Thirty kilometers below Bangkok, where the Chao Phraya River meets the Gulf of Thailand, stands a remnant mangrove forest. In the early twentieth century, several monks retreated here from the city to practice the oldest form of Buddhism, known as Theravāda, or the Forest Tradition. They named the temple they founded Wat Asokaram, the Monastery of No Sorrow.
In the twenty-first century, the estuary surrounding Wat Asokaram is no longer a forest wilderness. To one side are shrimp farms; on the other, a beach resort. The temple itself is now a Buddhist tourist attraction: a three-tiered, white wedding cake with thirteen spires. At one end of its ample parking lot, a path leads into what is left of the mangroves. Along raised walkways amid the trees are the monks’ kutis: clapboard cottages on pilings above tidal mud flats, shaded by curtains of hanging aerial roots.
The throb of urban Thailand fades here beneath the chitter of curlews and the splash of crabs and mud skippers. “In a city,” says Ajaan Boonku, a monk here for more than half a century, “you can study to control the mind. But it is difficult to achieve tranquility. In a forest, it is much easier to not think.”