Ajahn Sumedho

Category: Living Masters

From Buddhist Encyclopedia

Biography

Ajahn Sumedho was born in 1934 in Seattle, Washington. When he was 18 years old, he served overseas in the United States military for four years as a medic in the Korean War. Following his military service, he completed a Bachelor of Arts in Far Eastern Studies and, in 1963, a Master of Arts in South Asian Studies at the University of Washington.

He served in the Peace Corps as an English teacher in Borneo from 1964 to 1966, following a one-year stint as a social worker for the Red Cross.

In 1966, Ajahn Sumedho was ordained as a samanera monk at Wat Sri Saket in Thailand, and he was fully ordained as a Buddhist monk in May of the following year.

He spent ten years at Wat Pa Pong under the teacher Ajahn Chah Bodhinyana, from 1967-1977. In that time he became the most important western disciple of Ajahn Chah and has since become perhaps the most important modern western Buddhist monk in Theravada, establishing and becoming the abbot of Wat Pa Pong's sister monastery Wat Pa Nanachet, which now serves as a Thai monastery exclusively for westerners.

Ajahn Sumedho left Wat Pa Nanachet in 1977 after a visit to England with Ajahn Chah, who observed a strong interest in Buddhism among westerners. This led Ajahn Chah to send Ajahn Sumedho to England for the purposes of establishing a third monastery. This became Wat Pa Cittaviveka, in West Sussex. Ajahn Sumedho was granted the authority to give ordination to monks. He also established a ten precept ordination (Siladhara)for women. This has resulted in one of very few Theravadin "convents", since women are virtually unable to ordain in the Theravada tradition, due to the loss of the monastic lineage many centuries ago. Ajahn Sumedho's efforts to revive female ordination in Theravada have important social ramifications for the tradition, as this is a point of much controversy in Asia.

Ajahn Sumedho is currently the abbot of Amaravati, which was established in 1984. The network of monasteries and hermitages which started at Wat Pa Pong with Ajahn Chah now extends across the world, from Thailand to New Zealand, to the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, and Ajahn Sumedho was the figure most instrumental in building this community.

Teachings

Ajahn Sumedho is considered the seminal figure of the Thai Forest Tradition, more or less its de facto spiritual leader in the west. As a consequence, his teachings are very direct, practical, simple, and down to earth. He stresses in his lectures the quality of immediate awareness and the integration of this kind of awareness into daily life, producing (ideally) a kind of permanent vipassana practice. He, like almost all adherents to the Forest tradition, tends to avoid intellectual abstractions of the Dharma and focuses almost exclusively on the practical elements of daily training, his most consistent advice being "Pay attention to the mind". He is known for his bravado and witty communication style, in which he often directly challenges his listeners to practice or display their understanding. He engages his hearers with a startling sense of humour, often weaving amusing stories from his past experiences as a monk into his lectures.

Blibliographies

• Change, Celebration and Practise
• Life Is Like This
• The Way It Is
• Gratitude To Parents
• The Four Noble Truths
• Mindfulness: The Path to the Deathless