New Pa-Auk Thailand Monastery
New Pa-Auk Thailand Monastery
Picture of location in An-ton 2 hours from Bangkok.
The sima was officially completed (by vinaya transaction) about 6 months ago.
To complete a legal vinaya transaction, one needs the permission of the residing monks in the village. This could be a problem because monks often do not like newcomers on their own block, especially from Burma. To avoid such technicalities, the Thai donors who arranged this, picked a site in a village with only one monastery, which is abandoned. Most of the village is water. The mayor or equivalent, is connected with the owner which is leased on a long term contract. I think the land is officially owned by a Mahanikaya temple which makes everything to spec. About 36 Thai monks (plus two from Laos) are at Pa-Auk main now.
If you saw the foreigner list, you may have noticed a new Vietnam Monastery is much more important! That will happen this November. It depends on the country and their intention. Each monastery is independently funded/started by the donors, including paauk main.
Pa-Auk USA is not a real monastery. It is privately run by a Chinese Singaporean couple and funnelled through a nonprofit for the expenses as far as I last heard. The books are private, so nobody knows who owns the land and buildings. Sayadaw has no control over the place and is a guest. (As heard directly from me via a USA Pa-auk supporter in April 2014.)
I lost count, but there are maybe 40+ paauk branches locally and maybe 10 or so abroad. Mostly, Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Nepal.
Nauyana, Sri Lanka is a separate monastery, but teaches Pa-Auk Method.