❖ 1870-1949 Acaan Mun

Mun was born two years after Mongkut died, in Ubonratchathani, North-East Thailand, of Lao descent. He was a pupil of Acaan Sao (1861-1941) who taught him the “Bu-ddho” meditation practice.

His method develops a highly concentrated state experienced as a central and deep crystal sphere as a way to the inner refined Dhammakāya body. Although the term Dhammakāya has come to be the defining term for his lineage of practice, it is a term already familiar in other Buddhist traditions, including the Tibetan, meaning literally dhamma body in Pāli, or dharmakaya, dharma body in Mahāyana sanskrit.

The identifying feature of Dhammakāya meditation is the meditator's attention towards the centre of the body two finger breadths above the navel. The promoters of this approach say this is the same point as the end-point of the deepest breath in mindfulness of breathing meditation (Ānāpānasati). A similar technique is described in an obscure 18th century Sinhalese meditation manual that was translated into English as "Manual of a Mystic". This practice was probably introduced into Sri Lanka by Thai monks during the Buddhist revival in Sri Lanka in the mid-eighteenth century, and taught to forest dwelling monks of the Asgiriya Vihāra fraternity in the Kandyan Kingdom. It is likely that Luang Por Sodh was influenced by such texts, or traces of such practices already existing, although his followers believe that knowledge of Dhammakāya meditation was lost 500 years after the Buddha entered Parinibbāna, until rediscovered by Luang Por Sodh.

From 1916 onwards, Dhammakāya meditation became associated with his home temple of Wat Paknam in Bangkok, and Luang Por Sodh himself was renowned for psychic powers, and many amulets have been made in his name. In 1970, 11 years after his death, his most accomplished meditation pupil, a nun Khonnokyoong along with her lay and monk followers, established Wat Dhammakāya to continue the teaching – which became hugely popular with Thai middle and educated classes. but by the time of writing has become the focus of accusations of corruption.

❖ 1904-82 Mahāsi Sayadaw

Mahāsi Sayadaw, born in upper Burma, was a pupil of Mingun Sayadaw, from whom he learned vipassanā meditation. Based on this, and his understanding of the Satipathāna Sutta, he formulated his own style of practice, which in comparison to the more traditional samatha-vippassanā tradition became known as the sukha-vipassaka or “dry insight” method.

Mahāsi Sayadaw’s “dry” vipassanā method of meditation had an enormous influence on Buddhist meditation practices from the 1940s onwards, first in Burma, then extending to SouthEast Asia, and worldwide. In this method it was claimed that samatha meditation, in particular the development of jhānic absorption, as a grounding for insight or vipassanā, is not necessary (although the practice does have a samatha component in developing concentration to the level immediately preceding jhāna, access concentration or upacāra samādhi. It was claimed that diligent practice would lead to stream-entry, the Sotāpanna path, in one month. After establishing a large following in Burma, Mahāsi Sayadaw toured Thailand in 1951, and became even more influential when Burma hosted the 6th Buddhist Council in 1954/5. From the 1950s onwards Burmese vipassanā was so highly promoted in Thailand that much of the age old samatha and jhāna traditional practices were relegated to effectively suppressed esoteric roles. In 1979-80, Mahāsi Sayadaw and several of his senior teachers toured Europe and held a retreat in Oxford in 1979.

Mid-1950s New Burmese Vipassanā comes to Thailand

The dry vipassanā method was introduced to Thailand by Phra Phimolathan who was a pupil of Mahasi Sayadaw, when he was Ecclesiastical Minister of the Interior and Abbot of Wat Mahathat (seat of the Mahānikaya). This was presented as a “reform” to replace existing Mahānikaya samatha-vipassanā practices. The context was a fierce rivalry between the Mahānikay and Thammayut sects in the years following the death of Acaan Mun, and particularly between Phra Phimolatham (Mahānikay) and Somdet Phra Mahāwirawong (Thammayut). Thai politics were also a factor. From 1957-63 Thailand was under military rule headed by Field-Marshal Sarit Thanarat, and it suited Sarit and the Monarchy to favour the Thammayut sect and its associations to the forest tradition founded by Acaan Mun. Against this background, both sects were vying for meditational authority and ecclesiastical posts under a new structure of an Ecclesiastical Assembly with a Supreme Patriarch appointed by the King.

Phra Phimolathan instituted a national campaign to promote the Burmese vipassanā method in Thailand, but Sarit and his military government construed the popularity of the Mahānikay vipassanā meditation programme as a political and subversive threat. Phra Phimolathan was disrobed and incarcerated in 1955, and the previous democratic 1941 Sangha Act was eventually replaced by the authoritarian Sangha Act of 1962, which gave power to the Supreme Patriarch and his advisors in the Council of Elders (Mahātherasamakhom). The position of Supreme Patriarch was then taken by Phimolatham’s Thammayut rival, Somdet Phra Mahāwirawong.

However, as a result of the success of Phimolathan’s campaign, and his successor Phra Thepsiddhimuni, by this time many monasteries around the country had become satellite meditation “branches” of Wat Mahathat, the driving force of which was to undermine samatha meditation practices and to replace them by the “dry” vipassanā method from Burma. From the mid-1950s into the 1960s, for example, Thai monks wishing to travel to other countries were required to pass “tests” to prove they had attained a certain level in the vipassanā method, even if they were already experienced in samatha-vipassanā meditation.

The Burmese vipassanā method became the public face of Buddhist meditation in Thailand through open lectures delivered by the Buddhist University of Wat Mahathat during the 1970s, open to both Thais and foreigners, both monks and lay. The aim was to present the new vipassanā method as more rational and scientific than the previous samatha-vipassanā method, which was often portrayed as corrupt or tainted by “magical” practices, as well as with a dependence on developing jhānic practices which were considered unnecessary and a blind alley by the Burmese vipassanā school. (On the other hand, some experienced samatha-vipassanā teachers were of the opinion that the “dry” vipassanā method had attracted, and been largely formed by, “failed” samatha-vipassanā meditators.)

As Tambiah writes,

“The Thammayut brand of central Thai Buddhism was to be the criterion of pure Buddhism, and regional traditions of Buddhist practice, worship, and identity were to be obliterated in favour of a Bangkok orthodoxy and of central Thai language as against variant languages, such as the Tai Yuan of the North and its associated script”  
(1984: 162. The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets: A Study in Charisma, Hagiography, Sectarianism, and Millennial Buddhism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).