburi with a large old Buddha image and a wooden pavilion. He judged it a good place for Dhamma practice. He returned in 1974 and lived there with five other monks. The temple’s biography says some villagers suspected him of being a communist monk, which made the first years hard.

He rebuilt the temple. The Nonthaburi provincial tourism page records that in 1993 he began replacing the old wooden pavilion over the Buddha image with a new hall, with its foundation stone laid in 1994, and that the temple holds two relics brought from Sri Lanka. His temple’s biography says he built a hermitage at Pak Chong, Nakhon Ratchasima, in 1997 and later made it Wat Tham Kritsana Dhammaram, a practice centre for Thai and foreign monks and lay people, with an Austrian nun to look after foreign practitioners. He founded a radio station, Sangkhathantham, which The Nation said in 2012 broadcast on separate Thai and English frequencies.

His teaching rested on satipaṭṭhāna. The temple’s practice guide for lay visitors has them keep awareness through four postures: standing, walking, sitting and lying down. He died in August 2012 at the age of 68 while on the Rains retreat at the Katapunyo Dhamma Centre in Suphan Buri. His talks are published on the temple’s website in Thai.