Ajahn Brahm

He taught math at a Devon high school for a year, then left for Thailand, where he was ordained in Bangkok at twenty-three by Somdet Kiaw, abbot of Wat Saket.

That year he and Jagaro bought 97 acres of forested land south of Perth for almost nothing. There were no buildings, so Ajahn Brahm learned bricklaying and plumbing and built much of Bodhinyana Monastery himself, sleeping on doors propped up with bricks in those first broke years, according to his own retelling on Buddhistdoor. When Jagaro disrobed in the mid-1990s, Ajahn Brahm took over as abbot, a post he still holds.

In October 2009 he helped ordain four women as full bhikkhunis in Perth, the first such ordinations within Ajahn Chah’s forest lineage. The Thai sangha refused to recognize it, and Ajahn Brahm was formally expelled from communion with the Ajahn Chah order for declining to denounce the ordination or demote the new nuns to junior status, as recounted in Lion’s Roar. It’s a small, stubborn episode, and it says something true about how institutions guard their thresholds even when the people knocking are already inside the house. Buddhism doesn’t own the argument between hierarchy and conscience; every tradition runs it eventually, and every tradition needs someone willing to lose standing over it.

He remains known for turning serious dharma into something closer to stand-up, mixing physics, self-deprecation, and stories like “The Two Bad Bricks” into talks that draw crowds far beyond Perth.