[1] Luang Por Viradhammo is the most senior Thai Forest monk in Canada and currently the Abbot of Tisarana Buddhist Monastery in Perth, Ontario.

[3] He started in an Engineering program at the University of Toronto at the age of sixteen but quickly discovered that this was not his vocation and, in 1969, decided to travel to satisfy his continued search for meaning, first in North Africa and then in Europe and finally in Almora, India, near the Nepalese border.

It was while reading a book by J. Krishnamurti that Ajahn Viradhammo re-lived his experiences of pure, non-dual awareness that he had had as a child.

While living in India in 1969 he met the late Sāmanera Bodhesako, who introduced him to the teachings of the Buddha, which led him to travel to Thailand and become a novice at Wat Mahathat in 1973.

In 1985 he was invited by the Wellington Theravāda Buddhist Association to move to New Zealand where he lived for 10 years, helping build Bodhinyānārāma monastery.