Kruba Boonchum: The Forest Monk of Three Nations

Phra Khruba Boonchum — Pali name Ñāṇasaṃvaro, often written Yanasamvaro — was born in January 1964 (1965 by some reckonings) in Mae Kham, Chiang Rai province, in Thailand’s far north, to a Shan-speaking family whose roots lay across the border in Myanmar’s Shan State. He became a novice at eleven and received higher ordination in the mid-1980s at Wat Suan Dok in Chiang Mai.

Khruba is a northern Thai title for a revered senior monk. He belongs to the Theravāda forest tradition, which values solitude, meditation and austerity over life in town monasteries.

The monk of three nations

His following crosses borders: he is called the monk of three nations for the devotion he commands in Thailand, Myanmar and Laos, and his devotees extend into China. He has served as abbot of Wat Phra That Don Ruang in Tachileik, in Myanmar’s Shan State, and is closely associated with Wat Phra That Doi Wiang Kaew at Chiang Saen in Chiang Rai, where tens of thousands gathered in January 2024 to mark his sixtieth year.

Years in the caves

Each rainy season he withdraws into solitary retreat, often in a cave. Some retreats have lasted years: from 2010 to 2013 at a cave in Lampang, and from April 2019 to August 2022 — three years, three months and three days — at Mong Kyat cave in Shan State. Thousands waited to greet him when he emerged.

Tham Luang

In the summer of 2018, when twelve boys and their football coach were trapped by floodwater in the Tham Luang cave in Chiang Rai, Kruba Boonchum came to the cave to pray for them and for the spirits of the mountain, and told reporters they would soon be found. They were found days later and all were brought out alive. The episode made him known far beyond his devotees.

In Bhutan

He has long had a following in Bhutan, and royal households in both Bhutan and Thailand have invited him. In 2026 he visited the Project 108 site in Gelephu, offering prayers for the completion of the 108 Jangchub Chortens and for the peace and wellbeing of all beings, and contributed one chorten — one of the offerings that have made Project 108, in its own words, more than a Bhutanese undertaking. The full list of masters is in Project 108 Masters.