Wat Pa Sukato

Wat Pa Sukato is a forest meditation monastery in Kaeng Khro district, Chaiyaphum, established in 1976 under the guidance of Luang Por Kham Khian Suvanno as a place where the Dhamma could be practised simply and directly. The monastery follows the movement-meditation lineage of Luang Por Tian Jittasubho, in which rhythmic hand movements serve as the anchor for awareness practice rather than the breath alone. Entry is free, and the grounds are open daily, roughly 08:30-16:30.

The current abbot, Phra Paisal Visalo, arrived as a young monk in 1983 to study under Luang Por Kham Khian and took over as abbot after his teacher’s death in 2014. He’s one of Thailand’s most prominent socially engaged Buddhist monks, known for combining rigorous meditation practice with environmental work — ordaining trees to deter illegal logging, organising the Dhammayatra pilgrimage walks along the Lam Patao river basin on the Phu Lan Kha range, and writing widely on Buddhist ethics and ecology. The 500-rai forest around the monastery has been designated sacred, with logging and hunting prohibited, and the resident community works with nearby villages on conservation and debt-relief projects.

The movement-meditation method itself is worth explaining before you arrive: practitioners cycle through a sequence of slow, deliberate hand movements — palms turning, hands rising and falling — using the physical sensation as the object of awareness instead of counting breaths. Luang Por Tian developed the technique to make meditation accessible without years of prior training, and Wat Pa Sukato has taught it to lay visitors for decades alongside more conventional walking meditation on the forest paths between kutis.

Visitors and lay practitioners may come and practise. The grounds are simple meditation halls and kutis (monks’ huts) set under mature forest canopy; the setting is deliberately unadorned — no gilded chedis, no gift shop, nothing built for tourists. Practitioners can join walking meditation and attend Dhamma discussions, and the atmosphere is one of quiet discipline rather than display. For a different but related pilgrimage-and-nature angle in the same district, Pa Hin Ngam National Park and its sandstone plateau sit about an hour’s drive further into Chaiyaphum’s forest country.

Insider Tip: arrive before mid-afternoon if you want to sit in on walking meditation — the daily rhythm winds down well before the 16:30 close, and turning up late means watching from the edge rather than joining in. Watch out: this is a working monastery, not a tourist site — dress in white or plain, modest clothing if you intend to practise, keep photography discreet, and ask permission before entering meditation halls or approaching kutis.

To reach the monastery, take a motorcycle taxi from Kaeng Khro town (about 30 minutes, around 200 baht).