Chandra Khonnokyoong (; ), 19 January 1909 – 10 September 2000) was a Thai Maechi (nun) who founded Wat Phra Dhammakaya. Religious studies scholar Rachelle Scott has described her as "the most influential female meditation teacher in Thailand". Her own students call her Khun Yay Achan Mahā-ratana Upasika Chandra Khonnokyoong (Khun Yay Achan, for short), an honorific name meaning "grandmother-master-great-gem devotee". Although illiterate, she was widely respected for her experience in meditation, which is rare for a maechi. She managed to attract many well-educated students, despite her rural background and illiteracy. Some scholars have raised the example of Maechi Chandra to indicate that the position of women in Thai Buddhism may be more complex than was previously thought.
Early life
On 19 January 1909, Chandra was born into a middle class farming family in Nakhon Pathom province, of Thailand. Her father was called Ploy, and her mother was called Phan, and she had eight siblings. She was born in an area of the province which contained many long-established temples, which may have affected her devotion to Buddhism. Like most Thai women in those days, she had no formal education. In her childhood years, she helped both with farming and the household. One day, when her father was drunk, he had a fight with Chandra's mother. Trying to downplay her mother's insulting words to her father, Chandra made him angry. He cursed Chandra, saying that she would be deaf for five hundred lifetimes. Thai people in those days believed that a parent's words were sacred, and would normally be fulfilled. When her father died unexpectedly in 1921, Chandra still wanted to reconcile with him. She believed that reconciliation would help dissolve the effects of Karma and lift the curse.
In 1927, Chandra heard that a meditation master in Thonburi was able to use meditation to communicate with beings in the afterlife. This was Luang Pu Sodh Candasaro. To accomplish her wish to reconcile with her father, Chandra left her family eight years later and travelled to Bangkok to find her way to Wat Paknam Bhasicharoen, where Luang Pu Sodh was located at that time. At first, Chandra lived with her aunt in Bangkok. Later on, to acquaint herself with Wat Paknam, Chandra decided to work as a servant. She applied to work in a household which was regularly visited by a teacher from Wat Paknam. This was the household of Liap Sikanchananand in Saphan Han, Bangkok, in which Achan Thongsuk Samdaengpan came regularly to teach. After a while, Achan Thongsuk started to teach Chandra in private and Chandra quickly made progress in Dhammakaya meditation. Students in the Dhammakaya tradition believe that she eventually attained the state in meditation called Dhammakaya and was able to contact her father in the afterlife.
Wat Phra Dhammakaya often emphasizes Maechi Chandra's illiteracy, to make the point that she became a spiritual leader solely because of her character and spiritual maturity, rather than academic knowledge. The temple's biography states that "she made a classroom of the vast paddy fields of her youth".
Life at Wat Paknam
In 1938, with the permission of the mistress of the house, Chandra was taken by Achan Thongsuk to meet Luang Pu Sodh for the first time. She was going to spend a month at Wat Paknam. When she met Luang Pu Sodh, he addressed her with the words: "You are too late!" as though they had known each other previously. He allowed her to join an experienced group of meditation practitioners in Wat Paknam without having to pass any probation or tests. This was highly unusual. This privilege was not taken for granted by others at the temple, however, and she was looked down on at first. Despite these obstacles, she was able to develop her meditation and, still within the first month, was given a special meditation seat () used for training mindfulness, considered a sign of inner progress. Before her period of leave was finished, Chandra decided to ordain as a maechi and stay at Wat Paknam. She and Achan Thongsuk ordained on the same day. In the literature of Wat Phra Dhammakaya, it is said that Maechi Chandra quickly became one of Luang Pu Sodh's best students and was praised by him as "first among many, second to none". At that time, she became well-known because people believed she had the ability to share merit with people who had died, analyze people's karma, and other forms of abhiñña (mental powers) coming from her meditation practice. Maechi Chandra is believed by some practitioners to have prevented several bombs from hitting Bangkok during World War II.