ABSTRACT
The Forest Sangha is a Thai Theravada monastic tradition which appears to have come to Britain with little adaptation. However, it has a wholly changed context here, where Thai traditions may be inappropriate and lay supporters may have different perspectives. Earlier attempts by Western monks to establish a Theravada monastic sakgha in Britain were hampered by their lack of experience of monastic life, with its ‘training conventions and mendicant relationship with the laity’ (Sucitto, 1992a: 16). By contrast, Ajahn Sumedho (b.1934) had spent almost 10 years as a monk in a Thai forest monastery when he met the English Sangha Trust (EST) Chairman George Sharp in London in 1976. His teacher, the Thai meditation master Ajahn Chah, visited England at the EST’s invitation in 1977 and left Sumedho and three other Western monks at the Hampstead Vihara, a small house on a noisy street, where they attempted to continue their Thai practice. Bell (1991: 91) pointed out that these four monks were the first group of Western bhikkhus ‘committed to strictly practising the Vinaya discipline’, and Ajahn Sucitto (1992a: 16-17) described their difficulties adjusting to their new environment, with much confusion as to ‘how the tradition was to be altered, if at all, to fit English conditions’.
