Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu
Ajaan Geoff giving a Dhamma Talk
Religion	Theravada Buddhism
Lineage	Thai Forest Tradition
Education	Oberlin College
Personal
Nationality	American
Born	1949
Senior posting
Based in	Metta Forest Monastery
Title	Taan Ajahn
Rank	Phra Racha Khana (Chao Khun)
Religious career
Teacher	Fuang Jotiko, Phra Ajahn, Suwat Suvaco, Phra Ajahn
Present post	Treasurer, Dhammayut Order of the US
Website	www.watmetta.org

Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, also known as Ajaan Geoff (born 1949), is an American Buddhist monk. Belonging to the Thai Forest Tradition, for 22 years he studied under the forest master Ajahn Fuang Jotiko (himself a student of Ajaan Lee). Since 1993 he has served as abbot of the Metta Forest Monastery in San Diego County, California — the first monastery in the Thai Forest Tradition in the US — which he cofounded with Ajahn Suwat Suvaco.

Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu is perhaps best known for his translations of the Dhammapada and the Sutta Pitaka - almost 1000 suttas in all - providing the majority of the sutta translations for the reference website Access to Insight, as well as for his translations from the dhamma talks of the Thai forest ajahns. He has also authored several dhamma-related works of his own, and has compiled study-guides of his Pali translations.

Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu was born Geoffrey DeGraff in 1949 and was introduced to the Buddha's teaching on the Four Noble Truths as a high schooler, during a plane ride from the Philippines. Tricycle writes: "he grew up 'a very serious, independent little kid", spending his early childhood on a potato farm on Long Island, New York, and later living in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

At Oberlin College in the early 1970s, "he eschewed campus political activism because 'I didn't feel comfortable following a crowd.' For him, the defining issue of the day wasn't Vietnam, but a friend's attempted suicide." Thanissaro took a religious studies class when he found out there was meditation involved. Thanissaro writes: "I saw it as a skill I could master, whereas Christianity only had prayer, which was pretty hit-or-miss."

After graduating in 1971 with a degree in European Intellectual History from Oberlin College, he traveled on a university fellowship to Thailand. After a two-year search Thanissaro found a forest teacher — Ajaan Fuang Jotiko, a Kammatthana monk who studied under Ajahn Lee Dhammadaro — who insisted that his scholarly American student put his books aside.