Ajahn Amaro

Ajahn Amaro
With lay visitors in US, 2007
Religion	Theravada
School	Thai Forest Tradition
Personal
Born	1956 Kent, England
Senior posting
Based in	Amaravati Buddhist Monastery
Title	Ajahn
Religious career
Website	http://www.amaravati.org/

Ajahn Amaro (born 1956) is a Theravada Buddhist monk and teacher, and abbot of the Amaravati Buddhist Monastery at the eastern end of the Chiltern Hills in south east England. The centre, in practice as much for ordinary people as for monastics, is inspired by the Thai forest tradition and the teachings of the late Ajahn Chah. Its chief priorities are the practice and teaching of Buddhist ethics, together with traditional concentration and insight meditation techniques, as an effective way of dissolving suffering.

Ajahn Amaro was born Jeremy Charles Julian Horner in Kent. He was educated at Sutton Valence School and Bedford College, University of London. Ajahn means teacher. He is a second cousin of I.B. Horner (1896-1981), late President of the Pali Text Society.

Apart from a certain interest in the theories of Rudolf Steiner—to which he had been introduced by Trevor Ravenscroft, Amaro's principal enthusiasms on leaving university were, by his own admission, pretty much those standard-issue among sceptical students of the day: sex, drugs and rock'n'roll.

Having completed his honours degree in psychology and physiology, in 1977 he went to Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand on an undefined "open-ended" spiritual search. He somehow found himself in northeast Thailand, at the forest monastery of Wat Pah Nanachat. Ajahn Chah's charismatic impact and the encouragement of the senior American monk Ajahn Pabhakaro were decisive. It changed his life. Having become a lay renunciate, four months later he became a novice and in 1979 he received upasampada from Ajahn Chah and took profession as a Theravadin bhikkhu. He stayed in Thailand for two years. Amaro then went back to England to help Ajahn Sumedho establish Chithurst Monastery in West Sussex. With the blessing of his abbot, in 1983 he moved to Harnham Vihara in Northumberland. He made the entire 830-mile journey on foot, chronicled in his 1984 volume Tudong: The Long Road North.