Phra Khuva Boonchum

Phra Khuva Boonchum
Ñāṇasaṁvara
Personal life
Born	5 January 1965 (1965-01-05) (age 60) Mae Kham, Chiang Rai Province, Thailand
Nationality	Thai
Other names	Ñāṇasaṁvara
Religious life
Religion	Buddhism
School	Theravada
Lineage	Thai Forest Tradition
Senior posting
Teacher	Khruba Siwichai
Based in	Wat Phra That Don Ruang

Ñāṇasaṁvara (Thai: ญาณสํวโร; Burmese: ဉာဏသံဝရ) is a Shan Buddhist monk of the Thai Forest Tradition, specifically the Northern Thai Forest Tradition established by Khruba Siwichai.^[1] He is known as Phra Khuva Boonchum or Khruba Bonchum (ครูบาบุญชุ่ม) by Thai followers, and as the Mong Pong Sayadaw (မိုင်းဖုန်းဆရာတော်) by his Burmese followers.^[2] His serious solitary meditation practices, and his known for his solitary meditation retreats in caves in Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos.^[3][4] He is dubbed "the monk of the three nations".^[5]

Early life

Ñāṇasaṁvara was born on 5 January 1965 in Mae Kham, Chiang Rai Province, Thailand as the eldest son of a Shan-speaking family originally from Mong Yong, near Kengtung, Shan State, Burma.^[3] His grandparents migrated to Chiang Saen, Thailand.^[3] After receiving samanera ordination as a child, he received upasampada ordination at the age of 21 on 9 May 1986.^[6]

Later life

The sayadaw serves as the abbot of Wat Phra That Don Ruang (วัดพระธาตุดอนเรือง) in Tachileik, Shan State, Myanmar.^[7] According to the source, the sayadaw is often invited to the royal palaces of Bhutan and Thailand.^[8]

His followers include prominent Burmese officials and rebel leaders, such as Khin Nyunt and Yawd Serk. Before Khin Nyunt fall from power, he donated large amounts of money to the sayadaw. It was around 2007 when the authorities put pressure on him to leave his monastery. In the aftermath of the 2007 Saffron Revolution, the sayadaw was named in the list of patrons of the International Sangha Organization, led by the exiled Penang Sayadaw. Subsequently, the authorities pressured the trustees of his monastery to sign a letter stating that it was not desirable for him to live in the monastery. As a result, the sayadaw left for Thailand. He returned to Myanmar during the administration of President Thein Sein.^[8]

At the invitation of State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, the sayadaw visited Nay Pyi Taw in 2016 and also visited the residence of Senior General Min Aung Hlaing during that visit.^[8]

In 2018, he paid a visit to ailing former Senior General Maung Aye, the second-most powerful general in the former military regime.^[4]

He amassed additional prominence in Thailand and Myanmar during the Tham Luang cave rescue by accurately predicting when the trapped boys would be discovered and that they would be found alive.^[9]

In August 2022, he became ill and had to receive medical treatment at Bangkok Hospital after spending three years, three months, and three days meditating in the cave. Thai media reports indicate that the Sayadaw has been diagnosed with cerebral malaria. The King of Thailand, Vajiralongkorn, paid the expenses of the Sayadaw's healthcare, including his treatment at Bangkok Hospital.^[10]

References

1. "Khruba Bonchum: A symbol of peace". Burma News International. Retrieved 2018-07-12.
2. "မိုင်းဖုန်းဆရာတော် ဘဒ္ဒန္တဉာဏသံဝရအရှင်သူမြတ်အား အဂ္ဂမဟာကမ္မဌာနစရိယဘွဲ့တံဆိပ်တော် ပူဇော်ပွဲ အခမ်းအနားကျင်းပ" [Ceremony to Commemorate Mong Pong Sayadaw Bhaddanta Ñāṇasaṁvara's Receipt of the Aggamahākammaṭhānacariya Religious Title]. Shan State Government (in Burmese). Retrieved 2018-07-12.
3. "Khuva Boonchum - Dhamma Wiki". dhammawiki.com. Retrieved 2018-07-12.
4. "Monk Who Predicted Thai Cave Rescue Hailed for 'Intervention'". The Irrawaddy. 2018-07-03. Retrieved 2018-07-12.
5. "A mystical take on the Tham Luang cave rescue". Bangkok Post. 4 July 2018.
6. Tai, Ta (2012-02-19). "ထုင္ꨵလိꨓ္ေပꨣးထိꨁမ္း: Biography of the Most Venerable Khuva Boonchum Ñāṇasaṁvaro". ထုင္ꨵလိꨓ္ေပꨣးထိꨁမ္း. Retrieved 2018-07-12.
7. sahainop (2018-07-05). "หากันให้วุ่น! "เหรียญครูบาบุญชุ่ม" เกลี้ยงแผง ล่าสุดทะลุเกินแสนแล้ว!! (คลิป)". ข่าวสด (in Thai). Retrieved 2018-07-12.
8. စိုင်းထွန်းအောင်လွင် (2018-07-03). "ထိုင်းဂူရှေ့ ဆုတောင်းခဲ့တဲ့ မိုင်းဖုန်းဆရာတော်". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 2018-07-12.
9. "Thai King Offers Robes to Monk Who Predicted Team Trapped in Cave Would Be Found". The Irrawaddy. 2018-07-09. Retrieved 2018-07-12.
10. "ထိုင်းနိုင်ငံ ဘန်ကောက်တွင် ဆေးကုသမှုခံယူနေသည့် မိုင်းဖုန်းဆရာတော်၏ ကျန်းမာရေး ရာခိုင်နှုန်း ၈၀ ခန့်ပြန်လည် ကောင်းမွန်လာ". Eleven Media Group (in Burmese). 15 August 2022.