Upasika Kee Nanayon

Upasika Kee Nanayon was born in 1901 in Ratchaburi, west of Bangkok, the eldest child of a family of Chinese merchants. Her mother taught her the basics of Buddhist practice: nightly chanting and keeping the precepts. As a teenager she read Dhamma books and meditated in her spare time, and she ran a small business to support her father. She decided early not to marry.

In 1945 she gave up the business and moved with her aunt and uncle to a hill outside Ratchaburi called Khao Suan Luang. She dates their first stay in an old meeting hall there to 26 June 1945. The three devoted themselves to meditation. The small retreat they made in an abandoned monastic dwelling grew into a practice centre for women, which Thanissaro Bhikkhu in 1995 described as flourishing. Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote in 1995 that the life there was frugal, that the women were vegetarian, and that they met each day for chanting, group meditation and discussion of the practice.

She was largely self-taught. She had picked up the basics of meditation on visits to monasteries but had no formal meditation teacher. Most of her instruction came from the Pali canon and from the works of contemporary teachers, and she tested it in her own practice. Thanissaro Bhikkhu notes the influence of Buddhadasa Bhikkhu on her later teaching. Her talks were recorded from the mid-1950s, a first small volume was printed in 1956 for free distribution, and by the mid-1960s a flood of free Dhamma literature was reaching readers from Khao Suan Luang.

Access to Insight describes her teaching as centred on developing a mind free from attachment, and her talks include instruction in breath meditation. In her last years she lost her sight to cataracts but kept up her practice and went on receiving visitors. She died in 1978, leaving the centre in the hands of a committee she had chosen from its members.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu translated her talks into English. An Unentangled Knowing is free to read on dhammatalks.org.